Monday, 8 March 2010
Sunday, 7 March 2010
Ken Meets Chuck
Ken W.:
Realist theory predicts that balances disrupted will one day be restored. A limitation of the theory, a limitation common to social science theories, is that it cannot say when.Chuck P.:
On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.Me:
On a long enough time line, any prediction can come true. / On a long enough time line the notion of prediction becomes ridiculous.
Reply to Bill re: Hurt Locker
I have not seen The Hurt Locker so my comments are more in reaction to others. My main question is in what way does a filmmaker have a responsibilty to do anything other than make a piece of art and tell a story the way that they want to? If you are arguing that because the filmmaker didn't do certain things with the story you did not find the film enjoyable, fine. But if not, I fail to see where such a responsibility eminates from.The question of creative responsibility is a fair one. I would agree with you insofar as I think it wrong to apply individual 'blame' on two counts:
First, it overemphasises the importance of 'authorship.' While the director is clearly a key component in the production of a work such as this she is but one of an extremely large number of individuals who bring such a project to fruition. Not only must funding be won, producers hired and actors allowed creative control over their own characters, the ideas that are produced through such a creative process are heavily dependent upon existing ideational structures, be they cinematic conventions, racial stereotypes or, indeed, language itself. Even 'auteur-ship' is, then, not 'author-ship' because one can never take total creative control over one's own culturally constructed dispositions. Thus, critique is (or should be) nothing specifically personal - it is a political and a social act.
Second, as I mentioned below, the remarkable thing, for me at least, about this film is not so much the film itself but its (relatively un-)critical reception. To speak of the film in this context highlights its embeddedness in wider narratives than the film's own. It is precisely thinking about the film in this way that highlights its intrinisic political content because, whatever else happens, films will always be cultural spaces for the portrayal and construction of ideas about life and, in this case, war and racism. What, after all, is more remarkable: a film being made that operationalises questionable racial stereotypes or such a film being made and its being talked of as perhaps the finest made in an entire year? To validate this film is to validate what it can be seen to endorse, however implicitly. This is the crucial point.
Therefore, I don't think anyone here is accusing the filmmaker of 'racism' as such. What we are engaging in here (on a very small scale) is cultural criticism: the critical assessment of a prominent aspect of our cultural lives and its political connotations. I think this is extremely important but it is certainly not about placing 'blame' on any one individual. That said, the director does bear a significant degree of responsibility for what she has played such a large part in making. She is, then, responsible for her own role in her own life, just as well all are. She is no more exempt from politics for being an 'artist' than I am for being a librarian. Of course, she most likely has a different interpretation of her film; one that would not make her responsible for any kind of negativity - such is life. She is entitled to her opinion but it being her opinion doesn't make her exempt from responsibility for her creative actions.
Musings on race in Hurt Locker
Reply to:
Having said that though, I also partially agree with the reviewer because this film shows just how impossible it is to make an apolitical war film. War contains far too much politics for it to remain excluded by ignorance. It creeps back in through the spaces in the narrative that are neglected, glossed over or otherwise over-simplified - i.e. every moment there is a faceless, non-descript Iraqi simply taking up space, or an Iraqi acting in a hysterical or otherwise stereotypical manner; so, that is often. (Surely the 'professor' is the most stereotypical character in the film - even more so than his wife. He is the 'good, Western-ish Arab', the exception that proves the rule. He could've been plucked straight out of a cut scene in 24.)
You can't make an apolitical war film. It's like trying to make an asexual porno.
If you ignore the politics then THAT is your politics and, frankly, it is one of the worst sorts.
Making the mise en scène a blank canvas for your protagonist (whether he is a 'hero' or an 'anti-hero', it makes no difference) you cannot avoid endorsing and participating in the narratives that portray the Arab 'other' as an equally blank tabula rasa ready for imperial imprinting.
It is an interesting film with a unique atmosphere and I can see why it was nominated on that basis but its weaknesses far outweigh its strengths. It was apparently made on the basis that ignoring certain issues makes them go away. Now, it is not necessary for every war film to be a pro- or anti-war polemic but to work through a relatively subtle, character based plot in circumstances such as this requires substantially more subtle filmmaking than was on show here.
I too am surprised at the critical acclaim this film has received. I don't suppose the filmmakers ever dreamed that the film would be as successful as it has been and in this sense I think that the fact this film has been so well received is more important than the specific construction of the narrative itself. Clearly there is a strong appetite for films that give the appearance of gritty realism (to what extent these appearances are valid is an open question). To me this film suggests that many people want to get a 'soldier's eye view' on the war without being subjected to difficult questions about their own complicity in the acts they see occur. This desire is passed off as 'mature' filmmaking, surely a distant cousin of academic 'objectivity'.
These wars are now so deeply engrained in popular consciousness and popular culture that they are developing their own narrative conventions and it could be that this sort of withdrawn, 'matter of fact' aesthetic will become more popular and achieve a place alongside the masturbatory, gun-toting action movies and bleeding-heart-liberal platitude-reels. We will see. What is certain though: a minute spent watching the Oscars is a minute wasted!
When I heard that the "Hurt Locker," a drama set in the midst of the Iraq War, was nominated for several Oscars, I was intrigued. Americans have not shown much interest as a people in either of the current official wars and even less interest in documentaries about and dramas set in these conflicts. My initial hunch was that this film, was selected to balance out "Avatar", the narrative of which clearly questions militarism and imperialism (while also reveling in astounding levels of mindless violence). So I assumed that "The Hurt Locker" would make a conservative counter-argument which justified the necessity of this war of choice. After finally seeing it, I was stunned that this film was nominated for any awards.'Hurt Locker' seems to me to be an attempt to make an 'apolitical' war film. So, I partially agree with those disagreeing with the review - the film doesn't engage with issues of race, etc. because it's not interested in them, not so much because of any political programme. It is true that this film could have been set in any war (any war with unexploded munitions, at least). The plot concerns the main character(s), not the overall context and this point is made fairly explicitly.
Having said that though, I also partially agree with the reviewer because this film shows just how impossible it is to make an apolitical war film. War contains far too much politics for it to remain excluded by ignorance. It creeps back in through the spaces in the narrative that are neglected, glossed over or otherwise over-simplified - i.e. every moment there is a faceless, non-descript Iraqi simply taking up space, or an Iraqi acting in a hysterical or otherwise stereotypical manner; so, that is often. (Surely the 'professor' is the most stereotypical character in the film - even more so than his wife. He is the 'good, Western-ish Arab', the exception that proves the rule. He could've been plucked straight out of a cut scene in 24.)
You can't make an apolitical war film. It's like trying to make an asexual porno.
If you ignore the politics then THAT is your politics and, frankly, it is one of the worst sorts.
Making the mise en scène a blank canvas for your protagonist (whether he is a 'hero' or an 'anti-hero', it makes no difference) you cannot avoid endorsing and participating in the narratives that portray the Arab 'other' as an equally blank tabula rasa ready for imperial imprinting.
It is an interesting film with a unique atmosphere and I can see why it was nominated on that basis but its weaknesses far outweigh its strengths. It was apparently made on the basis that ignoring certain issues makes them go away. Now, it is not necessary for every war film to be a pro- or anti-war polemic but to work through a relatively subtle, character based plot in circumstances such as this requires substantially more subtle filmmaking than was on show here.
I too am surprised at the critical acclaim this film has received. I don't suppose the filmmakers ever dreamed that the film would be as successful as it has been and in this sense I think that the fact this film has been so well received is more important than the specific construction of the narrative itself. Clearly there is a strong appetite for films that give the appearance of gritty realism (to what extent these appearances are valid is an open question). To me this film suggests that many people want to get a 'soldier's eye view' on the war without being subjected to difficult questions about their own complicity in the acts they see occur. This desire is passed off as 'mature' filmmaking, surely a distant cousin of academic 'objectivity'.
These wars are now so deeply engrained in popular consciousness and popular culture that they are developing their own narrative conventions and it could be that this sort of withdrawn, 'matter of fact' aesthetic will become more popular and achieve a place alongside the masturbatory, gun-toting action movies and bleeding-heart-liberal platitude-reels. We will see. What is certain though: a minute spent watching the Oscars is a minute wasted!
Being against foundationalism does not necessarily make one an ‘anti-foundationalist’ – to self-identify with such a moniker effectively reduces the identity of one’s work to that project – the iconoclastic critical-theoretical destruction of foundationalism. While my work does share this aim I fear being reduced to it – anti-foundationalism will not get very far until it broadens out its scope and has the confidence to assert its own assumptions without making the justification of those core assumptions the central point of the argument. In other words, anti-foundationalism will only succeed by administering its own dissolution – it will fail by having this dissolution thrust upon it by foundationalists.
A quick, exciting thought
Not only is history necessary for the understanding of the international but, if we recognise the importance of Hegel in the intellectual life of the contemporary euro-west, the international may well be necessary for the understanding of history. Because, as Agamben puts it quoting Hegel:
‘Great men’ are merely instrumental in the forward march of the universal Spirit. Like individuals, ‘they do not know what is commonly held as happiness’. ‘Once they have reached their goal, they sag like empty sacks.’ The real subject of history is the State.
Sunday, 7 February 2010
Reply to Prof PTJ
Comment on: http://duckofminerva.blogspot.com/2010/02/two-philosophers-shoveling-snow.html
A very witty piece. I basically agree. However, I think something needs to be challenged: the notion of 'intersubjectivity' as the privileged site of knowledge (and thus 'reality') construction.
The primary disagreement between Roy and Will seems to be Roy's fury over Will's refusal to attribute the 'in-itself' (i.e. the snow in its 'intransigent' materiality) any 'agency' (loosely speaking) with regard to its own understanding. For Roy the snow has both transigent and intransigent qualities and while it can be understood differently by people with different sensory/cultural dispositions it nevertheless possesses a certain 'snowy-ness' that cannot be ignored; to ignore it, it is supposed, is to commit the 'epistemic fallacy', which assumes that mind arbitrarily 'makes' world (Alex Wendt's 'pigs don't fly just because you think they do' skit is a typical example of this reductio ad absurdum argument). In other words, as Will rightly points out, critical realists of this bent assume a dichotomy of possibilities where either mind is exterior to the 'real' world and imperfectly 'reflects' this reality or mind is coiled up in its own interiority 'creating' all fictive experience in the manner of an auteur. This, of course, assumes that mind can only ever be conceived of in the classical sense of an abstract ideational thing suspended in the ether, separate from 'reality' and (most likely) 'materiality' too. The likes of Will, on the other hand, take the mind to be far more extensive and always-already involved in and constituted by the 'real', which, instead of being the creative produce of a sovereign, rational, unproblematically legible mind, is produced intersubjectively (this is the key point).
So, this assumes that there exists a network of cultural-linguistic beings, all constituted by their shared reality. The 'epistemic fallacy' no longer works because the creation of reality no longer centres around the individual but rather is the product of the network of intersubjectivity, which precludes the narcissistic volitionalism of the subjective idealist that critical realists try to imagine all their opponents as. And yet the general thrust of the critical realist critique - that subjective idealism is narcissistic/solipsistic - is not, I think, rebutted - at least not entirely. I think this because the intersubjectivist theory remains resolutely anthropocentric. Why is it only subjects (i.e. humans) that get to play this game? For all our fancy tricks, what is so special about us flesh-bags?
We need another character; let's call him Alfred. Also a mind/world monist, Alfred agrees that knowledge is created intersubjectively but he wants to go further than this. He argues that 'experience' (his term) is a property common not just to subjects but to objects as well. He is, then, a panexperientialist - like a panpsychist (who thinks that all matter has the property of 'mind') but with a distinction made between experience and cognition. Knowledge and thus reality, for Alfred, are inter-objective productions (in the broadest sense that subjects are also objects - very distinct kinds of objects both existentially and ethically but objects nonetheless).
His theory is, like the intersubjectivist's, perspectival - what is 'real' depends entirely upon one's perspective, whether one is a subject or an object. In other words, there exist an infinite number of possible realities on one ontological plane. Humans are no longer the be-all-and-end-all that intersubjectivism would have them, yet every human individual's experience is distinct and each experience is a reality, just like intersubjectivism.
So, when Roy is raging about Will's refusal to take the snow's 'in-itself' as 'real' and Will, effectively, just shrugs it off, Alfred would be able to transcend both positions and come up with, I think, a far more satisfactory answer: the experience of shovelling snow is created inter-objectively with Will's culturally and linguistically imbued dispositions shaping the particular reality of the experience but the snow's 'actancy' (to borrow Alfred's grandson Bruno's term) also contributing in its own right. (The event of Will shovelling the snow is, then, in a manner of speaking, every bit as much a 'conversation' between two agentially empowered but relationally and processually constitued actants as the conversation between Will and Roy.)
Will maintains his monism and Roy's blood pressure can return to safer levels providing he can accept the loss of the 'in-itself' for the gain of the object as an 'actant', which, knowing Roy, he won't but that's his problem not Alfred's!
A very witty piece. I basically agree. However, I think something needs to be challenged: the notion of 'intersubjectivity' as the privileged site of knowledge (and thus 'reality') construction.
The primary disagreement between Roy and Will seems to be Roy's fury over Will's refusal to attribute the 'in-itself' (i.e. the snow in its 'intransigent' materiality) any 'agency' (loosely speaking) with regard to its own understanding. For Roy the snow has both transigent and intransigent qualities and while it can be understood differently by people with different sensory/cultural dispositions it nevertheless possesses a certain 'snowy-ness' that cannot be ignored; to ignore it, it is supposed, is to commit the 'epistemic fallacy', which assumes that mind arbitrarily 'makes' world (Alex Wendt's 'pigs don't fly just because you think they do' skit is a typical example of this reductio ad absurdum argument). In other words, as Will rightly points out, critical realists of this bent assume a dichotomy of possibilities where either mind is exterior to the 'real' world and imperfectly 'reflects' this reality or mind is coiled up in its own interiority 'creating' all fictive experience in the manner of an auteur. This, of course, assumes that mind can only ever be conceived of in the classical sense of an abstract ideational thing suspended in the ether, separate from 'reality' and (most likely) 'materiality' too. The likes of Will, on the other hand, take the mind to be far more extensive and always-already involved in and constituted by the 'real', which, instead of being the creative produce of a sovereign, rational, unproblematically legible mind, is produced intersubjectively (this is the key point).
So, this assumes that there exists a network of cultural-linguistic beings, all constituted by their shared reality. The 'epistemic fallacy' no longer works because the creation of reality no longer centres around the individual but rather is the product of the network of intersubjectivity, which precludes the narcissistic volitionalism of the subjective idealist that critical realists try to imagine all their opponents as. And yet the general thrust of the critical realist critique - that subjective idealism is narcissistic/solipsistic - is not, I think, rebutted - at least not entirely. I think this because the intersubjectivist theory remains resolutely anthropocentric. Why is it only subjects (i.e. humans) that get to play this game? For all our fancy tricks, what is so special about us flesh-bags?
We need another character; let's call him Alfred. Also a mind/world monist, Alfred agrees that knowledge is created intersubjectively but he wants to go further than this. He argues that 'experience' (his term) is a property common not just to subjects but to objects as well. He is, then, a panexperientialist - like a panpsychist (who thinks that all matter has the property of 'mind') but with a distinction made between experience and cognition. Knowledge and thus reality, for Alfred, are inter-objective productions (in the broadest sense that subjects are also objects - very distinct kinds of objects both existentially and ethically but objects nonetheless).
His theory is, like the intersubjectivist's, perspectival - what is 'real' depends entirely upon one's perspective, whether one is a subject or an object. In other words, there exist an infinite number of possible realities on one ontological plane. Humans are no longer the be-all-and-end-all that intersubjectivism would have them, yet every human individual's experience is distinct and each experience is a reality, just like intersubjectivism.
So, when Roy is raging about Will's refusal to take the snow's 'in-itself' as 'real' and Will, effectively, just shrugs it off, Alfred would be able to transcend both positions and come up with, I think, a far more satisfactory answer: the experience of shovelling snow is created inter-objectively with Will's culturally and linguistically imbued dispositions shaping the particular reality of the experience but the snow's 'actancy' (to borrow Alfred's grandson Bruno's term) also contributing in its own right. (The event of Will shovelling the snow is, then, in a manner of speaking, every bit as much a 'conversation' between two agentially empowered but relationally and processually constitued actants as the conversation between Will and Roy.)
Will maintains his monism and Roy's blood pressure can return to safer levels providing he can accept the loss of the 'in-itself' for the gain of the object as an 'actant', which, knowing Roy, he won't but that's his problem not Alfred's!
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
Reply to Michael Dawson re: academic freedom
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/07/social_science_and_the_public_sphere#comment-94856
@Michael Dawson:
My point was hardly that everything published in academic social science journals today is hunky-dory (if you permit me the phrase), nor that there are not serious weaknesses across the (intellectual) board. I myself would not accept the familiar chant you adopt of 'po-mo must go!' as I find many of these theories, if engaged with, are very important; perplexing perhaps but then I get that when I read anything by a hardline rational choice theorist (no less taxing on the terminological front). That said, there is a fringe orthodoxy concerning this sort of (po-mo) work that is somewhat intellectually stagnant, but that's another matter.
In fairness while I did have the po-mo 'critical' brigade partly in mind when I wrote the above, the only name I made reference to was Robert Cox who surely could not, save for causing him extreme offence, be associated with postmodernism yet he would likely share many of my criticisms, I think, with regard to the dangers of reification of objects of study (the state, human nature, etc.) and the strictures (and structures) of academic discipline that restrict the possibilities of knowledge production. One might legitimately disagree with him and all that he stands for but I don't think one can deny his rigour or the vitality of his thought, nor the space he holds open for critical thought. It was this sort of critical-ness I had in mind primarily.
By the way, I know Walt did not mention anything to do with 'critical' theory, I brought this up as a following-on point from my interpretation of Walt's comments, which I interpreted as relating to this point - and this I stand by.
I appreciate your candor, however.
To reiterate: my point (insofar as I intended to convey it) was that to reject in a somewhat ambiguous manner whole swathes of academic literature without naming any names (as your reply also fails to) is not only unhelpful vis-à-vis constructive debate but is in fact dangerous for academic freedom because it plays into the gaping jaws of an increasingly loud narrative which pronounces that the overarching structures of current political life are fine (even natural) and the only valid research paradigm addresses the production of ways of doing things within these wider structures.
In other words: "We've got the polity sorted, go make us some policy". ("Nothing to see here, move along!")
Given the economic, ecological and political problems that we all face, regardless of our nationality (it was this that perhaps irked me the most in Walt's post - the suggestion that academics owe a duty of deference to their nation rather than to their scholarship; this is a dangerous road), we have to consider that the things we take for granted might be involved inimically with the problems we actually face. Narrowly 'policy-oriented' research cannot address this kind of thing (not that such research is without value, of course - I do not believe this at all).
By way of rearguard defence: I would not by any means say that there are no articles published in decent journals that fall below standards I would consider acceptable. I simply consider it hysterical to suggest that this is some sort of cancer that can and must be removed; that there is 'good' research and 'bad' research and that someone (or anyone) should deem which is which so generally without giving good reasons as to why. I do not consider it the role of anyone - a nobody grad student like me or a well-known and respected, tenured, Ivy League professor like Walt - to say what is of value and what is not in such a sweeping manner (throwaway blog-post or not). Ascertaining the value of these things requires much more carefully defined terms and, dare I say it, more rigour.
There seems to be a number of issues that have become merged here and part of that might be my fault. There is a legitimate concern over excessive methodologism; I would accept that and see now that this is perhaps what others were getting at while I waxed tangential. On that I say this: it is important to be self-reflective on how academic knowledge is produced, surely no one would deny this, yet, I agree, in some quarters this becomes all encompassing and the Academy closes in on itself as the weight of its own intellectual circularity reaches a singularity at which point no life nor light escapes its pull (if you allow me the poetics - its late). This problem, if we accept for a moment that it is such a thing, cannot be addressed by wholesale rejection of nameless literatures.
I repeat the main point I was trying to make: I think this is, simply, dangerous. There are forces at work (not all that 'dark' perhaps but no less real or severe for their existing out in the open daylight) that are attempting and have attempted (with a lot of success, it must be said) to restrict the possibilities of academic knowledge production.
I am not a rudderless idealist when it comes to university life, as it happens. I wouldn't even accept that 'knowledge is a virtue in itself' - I just think that you can't always predict what will become valuable. I will defend to the comment word-limit, however, this assertion: universities should not be reduced to being simply and solely places for turning young people into economically utilisable units and turning unreflectively accumulated data into deferentially served-up policy for the same old ways of doing things. Prof. Walt would probably agree with this I'm sure. He just might not agree, and this is my point (if there actually was one after all this), that the manner of his post (I feel fairly silly for expending all this energy on one blog-post, but, alas, it is done) plays into this denigration of the institutionalised production of high-level, high value knowledge.
I do not think prof. Walt 'conservative' or even uncritical on the whole. He is a lone critical voice on a number of issues and I commend him for this and wish others had the same moral fibre. If I thought otherwise then I probably wouldn't read this blog. I just value academic freedom. And this is under threat. Plus it is, of course, possible to be refreshingly outspoken on, say, Middle Eastern politics and conservatively un-self-reflective on other issues such as, say, the historical contingency of realpolitik. But that's a whole other can of worms...
Bottom line(s): Even if there are some elements of academic research that wouldn't be missed if they disappeared, these cannot be fairly singled out as if they carried some distinguishing, essential feature; this kind of question is much to important to jump to such conclusions.
@Michael Dawson:
My point was hardly that everything published in academic social science journals today is hunky-dory (if you permit me the phrase), nor that there are not serious weaknesses across the (intellectual) board. I myself would not accept the familiar chant you adopt of 'po-mo must go!' as I find many of these theories, if engaged with, are very important; perplexing perhaps but then I get that when I read anything by a hardline rational choice theorist (no less taxing on the terminological front). That said, there is a fringe orthodoxy concerning this sort of (po-mo) work that is somewhat intellectually stagnant, but that's another matter.
In fairness while I did have the po-mo 'critical' brigade partly in mind when I wrote the above, the only name I made reference to was Robert Cox who surely could not, save for causing him extreme offence, be associated with postmodernism yet he would likely share many of my criticisms, I think, with regard to the dangers of reification of objects of study (the state, human nature, etc.) and the strictures (and structures) of academic discipline that restrict the possibilities of knowledge production. One might legitimately disagree with him and all that he stands for but I don't think one can deny his rigour or the vitality of his thought, nor the space he holds open for critical thought. It was this sort of critical-ness I had in mind primarily.
By the way, I know Walt did not mention anything to do with 'critical' theory, I brought this up as a following-on point from my interpretation of Walt's comments, which I interpreted as relating to this point - and this I stand by.
I appreciate your candor, however.
To reiterate: my point (insofar as I intended to convey it) was that to reject in a somewhat ambiguous manner whole swathes of academic literature without naming any names (as your reply also fails to) is not only unhelpful vis-à-vis constructive debate but is in fact dangerous for academic freedom because it plays into the gaping jaws of an increasingly loud narrative which pronounces that the overarching structures of current political life are fine (even natural) and the only valid research paradigm addresses the production of ways of doing things within these wider structures.
In other words: "We've got the polity sorted, go make us some policy". ("Nothing to see here, move along!")
Given the economic, ecological and political problems that we all face, regardless of our nationality (it was this that perhaps irked me the most in Walt's post - the suggestion that academics owe a duty of deference to their nation rather than to their scholarship; this is a dangerous road), we have to consider that the things we take for granted might be involved inimically with the problems we actually face. Narrowly 'policy-oriented' research cannot address this kind of thing (not that such research is without value, of course - I do not believe this at all).
By way of rearguard defence: I would not by any means say that there are no articles published in decent journals that fall below standards I would consider acceptable. I simply consider it hysterical to suggest that this is some sort of cancer that can and must be removed; that there is 'good' research and 'bad' research and that someone (or anyone) should deem which is which so generally without giving good reasons as to why. I do not consider it the role of anyone - a nobody grad student like me or a well-known and respected, tenured, Ivy League professor like Walt - to say what is of value and what is not in such a sweeping manner (throwaway blog-post or not). Ascertaining the value of these things requires much more carefully defined terms and, dare I say it, more rigour.
There seems to be a number of issues that have become merged here and part of that might be my fault. There is a legitimate concern over excessive methodologism; I would accept that and see now that this is perhaps what others were getting at while I waxed tangential. On that I say this: it is important to be self-reflective on how academic knowledge is produced, surely no one would deny this, yet, I agree, in some quarters this becomes all encompassing and the Academy closes in on itself as the weight of its own intellectual circularity reaches a singularity at which point no life nor light escapes its pull (if you allow me the poetics - its late). This problem, if we accept for a moment that it is such a thing, cannot be addressed by wholesale rejection of nameless literatures.
I repeat the main point I was trying to make: I think this is, simply, dangerous. There are forces at work (not all that 'dark' perhaps but no less real or severe for their existing out in the open daylight) that are attempting and have attempted (with a lot of success, it must be said) to restrict the possibilities of academic knowledge production.
I am not a rudderless idealist when it comes to university life, as it happens. I wouldn't even accept that 'knowledge is a virtue in itself' - I just think that you can't always predict what will become valuable. I will defend to the comment word-limit, however, this assertion: universities should not be reduced to being simply and solely places for turning young people into economically utilisable units and turning unreflectively accumulated data into deferentially served-up policy for the same old ways of doing things. Prof. Walt would probably agree with this I'm sure. He just might not agree, and this is my point (if there actually was one after all this), that the manner of his post (I feel fairly silly for expending all this energy on one blog-post, but, alas, it is done) plays into this denigration of the institutionalised production of high-level, high value knowledge.
I do not think prof. Walt 'conservative' or even uncritical on the whole. He is a lone critical voice on a number of issues and I commend him for this and wish others had the same moral fibre. If I thought otherwise then I probably wouldn't read this blog. I just value academic freedom. And this is under threat. Plus it is, of course, possible to be refreshingly outspoken on, say, Middle Eastern politics and conservatively un-self-reflective on other issues such as, say, the historical contingency of realpolitik. But that's a whole other can of worms...
Bottom line(s): Even if there are some elements of academic research that wouldn't be missed if they disappeared, these cannot be fairly singled out as if they carried some distinguishing, essential feature; this kind of question is much to important to jump to such conclusions.
Saturday, 12 December 2009
re: 'China is coming!'
http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/03/the_american_public_is_pretty_realist_the_american_public_is_also_pretty_dumb
I think its a bit unfair to call the public 'dumb'. The derision should be squarely aimed at the media and its associated politicians who have created this impression and, it must be said, the academics who have gone along with this 'China is taking over!' narrative. I've said it before on FP.com and I'll say it again: the extent to which the U.S. has declined economically and (therefore) geopolitically should not be underestimated, however taking that serious decline and comparing it to the fact that the U.S. is still overwhelmingly supreme in more or less every economic and geopolitical sense just goes to show how unbalanced the situation was to begin with.
The U.S. has fallen far - but from such great heights that the bottom remains out of sight.
Of course, this is not sensationalistic enough so the narratives of 'beware China!' tend to take over. Hence the misperception.
Blame the lack of intelligent public discourse, not the public per se.
I think its a bit unfair to call the public 'dumb'. The derision should be squarely aimed at the media and its associated politicians who have created this impression and, it must be said, the academics who have gone along with this 'China is taking over!' narrative. I've said it before on FP.com and I'll say it again: the extent to which the U.S. has declined economically and (therefore) geopolitically should not be underestimated, however taking that serious decline and comparing it to the fact that the U.S. is still overwhelmingly supreme in more or less every economic and geopolitical sense just goes to show how unbalanced the situation was to begin with.
The U.S. has fallen far - but from such great heights that the bottom remains out of sight.
Of course, this is not sensationalistic enough so the narratives of 'beware China!' tend to take over. Hence the misperception.
Blame the lack of intelligent public discourse, not the public per se.
Response to Stephen Walt re: academic freedom
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/07/social_science_and_the_public_sphere
I can only respond to this argument with incredulity. I would very much like to hear from Prof. Walt (a) some examples of this pointless research he is so disapproving of and (b) a specific defence of just how Prof. Walt's research benefits his 'fellow citizens' in such obvious and complete ways that it goes without saying that his is of the 'good' kind that should be encouraged (and given more funding).
Here in Britain, the government's new research rules stipulate that 25% of all research funding for institutions will be assessed on the basis of its 'economic and social impact'. No one knows quite what that means; most agree it is a stupefyingly reactionary policy masquerading as 'common sense'. Everyone, from Nobel prize winning chemists to cultural studies professors are disgusted. It is a populist move born of total ignorance as to how research works right across the academy from physicists who never know which speculative, almost incomprehensible hypothesis will turn out to be valid in 25 or 50 years to the likes of political science where the most ostensibly 'practical' and 'policy relevant' research projects are actually the least 'political' because they invite little or no critical thinking as to the current state of affairs but take it either (a) as a permanent and unchanging, dare I say 'natural', situation (I'm looking at the so called 'realists' and their crippling ahistoricism here, and that means you too Walt!) or (b) as something which it is not the place of academia to criticise - that is to say, that the study of politics should not be political.
Nobody wants to see universities churning out pointless, introverted, apolitical research but where exactly is this research? If anyone can point to the research that actually deserves this label I will gladly join the chorus (I'll sing tenor), however I think that this sweeping characterisation, without putting too fine a point on it, is hasty, overbearing and, frankly, rude.
It is difficult to argue against Prof. Walt's argument seeing as he doesn't specify any research in particular that is of this meaningless 'ivory tower-ish' quality, however I suspect that those studies against which his populist, common-sensical broadside is directed are of the self-styled 'critical' sort that, I believe quite rightly, refuses to engage with the 'cult of relevance' because they wish to place the state of polity (and the polity of the state) under scrutiny - i.e. they do not take for granted that the problems we face as humans (rather than citizens and patriots as Walt's argument seems to suggest) are born of a lack of, in Robert Cox's terms, 'problem solving knowledge' - they do not assume that political problems can be solved by qualitatively 'better' knowledge which can be simply operationalised within existing political structures. Instead they stress the importance of of 'critical knowledge' - that is, knowledge that challenges the way policy is made and the environment in which it is enacted not just what policy is in this extremely narrow sense implied by the call for 'policy relevance'.
In short, from what is an obviously (and this is not a criticism as such - I am aware this is a blogpost not a journal article but Walt does have form on this sort of argument...) thinly argued and sparsely articulated pronouncement it is difficult to mount a concerted and articulate reply, however, my opinion (for what it is worth) can be summed up thusly:
(a) I do not believe that there is a great deal of literature that conforms to the stereotype Walt articulates here. I especially do not believe that there is a great deal of this literature published in mainstream U.S. international relations journals.
(b) I believe that these disapproving broadsides against certain kinds of ('critical' rather than 'problem solving') scholarship emerge from an intellectually conservative, establishmentarian position that Prof. Walt himself occupies. It is primarily an argument that seeks to enclose legitimate debate within a sphere of comfort for such conservative points of view. It is a move that seeks to exclude alternative points of view simply because their conclusions are not directly and unproblematically applicable to present polity. It therefore valorises and naturalises present polity as the only possible political structure. Now, to argue for this permanent perfectionalism is one thing (and I would be interested to engage positively in this debate), however to dismiss all those who argue against this political articulation because they are, simply, 'irrelevant' to its own ways of functioning is quite another.
That said, I do not dispute that there are serious weaknesses in many areas of contemporary scholarship, particularly in IR. As it happens, I would locate the position Prof. Walt occupies among those weak positions along with, chances are, many of the positions taken up by those researchers Prof. Walt has deemed 'irrelevant'. I am an equal opportunities critic.
Of course, I should stress again that I am aware that this is a blogpost and academic rigour is in this sense unnecessary. However, as I said before, Prof. Walt has form on this sort of argument and it is an argument that is gathering pace on this side of the Atlantic precisely because of its populist, common-sensical (yet covertly ignorant and establishmentarian) appeal. I would gladly engage with this sort of argument in a sustained and coherent way.
I must, therefore, (again, for what little it is worth) respectfully but totally refute the claims made in the above blogpost as reactionary, conservative and posing a serious threat to the possibility of diversity within academia at present.
I can only respond to this argument with incredulity. I would very much like to hear from Prof. Walt (a) some examples of this pointless research he is so disapproving of and (b) a specific defence of just how Prof. Walt's research benefits his 'fellow citizens' in such obvious and complete ways that it goes without saying that his is of the 'good' kind that should be encouraged (and given more funding).
Here in Britain, the government's new research rules stipulate that 25% of all research funding for institutions will be assessed on the basis of its 'economic and social impact'. No one knows quite what that means; most agree it is a stupefyingly reactionary policy masquerading as 'common sense'. Everyone, from Nobel prize winning chemists to cultural studies professors are disgusted. It is a populist move born of total ignorance as to how research works right across the academy from physicists who never know which speculative, almost incomprehensible hypothesis will turn out to be valid in 25 or 50 years to the likes of political science where the most ostensibly 'practical' and 'policy relevant' research projects are actually the least 'political' because they invite little or no critical thinking as to the current state of affairs but take it either (a) as a permanent and unchanging, dare I say 'natural', situation (I'm looking at the so called 'realists' and their crippling ahistoricism here, and that means you too Walt!) or (b) as something which it is not the place of academia to criticise - that is to say, that the study of politics should not be political.
Nobody wants to see universities churning out pointless, introverted, apolitical research but where exactly is this research? If anyone can point to the research that actually deserves this label I will gladly join the chorus (I'll sing tenor), however I think that this sweeping characterisation, without putting too fine a point on it, is hasty, overbearing and, frankly, rude.
It is difficult to argue against Prof. Walt's argument seeing as he doesn't specify any research in particular that is of this meaningless 'ivory tower-ish' quality, however I suspect that those studies against which his populist, common-sensical broadside is directed are of the self-styled 'critical' sort that, I believe quite rightly, refuses to engage with the 'cult of relevance' because they wish to place the state of polity (and the polity of the state) under scrutiny - i.e. they do not take for granted that the problems we face as humans (rather than citizens and patriots as Walt's argument seems to suggest) are born of a lack of, in Robert Cox's terms, 'problem solving knowledge' - they do not assume that political problems can be solved by qualitatively 'better' knowledge which can be simply operationalised within existing political structures. Instead they stress the importance of of 'critical knowledge' - that is, knowledge that challenges the way policy is made and the environment in which it is enacted not just what policy is in this extremely narrow sense implied by the call for 'policy relevance'.
In short, from what is an obviously (and this is not a criticism as such - I am aware this is a blogpost not a journal article but Walt does have form on this sort of argument...) thinly argued and sparsely articulated pronouncement it is difficult to mount a concerted and articulate reply, however, my opinion (for what it is worth) can be summed up thusly:
(a) I do not believe that there is a great deal of literature that conforms to the stereotype Walt articulates here. I especially do not believe that there is a great deal of this literature published in mainstream U.S. international relations journals.
(b) I believe that these disapproving broadsides against certain kinds of ('critical' rather than 'problem solving') scholarship emerge from an intellectually conservative, establishmentarian position that Prof. Walt himself occupies. It is primarily an argument that seeks to enclose legitimate debate within a sphere of comfort for such conservative points of view. It is a move that seeks to exclude alternative points of view simply because their conclusions are not directly and unproblematically applicable to present polity. It therefore valorises and naturalises present polity as the only possible political structure. Now, to argue for this permanent perfectionalism is one thing (and I would be interested to engage positively in this debate), however to dismiss all those who argue against this political articulation because they are, simply, 'irrelevant' to its own ways of functioning is quite another.
That said, I do not dispute that there are serious weaknesses in many areas of contemporary scholarship, particularly in IR. As it happens, I would locate the position Prof. Walt occupies among those weak positions along with, chances are, many of the positions taken up by those researchers Prof. Walt has deemed 'irrelevant'. I am an equal opportunities critic.
Of course, I should stress again that I am aware that this is a blogpost and academic rigour is in this sense unnecessary. However, as I said before, Prof. Walt has form on this sort of argument and it is an argument that is gathering pace on this side of the Atlantic precisely because of its populist, common-sensical (yet covertly ignorant and establishmentarian) appeal. I would gladly engage with this sort of argument in a sustained and coherent way.
I must, therefore, (again, for what little it is worth) respectfully but totally refute the claims made in the above blogpost as reactionary, conservative and posing a serious threat to the possibility of diversity within academia at present.
Friday, 4 December 2009
re: Hegemonies
Response to: http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2009/12/04/hegemonies
I'm really glad you posted this post because, having been a reader for a few weeks now, I think it really clarifies where I would agree and disagree with your position – and as luck would have it, it is precisely the sort of disagreement I have with just about everyone at the moment (on both/all sides of the argument), philosophically I mean.
Basically, as I understand it, you are arguing against the position (let us, for argument's sake call it 'postie-ism') that, allegedly, reduces everything to 'textuality' – that is, says that language is the be all and end all; language is the ‘really real’; all that materiality is just a product of discourse, of ideas. This is the typical critique of postie positions and it is one a great deal of their writings reinforce by, I would wholeheartedly agree, emanating from cultural studies and literature departments that would dearly love to see the whole world as one giant intertext and adopt the ‘sacred texts’ (/’sacred cows’) of postie-ism as writ (that is to say, unreflexively and uncritically). However, I believe that it is an over-simplistic and, if not 'incorrect', then certainly disagreeable characterisation.
I think a good place to explain what I mean is Derrida's most (mis)quoted phrase "il n'y a pas de hors-texte", usually translated into English as "there is nothing outside the text". From this sentence alone one would surely draw the conclusion that you have – that everything is to be reduced to textuality; that textuality is 'the really real'. However, my Francophone friends inform me that this is a bad translation that loses much of the sense of the original. The phrase is often translated, conversely, as "there is no outside-the-text". At first glance this may appear to say basically the same thing. I believe that this is a big mistake.
The clearest way I can articulate this point (in my own mind at least) is through William James. In his epic work 'Psychology' James describes a hypothetical baby's perception of the world as "one great blooming, buzzing confusion" – in other words, at that stage in a baby's physical and cultural development it cannot perceive anything of what is around it as we would understand it. It must be just flashes of colours and sounds and textures and abstract patterns with no way of assembling the stimuli into any kind of coherent 'reality'. Of course, we can never know how a baby 'sees' the world; it is pure speculation – but this is allowed in these parts, isn't it?...
Taking this as a thought experiment let us suppose (with every sci-fi series ever – see 'Dollhouse' for a good recent example) that one were to take a fully formed adult and wipe away all trace of enculturation and make them a tabula rasa (of course this is an impossible Cartesian manoeuvre, epigenetics alone shows biology and culture to be irreversibly interwoven, but lets just pretend). Would this person then not be like James's baby? Would ‘reality’ then not be "one great blooming, buzzing confusion"? Just textures and colours with no way of understanding it -- effectively no way of establishing a 'self' or a 'reality' at all? It is not that the external world no longer exists – I can still see this poor brain-washed person; I can still make out his form, his limbs, the colour of his hair, etc. – it is that, from this particular, ‘brain-washed’ subject position no knowledge of the world can ever be said to properly exist; ‘reality’ is thus only my ‘property’, not his. This is an extreme thought experiment but it, I believe, holds for less extreme examples too. To put it simply, language is always already ‘there’ (and, by consequence, ‘there’ is always already ‘here’).
All of which is a longwinded way of saying that we can know nothing of anything without enculturation. Of course this was probably never in doubt – who could deny this?
Further, then, it is my contention that the postie attitude towards language follows much this same formula – it is not that language is the totality; language simply cannot be dispensed with. My favourite way of putting this is that it is ‘necessary but insufficient’ (as is so much in life).
Of course this brings to the foreground the most important issue. The above discussion to which I am responding fails to say what 'language' is. Of course this seems like common sense. This is language. And so is this. And this. Yet where do we stop? Is body language language? Is emotion language? Is volition (in the psychological sense)?
It would be an extraordinarily 'thick' definition of language to include all of the above. And this is perhaps where I can pull the rabbit out of the hat and (finally) make my point: the 'text' in Derrida's aphorism is not meant to be taken literally, or at least not as literally as it almost universally has been (by both those faithful and hostile). To say that "there is no outside-the-text" does not mean, therefore, that there is nothing besides language (language defined in any sensible way). It means, I believe, something akin to James's baby: that we can never, ever subtract language from our experiences; that without language ‘reality’ is nothing and therefore language must always have an effect on our perceptions of, well, everything. That language is ‘necessary but insufficient’. Of course we need bodies and those bodies need food and water – this is a given; why would anyone doubt this? The question is whether any of this means anything – indeed, whether any of this can even be comprehended on even the most basic level -- without langauge (or, as it should be clear by now, I would prefer to say 'enculturation' as the 'thick' definition encompassing affect, volition, etc.) Therefore, whether or not objects possess ‘transigent’ and ‘intransigent’ qualities, language can never be legitimately bracketed or set to one side.
From this position, with language being an ever present necessity – the only means by which we can think and certainly the only means by which we can communicate our thoughts, however imperfectly – one must have recourse to transcendental reason to ascertain the ‘really real’. One must somehow pierce this shield of language to get to what is outside of it and then represent this in some clear manner. One must entertain the transcendent; that is, provide a spectacle to cite it, to bring it forth, to make present, in some form, this sublime experience.
In other words, language must possess some quality of Reason by which utterances may be objectively distinguished in terms of truth or [insert your value distinction here]. That’s a whole other story. I’m not going to bore anyone with that now, least of all myself.
A far more coherent and profound description of what I’m trying to say here is offered by Ernesto Laclau in conversation with Roy Bhaskar here:
http://politicaltheology.com/ojs/index.php/JCR/article/viewFile/3611/2272
Here Laclau shows why what I am calling postie-ism (he calls it discourse theory) is not idealist – it is explicitly opposed to idealism. I don’t think Bhaskar really ‘gets it’ but its an interesting exchange.
While I would agree that a great deal of the writings on this postie-ism betray a certain idealism implicitly, if not explicitly, this is because, those that do…well…aren’t very good.
If this is the version of postie-ism that you have left behind recently, Levi, I can see why you did so; its fairly empty of merit as a philosophy goes. Unfortunately I really don’t recognise it; at least not in the major texts. In the multitude of followers, yes, sadly, but this is not an indictment of the whole philosophy.
For what (little) its worth, I see Derrida, despite his status as the archetypical postie-ist poster-boy, as a thinker who does not deny things. He is best read in his deeply ethical, wholly political sense of maintaining the total contingency of discourse and everything else. Everything is ‘to come’. Everything is promised, nothing is wholly delivered and this is fine. All it means is that we can’t take anything for granted and we shouldn’t ever accept being told ‘that’s the way it is’ (Isn’t this the Socratic ideal? Isn’t this why those who teach philosophy teach philosophy?).
The world was no less ‘real’ the day after he published Of Grammatology. The sun was as warm, food tasted the same. He just demonstrated that it needn’t mean the same things all the time. I don’t even see him as that much of a skeptic. If one is to read his interviews he would say much the same (of course its impossible to know if at any moment he is being honest or contrary, but still, its there as a plausible interpretation).
Having said all of that (and golly-gosh, this comment has reached, dare I say it, Levi-esque proportions) I am completely dissatisfied with the prevailing postie-ist positions too. My own personal intellectual project(/hell) is to produce an historical methodology that is consistent theoretically, ethically and politically with deconstruction but notes that it is, in itself, insufficient (there is that phrase again ‘necessary but insufficient’). This is not new. Gayatri Spivak, for one, says that ‘deconstruction cannot found any political project’ (I’m paraphrasing) – deconstruction is therefore, on its own, politically insufficient. Judith Butler (paraphrasing again) says that ‘deconstruction is not a necessary part of any political project’ – it may, therefore, be excluded. It is insufficient and non-necessary; if it is part of a project it cannot exist alone and it need not be a part at all. What ‘idealist’ could maintain this position? Read Butler’s lectures on Spinoza (‘Giving an Account of Oneself’) to see why the idealist label simply doesn’t fit in any way towards (the more brilliantly argued) postie-ist writings; she argues against the opacity of self-knowledge, this refuting any charge of ‘idealism’ (an idealist must presume autonomy and authority over one’s self-perceptions, something which is alleged in Levi’s post above).
Anyhoo, I’ll stop writing now, for the main reason that in the post this morning, I received a fresh, new copy of Meillassoux’s ‘After Finitude’. Also there’s a good chance this will all seem regrettably ignorant to me one day. I hope, soon, to be able to comment on these issues from a position of only partial ignorance rather than total.
Until that halcyon day, a caveat must be added, for my own self-protection:
Of course, I could be wrong.
I'm really glad you posted this post because, having been a reader for a few weeks now, I think it really clarifies where I would agree and disagree with your position – and as luck would have it, it is precisely the sort of disagreement I have with just about everyone at the moment (on both/all sides of the argument), philosophically I mean.
Basically, as I understand it, you are arguing against the position (let us, for argument's sake call it 'postie-ism') that, allegedly, reduces everything to 'textuality' – that is, says that language is the be all and end all; language is the ‘really real’; all that materiality is just a product of discourse, of ideas. This is the typical critique of postie positions and it is one a great deal of their writings reinforce by, I would wholeheartedly agree, emanating from cultural studies and literature departments that would dearly love to see the whole world as one giant intertext and adopt the ‘sacred texts’ (/’sacred cows’) of postie-ism as writ (that is to say, unreflexively and uncritically). However, I believe that it is an over-simplistic and, if not 'incorrect', then certainly disagreeable characterisation.
I think a good place to explain what I mean is Derrida's most (mis)quoted phrase "il n'y a pas de hors-texte", usually translated into English as "there is nothing outside the text". From this sentence alone one would surely draw the conclusion that you have – that everything is to be reduced to textuality; that textuality is 'the really real'. However, my Francophone friends inform me that this is a bad translation that loses much of the sense of the original. The phrase is often translated, conversely, as "there is no outside-the-text". At first glance this may appear to say basically the same thing. I believe that this is a big mistake.
The clearest way I can articulate this point (in my own mind at least) is through William James. In his epic work 'Psychology' James describes a hypothetical baby's perception of the world as "one great blooming, buzzing confusion" – in other words, at that stage in a baby's physical and cultural development it cannot perceive anything of what is around it as we would understand it. It must be just flashes of colours and sounds and textures and abstract patterns with no way of assembling the stimuli into any kind of coherent 'reality'. Of course, we can never know how a baby 'sees' the world; it is pure speculation – but this is allowed in these parts, isn't it?...
Taking this as a thought experiment let us suppose (with every sci-fi series ever – see 'Dollhouse' for a good recent example) that one were to take a fully formed adult and wipe away all trace of enculturation and make them a tabula rasa (of course this is an impossible Cartesian manoeuvre, epigenetics alone shows biology and culture to be irreversibly interwoven, but lets just pretend). Would this person then not be like James's baby? Would ‘reality’ then not be "one great blooming, buzzing confusion"? Just textures and colours with no way of understanding it -- effectively no way of establishing a 'self' or a 'reality' at all? It is not that the external world no longer exists – I can still see this poor brain-washed person; I can still make out his form, his limbs, the colour of his hair, etc. – it is that, from this particular, ‘brain-washed’ subject position no knowledge of the world can ever be said to properly exist; ‘reality’ is thus only my ‘property’, not his. This is an extreme thought experiment but it, I believe, holds for less extreme examples too. To put it simply, language is always already ‘there’ (and, by consequence, ‘there’ is always already ‘here’).
All of which is a longwinded way of saying that we can know nothing of anything without enculturation. Of course this was probably never in doubt – who could deny this?
Further, then, it is my contention that the postie attitude towards language follows much this same formula – it is not that language is the totality; language simply cannot be dispensed with. My favourite way of putting this is that it is ‘necessary but insufficient’ (as is so much in life).
Of course this brings to the foreground the most important issue. The above discussion to which I am responding fails to say what 'language' is. Of course this seems like common sense. This is language. And so is this. And this. Yet where do we stop? Is body language language? Is emotion language? Is volition (in the psychological sense)?
It would be an extraordinarily 'thick' definition of language to include all of the above. And this is perhaps where I can pull the rabbit out of the hat and (finally) make my point: the 'text' in Derrida's aphorism is not meant to be taken literally, or at least not as literally as it almost universally has been (by both those faithful and hostile). To say that "there is no outside-the-text" does not mean, therefore, that there is nothing besides language (language defined in any sensible way). It means, I believe, something akin to James's baby: that we can never, ever subtract language from our experiences; that without language ‘reality’ is nothing and therefore language must always have an effect on our perceptions of, well, everything. That language is ‘necessary but insufficient’. Of course we need bodies and those bodies need food and water – this is a given; why would anyone doubt this? The question is whether any of this means anything – indeed, whether any of this can even be comprehended on even the most basic level -- without langauge (or, as it should be clear by now, I would prefer to say 'enculturation' as the 'thick' definition encompassing affect, volition, etc.) Therefore, whether or not objects possess ‘transigent’ and ‘intransigent’ qualities, language can never be legitimately bracketed or set to one side.
From this position, with language being an ever present necessity – the only means by which we can think and certainly the only means by which we can communicate our thoughts, however imperfectly – one must have recourse to transcendental reason to ascertain the ‘really real’. One must somehow pierce this shield of language to get to what is outside of it and then represent this in some clear manner. One must entertain the transcendent; that is, provide a spectacle to cite it, to bring it forth, to make present, in some form, this sublime experience.
In other words, language must possess some quality of Reason by which utterances may be objectively distinguished in terms of truth or [insert your value distinction here]. That’s a whole other story. I’m not going to bore anyone with that now, least of all myself.
A far more coherent and profound description of what I’m trying to say here is offered by Ernesto Laclau in conversation with Roy Bhaskar here:
http://politicaltheology.com/ojs/index.php/JCR/article/viewFile/3611/2272
Here Laclau shows why what I am calling postie-ism (he calls it discourse theory) is not idealist – it is explicitly opposed to idealism. I don’t think Bhaskar really ‘gets it’ but its an interesting exchange.
While I would agree that a great deal of the writings on this postie-ism betray a certain idealism implicitly, if not explicitly, this is because, those that do…well…aren’t very good.
If this is the version of postie-ism that you have left behind recently, Levi, I can see why you did so; its fairly empty of merit as a philosophy goes. Unfortunately I really don’t recognise it; at least not in the major texts. In the multitude of followers, yes, sadly, but this is not an indictment of the whole philosophy.
For what (little) its worth, I see Derrida, despite his status as the archetypical postie-ist poster-boy, as a thinker who does not deny things. He is best read in his deeply ethical, wholly political sense of maintaining the total contingency of discourse and everything else. Everything is ‘to come’. Everything is promised, nothing is wholly delivered and this is fine. All it means is that we can’t take anything for granted and we shouldn’t ever accept being told ‘that’s the way it is’ (Isn’t this the Socratic ideal? Isn’t this why those who teach philosophy teach philosophy?).
The world was no less ‘real’ the day after he published Of Grammatology. The sun was as warm, food tasted the same. He just demonstrated that it needn’t mean the same things all the time. I don’t even see him as that much of a skeptic. If one is to read his interviews he would say much the same (of course its impossible to know if at any moment he is being honest or contrary, but still, its there as a plausible interpretation).
Having said all of that (and golly-gosh, this comment has reached, dare I say it, Levi-esque proportions) I am completely dissatisfied with the prevailing postie-ist positions too. My own personal intellectual project(/hell) is to produce an historical methodology that is consistent theoretically, ethically and politically with deconstruction but notes that it is, in itself, insufficient (there is that phrase again ‘necessary but insufficient’). This is not new. Gayatri Spivak, for one, says that ‘deconstruction cannot found any political project’ (I’m paraphrasing) – deconstruction is therefore, on its own, politically insufficient. Judith Butler (paraphrasing again) says that ‘deconstruction is not a necessary part of any political project’ – it may, therefore, be excluded. It is insufficient and non-necessary; if it is part of a project it cannot exist alone and it need not be a part at all. What ‘idealist’ could maintain this position? Read Butler’s lectures on Spinoza (‘Giving an Account of Oneself’) to see why the idealist label simply doesn’t fit in any way towards (the more brilliantly argued) postie-ist writings; she argues against the opacity of self-knowledge, this refuting any charge of ‘idealism’ (an idealist must presume autonomy and authority over one’s self-perceptions, something which is alleged in Levi’s post above).
Anyhoo, I’ll stop writing now, for the main reason that in the post this morning, I received a fresh, new copy of Meillassoux’s ‘After Finitude’. Also there’s a good chance this will all seem regrettably ignorant to me one day. I hope, soon, to be able to comment on these issues from a position of only partial ignorance rather than total.
Until that halcyon day, a caveat must be added, for my own self-protection:
Of course, I could be wrong.
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Untitled #02
There is a needle - a mile high needle.
Sharp and silver tipped - it rests upon a fine point and rises to a head upon which one may stand but not sit.
Symmetry balances precarity - it hangs upon the stillness of the slightest breeze. It stands in frozen time - awaiting history's touch.
Stand now atop your needle. And draw in a cold breath from your feet to your lungs.
Look down. And stay still.
Sharp and silver tipped - it rests upon a fine point and rises to a head upon which one may stand but not sit.
Symmetry balances precarity - it hangs upon the stillness of the slightest breeze. It stands in frozen time - awaiting history's touch.
Stand now atop your needle. And draw in a cold breath from your feet to your lungs.
Look down. And stay still.
Untitled #01
apple bloom pitch,
black water,
under crystal,
tree imported oak,
brass latched,
in the morning;
there is comfort now in
this corner.
black water,
under crystal,
tree imported oak,
brass latched,
in the morning;
there is comfort now in
this corner.
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
'Rethinking Terms?' re: Drezner/Applebaum
Reply to: http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/11/24/the_costs_of_being_the_default_superpower
Of course this is all premised on the argument, with a logic so twisted it is surely only possible in IR theory, that the leader by leading is, all things considered, somehow disadvantaged and 'put upon'. The leader is the leader because of an overwhelming advantage, not the inverse. This is especially true in what (despite the pessimism displayed here) is still a resolutely unipolar state system (albeit fraying around the edges in the form of increasing regionalism, perhaps). The U.S. remains spectacularly advantaged in more or less every respect, despite its undoubtedly spectacular recent fall. In fact, isn't it indicative of the U.S.'s extreme advantage that it has fallen as far as it has and still remains so overwhelmingly dominant? The vaguely multilateral moves made by the current administration would hardly be considered multilateralist if conducted by any other country - only by the U.S.'s existing standards could they be judged so.
That the U.S. (seemingly) feels so put upon is interesting in itself - is it not logical that an actor that makes the world in its own image (such as the U.S. has undoubtedly done to a large extent), after a time, will become blind to the extent to which that world has become similar to it (because, like one's own accent, one always takes for granted what is most familiar) and see only the differences, which in this context happens to be the disadvantages of its empowered leadership. Not every aspect of the world-made-in-it's-image will benefit the U.S. - perhaps, for instance, if the global financial system had been a little less to the U.S.'s liking previously then the financial crisis would not have been so severe - but a world-made-in-it's-image is surely preferable to the alternative - try asking people from any other country.
Of course, another way of looking at this would be to say 'leadership? what leadership?' - it can only be in a very narrow, realpolitik sense that one can say that the U.S. has provided international leadership in any positive sense recently. Witness the failures in Copenhagen, how little the U.S. position vis-à-vis climate change has actually moved - in fact, how little the U.S. position has actually changed on a whole swathe of issues.
Now, this should not suggest that I am dismissing the negatives of leadership out of hand. Clearly free-riding and such are problems for the actor concerned; however, I would strongly suggest that the negatives are vastly over-represented in public discourse and indeed in American IR theory generally.
The practical consequence of this thought would be that to move 'back' to unilateralism, as has been suggested, grossly underestimates the extent to which the U.S. remains the predominant power and, consequently, grossly overestimates the extent to which the U.S. has moved towards multilateralism at all. The choice, therefore, is not so much between uni- and multi-lateral politics as between (a:) a productive unilateral hegemony that is willing to - in part and with limitations - negotiate with lesser powers and make limited compromises for the common good and (b:) an unproductive unilateral hegemony that rules by diktat and consequently fails to reach agreements on the important issues of the day. Perhaps I am taking the distinction between uni- and multi-lateral a little too far, but I think the point stands. Multilateralism certainly implies an actor existing on at least a similar plane of existence other actors with regard to negotiating power.
The U.S., judged by the standards of any other state, remains overwhelmingly powerful. Personally, as a non-U.S. citizen, I welcome this and look forward to more of it. The usual reaction to such an attitude ('oh p**s off and live in China then') aside, I would welcome any further moves to multilateralism. I simply doubt whether the U.S.'s decline is such that this will become a possibility any time soon.
Of course this is all premised on the argument, with a logic so twisted it is surely only possible in IR theory, that the leader by leading is, all things considered, somehow disadvantaged and 'put upon'. The leader is the leader because of an overwhelming advantage, not the inverse. This is especially true in what (despite the pessimism displayed here) is still a resolutely unipolar state system (albeit fraying around the edges in the form of increasing regionalism, perhaps). The U.S. remains spectacularly advantaged in more or less every respect, despite its undoubtedly spectacular recent fall. In fact, isn't it indicative of the U.S.'s extreme advantage that it has fallen as far as it has and still remains so overwhelmingly dominant? The vaguely multilateral moves made by the current administration would hardly be considered multilateralist if conducted by any other country - only by the U.S.'s existing standards could they be judged so.
That the U.S. (seemingly) feels so put upon is interesting in itself - is it not logical that an actor that makes the world in its own image (such as the U.S. has undoubtedly done to a large extent), after a time, will become blind to the extent to which that world has become similar to it (because, like one's own accent, one always takes for granted what is most familiar) and see only the differences, which in this context happens to be the disadvantages of its empowered leadership. Not every aspect of the world-made-in-it's-image will benefit the U.S. - perhaps, for instance, if the global financial system had been a little less to the U.S.'s liking previously then the financial crisis would not have been so severe - but a world-made-in-it's-image is surely preferable to the alternative - try asking people from any other country.
Of course, another way of looking at this would be to say 'leadership? what leadership?' - it can only be in a very narrow, realpolitik sense that one can say that the U.S. has provided international leadership in any positive sense recently. Witness the failures in Copenhagen, how little the U.S. position vis-à-vis climate change has actually moved - in fact, how little the U.S. position has actually changed on a whole swathe of issues.
Now, this should not suggest that I am dismissing the negatives of leadership out of hand. Clearly free-riding and such are problems for the actor concerned; however, I would strongly suggest that the negatives are vastly over-represented in public discourse and indeed in American IR theory generally.
The practical consequence of this thought would be that to move 'back' to unilateralism, as has been suggested, grossly underestimates the extent to which the U.S. remains the predominant power and, consequently, grossly overestimates the extent to which the U.S. has moved towards multilateralism at all. The choice, therefore, is not so much between uni- and multi-lateral politics as between (a:) a productive unilateral hegemony that is willing to - in part and with limitations - negotiate with lesser powers and make limited compromises for the common good and (b:) an unproductive unilateral hegemony that rules by diktat and consequently fails to reach agreements on the important issues of the day. Perhaps I am taking the distinction between uni- and multi-lateral a little too far, but I think the point stands. Multilateralism certainly implies an actor existing on at least a similar plane of existence other actors with regard to negotiating power.
The U.S., judged by the standards of any other state, remains overwhelmingly powerful. Personally, as a non-U.S. citizen, I welcome this and look forward to more of it. The usual reaction to such an attitude ('oh p**s off and live in China then') aside, I would welcome any further moves to multilateralism. I simply doubt whether the U.S.'s decline is such that this will become a possibility any time soon.
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
re: Trends in the civilian costs of war
Response to: http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/11/18/trends_in_the_civilian_costs_of_war
Regardless of the accuracy of the data, is this argument surprising? I'm surprised that you find it surprising! Okay, so we were told that all those 'smart bombs' would only kill 'bad guys' and news shows became trade shows for cross-haired destruction from above. Hands up all those who swallowed all that craptastic propaganda...
The most important question is also neglected: what separates collateral damage and war crimes? Eye of the beholder? Dresden: war crime or collateral damage? How about the bombing of Baghdad? At what point do unintended deaths caused by negligence or simply not caring about civilian life become a war crime?
Regardless of the accuracy of the data, is this argument surprising? I'm surprised that you find it surprising! Okay, so we were told that all those 'smart bombs' would only kill 'bad guys' and news shows became trade shows for cross-haired destruction from above. Hands up all those who swallowed all that craptastic propaganda...
The most important question is also neglected: what separates collateral damage and war crimes? Eye of the beholder? Dresden: war crime or collateral damage? How about the bombing of Baghdad? At what point do unintended deaths caused by negligence or simply not caring about civilian life become a war crime?
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
re: Is the world ending more often now?
Response to: http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/11/13/is_the_world_ending_more_often_now
I think it was Slavoj Žižek in one of his films about films who asked: 'why is it so much easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism?' (or words to that effect). It is our narcissism that leads us to always believe that we are at the center of history and hence the that ultimate, unbeatable world changing event - the apocalypse - is happening in our time. There is a certain 'jouissance' (as Žižek would put it) in this, I suspect - a kind of perverse pleasure we take in imagining our own destruction because at least it provides a narrative to what is otherwise incomprehensible (the future). We always feel like we're on the verge of something epochal - it gives meaning to our lives; it attaches us to something larger than ourselves to something 'oceanic' (something incomprehensibly, awe inspiringly vast) to use another word from psychoanalysis. Of course we might be on the verge of this. Europe was in this position in 1989 but didn't know it yet. Although capitalism looks to have survived its shock, for the most part, we still remain incapable of imagining its end. Could the proliferation of disaster movies (and okay, yes, they're always a popular genre) correlate to this? In times of uncertainty when, despite every possible indication and opportunity, we remain incapable of thinking beyond the present and the immediate past in terms of the logic that governs every aspect of our lives we might find in the spectacular (in every sense of that word), cataclysmic yet reassuringly fictional destruction of all that is somehow a comfort. It provides a glimpse of change when such seems implausible.
I think it was Slavoj Žižek in one of his films about films who asked: 'why is it so much easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism?' (or words to that effect). It is our narcissism that leads us to always believe that we are at the center of history and hence the that ultimate, unbeatable world changing event - the apocalypse - is happening in our time. There is a certain 'jouissance' (as Žižek would put it) in this, I suspect - a kind of perverse pleasure we take in imagining our own destruction because at least it provides a narrative to what is otherwise incomprehensible (the future). We always feel like we're on the verge of something epochal - it gives meaning to our lives; it attaches us to something larger than ourselves to something 'oceanic' (something incomprehensibly, awe inspiringly vast) to use another word from psychoanalysis. Of course we might be on the verge of this. Europe was in this position in 1989 but didn't know it yet. Although capitalism looks to have survived its shock, for the most part, we still remain incapable of imagining its end. Could the proliferation of disaster movies (and okay, yes, they're always a popular genre) correlate to this? In times of uncertainty when, despite every possible indication and opportunity, we remain incapable of thinking beyond the present and the immediate past in terms of the logic that governs every aspect of our lives we might find in the spectacular (in every sense of that word), cataclysmic yet reassuringly fictional destruction of all that is somehow a comfort. It provides a glimpse of change when such seems implausible.
Response to Nick Srnicek and Paul John Ennis
Response to: http://anotherheideggerblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/politics-and-ontology.html
and: http://speculativeheresy.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/the-neutering-of-politics-a-response-to-some-friendly-critics/
Ontology can only be evacuated of politics if one takes a rather cripplingly 'thin' idea of what politics is. My common sensical reaction to Nick's claim is precisely the opposite and I can't understand how people don't see this as being obvious: politics and ontology are inseparable from the other but do not dominate each other; neither can be reduced to either one nor to some large whole.
Simply put: politics cannot be removed from ontology because ontology (especially under the guise of realism, however 'speculative') restricts political possibility. Ontology does not determine politics - Heidegger's ontology can be appropriated by left or right, same for OOO - but that does not mean it escapes politics because indeterminacy does not mean non-interference. That an ontology does not determine whatever politics may be affixed to it does not mean that it does not preclude many (or even most) political possibilities, nor that it doesn't preference some political possibilities over others.
and: http://speculativeheresy.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/the-neutering-of-politics-a-response-to-some-friendly-critics/
Ontology can only be evacuated of politics if one takes a rather cripplingly 'thin' idea of what politics is. My common sensical reaction to Nick's claim is precisely the opposite and I can't understand how people don't see this as being obvious: politics and ontology are inseparable from the other but do not dominate each other; neither can be reduced to either one nor to some large whole.
Simply put: politics cannot be removed from ontology because ontology (especially under the guise of realism, however 'speculative') restricts political possibility. Ontology does not determine politics - Heidegger's ontology can be appropriated by left or right, same for OOO - but that does not mean it escapes politics because indeterminacy does not mean non-interference. That an ontology does not determine whatever politics may be affixed to it does not mean that it does not preclude many (or even most) political possibilities, nor that it doesn't preference some political possibilities over others.
Wednesday, 12 August 2009
From democracy to development.
The U.S. has historically promoted democracy with a missionary’s zeal (hardly coincidentally), but this has never once been divorced from the promotion of American business, ‘free’ markets and, from the twentieth-century onwards at least, capitalism and globalisation. Obama is 100% committed to all these agendas. He is just toning down the fanaticism - he’s already the messiah, he doesn’t need to be a very naughty boy.
Can ‘one man’ change the world? No. Don’t buy the Republican’s rhetoric. He’s not a socialist. By international standards he’s barely a liberal. He is wholly and completely in the employ of American exceptionalism and its capitalist entourage - not in a conspiratorial way … but not in a good way.
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