I am going to move this (t)here:
http://pierremenard.posterous.com/
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Hope
I consider myself a man of hope. Hope is powerful. Hope is crushing. Hope gives meaning even as life takes it away. I always hope for the best. For people. For myself. For my life. For love. For the lives and fortunes of others, no matter what the fates may weave.
Why do I say this?
I hear many times about how difficult life is. That it is too depressing. That we never get what we want. We fail and that there is nowhere to go now. The bitter void must sallow us up.
I read philosophy. I consider myself a philosopher. I read literature. I must say, there are few stories that survive history that do not deal with love, sex, deceit, failure, death and all the little nasty facts about life that in everyday living we try to forget. I read philosophy that centers on the impossibility of knowing being, that centers on nothingness itself. I have been hit by a bus minding my own business, walking across the street, and no one was there to stop that bus. No one saved me.
But what is all this to say? I still got up and ate breakfast. The man too depressed to live, the weight of the world upon his shoulders and some kind of real or imagined existential angst heavy in his mind, bent down to tie his shoes.
Sometimes you just have to let it go. Just live for a moment. Watch the sunrise. Notice how it changes each morning, how Monet for all his mastery could never capture this light. How it changes each morning each afternoon. Each moment precious and timeless. Take the time to notice someone. Just notice things. Life is filled with the wonderful the fantastic, but when embroiled in life and what it denies, you fail to see what is there.
I am not trying to give some stoic sense of the world here. I am not saying some kind of life philosophy. I am simply pointing out that someone we just have to ask what is happiness and should we listen to people whine about issues, issues that I agree are real and can be deadening (trust me I have been there), or do we have to let go for a moment and consider where we are. As one of my good friends said about some abstract political theory I was spouting, “Now explain that to the people in McClellanville.” I think on this line many times. Tell that to the people without a job, without a means to the next meals, without a family, or worse a family and loved ones who have abandoned them, to those without education or even the opportunity for one, or even the one who works their ass off only to fail and be turned away from the one thing that gives their life meaning. Stop and think then.
That being said—I will continue to read and think about Heidegger, because I believe it is important. I will continue to read literature. I will continue to love my family and friends, I will continue to harbor hope for my dreams both in my goals in life, in my love unrequited or not, and in the next day—but I will always hope. I will hope even if each moment I fail, and I will fail no doubt.
While I breathe, I hope.
Dum spiro spero.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr8mr7Ex0cQ&feature=related
Why do I say this?
I hear many times about how difficult life is. That it is too depressing. That we never get what we want. We fail and that there is nowhere to go now. The bitter void must sallow us up.
I read philosophy. I consider myself a philosopher. I read literature. I must say, there are few stories that survive history that do not deal with love, sex, deceit, failure, death and all the little nasty facts about life that in everyday living we try to forget. I read philosophy that centers on the impossibility of knowing being, that centers on nothingness itself. I have been hit by a bus minding my own business, walking across the street, and no one was there to stop that bus. No one saved me.
But what is all this to say? I still got up and ate breakfast. The man too depressed to live, the weight of the world upon his shoulders and some kind of real or imagined existential angst heavy in his mind, bent down to tie his shoes.
Sometimes you just have to let it go. Just live for a moment. Watch the sunrise. Notice how it changes each morning, how Monet for all his mastery could never capture this light. How it changes each morning each afternoon. Each moment precious and timeless. Take the time to notice someone. Just notice things. Life is filled with the wonderful the fantastic, but when embroiled in life and what it denies, you fail to see what is there.
I am not trying to give some stoic sense of the world here. I am not saying some kind of life philosophy. I am simply pointing out that someone we just have to ask what is happiness and should we listen to people whine about issues, issues that I agree are real and can be deadening (trust me I have been there), or do we have to let go for a moment and consider where we are. As one of my good friends said about some abstract political theory I was spouting, “Now explain that to the people in McClellanville.” I think on this line many times. Tell that to the people without a job, without a means to the next meals, without a family, or worse a family and loved ones who have abandoned them, to those without education or even the opportunity for one, or even the one who works their ass off only to fail and be turned away from the one thing that gives their life meaning. Stop and think then.
That being said—I will continue to read and think about Heidegger, because I believe it is important. I will continue to read literature. I will continue to love my family and friends, I will continue to harbor hope for my dreams both in my goals in life, in my love unrequited or not, and in the next day—but I will always hope. I will hope even if each moment I fail, and I will fail no doubt.
While I breathe, I hope.
Dum spiro spero.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr8mr7Ex0cQ&feature=related
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Black Swan
I have been waiting for a while to write about Aronovsky’s latest film, the Black Swan, for several reasons. The first of which is that I wanted a lot of other people to see it so that my reading audience, no matter how small in reality it is, at least saw the previews for the film. With that being out of the way and the movie performing exceptionally well in the market for a rather high brow art film, as the critics have come to call it, my next reservation was with writing a post. I have yet to learn how to type on this bloody computer. Honestly I am a hunt and peck typist. On a conventional keyboard, I type a bit quicker and not using my pointer fingers the entire time, but on the netbook, it is much more difficult for me. By the way, I am very rapid hunt and peck and I don’t have to look at the keyboard so don’t judge me!
The final and most important reason why I have neglected in writing about the film was that I needed time to process it. Why?
My first reaction to the film was that it was either brilliant or the kitschiest piece of film I had seen in a long time. Then my Heraclitus/ Derridian/ Hegelian background said, no, no, there must a unity of opposites or there is a play between the differences or there is some synthesis of the two that surpasses them both. Maybe. First, we must analyze the ground upon which either claim stands and the consider this third leg of the equation.
Kitsch. This movie is simply a film that explores the tired cliché of art as destruction and self-deception. I think Tony Scott of the New York Times put it best when he started to write about how the dichotomy of the white and black swan in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, the ballet which gives the film its name and its plot , leads itself to the Apollonian and Dionysian duality that have come to represent art and creative powers. The apollonian with its order and form represents the White, virginal and innocent swan, as well as Natalie Portman’s character. The Dionysian with its out of control power, lust and sexuality is embodied by Mila Kunis’ character. One ballerina(and the prima ballerina at that) must embody both characters. There must be one who makes the change, the metamorphosis from white to black. Let us mediate her before we go forward into the second nuance of the kitsch. This idea of art is ancient and well worn. Art destroys you, you must free yourself, creativity is wild power, a power that no one can handle. Tried and true. A very Romantic notion of the artist, a Romanticism that seems to follow us still.
To the white swan. Here again with have the deeply Freudian notion of the overbearing and jealous mother. The mother of Portman’s character is a failed ballerina, is the typical overbearing mother that attempts to control every aspect of her daughter’s life. This includes removing all the locks from the doors and even sleeping in the room with her daughter (which leads to a rather funny scene later in the movie). Portman is a little girl in her home, surrounded by dolls and pink and the prescence of her mother.
Kunis shatters this notion. She is the perfect Black swan. Technically not very strong; nowhere near Portman—but she has passion and oozes sex. She and Portman go out one night, Portman lets loose and indulges in her, well self. Her we go with a good girl goes bad and grows up. Tried and true plot line.
So we have the plot of Swan Lake which drives the movie, Apollonian and Dionysian view of creative power as ultimate self destruction, Good girl goes bad and indulges in her passion, then of course the idea of the ballet company and the intrigue caused by aging ballerinas, obsession with beauty, the lecherous appeitie of the director, backstabbing up and comers…and the boring story lines continue.
But here is where the brilliance comes in. We have a ballerina, aging, too, we forget that Portman is 29 and ballet doesn’t leave young women with a long shelf life. Her body is flawless yet a skeleton. The art itself is killing her. Muscles begin to fail her (a cramped diaphragm!!) her toes begin to go together. She finally becomes her art quite literally. She believes herself so. Paranoia and lost passion become her. Portman, and I mean Portman becomes the art just as the character becomes the art. I agree with Tony on this point, we look at Portman, the lines on her face, we hear the last lines of her character and realize that she became her character. The movie with all its flaws and cliché showed that the life and art of characters and artists, whenever shown on screen seem to fall into the metafiction moment. Without breaking the fourth wall, and subtly, the movie reveals what we give ourselves. Outside of all the clichés, the movie is a movie that shows our own obsessions with art and our ideas of art. Here is where the power of the movie lies. It made me think long and hard because it was a reflection on a reflection, or maybe a reflection of a reflection. It is this view that makes criticism difficult. We are trapped in a web of our own fictions about art as we try to pull the strings of the knot of our own creation.
So where are we? I don’t know what I think. I would watch it. Good and Evil, sex, scandal, ballet, art, Nietzschean overtones and all. I don’t know upon which mind I stand in this movie. Maybe I will tarry in the middle.
The final and most important reason why I have neglected in writing about the film was that I needed time to process it. Why?
My first reaction to the film was that it was either brilliant or the kitschiest piece of film I had seen in a long time. Then my Heraclitus/ Derridian/ Hegelian background said, no, no, there must a unity of opposites or there is a play between the differences or there is some synthesis of the two that surpasses them both. Maybe. First, we must analyze the ground upon which either claim stands and the consider this third leg of the equation.
Kitsch. This movie is simply a film that explores the tired cliché of art as destruction and self-deception. I think Tony Scott of the New York Times put it best when he started to write about how the dichotomy of the white and black swan in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, the ballet which gives the film its name and its plot , leads itself to the Apollonian and Dionysian duality that have come to represent art and creative powers. The apollonian with its order and form represents the White, virginal and innocent swan, as well as Natalie Portman’s character. The Dionysian with its out of control power, lust and sexuality is embodied by Mila Kunis’ character. One ballerina(and the prima ballerina at that) must embody both characters. There must be one who makes the change, the metamorphosis from white to black. Let us mediate her before we go forward into the second nuance of the kitsch. This idea of art is ancient and well worn. Art destroys you, you must free yourself, creativity is wild power, a power that no one can handle. Tried and true. A very Romantic notion of the artist, a Romanticism that seems to follow us still.
To the white swan. Here again with have the deeply Freudian notion of the overbearing and jealous mother. The mother of Portman’s character is a failed ballerina, is the typical overbearing mother that attempts to control every aspect of her daughter’s life. This includes removing all the locks from the doors and even sleeping in the room with her daughter (which leads to a rather funny scene later in the movie). Portman is a little girl in her home, surrounded by dolls and pink and the prescence of her mother.
Kunis shatters this notion. She is the perfect Black swan. Technically not very strong; nowhere near Portman—but she has passion and oozes sex. She and Portman go out one night, Portman lets loose and indulges in her, well self. Her we go with a good girl goes bad and grows up. Tried and true plot line.
So we have the plot of Swan Lake which drives the movie, Apollonian and Dionysian view of creative power as ultimate self destruction, Good girl goes bad and indulges in her passion, then of course the idea of the ballet company and the intrigue caused by aging ballerinas, obsession with beauty, the lecherous appeitie of the director, backstabbing up and comers…and the boring story lines continue.
But here is where the brilliance comes in. We have a ballerina, aging, too, we forget that Portman is 29 and ballet doesn’t leave young women with a long shelf life. Her body is flawless yet a skeleton. The art itself is killing her. Muscles begin to fail her (a cramped diaphragm!!) her toes begin to go together. She finally becomes her art quite literally. She believes herself so. Paranoia and lost passion become her. Portman, and I mean Portman becomes the art just as the character becomes the art. I agree with Tony on this point, we look at Portman, the lines on her face, we hear the last lines of her character and realize that she became her character. The movie with all its flaws and cliché showed that the life and art of characters and artists, whenever shown on screen seem to fall into the metafiction moment. Without breaking the fourth wall, and subtly, the movie reveals what we give ourselves. Outside of all the clichés, the movie is a movie that shows our own obsessions with art and our ideas of art. Here is where the power of the movie lies. It made me think long and hard because it was a reflection on a reflection, or maybe a reflection of a reflection. It is this view that makes criticism difficult. We are trapped in a web of our own fictions about art as we try to pull the strings of the knot of our own creation.
So where are we? I don’t know what I think. I would watch it. Good and Evil, sex, scandal, ballet, art, Nietzschean overtones and all. I don’t know upon which mind I stand in this movie. Maybe I will tarry in the middle.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
2011
2011. A new year. 2011 should be a good year. Most of the time, during this time of the year we turn to the past and do reviews of the previous year. In this case, that review would be a reflection on the first decade of the second millennium. I prefer to look forward rather than be blown into the New Year by my history. Wither this is a good philosophy, time will tell, but it is a glance forward that I must take.
Starting this year I will continue to work on Italian. Both speaking it and reading its cannon. I will also embark on a structured reading list starting with the ancient Greeks, both the philosopher and the literature, and moving into the German idealists with Beckett, Borges and of course Heidegger in the mix. I will write short stories and continue writing in my journals. I already have new writing tools coming. I will write letters. I will restore my typewriter. I will laugh more and not get bogged down with work. I’ll take a trip. I’ll keep in touch with old friends. I’ll make new acquaintances. I’ll be moving in some direction.
Starting this year I will continue to work on Italian. Both speaking it and reading its cannon. I will also embark on a structured reading list starting with the ancient Greeks, both the philosopher and the literature, and moving into the German idealists with Beckett, Borges and of course Heidegger in the mix. I will write short stories and continue writing in my journals. I already have new writing tools coming. I will write letters. I will restore my typewriter. I will laugh more and not get bogged down with work. I’ll take a trip. I’ll keep in touch with old friends. I’ll make new acquaintances. I’ll be moving in some direction.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Snow and stuff
So i got a little netbook. I am excited. It is a very gracious gift. I must admit though, it is quite difficult to type. You must adjust. 98% the traditional size is a bit smaller than the 2% would imply.
I do not know what to write about. I would say something about Black Swan, a movie that is either brilliant or clumsy and cliché. I have yet to decide. Or I might write about how it seems that there are three things about which the world seems to rotate. At least human life. I might write about how I now have a legitimate reading list that should keep me occupied. I have a schedule at least. I might write how I feel lost.
I do not know what to write about. I would say something about Black Swan, a movie that is either brilliant or clumsy and cliché. I have yet to decide. Or I might write about how it seems that there are three things about which the world seems to rotate. At least human life. I might write about how I now have a legitimate reading list that should keep me occupied. I have a schedule at least. I might write how I feel lost.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
And then there was blogging
So it's been a while since Glasshouse and I have done one of these things, but better late or repeated than never again. I am much to blame. I am shit on keeping up with stuff and turning on my computer.
So he has sent me Jame Blake's "CMYK." Here, I'll but a link for you to listen to it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQoQirZwxE4
Yes, I didn't know it either, but USA Tennis player James Blake was also interested in the London underground dubstep scene. Crazy right? We all have multiple interests though, so I give him kudos for trying to pursue his.
No. I'm kidding, this is some kid from England, as all the good ones should be who once studied at University the kind of disciplines that US doesn't put value in anymore. This guy, then takes his music knowledge and affinity for dubstep and churns out this really pop song with inspiration from dubstep.
These kind of songs are just difficult to write about. Is it dance music. No not really. It is more an exploration of where the sounds will take you. DJing without being a DJ that spins for the kids to dance nor for the art itself. They just spin and mix. And it's always kids in the basement.
So to the song. CMYK. Let's start there. What the fuck is that? Silly initials. It seems to have little to do with the refrain, "Look, I found her, red coat." Right? Well not quite. CMYK is a colour printing scheme that is extremely common. It operates on principles that the human eye cannot perceive the small dots that create a picture and how these dots of the cyan, magenta, yellow and key lay on one another. This produces a solid picture in different colours that the eye can perceive.
Okay, so turn to the song. Just like the title, the refrain, Look I found her red coat. Again and again this refrain. It echos like little dots, punctuating the beat itself. What is dictating the movement of the song, where is the message. It is dubstep electronic music. It doesn't have some kind of cohesive story to tell it is just this refrain this message over and over again being driven and driving again and again and again. Red coat, red coat, look, look, i found her, i found her, red coat, red coat.
This is precisely how the song operates. Just like the subtractive method that constitutes the colour scheme mentioned in the title of the song, the words drive the message. The color, red, look, look, as the listener of the song you must look and see the layers that form the musician complexity that the song creates. It is a layer. Not of just red. Red is just the sound you hear. Notice, red is not even in the CMYK color scheme. But it is red you hear. You hear it because it is part of the entire musical structure. It is being created and perceived by the listener by the dots, the layers and pulse of the music. We hear the sound "red" look. You found the red coat, but you did not see the entire structure which created the song. It is the dots that create the song. It is the sound waves of layers and layers that give content to the music and the message. There is not a message without the beats that are dubstep. The form creates the message.
Even when we move to the beat itself it echos the sounds of a printer. Tick tick tick tick tick tick....just likes the printing press.
So James Blake our brilliant brit is using a visual metaphor to create an aural message that reflects on both the aural and the visual. Wow. This kiddie is a smart one.
Or this is complete bullshit. It is perhaps then that he is not giving us a message at all. That he is merely mashing up some beats and tossing in some vocals. It sounds good. It is a great song.
I have to say though, there is definitely something behind this song. Why the title? Why the color reference? Why the reference to the visual? Is it some reference to Marry Poppins in her red coat and blue scarf? Is that who we are to find? Is this a call to Marry Poppins to give James a little more sugar with his medicine? I don't know and James does not need any more sugar given the history of the English dental profession (kidding, I know it is getting better. Slightly. All the MPs have great teeth. Okay, now I am lying).
Who knows? Who uses art for messages anyway. That would be silly.
So he has sent me Jame Blake's "CMYK." Here, I'll but a link for you to listen to it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQoQirZwxE4
Yes, I didn't know it either, but USA Tennis player James Blake was also interested in the London underground dubstep scene. Crazy right? We all have multiple interests though, so I give him kudos for trying to pursue his.
No. I'm kidding, this is some kid from England, as all the good ones should be who once studied at University the kind of disciplines that US doesn't put value in anymore. This guy, then takes his music knowledge and affinity for dubstep and churns out this really pop song with inspiration from dubstep.
These kind of songs are just difficult to write about. Is it dance music. No not really. It is more an exploration of where the sounds will take you. DJing without being a DJ that spins for the kids to dance nor for the art itself. They just spin and mix. And it's always kids in the basement.
So to the song. CMYK. Let's start there. What the fuck is that? Silly initials. It seems to have little to do with the refrain, "Look, I found her, red coat." Right? Well not quite. CMYK is a colour printing scheme that is extremely common. It operates on principles that the human eye cannot perceive the small dots that create a picture and how these dots of the cyan, magenta, yellow and key lay on one another. This produces a solid picture in different colours that the eye can perceive.
Okay, so turn to the song. Just like the title, the refrain, Look I found her red coat. Again and again this refrain. It echos like little dots, punctuating the beat itself. What is dictating the movement of the song, where is the message. It is dubstep electronic music. It doesn't have some kind of cohesive story to tell it is just this refrain this message over and over again being driven and driving again and again and again. Red coat, red coat, look, look, i found her, i found her, red coat, red coat.
This is precisely how the song operates. Just like the subtractive method that constitutes the colour scheme mentioned in the title of the song, the words drive the message. The color, red, look, look, as the listener of the song you must look and see the layers that form the musician complexity that the song creates. It is a layer. Not of just red. Red is just the sound you hear. Notice, red is not even in the CMYK color scheme. But it is red you hear. You hear it because it is part of the entire musical structure. It is being created and perceived by the listener by the dots, the layers and pulse of the music. We hear the sound "red" look. You found the red coat, but you did not see the entire structure which created the song. It is the dots that create the song. It is the sound waves of layers and layers that give content to the music and the message. There is not a message without the beats that are dubstep. The form creates the message.
Even when we move to the beat itself it echos the sounds of a printer. Tick tick tick tick tick tick....just likes the printing press.
So James Blake our brilliant brit is using a visual metaphor to create an aural message that reflects on both the aural and the visual. Wow. This kiddie is a smart one.
Or this is complete bullshit. It is perhaps then that he is not giving us a message at all. That he is merely mashing up some beats and tossing in some vocals. It sounds good. It is a great song.
I have to say though, there is definitely something behind this song. Why the title? Why the color reference? Why the reference to the visual? Is it some reference to Marry Poppins in her red coat and blue scarf? Is that who we are to find? Is this a call to Marry Poppins to give James a little more sugar with his medicine? I don't know and James does not need any more sugar given the history of the English dental profession (kidding, I know it is getting better. Slightly. All the MPs have great teeth. Okay, now I am lying).
Who knows? Who uses art for messages anyway. That would be silly.
Encounter with the Real
Wikileaks.
A point that is often discussed in psychoanalysis coming out of Freud and his notion of consciousness as a protective shell that protects the self from reality and later taken up by Lacan and then his bastard ideological son, Zizek, is that the real, reality is too powerful, too strong to be encountered in it's true form. We must then create fictions around ourselves in order to survive. Zizek then takes this idea a little further from it's Freudian and Lacanian interpreted origins and writies that it is the virtual, the fictions, that have become the read. That we cannot even encounter our own illusions for they have become the real. We continue to wrap ourselves in illusions that we cannot see. Thus, he often says, he looks for the reality in the virtual. That the virtual shows reality.
Herein lies Wikileaks. Wikileaks, that strange and hated website created by the even stranger and even more hated Julian Assange. Wikileaks, legally or not, though probably not, began to leaks documents, private and confidental documents to the press regarding first some atrocities and friendly fire incidents in the middle east and much more recently private cable messages from the US to it's embassies. What these documents released include:
-Sarkozy is a slightly neurotic, image obsessed man with an entourage and tendencies to autocracy
-Saudi Arabia funds terror and it a major destabilizing force in the middle east
-The US and Canada have a strained friendship
-Fears about China.
-Direction to state department official to gather low level information of other diplomats.
Yikes. This news is both revelatory and shocking.
No, no it isn't.
For anyone who has ever read a newspaper and followed the course of events in these countries or read a spy novel, this news is by any means very du jour. Saudi Arabia is a dangerous nation that funds extremist with one hand while shunning it publicly. It is a country that is held together with religious beliefs despite a huge disparity in income. Canada and the US have many dividing points. China holds most of the US debt. Sarkozy, is well, Sarkozy. Diplomats have always spied on each other. That is the name of the game.
Thus what we have is another encounter with the real. The most shocking thing about the releases is that we know the truth. Everyone knew the truth, but no one "knew" the truth. The shallow surface of politics upon which the news channels floated and diplomancy worked has been revealed to the world. There are games which we thought occured that have been confirmed to us all.
At last, we have encountered the real. The under belly has been shown to us.
Or has it?
Funny, that this encounter with the real was brought to us through virtual means. It took virtual reality to leak this message to the public to expose the real. Then the new programs got a hold of it and started to investigate and show us more. But what did they show us? Words and documents that have never appeared in print, only as hacked bits of bytes from sources who we do not know. Where is the virtual now? Baudrillard once wrote about the speed of technology when he said that the virtual would outpace the events themselves, that the news would arrive before the events even occurred. Is that what we have here? We have been shown the truth, but is it really the truth? Have we been shown anything, or is this yet another virtual reality within a fiction within a fiction, a Borgesian maze with many rabbit holes with no exits.
A point that is often discussed in psychoanalysis coming out of Freud and his notion of consciousness as a protective shell that protects the self from reality and later taken up by Lacan and then his bastard ideological son, Zizek, is that the real, reality is too powerful, too strong to be encountered in it's true form. We must then create fictions around ourselves in order to survive. Zizek then takes this idea a little further from it's Freudian and Lacanian interpreted origins and writies that it is the virtual, the fictions, that have become the read. That we cannot even encounter our own illusions for they have become the real. We continue to wrap ourselves in illusions that we cannot see. Thus, he often says, he looks for the reality in the virtual. That the virtual shows reality.
Herein lies Wikileaks. Wikileaks, that strange and hated website created by the even stranger and even more hated Julian Assange. Wikileaks, legally or not, though probably not, began to leaks documents, private and confidental documents to the press regarding first some atrocities and friendly fire incidents in the middle east and much more recently private cable messages from the US to it's embassies. What these documents released include:
-Sarkozy is a slightly neurotic, image obsessed man with an entourage and tendencies to autocracy
-Saudi Arabia funds terror and it a major destabilizing force in the middle east
-The US and Canada have a strained friendship
-Fears about China.
-Direction to state department official to gather low level information of other diplomats.
Yikes. This news is both revelatory and shocking.
No, no it isn't.
For anyone who has ever read a newspaper and followed the course of events in these countries or read a spy novel, this news is by any means very du jour. Saudi Arabia is a dangerous nation that funds extremist with one hand while shunning it publicly. It is a country that is held together with religious beliefs despite a huge disparity in income. Canada and the US have many dividing points. China holds most of the US debt. Sarkozy, is well, Sarkozy. Diplomats have always spied on each other. That is the name of the game.
Thus what we have is another encounter with the real. The most shocking thing about the releases is that we know the truth. Everyone knew the truth, but no one "knew" the truth. The shallow surface of politics upon which the news channels floated and diplomancy worked has been revealed to the world. There are games which we thought occured that have been confirmed to us all.
At last, we have encountered the real. The under belly has been shown to us.
Or has it?
Funny, that this encounter with the real was brought to us through virtual means. It took virtual reality to leak this message to the public to expose the real. Then the new programs got a hold of it and started to investigate and show us more. But what did they show us? Words and documents that have never appeared in print, only as hacked bits of bytes from sources who we do not know. Where is the virtual now? Baudrillard once wrote about the speed of technology when he said that the virtual would outpace the events themselves, that the news would arrive before the events even occurred. Is that what we have here? We have been shown the truth, but is it really the truth? Have we been shown anything, or is this yet another virtual reality within a fiction within a fiction, a Borgesian maze with many rabbit holes with no exits.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Borges
So initially I had a grand idea about writing about myths. Myths are interesting. Why we return to them? Why do they have meaning in an age when the truth value of the truths of myths has been reassigned to science (for the most part)? Taking some ideological and argument leaps and liberties, we can say that truth is a function of society, of the relationships within it. Pure and unadulterated referentiality is impossible. This is a dull argument and one that we just need to mention if only to say we acknolwedge it.
Why then do we ask questions about myths? What do they mean to us today? Have they be reassigned a new truth (well of course)? Or do we refer to them if only to show how we once were? Is it a means to show progress or regression? Do myths have to be historically progressive or can they simply show the contingency of history? Is myth a myth if only because of its literariness, its disguising the truth while trying to say it (this is a nod to the russian formalists)? I do not know the answer. All I do know is that mythology is popular and I would assume will always remain popular and I wonder why? Why do we need myths? What value do they have? Value perhaps not as truth value but value within the whole. Why do we need them?
All of this was just to say I think Borges is one of the most fascinating characters of all time. When one follows his works, one finds not only breathtaking stories that weave in and out of time and narration--but a richness of stories and cannons that involve Kabbalah, Fascism, Nietzsche, Idealism, the Infinite, and the whole of the western cannon. He offers many paths. I think teasing each one out would be a real exercise and not to mention just plain fun.
Oh well. That's I've got.
How about wikileaks. Wow.
Why then do we ask questions about myths? What do they mean to us today? Have they be reassigned a new truth (well of course)? Or do we refer to them if only to show how we once were? Is it a means to show progress or regression? Do myths have to be historically progressive or can they simply show the contingency of history? Is myth a myth if only because of its literariness, its disguising the truth while trying to say it (this is a nod to the russian formalists)? I do not know the answer. All I do know is that mythology is popular and I would assume will always remain popular and I wonder why? Why do we need myths? What value do they have? Value perhaps not as truth value but value within the whole. Why do we need them?
All of this was just to say I think Borges is one of the most fascinating characters of all time. When one follows his works, one finds not only breathtaking stories that weave in and out of time and narration--but a richness of stories and cannons that involve Kabbalah, Fascism, Nietzsche, Idealism, the Infinite, and the whole of the western cannon. He offers many paths. I think teasing each one out would be a real exercise and not to mention just plain fun.
Oh well. That's I've got.
How about wikileaks. Wow.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Ou est la Gauche?/ Where is the Left?
In the course of working for a French company, being surrounded by French, and having one of my best friends being French, not to mention a profound interest in politics and recent French philosophy, I have taken an interest in the French political scene. What I have seen of late is disturbing.
Sarkozy, l’americaine, has taken serious strides to turn France into America—if only a romanticized version of it. With reforms to retirement and efforts at autereity in the form of reducing social programs and opening the doors of the inclusive “member’s only” club that are the Grande Ecoles, our French president is knocking at the doors of American equality and individualism. Or is this a fair title for what we are seeing? A quota system for entry into the Ecoles does not change the nature and image of the Ecoles at a grand level. Rather, the institution itself remains unchanged. It is still a private club that not only judges the intelligence of it’s applicants (students, who spend two years cramming all subjects in the classes preparatoires) but also their understanding of the culture (upper echelon of French society from the finest families from the finest lycees). The cloistered structure of French society still remains, even as Sarkozy attempts to erode some of the tenents of modern French society, such as the shortened work week, protection of labour, the fonctionaires, and the welfare state.
So the question is where is the left? These meager gains and the now romanticized French way, is being attacked by the right. A new terror in the guise of a necessary austerity in the face of the collapse of capitalism and it’s revival by the government. Where is the revolutionary fervor that gaves these liberties (positive) to the French people? Was it not in the wake of the revolution in May and June of 1968 that the government granted such concessions? Where is the return of the left to save these institutions?
One might immediately say, “But of course, the students are in the streets, they are protesting. The workers have awakened and they blocked the petrol, crippling France and spitting in the face of Sarkozy.” But yet the “reform” passed. The students did march in the street. The schools shut down. The police were called in to disperse the people. The unions, who threw their imperial might behind the strike (with all 10% of the unionized work force in France) and lost. The students, lost.
But what were they fighting for? Notice how earlier I mentioned that the institutions of France were under attack. Odd how the romantic notion of France as the keepers of a particular way of life, of a welfare state, of limited work hours, of wine and cheese and long dinners, relies on institutions. Instititions keep the identity of the nation safe. A country known to be the most liberal, the bastion of the French Revolution, of Jean Paul Sartre and the rest of the old Marxists, all of them rely on the insititon for protection. Not so very left.
So what does this say? Is there an avenue for the voices to speak. Insititions structure the discourse of that era. What one can say, as the left, is only in light of what the reasonable leftist discourse can be. In France the reasonable (within the reason of the left) reaction is to protest. To strike. The gesture was completed. The reasonable response occurred. Yet, it failed. Or was it always to fail?
Let us turn back to 1968. The grand revolution when poetry ruled the streets was acclaimed as the great failure. The unions showed themselves weak and allied with de Gaulle’s government against the workers and students. The Marxist dream was dead. The people did get concession from the government, but an ideology was dead. In the wake of this you have a birth of great thinkers, Foucault, Derrida, Ranciere, Iraguray to name a few, and a new discourse is born. This new discourse would be one that is always traumatized by the failures of it’s intellectual forbearers. The questions of “who are we now?” “the democracy to come” “the inoperative community” were asked in the wake of the failure of 1968 and forever indebted to it.
Now as we move to the current events, we see that the question of “where is the left” is more complicated. The left as we thought of it is buried in the past. It is structured by the discourse of the right which allows it to protest and march in the streets in an effort to exercise the demons of its past an exercise that shows the futility of such actions. It is institutionalized.
The left is dead.
The question now is what form can the discourse take place? A discourse that is not traumatized by the events of 1968 and poisoned by the stagnate thinking of the intellectual children of that failure. Or, should the discourse arise with the knowledge of it’s own traumatized being? Or should it arise knowing that the entire institution owes itself to a particular understanding of itself? It seems as though politics and the current political discourse is aligning itself into a much more rightist structure (whatever value we can now place in the term “right” is questionable, perhaps the prevalent discourse or order of things). From the recent win of the conservatives and the government of David Cameron (and their strange bedfellow, the liberal democrat Nick Clegg) to the Tea Party movement in the United States, it seems that something is occurring.
It is here that we must begin. Who are we? What is the discipline of the age and the order of discourse? Or is this even the right question? Are these tired realignments of political alliances merely a product of the sedimentation of such a search for origins and the creation of identities? Is there a deeper question that underlies this entire argument especially when questioning the political being of both an individual and the Political itself? Must we fall into an essentialist structure that seeks to universalize? What would it mean to seize being? These are the questions we must ask of ourselves.
Sarkozy, l’americaine, has taken serious strides to turn France into America—if only a romanticized version of it. With reforms to retirement and efforts at autereity in the form of reducing social programs and opening the doors of the inclusive “member’s only” club that are the Grande Ecoles, our French president is knocking at the doors of American equality and individualism. Or is this a fair title for what we are seeing? A quota system for entry into the Ecoles does not change the nature and image of the Ecoles at a grand level. Rather, the institution itself remains unchanged. It is still a private club that not only judges the intelligence of it’s applicants (students, who spend two years cramming all subjects in the classes preparatoires) but also their understanding of the culture (upper echelon of French society from the finest families from the finest lycees). The cloistered structure of French society still remains, even as Sarkozy attempts to erode some of the tenents of modern French society, such as the shortened work week, protection of labour, the fonctionaires, and the welfare state.
So the question is where is the left? These meager gains and the now romanticized French way, is being attacked by the right. A new terror in the guise of a necessary austerity in the face of the collapse of capitalism and it’s revival by the government. Where is the revolutionary fervor that gaves these liberties (positive) to the French people? Was it not in the wake of the revolution in May and June of 1968 that the government granted such concessions? Where is the return of the left to save these institutions?
One might immediately say, “But of course, the students are in the streets, they are protesting. The workers have awakened and they blocked the petrol, crippling France and spitting in the face of Sarkozy.” But yet the “reform” passed. The students did march in the street. The schools shut down. The police were called in to disperse the people. The unions, who threw their imperial might behind the strike (with all 10% of the unionized work force in France) and lost. The students, lost.
But what were they fighting for? Notice how earlier I mentioned that the institutions of France were under attack. Odd how the romantic notion of France as the keepers of a particular way of life, of a welfare state, of limited work hours, of wine and cheese and long dinners, relies on institutions. Instititions keep the identity of the nation safe. A country known to be the most liberal, the bastion of the French Revolution, of Jean Paul Sartre and the rest of the old Marxists, all of them rely on the insititon for protection. Not so very left.
So what does this say? Is there an avenue for the voices to speak. Insititions structure the discourse of that era. What one can say, as the left, is only in light of what the reasonable leftist discourse can be. In France the reasonable (within the reason of the left) reaction is to protest. To strike. The gesture was completed. The reasonable response occurred. Yet, it failed. Or was it always to fail?
Let us turn back to 1968. The grand revolution when poetry ruled the streets was acclaimed as the great failure. The unions showed themselves weak and allied with de Gaulle’s government against the workers and students. The Marxist dream was dead. The people did get concession from the government, but an ideology was dead. In the wake of this you have a birth of great thinkers, Foucault, Derrida, Ranciere, Iraguray to name a few, and a new discourse is born. This new discourse would be one that is always traumatized by the failures of it’s intellectual forbearers. The questions of “who are we now?” “the democracy to come” “the inoperative community” were asked in the wake of the failure of 1968 and forever indebted to it.
Now as we move to the current events, we see that the question of “where is the left” is more complicated. The left as we thought of it is buried in the past. It is structured by the discourse of the right which allows it to protest and march in the streets in an effort to exercise the demons of its past an exercise that shows the futility of such actions. It is institutionalized.
The left is dead.
The question now is what form can the discourse take place? A discourse that is not traumatized by the events of 1968 and poisoned by the stagnate thinking of the intellectual children of that failure. Or, should the discourse arise with the knowledge of it’s own traumatized being? Or should it arise knowing that the entire institution owes itself to a particular understanding of itself? It seems as though politics and the current political discourse is aligning itself into a much more rightist structure (whatever value we can now place in the term “right” is questionable, perhaps the prevalent discourse or order of things). From the recent win of the conservatives and the government of David Cameron (and their strange bedfellow, the liberal democrat Nick Clegg) to the Tea Party movement in the United States, it seems that something is occurring.
It is here that we must begin. Who are we? What is the discipline of the age and the order of discourse? Or is this even the right question? Are these tired realignments of political alliances merely a product of the sedimentation of such a search for origins and the creation of identities? Is there a deeper question that underlies this entire argument especially when questioning the political being of both an individual and the Political itself? Must we fall into an essentialist structure that seeks to universalize? What would it mean to seize being? These are the questions we must ask of ourselves.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
updates
keeping a blog is like watering a plant. you don't show it enough love and attention, it will wither and die.
fortunately the internet is closer to bamboo in that it never really dies and when you give it a little bit of water, it will grow anew.
perhaps it is kudzu.
fortunately the internet is closer to bamboo in that it never really dies and when you give it a little bit of water, it will grow anew.
perhaps it is kudzu.
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