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.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
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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