Foucault & Foucault

The space in which we live, which draws us out of ourselves, in which the erosion of our lives. our time and our history occurs, the space that claws and gnaws at us, is also, in itself, a heterogeneous space. In other words, we do not live in a kind of void, inside of which we could place individuals and things. We do not live inside a void that could be colored with diverse shades of light, we live inside a set of relations that delineates sites which are irreducible to one another and absolutely not superimposable on one another.

(from Heterotopia)

The strategic adversary is fascism... the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.

(from the preface to Anti-Oedipus)

Wandering Lines

As unrecognized producers, poets of their own acts, silent discoverers of their own paths in the jungle of functionalist rationality, consumers produce through their signifying practices something that might be considered similar to the "wandering lines" ("lignes derre") drawn by the autistic children studied by F. Deligny: "indirect" or "errant" trajectories obeying their own logic. In the technocratically constructed, written, and functionalized space in which the consumers move about, their trajectories form unforeseeable sentences, partly unreadable paths across a space. Although they are composed with the vocabularies of established languages (those of television, newspapers, supermarkets, or museum sequences) and although they remain subordinated to the prescribed syntactical forms (temporal modes of schedules, paradigmatic orders of spaces, etc.), the trajectories trace out the ruses of other interests and desires that are neither determined nor captured by the systems in which they develop.

- Michel de Certau in The Practice of Everyday Life

Guerrilla War

It is often said that guerrilla warfare is primitive, This generalization is dangerously misleading and true only in the technological sense. If one considers the picture as a whole, a paradox is immediately apparent, and the primitive form is understood to be in fact more sophisticated than nuclear war or atomic war or war as it was waged by conventional armies, navies, and air forces. Guerrilla war is not dependent for success on the efficient operation of complex mechanical devices, highly organized logistical systems, or the accuracy of electronic computers. It can be conducted in any terrain, in any climate, in any weather; in swamps, in mountains, in farmed fields. Its basic element is man, and man is more complex than any of his machines. He is endowed with intelligence, emotions, and will. Guerrilla warfare is therefore suffused with, and reflects, man’s admirable qualities as well as his less pleasant ones, While it is not always humane, it is human, which is more than can be said for the strategy of extinction.

- Brigadier General Samuel B. Griffith, USMC
From his introduction to his 1978 translation of Mao's Guerrilla Warfare.

A tear for the world

Cultivo una rosa blanca
En julio como en enero,
Para el amigo sincero
Que me da su mano franca.

Y para el cruel que me arranca
El corazon con que vivo,
Cardo ni ortiga cultivo,
Cultivo una rosa blanca.

I cultivate a white rose
In July as in January
For the sincere friend
Who gives me his hand frankly.

And for the cruel person who tears out
the heart with which I live,
I cultivate neither nettles nor thorns:
I cultivate a white rose.

- José Martí

Love, and solidarity Tristan, and all who struggle with him.

Alienation & Academia

I finished a (short) paper today. It's nothing brilliant or anything; but, since it's about militarism and the university, I figured I ought to share. It doesn't gives a full account of what's going on (not even close) but it offers -- what I hope -- is one useful way of looking at it.

Since World War Two, American academia has had a close relationship with the military, in what has been termed the “Military-Industrial-Academic-Complex” (Leslie, 1993). In a report on the influence of military funding on science the Stanford Workshop on Political and Social Issues found that a number of professors defended their relationship with the military by “[...] declin[ing] to make any connection between their work and the DDC statements of military relevance” (Shapley, 1972). This paper will explicate Marx’s theory of alienation and then apply it to academia in order to illuminate how scientists are distanced from the ethical implications of their work.

[Read the rest of the paper.]

Phalic Key

The gargoyle lock of nightmares swallows with a robotic rumble the steel teeth of the keys, the phallic symbol of the prison.

- Jacques Lesage de la Haye, La guillotine du sexe

Friday Quote

"And when people got angry the ground would shake; and when people were muddled and uncertain about things the Moody Land got confused as well— the outlines of its buildings and lamp-posts and motor-cars got smudgy, like paintings whose colours had run, and at such times it could be difficult to make out where one thing ended and another began…
'Am I right?' Haroun asked his father. 'Is this the place the story was about?'
'The Moody Land was only a story, Haroun,' Rashid replied. 'Here, we're somewhere real.' When Haroun heard his father say only a story, he understood that the Shah of Blah was very depressed indeed, because only deep despair could have made him say such a terrible thing"(48).

- Haroun and the Sea of Stories

Non-nudist

Two quick t-shirt ideas. First from my brother:

pagan + control freak = catholic

Second from me staying up to late:

WWFC?

What would Foucault Critique?

Banal Omnipresence

Fridays are now Quotable Fridays. We start of with a tidbit from Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation. Hat tip to Bhaskara for recommending I read it, though I can't claim to have understood it all.

Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the "real" country, all of "real" America, which is Disneyland (just as prisons are there to conceal the fact that it is the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, which is carceral).

Military Civilians

I just wanted to highlight Send R.O.T.C. Back to School, a recent op-ed from the NY Times, which urges Obama to make invest more in ROTC and help the military recruit on campus. What I found interesting was not the rah-rah-military attitude but the connection the author makes between elite civilian universities (specifically Yale) and the military.

But rebuilding a connection between America’s military and its most selective colleges is about more than providing exceptional opportunities to exceptional young people. It is, ultimately, about our military’s relationship to its civilian leaders.

And then later on more explicitly:

My students understood that many of the cadets they met would soon be at war. And without my saying it, they also knew that the decisions leading to war are made by elite civilians like themselves.

The Aesthetics of Protest

I remember going -- back in high school -- to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art to see an exhibit entitled "Pirkle Jones: Sixty Years in Photography". I went as part of a field trip organized by the Music and Arts Conservatory, the head of which is an elderly Russian lady named Lana Bodnar. From October to June of 1968 Pirkle Jones -- along with his wife Ruth-Marion -- photographed the Black Panthers in Oakland. These images formed a central part of the exhibit. A few of my peers were dismissive, uninterested and otherwise unimpressed. Lana remarked something to the effect: 'you may not agree with the Black Panthers, or find them somewhat extreme, but just look at the way they hold themselves in those photos, tall and proud. You don't see pride like that very often, especially not amongst black youth today'.


I'm not a huge fan of uniforms and militaristic parades, but Lana had a point. And it's not restricted to the Black Panthers. Dr. King marched in a suit and tie, for example, and silent vigils are still popular. Let's call this the aesthetics of Quiet Dignity.

I think nearly every planning meeting I have been to has emphasized that the action should be fun, exciting and enjoyable. And, I am certain that every large action I have been to has looked like a hippie reunion. Two prominent examples spring to mind: the Gay Pride Parades and the 1968 Festival of Life. Let's call this the aesthetic of Loud Life.

These are two different ways of facing the Powers That Be™. Quiet Dignity can be incredibly powerful, but runs the risk of buying into the normative power paradigm. Loud Life disrupts the normative power paradigm, but in practice often amounts to no more than a demonstrative act that is easily written off and marginalized. It would, of course, be foolish to suggest that one is always preferable to the other, or that this represents an exhaustive cataloging. I bring it up for three reasons:

(a) It might be interesting to look at historical movements and see why a certain aesthetic developed in that particular context. I would love it if someone with more historical knowledge than I took on such a project or if folks could point me towards already existing resources in this direction.

(b) We often fall into a rut and repeat similar actions over and over and I think it is important to remember that there are different approaches. Gene Sharp's list of 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action [also available as an 11x17 poster] is a good resource. But in general, I feel like we reinvent the wheel, or repeat what our immediate antecedents have done without reaching out enough to history and parallel movements.

(c) There may be commonalities that can help us understand what works and what does. The call for "fun" actions is often a reaction against lame Liberal demonstrations. But, perhaps it's not (at times, self-indulgent) fun so much as dignity and power that we feel is lacking? Fun, of course, may be lead to those, but we keep demanding it as if it's something new so perhaps a clearer understanding of what we're after would help us get there, and looking at other movements might give us that understanding.

Food Nation

Bhaskara, so even my all American peanut butter and jelly sandwich isn't safe from theory? And I even made it with whole wheat bread.

If you walk into your standard issue chain bookstore and saunter over to the "social science" -- or whatever they call the one and half bookshelves crammed in a nook in the back -- section you will find a plethora of food related volumes. Michael Pollan springs to mind as does Fast Food Nation, but there are plenty more, and that's not even including all the diet books and cookbooks. For a country that barely eats real food America sure is obsessed with the stuff.

I must admit: I am not entirely immune. I take my food choices seriously. I am vegetarian, prefer locally grown produce, care about sustainable farming, dumpster, and so on down the line. On the one hand these are very important issues. On the other it's flirting with yuppie style sublimation of ethics into consumerism. There are lots of cool projects related to food -- community supported agriculture, urban gardens etc. -- but they still leave me with a funny taste in my mouth. I love food. I love cooking and, perhaps more than anything, I love gathering around a meal with friends. But do I really want to be this obsessed with food?

I agree with you Bhaskara that the situation is insane, but I'm not sure what the radical response would be. Perhaps polarbear would deign to join the blog and expand on his biopower comment for the rest of us?

Peanut Butter Panic

The recent recall of peanut butter products produced by Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) has resulted in abundant dumpstering opportunities. And so far so good (no violent salmonella induced vomiting).

However, such a massive recall indicates the instability of food production practices in North America. Clearly, with eight people dead and hundreds more sick and hospitalized, the situation is serious, yet the immediate recall of all products seems like an inappropriate response (not all the products are contaminated), a response on par with other scare-mongering, blame-escaping corporate practices.

How is it less expensive to dump all the products than risk a class action lawsuit?

Book Deal

In conversation with Steve S. an idea arose that I wanted to share with folks. The local/indy music scene seems to - on the whole - be thriving. The analogous literature scene, however, isn't doing as well. The strength of music lies in its ability to create a community through public performance. Literature, however, tends to be more solitary. To break past that and start building a "literary scene" we thought it would be neat if writers took up some aspects of performing: either by organizing their own shows (come listen to a night of short stories by local authors), or - better yet? - in conjunction with musicians (come listen to FooBar play and Etaoin Shrdlu read her latest story). It would be really awesome if this would ultimately culminate in Book Tours in which a group of writers would travel around - the same way bands do - reading their prose (or poetry) at small venues. I know there exist open mics and that slam poetry is very performative. The idea here is to organize something closer to a traditional music show, but with writers instead of bands. Hopefully, not only would this spread some awesome writing around but it'll inspire more folks to tackle writing -- the same way everyone and their mother's second cousin is now 'starting a band'.

Warhol Panopticon

Concept by Techphobe; Realized by J-dV.