A 100-Year-Old Church in Spain Transformed into a Skate Park Covered in Murals by Okuda San Miguel
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Sunday, December 6, 2015
We Spoke to the Artist Making the Longest Movie in History
(Vice.com)
"Swedish artist Anders Weberg [...] is aiming for a place in film history. Ambiancé is a 720-hour film over six years in the making. [...]
"After simultaneously screening the movie on every continent in 2020, Weberg plans on destroying the film, making its one screening its only screening. Ambiancé's experimental marketing has followed a similar pattern. The first teaser, released in July 2014 and clocking in at around 72 minutes, has since disappeared from the web. Last month, Weber shared a one-minute excerpt from a trailer, which will be released sometime next year and will run for about seven hours and 20 minutes."
(Vice.com)
"Swedish artist Anders Weberg [...] is aiming for a place in film history. Ambiancé is a 720-hour film over six years in the making. [...]
"After simultaneously screening the movie on every continent in 2020, Weberg plans on destroying the film, making its one screening its only screening. Ambiancé's experimental marketing has followed a similar pattern. The first teaser, released in July 2014 and clocking in at around 72 minutes, has since disappeared from the web. Last month, Weber shared a one-minute excerpt from a trailer, which will be released sometime next year and will run for about seven hours and 20 minutes."
Friday, November 27, 2015
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Thursday, September 17, 2015
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
For the mere look of a printed line is itself extremely characteristic --- it presents, that is, a quite special appearance, the letters all roughly the same size, akin in shape too, and always recurring; most of the words constantly repeated and immensely familiar to us, like well-known faces.
-- from Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sect. 167, p73-74e
-- from Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sect. 167, p73-74e
Friday, June 19, 2015
Thursday, June 18, 2015
It is precisely the force and the efficiency of the system that regularly change transgressions into "false exits." Taking into account these effects of the system, one has nothing, from the inside where "we are," but the choice between two strategies:
a. To attempt an exit and a deconstruction without changing terrain, by repeating what is implicit in the founding concepts and the original problematic, by using against the edifice the instruments or stones available in the house, that is, equally, in language. Here, one risks ceaselessly confirming, consolidating, relifting (relever), at an always more certain depth, that which one allegedly deconstructs. The continuous process of making explicit, moving toward an opening, risks sinking into the autism of the closure.
b. To decide to change terrain, in a discontinuous and irruptive fashion, by brutally placing oneself outside, and by affirming an absolute break and difference. Without mentioning all the other forms of trompe-l'oeil perspective in which such a displacement can be caught, thereby inhabiting more naively and more strictly than ever the inside one declares one has deserted, the simple practice of language ceaselessly reinstates the new terrain on the oldest ground. The effects of such a reinstatement or of such a blindness could be shown in numerous precise instances.
It goes without saying that these effects do not suffice to annul the necessity for a "change of terrain." It also goes without saying that the choice between these two forms of deconstruction cannot be simple and unique. A new writing must weave and interlace these two motifs of deconstruction. Which amounts to saying that one must speak several languages and produce several texts at once.
-- from "The Ends of Man," Derrida, p 135
a. To attempt an exit and a deconstruction without changing terrain, by repeating what is implicit in the founding concepts and the original problematic, by using against the edifice the instruments or stones available in the house, that is, equally, in language. Here, one risks ceaselessly confirming, consolidating, relifting (relever), at an always more certain depth, that which one allegedly deconstructs. The continuous process of making explicit, moving toward an opening, risks sinking into the autism of the closure.
b. To decide to change terrain, in a discontinuous and irruptive fashion, by brutally placing oneself outside, and by affirming an absolute break and difference. Without mentioning all the other forms of trompe-l'oeil perspective in which such a displacement can be caught, thereby inhabiting more naively and more strictly than ever the inside one declares one has deserted, the simple practice of language ceaselessly reinstates the new terrain on the oldest ground. The effects of such a reinstatement or of such a blindness could be shown in numerous precise instances.
It goes without saying that these effects do not suffice to annul the necessity for a "change of terrain." It also goes without saying that the choice between these two forms of deconstruction cannot be simple and unique. A new writing must weave and interlace these two motifs of deconstruction. Which amounts to saying that one must speak several languages and produce several texts at once.
-- from "The Ends of Man," Derrida, p 135
Sunday, May 17, 2015
Freedom as letting be and truth as unconcealment, of course, are reciprocal. Thus on the "practical" front, the displacement of the will as the privileged locus of freedom complements on the "theoretical" front the removal of the assertion as the privileged locus of truth. And the more explicitly we witness the breakdown of the theory-practice dichotomy, the further we distance ourselves from the influence that Cartesian dualism has on shaping modern ethics: the presumption of privileging consciousness as a disembodied spirit and then denigrating nature as the aggregate of material objects devoid of value. An "originary ethics," which attends to the ethos of our inhabitation, can then emerge in the space created by subverting the volitional, anthropocentric, "foundationalist" premise of modern ethics.
-- from The Incarnality of Being by Frank Schalow, p. 108-9
-- from The Incarnality of Being by Frank Schalow, p. 108-9
'Preliminary' Thoughts on Philosophy Outside the Academy:
How can we imagine philosophy outside of the academy?
In some sense, the question seems odd. Why would we need philosophy outside of academia? And who's to say it's not already outside of the academy?
Why we would need it outside of academia has several reasons. First, the academic system seems to be imploding. Not only is it 'top-heavy' (with administrators), increasingly staffed by part-time, sessional, limited-term professors who are over-worked, underpaid, unable to fully dedicate themselves to either research or teaching; not only is it increasingly facing budget cuts, where the humanities must constantly justify their very existence; not only is the trend towards job training and always immediate transparent relevance; but the institution is also embedded within a society, one that prioritizes the economy, efficiency, and smooth bureaucratic operation (which is by its nature never smooth). The atmosphere of austerity is only the latest in a chain of ever-more impoverished views to reduce all experience to calculation, balancing, and accounting.
In this kind of situation, it is hard to imagine anything but the current trends continuing. It becomes increasingly difficult to imagine the university as continuing to provide a ripe environment for philosophy or other such pursuits. What it does still offer is an institutional arrangement for funding (problematic though it is), resources (buildings, equipment, spaces), and, above all, great people. For what philosophy needs is a set of social relations, a community of thinkers.
But to return to the question, why would we need philosophy outside of the academy, especially when it becomes increasingly hard to explain and justify why we even need philosophy inside of the academy.
There is of course no way to avoid going into a least a little what philosophy is to be able to speak about it. This is no easy task, and one that philosophers have struggled with. I am in no position to be arbiter on this matter. However, I will say a little about what I think philosophy is or does.
We may think of philosophy as learning how to think. Perhaps a key part to it is that it learns to think with clarity. Philosophy works on giving one's thoughts tractability to phenomena in the world, so that one can speak and think more accurately, with more precision, with more rigor. Yet philosophy is not restricted to thinking, whatsoever we may mean by that term (and action is always thought-ful, even if it is not well-thought-out). Philosophy has to do with living a good life. It works hard on thinking through what it is that is the case, and what this means for one's ability to live well. Philosophy, then, involves being gripped by questions and being transformed in one's inquiry: one's very being is (or can be) at stake. Philosophy can be a way of learning to breath, so to speak. That is, philosophy can involve rethinking, reorienting oneself within one's world, and to let the phenomena appear in a different way, to allow oneself to be struck by different aspects, such that the problems that are encountered can shift and appear differently, such that the world can shift and appear (and be) differently.
Philosophy, for me, is a way of life. It has to do with being responsibly responsive to and in the world, and it has to do with listening and paying attention to phenomena. Philosophy is deeply grounding, gratifying, and engaging. Or it can be.
There are other strains and strands, different conceptions of philosophy, that may not touch upon what I am getting at here: various forms that involve less strain, less at stake, less worry. I won't dwell on this for now.
So why would we want this outside of the academy? There are various reasons, but an obvious one is that it has never really been restricted to the academy, anyway. Just like poets are not necessarily the ones who write with ink and legacy, so philosophers are not necessarily those great canonical figures. Traces are left all over the place in so many different ways. But this does not directly address the question.
I think we would want philosophy outside of the academy because it is fundamental to the way we (ought to) live. We cannot escape (permanently) the questions our existence trails along with it (like a dog trailing along with a corpse). And I don't mean the pseudo-wise questions one asks to sound deep. I mean the questions, concerns, anxieties that grip us in our being. We may flee these, push them away, but they return, nagging us. I will not pose any here because the very posing of questions is a huge issue of philosophy: how can the question itself be given enough room for it to express itself in all its urgency and pain? in all its vulnerability and precariousness? in its fragile, cherished way? Philosophy is a way of giving expression to our tenuousness.
I will not spend time discussing here why, if philosophy is as I have characterized it, more people do not seem to recognize its value. Nor will I try to spell out how it differs from other such inquiries, such as poetry, art, religion, science, etc. Rather, I will ask: what form could it take outside of the academy? This is no easy question, but let me offer some 'preliminary' thoughts.
First, why does it need to take a form? Because it seems to me that our propensity to attempt to flee its consequences is great. It also seems to me that attempting to think through this question is part of trying to find a way to dwell with philosophy once its most easily recognized home may no longer offer it refuge.
Philosophy could take the form of children's books. Not as a diatribe or discourse on philosophical themes, etc., but as a philosophical engagement with important matters. Or, it could also take the form of therapy. This may sound odd: therapy is usually taken as being psychology or, depending on one's definitions, religion. Psychology and religion appeal to the masses, yet philosophy, doesn't it try to appeal to an elite? But I think this is a mis-characterization of philosophy. Sure, philosophy can be elitist and yes it can be quite difficult, but it can also be an activity that is open. It can also certainly help resolve and reframe problems and questions. It is obviously not like medication: its goal is not to treat symptoms or to prepare you to reenter society so you can be more efficient, productive, etc. Rather, it would involve deep work of investigating one's situation.
Philosophy could also take root in think-tanks or policy. I don't just mean in terms of ethical questions like "is it right or wrong to treat animals the way we do in slaughterhouses" but I mean it could ask deeper questions. Or, it could also take the form of a field school, offering a community of learners not necessarily tied to the old institutions of the university.
I think that philosophy in this time must take a great risk (particularly, as is what I am most familiar with, in Canadian society). I wonder whether it can set out well, and I hope it can continue, or regain, its thriving. There is no guarantee that philosophy will ask questions in an incisive and decisive way, but there is the possibility of its opening up to us to give us a way in to ask such revolutionary questions, and to dwell in them for a while.
How can we imagine philosophy outside of the academy?
In some sense, the question seems odd. Why would we need philosophy outside of academia? And who's to say it's not already outside of the academy?
Why we would need it outside of academia has several reasons. First, the academic system seems to be imploding. Not only is it 'top-heavy' (with administrators), increasingly staffed by part-time, sessional, limited-term professors who are over-worked, underpaid, unable to fully dedicate themselves to either research or teaching; not only is it increasingly facing budget cuts, where the humanities must constantly justify their very existence; not only is the trend towards job training and always immediate transparent relevance; but the institution is also embedded within a society, one that prioritizes the economy, efficiency, and smooth bureaucratic operation (which is by its nature never smooth). The atmosphere of austerity is only the latest in a chain of ever-more impoverished views to reduce all experience to calculation, balancing, and accounting.
In this kind of situation, it is hard to imagine anything but the current trends continuing. It becomes increasingly difficult to imagine the university as continuing to provide a ripe environment for philosophy or other such pursuits. What it does still offer is an institutional arrangement for funding (problematic though it is), resources (buildings, equipment, spaces), and, above all, great people. For what philosophy needs is a set of social relations, a community of thinkers.
But to return to the question, why would we need philosophy outside of the academy, especially when it becomes increasingly hard to explain and justify why we even need philosophy inside of the academy.
There is of course no way to avoid going into a least a little what philosophy is to be able to speak about it. This is no easy task, and one that philosophers have struggled with. I am in no position to be arbiter on this matter. However, I will say a little about what I think philosophy is or does.
We may think of philosophy as learning how to think. Perhaps a key part to it is that it learns to think with clarity. Philosophy works on giving one's thoughts tractability to phenomena in the world, so that one can speak and think more accurately, with more precision, with more rigor. Yet philosophy is not restricted to thinking, whatsoever we may mean by that term (and action is always thought-ful, even if it is not well-thought-out). Philosophy has to do with living a good life. It works hard on thinking through what it is that is the case, and what this means for one's ability to live well. Philosophy, then, involves being gripped by questions and being transformed in one's inquiry: one's very being is (or can be) at stake. Philosophy can be a way of learning to breath, so to speak. That is, philosophy can involve rethinking, reorienting oneself within one's world, and to let the phenomena appear in a different way, to allow oneself to be struck by different aspects, such that the problems that are encountered can shift and appear differently, such that the world can shift and appear (and be) differently.
Philosophy, for me, is a way of life. It has to do with being responsibly responsive to and in the world, and it has to do with listening and paying attention to phenomena. Philosophy is deeply grounding, gratifying, and engaging. Or it can be.
There are other strains and strands, different conceptions of philosophy, that may not touch upon what I am getting at here: various forms that involve less strain, less at stake, less worry. I won't dwell on this for now.
So why would we want this outside of the academy? There are various reasons, but an obvious one is that it has never really been restricted to the academy, anyway. Just like poets are not necessarily the ones who write with ink and legacy, so philosophers are not necessarily those great canonical figures. Traces are left all over the place in so many different ways. But this does not directly address the question.
I think we would want philosophy outside of the academy because it is fundamental to the way we (ought to) live. We cannot escape (permanently) the questions our existence trails along with it (like a dog trailing along with a corpse). And I don't mean the pseudo-wise questions one asks to sound deep. I mean the questions, concerns, anxieties that grip us in our being. We may flee these, push them away, but they return, nagging us. I will not pose any here because the very posing of questions is a huge issue of philosophy: how can the question itself be given enough room for it to express itself in all its urgency and pain? in all its vulnerability and precariousness? in its fragile, cherished way? Philosophy is a way of giving expression to our tenuousness.
I will not spend time discussing here why, if philosophy is as I have characterized it, more people do not seem to recognize its value. Nor will I try to spell out how it differs from other such inquiries, such as poetry, art, religion, science, etc. Rather, I will ask: what form could it take outside of the academy? This is no easy question, but let me offer some 'preliminary' thoughts.
First, why does it need to take a form? Because it seems to me that our propensity to attempt to flee its consequences is great. It also seems to me that attempting to think through this question is part of trying to find a way to dwell with philosophy once its most easily recognized home may no longer offer it refuge.
Philosophy could take the form of children's books. Not as a diatribe or discourse on philosophical themes, etc., but as a philosophical engagement with important matters. Or, it could also take the form of therapy. This may sound odd: therapy is usually taken as being psychology or, depending on one's definitions, religion. Psychology and religion appeal to the masses, yet philosophy, doesn't it try to appeal to an elite? But I think this is a mis-characterization of philosophy. Sure, philosophy can be elitist and yes it can be quite difficult, but it can also be an activity that is open. It can also certainly help resolve and reframe problems and questions. It is obviously not like medication: its goal is not to treat symptoms or to prepare you to reenter society so you can be more efficient, productive, etc. Rather, it would involve deep work of investigating one's situation.
Philosophy could also take root in think-tanks or policy. I don't just mean in terms of ethical questions like "is it right or wrong to treat animals the way we do in slaughterhouses" but I mean it could ask deeper questions. Or, it could also take the form of a field school, offering a community of learners not necessarily tied to the old institutions of the university.
I think that philosophy in this time must take a great risk (particularly, as is what I am most familiar with, in Canadian society). I wonder whether it can set out well, and I hope it can continue, or regain, its thriving. There is no guarantee that philosophy will ask questions in an incisive and decisive way, but there is the possibility of its opening up to us to give us a way in to ask such revolutionary questions, and to dwell in them for a while.
Friday, May 15, 2015
Gregory Bateson has argued that the rituals, for instance, that two dogs enact in meeting and greeting each other are not instinctual in the sense of being pre-programmed and automatic. The rituals are rather a matter of the two dogs expressively and intercorporeally determining the situation, and working out a shared world. Animals, Bateson asserts, cannot use negations. They cannot say “I will not bite.” What they do, instead, is they act out a kind of reductio ad absurdum: they play at biting and fighting, for instance, in order to reveal to each other that “it is biting that I am not doing.” In this way, they “discover or rediscover friendship.” Through an intercorporeal dance, they bring to expression a situation in which each is confirmed as the friend of the other.
-- Kym Maclaren, “Life is Inherently Expressive,” Life: the 28th Annual Meeting of the Merleau-Ponty Circle, University of Western Ontario 2003; cited in David Morris, "Animals and humans, thinking and nature," Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (2005) 4, page 60-1
-- Kym Maclaren, “Life is Inherently Expressive,” Life: the 28th Annual Meeting of the Merleau-Ponty Circle, University of Western Ontario 2003; cited in David Morris, "Animals and humans, thinking and nature," Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (2005) 4, page 60-1
Thursday, May 7, 2015
"What is the most wondrous thing in the world?" asks Yama, the Lord of Death. His son, Yudhisthira, answers, "The most wondrous thing in the world is that all around us people can be dying and we don't believe it can happen to us."
-- from the Mahabharata, quoted in Halifax's Being with Dying, quoted in Evan Thompson's Waking, Dreaming, Being, p. 274
-- from the Mahabharata, quoted in Halifax's Being with Dying, quoted in Evan Thompson's Waking, Dreaming, Being, p. 274
Friday, May 1, 2015
Immortality. A concept that, some of us hope, will turn to a reality someday. We also see this in movies, books, essays. It has been there for years. It could be the vampire Lestat, Dracula, or even the vampires from Twilight, but all good things must come to an end. "The End," another term for death.
-- Intro, set off in single space, to a student essay for Biomedical Ethics, final exam
It helps to imagine it read, dramatically, by a person on television, in a bathrobe, in front of a fireplace.
-- Intro, set off in single space, to a student essay for Biomedical Ethics, final exam
It helps to imagine it read, dramatically, by a person on television, in a bathrobe, in front of a fireplace.
Thursday, April 9, 2015
Criminalization of her sexuality [as a lesbian] in both [her native] Trinidad and the United States informs [M. Jacqui] Alexander's understanding of "the heterosexual imperative of citizenship" (Alexander 1994, 6). She reads the national criminalization of "sex that is non-productive of babies and of no economic gain" through the Eurocentric equation of "development" with valuing production and profit-accumulation over a people's right to self-determination (6). Alexander underlines how postcolonial leaders who forfeit nationalist promises of self-determination in exchange for managing the neoliberal project give in to this colonial logic (Alexander 2005, 182). As they suffer economic subordination to multinational corporations based in their former colonizer nations, these neocolonial state leaders legislate heteropatriarchy to recuperate authority over their nation's "development."
-- Shireen Roshanravan, "Motivating Coalition: Women of Color and Epistemic Disobedience", 45
-- Shireen Roshanravan, "Motivating Coalition: Women of Color and Epistemic Disobedience", 45
Monday, April 6, 2015
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
I like this:
One thing that I'm tired of reading in these reviews is how difficult it is to read 20th-century French philosophers, how they're all a bunch of obscurantists with no substance, etc., etc. I like clear prose as much as the next guy, but to dispose of an entire (very important) movement of thought because the writing isn't aesthetically pleasing is anti-intellectual snobbery.
-- from amazon.ca review of Derrida's Writing and Difference, by Adam Kotsko
One thing that I'm tired of reading in these reviews is how difficult it is to read 20th-century French philosophers, how they're all a bunch of obscurantists with no substance, etc., etc. I like clear prose as much as the next guy, but to dispose of an entire (very important) movement of thought because the writing isn't aesthetically pleasing is anti-intellectual snobbery.
-- from amazon.ca review of Derrida's Writing and Difference, by Adam Kotsko
Sunday, March 29, 2015
'Preliminary' Thoughts on the Student Strikes:
In some ways it seems odd to call the anti-austerity student strikes of 2015 that have started in Montréal and Québec in the past month or so a "strike". Strikes are often seen as (quasi-)legitimate bargaining tools as part of the negotiating activity of a union on behalf of employees with the employer. The student strike, on the other hand, features students who withdraw their academic labour of attending class, classes for which they (and the government/taxpayers) have paid. The administrators of the universities are not (always) the targets of such strike actions. In addition, the strikes must picket classrooms to prevent professors from being able to give class, and yet the faculty are not the target of the strike either. So whereas a labour strike withdraws labour to directly target and pressure the employer, the student strike withdraws academic labour to take to the streets to, shall we say, protest the government's austerity mandates.
It may be said, in response, that the student strike is not targeting the faculty, administrators, or students, analogous to clients or customers who are also affected by a labour strike but are not the direct target. Nonetheless, it does seem odd, and makes many ambivalent about the chosen course of action, when students are picketing to prevent classes from occurring, particularly when the classroom situation is precarious and universities are under fire, in terms of deprived budgets, pressures to transition towards becoming 'practical' job-creation/training centers, the shift from permanent tenured positions to precarious limited-term, sessional instruction, etc.
It may be responded that pressure is being put on the government: the cost to man the helicopters above the protests, the cost for police time, police resources, detention costs, etc. In times of austerity, surely putting pressure on economically is a tactic. Or it may be responded that the student strike is to free people and get them on the streets. However, readings along these lines I think miss something essential of the student movement. Yes there are ambiguous relations involved, and yes the actions can be read along economic lines, and yes the strikes free people for the streets (but then why cancel class? why not just go before/after class?), but all of these readings miss, I think, the symbolic stakes involved here. This activity is more than an economic calculation or a bargaining move, or an unthought, under-thought commotion by students. Rather, it is a symbolic activity with symbolic stakes.
The taking of the streets, the forced appearance of students, is an appearance of students as political actors. This appearance is also a challenge, the call to duel, the poisonous gift to the government and to economic forces: rather than on a model of one-to-one exchange, it is a challenge posed to the government to which it must react.
And react it has. Its reaction has been to (attempt to) incite further reaction: it aims to remove agency and action by turning them into reaction. I had predicted at the outset that the police would have a heavy-handed response. My reasoning was that it seemed to me, from an outsider perspective, that the public in Québec got angry during 2012 in part due to the 'delayed' response to the student movement, the prolonged nature of the protests that went on night after night. However, this time around, if the police crack down on the movement, repressively, aggressively, off the bat, violently -- and if this was supported by the public -- then it would be a clever political move. (Of course I do not know if the public will tolerate it or not, in the long run. And I do not think the students will be easily discouraged.)
In support of this prediction, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I think there are many who think in the following way: I always follow the law. These protests are illegal. (--- Unless the protestors submit their itinerary in advance in accordance with bylaw P-6, passed during the 2012 movements, the police declare the protest illegal. Protestors often refuse, as P-6's intention and result is to disrupt any disruption: a march that is approved of is not an intervention: it is a parade. The police block the streets for you: you are a temporary alternation in the regular general circulation and flows in the city, but you are not an intervention, not an appearance. P-6 makes the march calculable in advance, circumscribing it. Anyway, to continue:) Because the protests are illegal--and moreover, even if they weren't--the protestors should be punished. However, our system of detention and arrêt itself is too kind, too gentle. These protestors anger me (here I am still projecting my voice) because I have followed the law: the law is there for everyone, equally: it maintains order! ...I have had to suffer, willingly, by following the law (--the law is always a 'traumatic' event: imposing itself, without reason, without rationale) and everyone should do as I do! There should be no exceptions. Therefore, the police are legitimized (by me, by us, by our voice) to wield the batons, to wield pepper spray, to wield rubber bullets, to use whatever means necessary to restore order (i.e., the general circulatory flow). (In other words, the ressentiment of such people matches (in a 'degraded' sense, i.e., from the moral to the legal law) Nietzsche's characterization of Kant: I am good at following the law, so everyone should do so.)
...However. To make the 'us' feel satiated, though, to be in good conscience, it would be best if there were first an expression of senseless 'violence' on the protestors' side: broken windows...or some such thing.
This is the kind of provocation the police can hope for.
Such 'violence' by those beneath the law brings down violence from those outside-astride it (i.e., the police). And so the goal is to violently provoke 'violence' that begets violence: yes, this is what 'we' want. Vindication.
However, we should remember that the police are by no means the target of the movement.
Let us return for a second: why call it a strike? This introduces a risk and a promise: a promise, in that it suggests that it is legitimated in the way a labour strike is; a risk, in that it may bring down the labour strike in status (i.e., "those labour strikes are only mobs, just like students!"). However, of course, that risk is already being run down: in an era of closely legislated strike and labour movement, in an era of relentless attacks on organized labour, in an era of the threat of huge fines for unions if they do not adhere to various regulations --- in other words, that unions must adhere to a general circulatory flow that is circumscribed, prescribed, and increasingly constricted --- perhaps the risk is not so great: perhaps the promise and risk are the chance for us now to rethink 'strike': that a strike in all cases emerges from the rivers of discontent, and is not a bargaining chip, or not merely such; that a strike matches its name: that it is or can be incendiary.
Just as the stakes are not really economic, so too the police response is not. The helicopters in the air are a demonstration of excess. Buoyed in the air by funds being denied through austerity measures, the helicopters are lifted above the protestors, yes as panopticon, but also as reminder: there is a literal and figurative space, an infinite uncrossable distance, between citizen and state. The helicopter flies on symbolic stakes.
It is important to recall the symbolic. By symbolic, I do not mean 'X represents Y', as in the cross is a symbol for X,Y,Z. Rather, I'm pointing to a power, a force, a subterranean force. I'm pointing to the power that is expressed in recognition, acknowledgment, greeting, rejection: when someone nods do you respond (and, if you see it, you always respond: so: how do you respond); when someone gives you a gift, how do you respond? When someone insults you, slights you, what do you do. You are called, and must respond. This is the symbolic. It is not an economic exchange of one insult for another. It is knowing how to respond to the situation and what is called for, it is knowing the weight, the pressure, of various gestures. It is the 'logic' of challenge-duel-gift.
To this end, all of this is highly contextual. Anything I muse here must be rethought within the Québec context, with which I am not sufficiently familiar. The Québec context includes the history of movements here; the political landscapes; the social landscapes; the media landscapes; and so on.
Given that, I wonder. I wonder about the symbolic stakes, and tactics that could be used. I do not think that protest as general circulatory movement is sufficient. I also definitely do not think that smashing windows (property damage) as advocated during e.g., G-20, anti-Olympic protests, is helpful (this does not escape the general circulation: the response from such an action is incredibly predictable in every sense). Rather, I wonder about crossing boundaries and lines. For instance, the police have been wearing camo pants and ballcaps in Montréal for a while now: this is due to their protests against austerity cuts from city hall. They have even co-opted the carré rouge with words over top (on n'a rien volé), pasted all over buses, metro trains, buildings. What if, at the protests, students showed up with camo pants and ballcaps on?
Furthermore, we know that police have weapons perfected for streets. Is taking to the streets always the best tactic? What of buildings, rail lines, underground walkways?... How does circulation flow?
These are probably just cheap musings, but it seems that what is needed is creativity. I feel like thinkers (and we're all thinkers) need to put their heads together and think through the symbolic stakes on the line, and how to take advantage of them. I do not think that trench warfare, lined up facing the cops, is necessarily sufficient. (Nor do I think provocation of the police is the best strategy: I saw a photo from 2012 with protestors dangling donuts by fishing lines in front of police.) I do not know what is sufficient.
In some ways it seems odd to call the anti-austerity student strikes of 2015 that have started in Montréal and Québec in the past month or so a "strike". Strikes are often seen as (quasi-)legitimate bargaining tools as part of the negotiating activity of a union on behalf of employees with the employer. The student strike, on the other hand, features students who withdraw their academic labour of attending class, classes for which they (and the government/taxpayers) have paid. The administrators of the universities are not (always) the targets of such strike actions. In addition, the strikes must picket classrooms to prevent professors from being able to give class, and yet the faculty are not the target of the strike either. So whereas a labour strike withdraws labour to directly target and pressure the employer, the student strike withdraws academic labour to take to the streets to, shall we say, protest the government's austerity mandates.
It may be said, in response, that the student strike is not targeting the faculty, administrators, or students, analogous to clients or customers who are also affected by a labour strike but are not the direct target. Nonetheless, it does seem odd, and makes many ambivalent about the chosen course of action, when students are picketing to prevent classes from occurring, particularly when the classroom situation is precarious and universities are under fire, in terms of deprived budgets, pressures to transition towards becoming 'practical' job-creation/training centers, the shift from permanent tenured positions to precarious limited-term, sessional instruction, etc.
It may be responded that pressure is being put on the government: the cost to man the helicopters above the protests, the cost for police time, police resources, detention costs, etc. In times of austerity, surely putting pressure on economically is a tactic. Or it may be responded that the student strike is to free people and get them on the streets. However, readings along these lines I think miss something essential of the student movement. Yes there are ambiguous relations involved, and yes the actions can be read along economic lines, and yes the strikes free people for the streets (but then why cancel class? why not just go before/after class?), but all of these readings miss, I think, the symbolic stakes involved here. This activity is more than an economic calculation or a bargaining move, or an unthought, under-thought commotion by students. Rather, it is a symbolic activity with symbolic stakes.
The taking of the streets, the forced appearance of students, is an appearance of students as political actors. This appearance is also a challenge, the call to duel, the poisonous gift to the government and to economic forces: rather than on a model of one-to-one exchange, it is a challenge posed to the government to which it must react.
And react it has. Its reaction has been to (attempt to) incite further reaction: it aims to remove agency and action by turning them into reaction. I had predicted at the outset that the police would have a heavy-handed response. My reasoning was that it seemed to me, from an outsider perspective, that the public in Québec got angry during 2012 in part due to the 'delayed' response to the student movement, the prolonged nature of the protests that went on night after night. However, this time around, if the police crack down on the movement, repressively, aggressively, off the bat, violently -- and if this was supported by the public -- then it would be a clever political move. (Of course I do not know if the public will tolerate it or not, in the long run. And I do not think the students will be easily discouraged.)
In support of this prediction, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I think there are many who think in the following way: I always follow the law. These protests are illegal. (--- Unless the protestors submit their itinerary in advance in accordance with bylaw P-6, passed during the 2012 movements, the police declare the protest illegal. Protestors often refuse, as P-6's intention and result is to disrupt any disruption: a march that is approved of is not an intervention: it is a parade. The police block the streets for you: you are a temporary alternation in the regular general circulation and flows in the city, but you are not an intervention, not an appearance. P-6 makes the march calculable in advance, circumscribing it. Anyway, to continue:) Because the protests are illegal--and moreover, even if they weren't--the protestors should be punished. However, our system of detention and arrêt itself is too kind, too gentle. These protestors anger me (here I am still projecting my voice) because I have followed the law: the law is there for everyone, equally: it maintains order! ...I have had to suffer, willingly, by following the law (--the law is always a 'traumatic' event: imposing itself, without reason, without rationale) and everyone should do as I do! There should be no exceptions. Therefore, the police are legitimized (by me, by us, by our voice) to wield the batons, to wield pepper spray, to wield rubber bullets, to use whatever means necessary to restore order (i.e., the general circulatory flow). (In other words, the ressentiment of such people matches (in a 'degraded' sense, i.e., from the moral to the legal law) Nietzsche's characterization of Kant: I am good at following the law, so everyone should do so.)
...However. To make the 'us' feel satiated, though, to be in good conscience, it would be best if there were first an expression of senseless 'violence' on the protestors' side: broken windows...or some such thing.
This is the kind of provocation the police can hope for.
Such 'violence' by those beneath the law brings down violence from those outside-astride it (i.e., the police). And so the goal is to violently provoke 'violence' that begets violence: yes, this is what 'we' want. Vindication.
However, we should remember that the police are by no means the target of the movement.
Let us return for a second: why call it a strike? This introduces a risk and a promise: a promise, in that it suggests that it is legitimated in the way a labour strike is; a risk, in that it may bring down the labour strike in status (i.e., "those labour strikes are only mobs, just like students!"). However, of course, that risk is already being run down: in an era of closely legislated strike and labour movement, in an era of relentless attacks on organized labour, in an era of the threat of huge fines for unions if they do not adhere to various regulations --- in other words, that unions must adhere to a general circulatory flow that is circumscribed, prescribed, and increasingly constricted --- perhaps the risk is not so great: perhaps the promise and risk are the chance for us now to rethink 'strike': that a strike in all cases emerges from the rivers of discontent, and is not a bargaining chip, or not merely such; that a strike matches its name: that it is or can be incendiary.
Just as the stakes are not really economic, so too the police response is not. The helicopters in the air are a demonstration of excess. Buoyed in the air by funds being denied through austerity measures, the helicopters are lifted above the protestors, yes as panopticon, but also as reminder: there is a literal and figurative space, an infinite uncrossable distance, between citizen and state. The helicopter flies on symbolic stakes.
It is important to recall the symbolic. By symbolic, I do not mean 'X represents Y', as in the cross is a symbol for X,Y,Z. Rather, I'm pointing to a power, a force, a subterranean force. I'm pointing to the power that is expressed in recognition, acknowledgment, greeting, rejection: when someone nods do you respond (and, if you see it, you always respond: so: how do you respond); when someone gives you a gift, how do you respond? When someone insults you, slights you, what do you do. You are called, and must respond. This is the symbolic. It is not an economic exchange of one insult for another. It is knowing how to respond to the situation and what is called for, it is knowing the weight, the pressure, of various gestures. It is the 'logic' of challenge-duel-gift.
To this end, all of this is highly contextual. Anything I muse here must be rethought within the Québec context, with which I am not sufficiently familiar. The Québec context includes the history of movements here; the political landscapes; the social landscapes; the media landscapes; and so on.
Given that, I wonder. I wonder about the symbolic stakes, and tactics that could be used. I do not think that protest as general circulatory movement is sufficient. I also definitely do not think that smashing windows (property damage) as advocated during e.g., G-20, anti-Olympic protests, is helpful (this does not escape the general circulation: the response from such an action is incredibly predictable in every sense). Rather, I wonder about crossing boundaries and lines. For instance, the police have been wearing camo pants and ballcaps in Montréal for a while now: this is due to their protests against austerity cuts from city hall. They have even co-opted the carré rouge with words over top (on n'a rien volé), pasted all over buses, metro trains, buildings. What if, at the protests, students showed up with camo pants and ballcaps on?
Furthermore, we know that police have weapons perfected for streets. Is taking to the streets always the best tactic? What of buildings, rail lines, underground walkways?... How does circulation flow?
These are probably just cheap musings, but it seems that what is needed is creativity. I feel like thinkers (and we're all thinkers) need to put their heads together and think through the symbolic stakes on the line, and how to take advantage of them. I do not think that trench warfare, lined up facing the cops, is necessarily sufficient. (Nor do I think provocation of the police is the best strategy: I saw a photo from 2012 with protestors dangling donuts by fishing lines in front of police.) I do not know what is sufficient.
Saturday, March 14, 2015
"In 1912, the Prussian Academy of Sciences established on the island of Tenerife a station devoted to experimentation into the mental capacities of apes, particularly chimpanzees. The station operated until 1920.
"One of the scientists working there was the psychologist Wolfgang Köhler. In 1917 Köhler published a monograph entitled The Mentality of Apes describing his experiments. [...]
"Let me recount to you some of what the apes on Tenerife learned from their master Wolfgang Köhler, in particular Sultan, the best of his pupils [...].
"Sultan is alone in his pen. He is hungry: the food that used to arrive regularly has unaccountably ceased coming.
"The man who used to feed him and has now stopped feeding him stretches a wire over the pen three meters above ground level, and hangs a bunch of bananas from it. Into the pen he drags three wooden crates. Then he disappears, closing the gate behind him, though he is still somewhere in the vicinity, since one can smell him.
"Sultan knows: Now one is supposed to think. That is what the bananas up there are about. The bananas are there to make one think, to spur one to the limits of one's thinking. But what must one think? One thinks: Why is he starving me? One thinks: What have I done? Why has he stopped liking me? One thinks: Why does he not want these crates any more? But none of these is the right thought. Even a more complicated thought---for instance: What is wrong with him, what misconception does he have of me, that leads him to believe it is easier for me to reach a banana hanging from a wire than to pick up a banana from the floor?---is wrong. The right thought to think is: How does one use the crates to reach the bananas?
"Sultan drags the crates under the bananas, piles them one on top of the other, climbs the tower he has built, and pulls down the bananas. He thinks: Now will he stop punishing me?
"The answer is: No. The next day the man hangs a fresh bunch of bananas from the wire but also fills the crates with stones so that they are too heavy to be dragged. One is not supposed to think: Why has he filled the crates with stones? One is supposed to think: How does one use the crates to get the bananas despite the fact that they are filled with stones?
"One is beginning to see how the man's mind works.
"Sultan empties the stones from the crates, builds a tower with the crates, climbs the tower, pulls down the bananas.
"As long as Sultan continues to think wrong thoughts, he is starved. He is starved until the pangs of hunger are so intense, so overriding, that he is forced to think the right thought, namely, how to go about getting the bananas. Thus are the mental capacities of the chimpanzee tested to their uttermost. [...]
"At every turn Sultan is driven to think the less interesting thought. From the purity of speculation (Why do men behave like this?) he is relentlessly propelled toward lower, practical, instrumental reason (How does one use this to get that?) and thus toward acceptance of himself as primarily an organism with an appetite that needs to be satisfied. Although his entire history, from the time his mother was shot and he was captured, through his voyage in a cage to imprisonment on this island prison camp and the sadistic games that are played around food here, leads him to ask questions about the justice of the universe and the place of this penal colony in it, a carefully plotted psychological regimen conducts him away from ethics and metaphysics toward the humbler reaches of practical reason. And somehow, as he inches through this labyrinth of constraint, manipulation, and duplicity, he must realize that on no account dare he give up, for on his shoulders rests the responsibility of representing apedom. The fate of his brothers and sisters may be determined by how well he performs.
[...]
"In his deepest being Sultan is not interested in the banana problem. Only the experimenter's single-minded regimentation forces him to concentrate on it. The question that truly occupies him, as it occupies the rat and the cat and every other animal trapped in the hell of the laboratory or the zoo, is: Where is home, and how do I get there?"
-- from The Lives of Animals, by J.M. Coetzee, spoken by his character Elizabeth Costello, p 27-30
"One of the scientists working there was the psychologist Wolfgang Köhler. In 1917 Köhler published a monograph entitled The Mentality of Apes describing his experiments. [...]
"Let me recount to you some of what the apes on Tenerife learned from their master Wolfgang Köhler, in particular Sultan, the best of his pupils [...].
"Sultan is alone in his pen. He is hungry: the food that used to arrive regularly has unaccountably ceased coming.
"The man who used to feed him and has now stopped feeding him stretches a wire over the pen three meters above ground level, and hangs a bunch of bananas from it. Into the pen he drags three wooden crates. Then he disappears, closing the gate behind him, though he is still somewhere in the vicinity, since one can smell him.
"Sultan knows: Now one is supposed to think. That is what the bananas up there are about. The bananas are there to make one think, to spur one to the limits of one's thinking. But what must one think? One thinks: Why is he starving me? One thinks: What have I done? Why has he stopped liking me? One thinks: Why does he not want these crates any more? But none of these is the right thought. Even a more complicated thought---for instance: What is wrong with him, what misconception does he have of me, that leads him to believe it is easier for me to reach a banana hanging from a wire than to pick up a banana from the floor?---is wrong. The right thought to think is: How does one use the crates to reach the bananas?
"Sultan drags the crates under the bananas, piles them one on top of the other, climbs the tower he has built, and pulls down the bananas. He thinks: Now will he stop punishing me?
"The answer is: No. The next day the man hangs a fresh bunch of bananas from the wire but also fills the crates with stones so that they are too heavy to be dragged. One is not supposed to think: Why has he filled the crates with stones? One is supposed to think: How does one use the crates to get the bananas despite the fact that they are filled with stones?
"One is beginning to see how the man's mind works.
"Sultan empties the stones from the crates, builds a tower with the crates, climbs the tower, pulls down the bananas.
"As long as Sultan continues to think wrong thoughts, he is starved. He is starved until the pangs of hunger are so intense, so overriding, that he is forced to think the right thought, namely, how to go about getting the bananas. Thus are the mental capacities of the chimpanzee tested to their uttermost. [...]
"At every turn Sultan is driven to think the less interesting thought. From the purity of speculation (Why do men behave like this?) he is relentlessly propelled toward lower, practical, instrumental reason (How does one use this to get that?) and thus toward acceptance of himself as primarily an organism with an appetite that needs to be satisfied. Although his entire history, from the time his mother was shot and he was captured, through his voyage in a cage to imprisonment on this island prison camp and the sadistic games that are played around food here, leads him to ask questions about the justice of the universe and the place of this penal colony in it, a carefully plotted psychological regimen conducts him away from ethics and metaphysics toward the humbler reaches of practical reason. And somehow, as he inches through this labyrinth of constraint, manipulation, and duplicity, he must realize that on no account dare he give up, for on his shoulders rests the responsibility of representing apedom. The fate of his brothers and sisters may be determined by how well he performs.
[...]
"In his deepest being Sultan is not interested in the banana problem. Only the experimenter's single-minded regimentation forces him to concentrate on it. The question that truly occupies him, as it occupies the rat and the cat and every other animal trapped in the hell of the laboratory or the zoo, is: Where is home, and how do I get there?"
-- from The Lives of Animals, by J.M. Coetzee, spoken by his character Elizabeth Costello, p 27-30
Thursday, March 12, 2015
The web extends out in different directions and when one of the threads of the web is struck by an insect the spider in the middle stirs, and then runs out along the thread and bites into the insect to drink its juice. Similarly, when one of the senses is stimulated, the mind, like the spider, wakes up and adverts to the "door" of the particular sense in question. Like a spider running out along the thread, the mind is then said in due order to perceive the object, receive it, investigate it, and establish its nature. Finally, again like our spider, the mind enjoys and savours the object.
-- from Rupert Gethen, "The Foundations of Buddhism," cited in "Waking, Dreaming, Being" by Evan Thompson, p. 59-60
-- from Rupert Gethen, "The Foundations of Buddhism," cited in "Waking, Dreaming, Being" by Evan Thompson, p. 59-60
Sunday, February 22, 2015
The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
-- Jeremy Bentham, from An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789)
-- Jeremy Bentham, from An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789)
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
When it comes to guinea pigs, now you have a choice. You can opt for our standard model that comes complete with hair. Or try our new 1988 stripped down, hairless model for speed and efficiency.
Our euthymic, hairless guinea pigs are the product of years of breeding. They can be used for dermatologic studies for hair producing agents. Skin sensitization. Transdermal therapy. Ultraviolet studies. And more.
-- from guinea pig advertisement in Lab Animal (1988), cited in Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, p 38
Our euthymic, hairless guinea pigs are the product of years of breeding. They can be used for dermatologic studies for hair producing agents. Skin sensitization. Transdermal therapy. Ultraviolet studies. And more.
-- from guinea pig advertisement in Lab Animal (1988), cited in Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, p 38
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Friday, February 6, 2015
Thursday, January 29, 2015
"An analysis of the Intoitus that opens the Systema leaves no doubts about the sense Linnaeus attributed to his maxim [see yesterday's post: 'know thyself' was attributed to Homo]: man has no specific identity other than the ability to recognize himself. Yet to define the human not through any nota characteristica, but rather through his self-knowledge, means that man is the being which recognizes itself as such, that man is the animal that must recognize itself as human to be human."
-- Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal, p 25-26
-- Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal, p 25-26
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
"In truth, Linnaeus's genius consists not so much in the resoluteness with which he places man among the primates as in the irony with which he does not record---as he does with the other species---any specific identifying characteristic next to the generic name Homo, only the old philosophical adage: nosce te ipsum {know yourself}. Even in the tenth edition, when the complete denomination becomes Homo sapiens, all evidence suggests that the new epithet does not represent a description, but that it is only a simplification of that adage, which, moreover, maintains its position next to the term Homo. It is worth reflecting on this taxonomic anomaly, which assigns not a given, but rather an imperative as a specific difference."
-- Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal, p 25
-- Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal, p 25
Friday, January 16, 2015
"[...] Freud suggest that the relation to our own death is not representable, and that each time we try to represent our own death to ourselves, we continue to be there as spectators, observers, voyeurs, at a distance and subject to imagery, to imagination. We are alive enough to see ourselves and imagine ourselves dead, and therefore, I would add, buried or swallowed up or cremated alive. This is another way of saying, against Heidegger, that we never have any access to our own death as such, that we are incapable of it. Our death is impossible. Whence Freud concludes, and I quote: "Hence the psycho-analytic school could venture the assertion that at bottom no one believes in his own death, or, to put the same thing in another way, that in the unconscious every one of us is convinced of his own immortality.""
-- Derrida, "The Beast & the Sovereign, Volume II", Sixth Session, p 157
-- Derrida, "The Beast & the Sovereign, Volume II", Sixth Session, p 157
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