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All things theory / Polemos — No Comments
4
Sep 11

The Next Generation

It is election time and the all the well-known political themes are flourishing. One theme that seems unable to sustain its steady dominance since 2001, however, is that of national identity. This, of course, poses a bit of a problem for the party primarily devoted to this sole theme. They appear strangely left out and ignored and their cries for a significant position in the spotlight sound ever more hysterical.

One such desperate voice belongs to Marie Krarup, daughter of long time member of parliament for the Danish People’s Party (DF) Søren Krarup. He is retiring this year but the next generation is ready to take over, to continue the fight for “true conservatism.”

Klaus Wivel interviewed her for Weekendavisen and her statements played in a similar key to that of the Zizek quote brought up in Che vuoi? A spinning top made out of pork:

One becomes a full member of a community not simply by identifying with its explicit symbolic tradition, but only when one also assumes the spectral dimension that sustains this tradition, the undead ghosts that haunt the living, the secret history of traumatic fantasies transmitted “between the lines,” through the lacks and distortions of the explicit symbolic tradition […]

In my own sloppy translation, Marie Krarup said the following:

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All things theory / Polemos — 1 Comment
1
Sep 11

Che vuoi? A spinning top made out of pork

As most readers of Zizek have propably noticed, the pelvis of Cultural Theory has a tendency to repeat himself, giving many passages a strange air of déjà vu. This, of course, is not a problem per se, but if, like me, you are hysterical when it comes to references, it does tend to disrupt your reading somewhat when you feel the irrepressable urge to go look for that other place where you saw that paragraph last.

One such fragment is the following:

One becomes a full member of a community not simply by identifying with its explicit symbolic tradition, but only when one also assumes the spectral dimension that sustains this tradition, the undead ghosts that haunt the living, the secret history of traumatic fantasies transmitted “between the lines,” through the lacks and distortions of the explicit symbolic tradition […]

This passage can be read twice in the 2008 edition of The Fragile Absolute (pp. vii-viii and 58) and once in The Puppet and the Dwarf (p. 128).

In all three instances, the text adequately describes “Judaism’s stubborn attachment to the unacknowledged violent founding gesture that haunts the public legal order…” (ibid.). Zizek’s goal is to rid society of this spectral haunting and its obscene superego legal supplement, which is why he hails Christianity as the revelation that “there is nothing – no secret – behind it to be revealed” (Puppet p. 127); that “with this “Father, why hast thou forsaken me?,” it is God-the-Father who, in effet, dies, revealing His utter impotence, and thereupon rises from the dead in the guise of the Holy Spirit [the community of believers = communism] (Puppet p. 126).

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All things theory / Polemos — No Comments
13
Jun 11

Zizek’s misreading of Foucault

In a rant about the relations between the university discourse and the Master-Signifier 1, Zizek criticizes Foucault:

What one should avoid here is the Foucauldian misreading: the produced subject is not simply the subjectivity which arises as the result of the disciplinary application of knowledge-power, but its remainder, that which eludes the grasp of knowledge-power.

The thing is, that this is not an adequate rendition of Foucault. It might be ascribed to Althusser for whom the subject was constituted solely by the interpellation of ideology but for Foucault the remainder is exactly what characterizes the subject.

One indication of this remainder is found in Foucault’s desciption of his attempt to analyze power:

It consists of taking the forms of resistance against different forms of power as a starting point.2

In order to understand power as well as subjectivation we should study resistance, the remainder. Foucault, of course is althusserian, and he acknowledges the transition from the individual to the subject as a a result of power but even then, there are two meanings to the word ‘subject’:

It is a form of power which makes individuals subjects. There are two meanings of the word “subject”: subject to someone else by control and dependence; and tied to his own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge. Both meanings suggest a form of power which subjugates and makes subject to.3

Both meanings suggest power and the production of the subject by power but in one, power takes the role of agent whereas the second is a matter of subjective response. The remainder is completely immersed in various power structures but, nonetheless, it remains a remainder.

This is exactly what constitutes Foucault’s notion of Freedom:

Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free. By this we mean individual or collective subjects who are faced with a field of possibilities in which several ways of behaving, several reactions and diverse comportments, may be realized. Where the determining factors saturate the whole, there is no relationship of power; slavery is not a power relationship when man is in chains.4

Subjectivity according to Foucault is precisely characterized by some splinter of freedom, by what Zizek calls “its remainder, that which eludes the grasp of knowledge-power.” The foucauldian misreading turns out to be Zizek’s misreading of Foucault.

  1. Cf. Zizek: HOMO SACER AS THE OBJECT OF THE DISCOURSE OF THE UNIVERSITY ↩
  2. Foucault: “The subject and power” in Critical Inquiry, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Summer, 1982), p. 780 ↩
  3. Foucault: “The subject and power” p. 781 ↩
  4. Foucault: “The subject and power” p. 790 ↩
Waffle — No Comments
10
Jun 11

The Rumsfeld doctrine

I have recently distributed all the twitter accounts I follow across four lists. I follow eighty something twitter accounts and from time to time, getting through the timeline is a bit of a bother. So I decided to weigh, sort and categorize everyone.

Of course, such a thing is not to be done lightly. I pondered and schemed and finally decided to follow the Rumsfeld doctrine. Or a variation of it at least.

I have a couple of public lists containing tech and digital humanities stuff, but then I have three additional lists based on a famous statement about the search for weapons of mass destruction 1 in Iraq given by former secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. There are Known unknowns, Unknown knowns and unknown unknowns.

As Zizek rightly pointed out, Rumsfeld never referred to the category of unknown knowns 2. He did however talk of Known knowns. What Zizek found amusing was the fact that Rumsfeld tried to evoke the terror of the unknown threats that we can’t even imagine – the unknown unknowns – without even considering taking a look at the disavowed ideological background for his statements.

I am not completely faithful to the Rumsfeld doctrine as he imagined it. The known unknowns within my Twitter universe are not the ever elusive dangers I know about but am unable to confront and terminate. They are not the objet petit a. Nor are they people I know who are not famous. The list contains people that I know – friends and acquaintances – but it acknowledges that they will remain forever ‘other’, you can never fully know the people you know.

The unknown knowns are the almost famous people that I do know, but not quite. More specifically they are the people that I do not know personally, which is exactly why I know them. I know them in their spectacular presence, their imaginary existence as whole consistent entities, I know them as being one with their name and character.

Unknown unknowns lists the information that I didn’t know that I didn’t know, i.e. news. Different news services inform me on a daily basis of things I had no idea would happen or the existence of which I had never guessed. The terror of Rumsfeld is transformed into the pleasant pursuit of learning.

Just as Rumsfeld left out one of the four possible combinations of the two terms known and unknown, I have left out the known knowns. Because who on earth would follow a stream of data you are already familiar with?

I am very happy with my modified Rumsfeld doctrine. I hereby present it to public use.

  1. when writing this, I actually wrote weapons of mass distraction. Talk about a Freudian free fall ↩
  2. Cf. e.g. http://www.lacan.com/zizekrumsfeld.htm ↩
Housekeeping — No Comments
7
Jun 11

Hurrah!

RSS and Permalinks are back up. It turned out to be a general permalink problem solved by a simple resaving of the settings.

All is well.

Digital Culture — No Comments
7
Jun 11

Brooks/Siegler on iMessage

Ben Brooks of The Brooks Review comments on MG Siegler’s remarks about iMessage:

MG Siegler on iMessage: ”

MG Siegler:

And again, while this may be iOS-only, guess who else is going to have to match this feature now? Android. SMS is about to become a cross-platform messaging platform only.

I hadn’t thought about that, iMessage will have a big impact in the mobile world. Especially because, as Siegler notes, it is built into the current SMS app and defaults to iMessage with SMS being a backup only (or so I hear).”

When reading both of them the obvious question is: Will it really? Will it really have a have a big impact in the mobile world? Will a one platform messaging service really gain any traction? How is that working out for Facetime?

I see that John Gruber of Daring Fireball has enough iPhone-using friends to cancel his SMS plan as soon as this launches. First of all, I haven’t got an SMS plan. I have unlimited text messages as a non optional part of my subscription. Also, and more importantly, most of my friends are still on old candy bar phones. I have noticed a worrying reluctance among Modern Culture graduates to engage in frivolous digital pursuits. Most of them have finally given in to the global group pressure of Facebook but Twitter still holds no apparent purpose to them and smart phones are not worth the investment. I mean really!

Housekeeping — No Comments
6
Jun 11

Hacked!

Apparently, this site has been hacked at some point. I don’t know when, nor do I know why such an abominable aggression targeted this obscure haven of waffle but, nonetheless, the FTP server suddenly contained an ungodly amount of strange php files the content of which seemed to alarm google. The consequence of my (maybe too) hasty defence measures – the rash eradication of any conspicuous intruder – is that RSS has ceased to be and the Continue Reading links have ceased to function. The deficiencies shall be remedied, I assure you, as soon as I know how.

Polemos / Waffle — No Comments
27
May 11

Von Trier’s breast

Much has been said about Lars von Trier’s failed remarks at his Cannes press conference. Too much. One of the few sain interventions came from Hannah Pilarczyk at Spiegel. She states:

By deciding to declare von Trier persona non grata for the current competition, the festival loses much of its credibility. Treating von Trier’s remarks as a political position to be taken seriously and drawing extensive consequences from it misjudges the situation in which von Trier made the remarks, as well as his work as aesthetic context.

I completely agree. Yes, Trier said foolish things, he has apologized, now let’s get on with it. Anyone taking his remarks at face value and thus considering him a true Nazi is a blithering idiot. So there.

But now, according to Danish newspaper Politiken, French/German television channel Arte threatens to pull further sponsorship for von Trier’s movies. They have financially supported several of his films but, apparently, they now feel that the remarks, although acknowledged as a failed joke, enter into conflict with their overall identity and purpose.

From Politiken:

“We know it was said for fun. But it was simply not funny. We found Trier’s statements crude and very shocking. We need to reconsider whether we can continue to support his films,” says Arte Film Director Michel Reilhac.
[…]
Arte was originally created by the then French President François Mitterand and Germany’s Helmuth Kohl as a way of signalling an end to historical enmity and in order to show through culture that European countries share the same ideals about humanity and generosity.

“Lars von Trier’s statements do not fit in to that perspective,” Reilhac says.

Arte hereby loses all credibility as a producer of quality cultural content. This reaction reminds me of the time Janet Jackson showed a not quite naked breast during a Super Bowl performance. To be shocked by Trier would require the same nervous frailty as the woman who claimed substantial psychic damage three years after being inflicted by Jackson’s breast. It is a feigned shock, designed to show… I have no idea! Does it demonstrate moral superiority to say “We know he didn’t mean it but, nonetheless, we were profoundly hurt”? This is the reaction you would expect form the tabloids, from the small town idiots who gossip about their new next door neighbour, not from what is supposed to be a powerhouse of cultural television.

Waffle — No Comments
26
May 11

iPad Killer

Even though Steve Ballmer famously suggested that there is “no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share” every new smart phone is measured against the almost messianic term “iPhone killer”. Will this one be able to compete with the unstoppable force that is Steve Jobs’ almost blasphemously divine creation? This, of course, holds even more true for every new tablet on the market, which is consistently described as trying to catch up with the undisputed market leader, the iPad.

Which device will be able to taint their glory and thus earn the killer status remains to be seen. I do feel, however, that the double divinity have somewhat of a killing capacity themselves. Two weeks ago, I inherited my mother’s iPad 1. She had bought it as an interesting toy but, as sometimes happens with interesting toys, she never really transformed the initial fantasy of owning the thing into an actual practice.

So, for two weeks I have been the lucky and happy owner of an iPad and it is killing me. The permissiveness of the ipad’s lavish array of possibilities functions as superego enjoining me to enjoy. A hedonistic microcosm has installed itself in the incessant feedback loop between me and my precious tablet. Of course there are prohibitions. I am a serious man and not about to play Angry Birds or engage in any such foolishness. No, I am enjoined to desire the optimisation of my own work routines and the salvation of human kind. This is serious business, it does anything you could possibly want, it gives you access to anything anywhere at any time, all that is lacking for the ultimate completion of every thinkable potential is to incorporate this thing appropriately in noble pursuits. Desire can finally be fulfilled.

This optimisation of work as a process is a stressful occupation. I have installed Instapaper to profit from the superior experience of reading web content. I have installed Reeder to have optimal conditions for the perusal of my rss subscriptions. I have bought Goodreader allowing me to read and annotate my extensive collection of PDF articles as found in my Dropbox. I have downloaded the Kindle app in order to explore the reading efficiencies of ebooks. Of course I also have the Twitter app to keep me up to date on different news and research areas. That is a lot of reading!

And then comes the organisation of time and knowledge. Of course I have the standard calendar but I also got Omnifocus to remind me what I should actually do with my time. And of course the Omnifocus user experience is so nice that I light up the iPad to change the due date of a task even though I have the Mac edition right in front of me. I have Evernote to store God knows what. I am still not sure whether Evernote on the iPad beats Evernote on the MacBook as a note taking tool during conferences, but the iPad superego enjoins me to enjoy, to fulfil its potential and my own along with it.

I am a bit tired. The last thing I do before falling asleep is read on the iPad. I wake up to the sound of TuneIn Radio Pro playing France Culture. I have the iPad alight next to my computer while I work so that I may use it as an extra screen, use it to display the text I am translating instead of printing it, use it to display my to-dos in Omnifocus so that I will never forget what is to be done.

When I am not sure what to do I look for new ways to use the iPad. And when I can’t think of any new ways and I feel all worn out, I use it to write a blog post about my iPad and how it is killing me.

Polemos — No Comments
19
Mar 11

Hey… Hey… Listen..!

I have just done something I have never done before. I knocked on the door of my upstairs neighbour to complain about the level of noise issuing from the apartment at two in the morning.

I don’t normally do that sort of thing, as I believe we should all be allowed some guests and some beers from time to time. What triggered this first accusing knock, however, was a simple discussion between three people. I think the topic was US involvement in certain geopolitical matters and how these are taught and communicated. One particularly effective argument was the following: “Listen, listen, listen… I can only say that when I have to tell my kids about American intervention, I’ll say that they only do what’s best for themselves!”

A wonderful silence of almost five seconds followed this immensely astute observation of American foreign politics. Then the shouting recommenced.

I love drunken debates, I really do. I love having a shouting match about Hegelian traits in Nietzsche when I am so thoroughly sloshed that I have forgotten my complete ignorance of the matter. But listening to others doling out their dime-store apothems is auditory torture well beyond any preteen a cappella rendition of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance.

I think we should agree – drunkard to drunkard – that if three people debate in a private room, and you still have to shout “Hey… Hey… Listen!” in order to get a word in, you really need to find a bar loud enough to allow for such lung effort or shut the fuck up.

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