I know that none of my blog audience watches the news, or at least the important news, and I'm concerned for your ability to stay on top of the important issues of our day. So here they are exactly as I found them*, but conveniently abbreviated entirely into the digest-headline form you find below. Guess which headline is fake**, and remember that brevity is... wit.
a) Man Accused of Killing 7 Prostitutes
b) Jessica Simpson Loses Voice
c) Kids Watch Clown Crushed To Death
d) Virgin Mary Found On Turtle
e) Woman Has 14-Pound Baby Girl
f) Widely Publicized Child Sex-Object Murder Case, Due To Wide Publication, Gets Attention From Pathologically Lying Child-Sex Aficionados Who Then Must Necessarly Get Widely Publicized Themselves
*Well, I wasn't actually able to quote headline f verbatum as, I'll be darned, you just aren't able to find any articles on it anymore. Guess the news doesn't like to sensationalize particularly sensitive and singular court cases for too long or anything, especially when the coverage necessarily includes graphic descriptions of violence, sexuality, and/or social taboo. But I remember back in the day, when our tabloids still cared about JonBenet Ramsey. And this is more or less how they read.
**None
29.8.06
And ballet slippers will hurt my feet
...the way your ideals of beauty are a suspension of your own image, a projection of it out into the world, as a general framework within which you wait, until you encounter and incarnate beauty -- and precisely then you run the risk of ruining it. you yourself change from the suffering of this loss, and the ideal necessarily changes with you, moving close beneath your own flesh until the moment your consciousness lapses entirely, until the moment you die...
the appreciation of childhood, nostalgic or otherwise, then arises from precisely a desire to evade death and finitude yourself -- one seeks redemption and self-verification in the respite of possession, and especially here through possession of an object "childhood" one seeks to perpetuate one's own life, "in the abundance of its fertility," indefinitely. and at once excessive fixation on being-towards death is necessarily a pathos, necessarily pathological, for in thinking of mortality consciousness conceives of itself as dying. in pursuit of beauty we seek respite FROM mortality, and yet it is through thorough engagement with life that one is aware of oneself as beginning to age.
we can then explain at once why we find a conjunction of fertility and childishness, of sexuality and the youthful image, in popular media and popular ideals of the beautiful. a woman is sexually attractive, generally speaking, when she has disproportionately large eyes, or is from the waist-down tiny as a six-year old and from the waist up, pregnant. and it is through appreciating youth and fertility as beauty in a woman that man precisely can HAVE a child, recreate himself THROUGH their child, precisely distance himself from the imminence of his finitude -- though he also admits of this limitation IN the need to give himself sexually and emotionally to youthfulness as an OTHER in the woman and ultimately, also the child. age truly begins to decline once even one's children are grown. death awaits beyond self-fulfillment in this way. though in a patriarchal society this standard would apply only to women as objects of sexual desire, i should note that to the extent that when ANYONE finds this youth-oriented concept of beauty sexually attractive, they are likely facing the finitude of their own status, historically or personally, and attempting to surmount their own impotence in the same way men of a patriarchal society do -- thus particularly fitting is DeBeauvoir's questionably-phrased call for a "brotherhood" of men and women.
an ideal of beauty which fulfilled no more than the desperate need to affirm one's own virility and youth in the face of one's own weakness cannot be of any solace here, can it? and this is why it develops. but ultimately an ideal of beauty can only perhaps be of partial solace. the greater question is how to balance the corruptive force of power with the subjugative force of powerlessness in oneself -- for one is deceiving oneself to say that the appeal of the childish other, the innocent other, is not contingent on the perceived powerlessness of that childishness -- an attempt to gain immortality through projecting nostalgia for youth outward into an object of consumption. and if it is not possible to make oneself the object of one's own desires, through vagaries like the notion of self-realization (that is always also a disunification from the immediate self), we could then only explore the potential of an ascetic relinquishment of any attachment to the movement of desiring itself.
the appreciation of childhood, nostalgic or otherwise, then arises from precisely a desire to evade death and finitude yourself -- one seeks redemption and self-verification in the respite of possession, and especially here through possession of an object "childhood" one seeks to perpetuate one's own life, "in the abundance of its fertility," indefinitely. and at once excessive fixation on being-towards death is necessarily a pathos, necessarily pathological, for in thinking of mortality consciousness conceives of itself as dying. in pursuit of beauty we seek respite FROM mortality, and yet it is through thorough engagement with life that one is aware of oneself as beginning to age.
we can then explain at once why we find a conjunction of fertility and childishness, of sexuality and the youthful image, in popular media and popular ideals of the beautiful. a woman is sexually attractive, generally speaking, when she has disproportionately large eyes, or is from the waist-down tiny as a six-year old and from the waist up, pregnant. and it is through appreciating youth and fertility as beauty in a woman that man precisely can HAVE a child, recreate himself THROUGH their child, precisely distance himself from the imminence of his finitude -- though he also admits of this limitation IN the need to give himself sexually and emotionally to youthfulness as an OTHER in the woman and ultimately, also the child. age truly begins to decline once even one's children are grown. death awaits beyond self-fulfillment in this way. though in a patriarchal society this standard would apply only to women as objects of sexual desire, i should note that to the extent that when ANYONE finds this youth-oriented concept of beauty sexually attractive, they are likely facing the finitude of their own status, historically or personally, and attempting to surmount their own impotence in the same way men of a patriarchal society do -- thus particularly fitting is DeBeauvoir's questionably-phrased call for a "brotherhood" of men and women.
an ideal of beauty which fulfilled no more than the desperate need to affirm one's own virility and youth in the face of one's own weakness cannot be of any solace here, can it? and this is why it develops. but ultimately an ideal of beauty can only perhaps be of partial solace. the greater question is how to balance the corruptive force of power with the subjugative force of powerlessness in oneself -- for one is deceiving oneself to say that the appeal of the childish other, the innocent other, is not contingent on the perceived powerlessness of that childishness -- an attempt to gain immortality through projecting nostalgia for youth outward into an object of consumption. and if it is not possible to make oneself the object of one's own desires, through vagaries like the notion of self-realization (that is always also a disunification from the immediate self), we could then only explore the potential of an ascetic relinquishment of any attachment to the movement of desiring itself.
27.8.06
I forgot the password.
I've this summer, in my desperation, ended up watching both the Derrida documentary and the Zizek documentary, both productions of "Zeitgeist" films. I'm not going to apologize for this desperation -- it raises some interesting issues, and even allows me to better comment on the film. Precisely the only thing keeping me from exhibiting desperation would be this attempt at concealing the distaste I had for my surroundings all summer, in the name of maintenance of a public image. Rather than do that I find it interesting to think about the way Derrida and Zizek each reacted to the possibility of fetishization as it works through the public image which is being projected when something vaguely resembling a biographical film is made about you.
Both men seem to be aware of the constraints such a concern places on a sort of enlightenment-style disregard for style -- an emphasis on Derrida or Zizek's "style" taking priority over their "actual theoretical ideas," a distinction which Zizek at least thinks can be strictly maintained. But at the same time his thought seems to me to preclude such a distinction in some ways. Okay, so Derrida at first requested that no images be published of him, ever. This makes it seem as if he already had the problems that go along with having a public image in mind, and wished to avoid them entirely -- and indeed, a lot of what he says in the film seems to be predominantly concerned with the qeustion of tension between theory and praxis -- to a point he agrees with Heidegger, who agrees with Aristotle, that a philosopher is born, thinks, and dies. The preemptive rejection of a philosopher as a knowable human being, and the identification of a knowable human being with "style," surreptitiously sets you up to want to know more about the secret life of the philosopher, and the documentary tries to taunt you with this -- filming Derrida very ambiguously explaining his behavior is in many ways completely artificial because of the fact that he is being filmed, and so on. On the otehr hand, Zizek's reaction to the cult of personality forming around him is a blunt cry of "Confound it, you idiots!" which means not that you shouldn't want to know about a philosopher, lest you embarass him by emphasizing personal style, but more -- why are you not able to think about a philosopher as a living person without turning her into a caricature of herself?
Precisely what he is trying to avoid here appears in his other talk about surplus-value and surplus-enjoyment having the homology of desire -- precisely the problem he has with public images is the emphasis it places on philosophy without philosophy, precisely the way one seeks cybersex as sex without the sex-act. His realization, unlike Derrida's, admits its contingency on the reaction, admits that he didn't originally think it would even be necessary. His role as a philosopher, when he sees people coming to him as a brilliant thinker who will tell leftists finally "what to do," he sees as to react by making these people ask themselves to what extent such requests are even legitimate, why they might have such needs to begin with. His public image complements this with a public suicide, and an artificial image of himself on the ground after having leapt a flight of stairs. The image of his playing dead is not the black nothingness of a prohibitive warning, as in Derrida, but rather as the aftereffect of an insult, a rejection of flattery. The absence of an image still by its very being named can't deny its status of existing as an image for others, not the same as this image of something - of suicide. In fact it's more insulting to have nothing.
Ultimately, though, both Derrida and Zizek share animosity towards the idea of the passing fad, the ironic sitcom of the real. What we are lacking in popular culture is the ability to take anything seriously. We are afraid of the implications behind any move we might make and so we choose, in the name of not tarnishing reputations, not to say anything at all. Rather than what we fear as weight we prefer cartoons of weight, and to make our impotence more palatable we express it as a joke, as if self-awareness already is articulated freedom. But one cannot have chosen not to be in freedom, and so we still fail to say anything meaningdul when we make a joke of discrimination, of class oppression, in order to give the appearance that we are able to somehow disengage from our conditions simply by having a basic awareness of them. We replace any decisive action with ironic remarks and with style -- I still don't know if I understand how style can possibly have weight so long as it is measured against a distinction from underpinning theoretical content (Nietzsche, anyone?). And irony is so pervasive that even the deepest suffering can become a trinket of its amusement. We think that we bequeath fair treatment to the suffering person so long as she is able to address us colloquially with an affirmation of her satirization. In this way we miss the point of the morbid, as an impetus to challenge whatever conditions result in it. More important and less understood than the sheer morbidity is the reasoning behind its appearance in art. Why does the Zizek film end with him throwing himself down a flight of stairs? Well, his other option was what, to end his talk on the artificiality and insincerity of public image by waving goodbye? Sorry adoring fans, I'll deproblematize your adoration some other time. For now I have to go enjoy my champagne and the idle preening of small talk with the film producers. Life goes on.
The problem is that this fear of weight does not itself even indicate any real object around which the satire orients itself -- the elementary definition of the real, for Zizek, is "death which resists symbolization," the negative that resists symbolization -- and that, stated as such, is absolutely meaningless. For example, there is no "real difference" between the liberal and conservative camps insofar as there is not a definition of that difference which does not already originate from the liberal or conservative side; at most, positively, there is a "difference from." And yet this "difference from," weightless as it is, carries even greater and more insidious forms of the weight which is barring free possibilities for change -- because we do not have the trite but firmly established vocabulary for change that we do for the status quo, and the status quo is becoming global capitalism. Still we claim a so-called society of tolerance and free choice, and still we enforce the injunction to ENJOY which is even more pervasive than the injunction simply to DO. The alleged postmodern individual appeals to a basic humanity which has been recovered after a loss of the meaning, a loss of the real, but these appeals carry all the same and even further restrictions on our behavior -- we must tolerate even the petty sitcoms which ease their nausea lest we risk social alienation. This constitutes an authority which precisely disallows any opposition in its denial that it itself is even an authority. It denies that real radical change, expansion of vocabularies for articulating lack of freedom, and indeed real social tolerance would require us to make any compromises in our comfortable patterns of etiquette, even the etiquette of ironic self-abnegation!, at all.
Both men seem to be aware of the constraints such a concern places on a sort of enlightenment-style disregard for style -- an emphasis on Derrida or Zizek's "style" taking priority over their "actual theoretical ideas," a distinction which Zizek at least thinks can be strictly maintained. But at the same time his thought seems to me to preclude such a distinction in some ways. Okay, so Derrida at first requested that no images be published of him, ever. This makes it seem as if he already had the problems that go along with having a public image in mind, and wished to avoid them entirely -- and indeed, a lot of what he says in the film seems to be predominantly concerned with the qeustion of tension between theory and praxis -- to a point he agrees with Heidegger, who agrees with Aristotle, that a philosopher is born, thinks, and dies. The preemptive rejection of a philosopher as a knowable human being, and the identification of a knowable human being with "style," surreptitiously sets you up to want to know more about the secret life of the philosopher, and the documentary tries to taunt you with this -- filming Derrida very ambiguously explaining his behavior is in many ways completely artificial because of the fact that he is being filmed, and so on. On the otehr hand, Zizek's reaction to the cult of personality forming around him is a blunt cry of "Confound it, you idiots!" which means not that you shouldn't want to know about a philosopher, lest you embarass him by emphasizing personal style, but more -- why are you not able to think about a philosopher as a living person without turning her into a caricature of herself?
Precisely what he is trying to avoid here appears in his other talk about surplus-value and surplus-enjoyment having the homology of desire -- precisely the problem he has with public images is the emphasis it places on philosophy without philosophy, precisely the way one seeks cybersex as sex without the sex-act. His realization, unlike Derrida's, admits its contingency on the reaction, admits that he didn't originally think it would even be necessary. His role as a philosopher, when he sees people coming to him as a brilliant thinker who will tell leftists finally "what to do," he sees as to react by making these people ask themselves to what extent such requests are even legitimate, why they might have such needs to begin with. His public image complements this with a public suicide, and an artificial image of himself on the ground after having leapt a flight of stairs. The image of his playing dead is not the black nothingness of a prohibitive warning, as in Derrida, but rather as the aftereffect of an insult, a rejection of flattery. The absence of an image still by its very being named can't deny its status of existing as an image for others, not the same as this image of something - of suicide. In fact it's more insulting to have nothing.
Ultimately, though, both Derrida and Zizek share animosity towards the idea of the passing fad, the ironic sitcom of the real. What we are lacking in popular culture is the ability to take anything seriously. We are afraid of the implications behind any move we might make and so we choose, in the name of not tarnishing reputations, not to say anything at all. Rather than what we fear as weight we prefer cartoons of weight, and to make our impotence more palatable we express it as a joke, as if self-awareness already is articulated freedom. But one cannot have chosen not to be in freedom, and so we still fail to say anything meaningdul when we make a joke of discrimination, of class oppression, in order to give the appearance that we are able to somehow disengage from our conditions simply by having a basic awareness of them. We replace any decisive action with ironic remarks and with style -- I still don't know if I understand how style can possibly have weight so long as it is measured against a distinction from underpinning theoretical content (Nietzsche, anyone?). And irony is so pervasive that even the deepest suffering can become a trinket of its amusement. We think that we bequeath fair treatment to the suffering person so long as she is able to address us colloquially with an affirmation of her satirization. In this way we miss the point of the morbid, as an impetus to challenge whatever conditions result in it. More important and less understood than the sheer morbidity is the reasoning behind its appearance in art. Why does the Zizek film end with him throwing himself down a flight of stairs? Well, his other option was what, to end his talk on the artificiality and insincerity of public image by waving goodbye? Sorry adoring fans, I'll deproblematize your adoration some other time. For now I have to go enjoy my champagne and the idle preening of small talk with the film producers. Life goes on.
The problem is that this fear of weight does not itself even indicate any real object around which the satire orients itself -- the elementary definition of the real, for Zizek, is "death which resists symbolization," the negative that resists symbolization -- and that, stated as such, is absolutely meaningless. For example, there is no "real difference" between the liberal and conservative camps insofar as there is not a definition of that difference which does not already originate from the liberal or conservative side; at most, positively, there is a "difference from." And yet this "difference from," weightless as it is, carries even greater and more insidious forms of the weight which is barring free possibilities for change -- because we do not have the trite but firmly established vocabulary for change that we do for the status quo, and the status quo is becoming global capitalism. Still we claim a so-called society of tolerance and free choice, and still we enforce the injunction to ENJOY which is even more pervasive than the injunction simply to DO. The alleged postmodern individual appeals to a basic humanity which has been recovered after a loss of the meaning, a loss of the real, but these appeals carry all the same and even further restrictions on our behavior -- we must tolerate even the petty sitcoms which ease their nausea lest we risk social alienation. This constitutes an authority which precisely disallows any opposition in its denial that it itself is even an authority. It denies that real radical change, expansion of vocabularies for articulating lack of freedom, and indeed real social tolerance would require us to make any compromises in our comfortable patterns of etiquette, even the etiquette of ironic self-abnegation!, at all.
25.8.06
God will come and wash away our tattoos and all the cocaine
Woke up in Pittsburgh early this morning after twelve hours of sleep. Breathed in air. Attic windows illuminate brick houses, metal roofing washed iridescent with rust and rain. Houses crowded so elegantly, distant pines spread across the distant mountains walling us into Sharpesburg. Tea outside for breakfast, the Zenith for lunch. My cousin Brian suggesting the city is "paradise, under deconstruction," noting how the poorest parts of the town lack a single grocery store, yet never are wanting for the spires of Catholic churches. And men who bartend and hunt deer will refuse neat scotch to dirty niggers, and angsty chickenwire art spins slowly, suspended from the ceilings of antique shops. All the architecture has always already been defaced by graffiti here, dust ignited neon under bridges, and everywhere an unfaded revelry of names humming in cacophonous blue and red beneath the traffic, indicating a population forged entirely in neglect like steel. I alternate between reading Machiavelli's "The Prince" and de Saint-Exupery's "The Little Prince." I befriend a girl with a pink mohawk and a jump rope. I run my fingers along our halls of stained glass and peeled wallpaper, stucco Greek doorways, dried flowers pinned everywhere. In the evening we sit outside on concrete stairs, overdressed for the poor part of town. And I start drinking blueberry Stolichnaya and I grow aware that the heart may yet awaken from its sleeping.
21.8.06
Agemo's Hoops
Ed is a 34-year old man who lives in La Mirada, CA. Originally from Taipei, Ed is an unemployed market/financial analyst. His interests include high fidelity audio, the San Francisco Giants, epistemology, and Tao. Ed enjoys reading Murakami, Hume, Merleau-Ponty, Mencius, LaoTzu, SunTzu, Magazines about gadgets/cars/stereos. Friends are pressuring him to marry his current girlfriend. Ed has been viewing my Friendster profile.
I find the prospect of knowing who looks at my Friendster profile, when and how often they do so, pretty creepy. This is part of the reasoning behind my overall conclusion -- Friendster (and to a slightly lesser extent, Myspace & Facebook) is/are combining with 4:00 AM to destroy something essential to the fabric of the universe. And yet I continue to make use of these websites' services, while Rupert Murdoch looks on.
How could I let this happen? I think the problem here is aptly summed up in a selection from this "Ed" character's profile. Given that, by posting his information on Friendster, Ed effectively makes the information public knowledge, I do not have any internal qualms about reproducing said information here in order to make my point. As usual, the only part that really terrifies me is the way his beautiful, white-stockinged girlfriend is awkward, immobile beneath his embrace, which holds as one would a treasured thing that otherwise evades us entirely.
ABOUT ME:
Pensive, introspective, uncaring, aloof, unpolished, sleepy, uninterested, deductive, accurate, debilitated, meandering, not to the point, day dreaming, holistic, Chinese, noodle lover, insatiable appetite, always broke, anti-social, hates phones, love etnie sandals, cold, starved, spoiled, dejected, rejected, humiliated, objectified, assumed, senile, no flavor, anti-authoritative, anti-establishment, anti-religion, anti-affiliation, anti-sensationalistic, bilingual, chaotic, deprived, sentimental, regretful, strategic, anti-hand lotion, anti-beauty products, anti-art for art's sake, epistomlogical, phenomenological, humanistic, stubborn, insightful, uncommunicative, unexpressive, uncontrollable, unmotivated, undomesticated, under educated, not pliable, unmaleable, unassimliated, reductionistic, underappreciated, underrated, under dog, prefers boxers, hates sox, hates suits, hates ties, hates saturated oil, likes oil paintings, dislike oil spills, environmentally minded but not environmentally active, semi political, semi libertarian, semi leftist, pro choice, pro education, no war, screw social security, universal sufferage, uninitiative, plays fair, drives fast, speaks slow, bad penmanship, fast typer, eloquent writer, disdainful, hates euphemisms, hates to make promises, black sheep, scape goat, misunderstood, misinterpreted, emphasizes fundamentals, existential, nihilistic, never used drugs, (seeks) humility,
I find the prospect of knowing who looks at my Friendster profile, when and how often they do so, pretty creepy. This is part of the reasoning behind my overall conclusion -- Friendster (and to a slightly lesser extent, Myspace & Facebook) is/are combining with 4:00 AM to destroy something essential to the fabric of the universe. And yet I continue to make use of these websites' services, while Rupert Murdoch looks on.
How could I let this happen? I think the problem here is aptly summed up in a selection from this "Ed" character's profile. Given that, by posting his information on Friendster, Ed effectively makes the information public knowledge, I do not have any internal qualms about reproducing said information here in order to make my point. As usual, the only part that really terrifies me is the way his beautiful, white-stockinged girlfriend is awkward, immobile beneath his embrace, which holds as one would a treasured thing that otherwise evades us entirely.
ABOUT ME:
Pensive, introspective, uncaring, aloof, unpolished, sleepy, uninterested, deductive, accurate, debilitated, meandering, not to the point, day dreaming, holistic, Chinese, noodle lover, insatiable appetite, always broke, anti-social, hates phones, love etnie sandals, cold, starved, spoiled, dejected, rejected, humiliated, objectified, assumed, senile, no flavor, anti-authoritative, anti-establishment, anti-religion, anti-affiliation, anti-sensationalistic, bilingual, chaotic, deprived, sentimental, regretful, strategic, anti-hand lotion, anti-beauty products, anti-art for art's sake, epistomlogical, phenomenological, humanistic, stubborn, insightful, uncommunicative, unexpressive, uncontrollable, unmotivated, undomesticated, under educated, not pliable, unmaleable, unassimliated, reductionistic, underappreciated, underrated, under dog, prefers boxers, hates sox, hates suits, hates ties, hates saturated oil, likes oil paintings, dislike oil spills, environmentally minded but not environmentally active, semi political, semi libertarian, semi leftist, pro choice, pro education, no war, screw social security, universal sufferage, uninitiative, plays fair, drives fast, speaks slow, bad penmanship, fast typer, eloquent writer, disdainful, hates euphemisms, hates to make promises, black sheep, scape goat, misunderstood, misinterpreted, emphasizes fundamentals, existential, nihilistic, never used drugs, (seeks) humility,
11.8.06
Even though no one has ever asked
I can swim like the others only I have a better memory than
the others. I have not forgotten my former inability to swim.
But since I have not forgotten it my ability to swim is of no
avail and I cannot swim after all.
Kafka
the others. I have not forgotten my former inability to swim.
But since I have not forgotten it my ability to swim is of no
avail and I cannot swim after all.
Kafka
Medicine bottle collection on the windowsill --
LEVINAS: One has to respond to one's right to be, not by referring to some abstract and anonymous law, or judicial entity, but because of one's fear for the Other. My being-in-the-world or my 'place in the sun,' my being at home, have these not also been the usurpation of spaces belonging to the other man whom I have already oppressed or starved, or driven out into a third world; are they not acts of repulsing, excluding, exiling, stripping, killing? Pascal's 'my place in the sun' marks the beginning of the image of the usurpation of the whole earth. A fear for all the violence and murder my existing might generate, in spite of its conscious and intentional innocence. A fear which reaches back past my 'self-consciousness' in spite of whatever moves are made towards a bonne conscience by a pure perseverance in being. It is the fear of occupying someone else's place with the Da of my Dasein; it is the inability to occupy a place, a profound utopia.
So I'm going to try to summarize my criticisms of De Beauvoir's text a little. First, I think I should establish that her argument is styled something like this --
a) The problem, most basically, is a problem with the abstract category of identity that makes somebody a "woman."
b) Inherent to this category is a reactive and passive, solipsistic and narcissistic cult of self which encloses the person in what De Beauvoir establishes as a "situation" which prevents her from being free, whatever that may mean, and from being autonomous (economically, psychologically, whatev) enough to make her own place in the world.
c) The way to solve the problems associated with this category is to disengage from the situation of being a woman. Part of this disengagement would involve the understanding that this essential & abstract concept "woman" does not really bind us as a gender -- we need to distinguish, then, between "women," who have no potential to change, and "females," who can evade the necessity of the category of being a "woman."
d) Here De Beauvoir actually spends a lot of time explaining why women are unable to really establish a community between themselves and other women -- because every action they make, so long as they are women, remains determined by the expectations of the male gaze.
Right. but here is the problem:
e) Since we don't really have anywhere to begin with establishing an autonomous mit-sein composed of women without reverting to the reactive roles, to a greater or lesser extent to break free of the man's rein involves adopting the dominant values within a system that has primarily been established by men.
She seems to me to be concerned to detach herself from women in general, which is fine, but also to locate herself in a place that will allow chauvinist critics of feminism to feel some sort of common ground with her. In the meantime this will involve, in the text, long encyclopaedic descriptions of the way women fail. "She looks at herself too much to see anything; she understands in others only what she recognizes as like herself in them; whatever is not germane to her own case, her own history, remains outside her comprehension." The whole thing, ironically, reeks of misogyny -- keeping in mind her relationship with Sartre -- and as I remarked to Ben last night, reminds me of the way a father would degrade and insult his son in order to spur the son onto something higher. I'm ultimately really grateful that this text exists, as opposed to no text, but it certainly could have been done without either repeating the passive habits of behavior that allow women to become oppressed to begin with or merely appropriating the behavior of the oppressors.
Now, the issue I have with the Levinas quotation in relation to all of this -- well, first note that in every giving there is also a receiving and in every receiving there is also a giving. The problem with presuming to take that much responsibility for the Other's mortality is that it runs the risk of depriving the Other precisely of their own responsibility for it -- thusly their own ability to change it. And I think it is that feeling of unjustifiable guilt that has allowed, say, women to continue putting their own best interests aside for the sake of the men they want in their lives, Christians to put their best interests aside for the sake of God, which in turn allows for their lives to be more and more controlled. I should mention that Levinas is very religious. Anyway, to respond to what you said, about semen staining the mountaintops -- I love the conceit, right, but theoretically speaking it isn't exactly men who are doing the usurping, who historically have done it. It's white, property-owning men. All one would have to do then to be worthy of feeling this sort of idolized guilt is fall into one of those three categories (cf. Solomon's post on my wall) -- am I white? Do I own property? Am I male?
Now, we might want to think about issues with private property, and race or even gender as a social construct. But we should be able to realize that guilt in-itself, except as a bare motivation to self-criticism (which I don't think most guilt is) is not the answer. Nor is coddling the oppressed class. Ben was talking about how, when he was reading The Second Sex, he grew pretty pessimistic about the possibilities of human relationship insofar as she encyclopaedically lays out the ways in which one human being can dominate another -- noting that even the most earnest care and attention can be an insidious form of this -- Christian charity, right. So... I'm speaking really generally, and even if I were speaking more clearly, I'd eventually just start writing a dissertation, so I'm going to end it here. There's a scene in the Zizek documentary where Zizek is on a panel, and one of the people who is also on the panel stands up and says "Okay -- so I really like Zizek, and, well, he's probably got the highest I.Q. of anyone in the room -- I'd bet money on that -- still -- there are --- well, he's probably been speaking at least three times as much as any of us here."
By the way, what the hell is up with I.Q.? Srsly.
DEBEAUVOIR: Many of the faults for which women are reproached – mediocrity, laziness, frivolity, servility – simply express the fact that their horizon is closed. It is said that woman is sensual, she wallows in immanence; but she has first been shut up in it. The harem slave feels no morbid passion for rose preserves and perfumed baths: she has to kill time. When woman suffocates in a dull gynaeceum – brothel or middle-class home – she is bound to take refuge in comfort and well-being; besides that, if she eagerly seeks sexual pleasure, it is very often because she is deprived of it. Sexually unsatisfied, doomed to male crudeness, "condemned to masculine ugliness," she finds consolation in creamy sauces, heady wines, velvets, the caress of water, of sunshine, of a woman friend, of a young lover. If she seems to man so "physical" a creature, it is because her situation leads her to attach extreme important to her animal nature. The call of the flesh is no louder in her than in the male, but she catches its least murmurs and amplifies them. Sexual pleasure, like rending pain, represents the stunning triumph of the immediate; in the violence of the instant, the future and the universe are denied; what lies outside the carnal flame is nothing; for the brief moment of this apotheosis, woman is no longer mutilated and frustrated. But, once again, she values these triumphs of immanence only because immanence is her lot. (603)
Okay.
So I'm going to try to summarize my criticisms of De Beauvoir's text a little. First, I think I should establish that her argument is styled something like this --
a) The problem, most basically, is a problem with the abstract category of identity that makes somebody a "woman."
b) Inherent to this category is a reactive and passive, solipsistic and narcissistic cult of self which encloses the person in what De Beauvoir establishes as a "situation" which prevents her from being free, whatever that may mean, and from being autonomous (economically, psychologically, whatev) enough to make her own place in the world.
c) The way to solve the problems associated with this category is to disengage from the situation of being a woman. Part of this disengagement would involve the understanding that this essential & abstract concept "woman" does not really bind us as a gender -- we need to distinguish, then, between "women," who have no potential to change, and "females," who can evade the necessity of the category of being a "woman."
d) Here De Beauvoir actually spends a lot of time explaining why women are unable to really establish a community between themselves and other women -- because every action they make, so long as they are women, remains determined by the expectations of the male gaze.
Right. but here is the problem:
e) Since we don't really have anywhere to begin with establishing an autonomous mit-sein composed of women without reverting to the reactive roles, to a greater or lesser extent to break free of the man's rein involves adopting the dominant values within a system that has primarily been established by men.
She seems to me to be concerned to detach herself from women in general, which is fine, but also to locate herself in a place that will allow chauvinist critics of feminism to feel some sort of common ground with her. In the meantime this will involve, in the text, long encyclopaedic descriptions of the way women fail. "She looks at herself too much to see anything; she understands in others only what she recognizes as like herself in them; whatever is not germane to her own case, her own history, remains outside her comprehension." The whole thing, ironically, reeks of misogyny -- keeping in mind her relationship with Sartre -- and as I remarked to Ben last night, reminds me of the way a father would degrade and insult his son in order to spur the son onto something higher. I'm ultimately really grateful that this text exists, as opposed to no text, but it certainly could have been done without either repeating the passive habits of behavior that allow women to become oppressed to begin with or merely appropriating the behavior of the oppressors.
Now, the issue I have with the Levinas quotation in relation to all of this -- well, first note that in every giving there is also a receiving and in every receiving there is also a giving. The problem with presuming to take that much responsibility for the Other's mortality is that it runs the risk of depriving the Other precisely of their own responsibility for it -- thusly their own ability to change it. And I think it is that feeling of unjustifiable guilt that has allowed, say, women to continue putting their own best interests aside for the sake of the men they want in their lives, Christians to put their best interests aside for the sake of God, which in turn allows for their lives to be more and more controlled. I should mention that Levinas is very religious. Anyway, to respond to what you said, about semen staining the mountaintops -- I love the conceit, right, but theoretically speaking it isn't exactly men who are doing the usurping, who historically have done it. It's white, property-owning men. All one would have to do then to be worthy of feeling this sort of idolized guilt is fall into one of those three categories (cf. Solomon's post on my wall) -- am I white? Do I own property? Am I male?
Now, we might want to think about issues with private property, and race or even gender as a social construct. But we should be able to realize that guilt in-itself, except as a bare motivation to self-criticism (which I don't think most guilt is) is not the answer. Nor is coddling the oppressed class. Ben was talking about how, when he was reading The Second Sex, he grew pretty pessimistic about the possibilities of human relationship insofar as she encyclopaedically lays out the ways in which one human being can dominate another -- noting that even the most earnest care and attention can be an insidious form of this -- Christian charity, right. So... I'm speaking really generally, and even if I were speaking more clearly, I'd eventually just start writing a dissertation, so I'm going to end it here. There's a scene in the Zizek documentary where Zizek is on a panel, and one of the people who is also on the panel stands up and says "Okay -- so I really like Zizek, and, well, he's probably got the highest I.Q. of anyone in the room -- I'd bet money on that -- still -- there are --- well, he's probably been speaking at least three times as much as any of us here."
By the way, what the hell is up with I.Q.? Srsly.
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