They will never give it away for free
With new protests against the fees and cuts being made to Higher Education planned for this Wednesday on what’s being called ‘Day X’ (more information here) it’s necessary to avoid getting drowned in the new slave consensus. The ‘cuts’, the ‘deficit’ and the whole new way in which economics is being organised are presented as obvious, necessary, inevitable. They are no such thing. There are always options. There are realities that we can imagine but these realities must be fought for, both physically and mentally. We must dream and demonstrate the new reality. The only other option is to let the new ‘common sense’ drown us. They will never give it away for free, it has always had to be taken from them by force. This time will be no different. Prepare to fight now. It’s the students and universities at the moment, it will be your hospitals, schools and homes next…and soon.
We’re all pretty fucked…It’s not just cuts in education and upping the fees that’s the problem. The problem is that the cuts in general mean we’re all pretty fucked. Whether you’re a student in a F.E college or University, whether you’re a working single-mum, whether you’re self-employed, whether you’re unemployed, whether you’re working a precarious temp job, whether you working a good job in the public sector. The depth of the cuts means most people are going to become worse-off.There are differing trains of thought that link the cuts to ‘The Crisis’ or ‘The Deficit’ or ‘The Tories’ but for many there is a much more simple truth – it’s just called ‘Life as normal’. The rich have been getting successively richer in this country and the poor have been getting poorer. If the cuts are setting out to re-float a busted economy of over-inflated debt and speculation by taking more and more from the poorer section of the population, well, it’s just more of the same for most people. Poverty, crap jobs, insecurity, health problems – well, that’s just how we’ve been living anyway. But do you feel like politicians will sort it out for you? Do you feel like if you keep your head down and work hard, you’ll be okay? Do you feel scared? Had enough of that shit yet?”
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2010/11//468269.pdf
http://anticuts.org.uk/
http://educationactivistnetwork.wordpress.com/
Larvalsubjects has an interesting post on Marx in the academy over here which has generated a lively discussion in which, perhaps unsurprisingly, the question of agency has risen to the fore again. This is still something I find disturbing, something I’m not really able to get a grip on fully, since I tend to understand the problem of agency as responding to something like a desire to answer the question ‘what difference can I make?’. "Where’s the agency", someone might ask, "in these economic analyses of desire (D&G) or capital (Marx)? Isn’t it all just a huge machine in which I am nothing? And if it is a big machine, how did this machine produce it’s own auto-critique? Isn’t it really the break, the rupture (of the subject), that we need to theorise? Isn’t consciousness really the most important fact in reality since it is inexplicable by reality? Me, I’m important, surely – doesn’t my analysis do anything, offer anything – don’t I have the answers, or at least the right to produce answers or the possibility of finding them?" I’m inclined to dismiss these questions out of hand as the whining desire of a resentiment-filled petit-bourgeois who thinks they’re ‘in charge of their life’ in the first place but have to recognise that at least some of the charge invested in this response is disproportionate and perhaps related to the other peculiar investments I find myself bound to (revolution, majik, sex).
One of the things that I thin I agree with larval about is that the emphasis of thinkers such as Badiou, Laclau, Ranciere and Zizek seems to be inverse to that of Marx – "Don’t these positions [Badiou, Laclau, Ranciere, Zizek] postulate that change proceeds via consciousness, rather than consciousness, thought, emerging from modes of production?" larval asks.
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One of the re-occurring problems that Deleuze & Guattari address within Anti-Oedipus (AO) is that of the apparently self harming act. This is perhaps most clearly indicated in the way in which they return to the ‘desire for fascism’ within the masses that Wilhelm Reich attempted to address in his book The mass psychology of fascism. Reich, whom D&G declare "the true founder of a materialist psychiatry" (AO: 129), was unsatisfied with any theoretical explanation of the rise of fascism that failed to account for its popular support. They phrase this in terms of desire – "Desire can never be deceived. Interests can be deceived, unrecognised, or betrayed, but not desire. Whence Reich’s cry: no, the masses were not deceived, they desired fascism, and that is what has to be explained" (AO: 279). The argument is a attempt to allow reality to speak, to let the facts back in, in particular the unpalatable fact that there was this support for fascism (this desire). Such a fact, the argument presumably goes, means that we are faced with the options of (i) either those who voted and marched and applauded the fascists were somehow duped or else (ii) they willingly and knowingly wanted this state of things (which is taken to be a kind of contradictory situation since it is ‘against their own interests’ for the masses to desire fascism). Unlike a simple despotism in which the autocrat installs themselves through violence, perhaps aided in some sense by passivity, the fascist regime came to power through a popular passion, through the desire of the masses. This poses the problem of why people desire that which is against their own interests, why people desire that which oppresses them?
Notes on revolutionary Marxism
The central tenets.
(beginning from the ‘Founding Statement’ of the Trotskyist group ‘Permanent Revolution’ to be found online at http://www.permanentrevolution.net/?view=entry&entry=779, accessed 15.11.07)
Belief in communism, “using Karl Marx’s rough guide to communism – from each according to his (or her) ability, to each according to his (or her) need – as its starting point”.
Belief in revolution – violent revolution – because (a) the state will defend its interests and (b) wholesale change is necessary (radical break) rather than reform.
Belief in the working class as the ‘agent of change’ – the only revolutionary class.
Belief in the need for a revolutionary, internationalist party.
Lineage – tradition (Paris Commune; Marxist wing of 1st International; Left wing of 2nd International, the Bolsheviks and Rosa Luxembourg rather than the Mensheviks; 3rd International (first four congresses) before Stalinisation onset; 4th International – then debate.
The need to continue to develop a program “in the light of experience, the supreme criterion of human reason”. (Empiricism) It is on the basis of this programmatic development that further distinctions are then made (i.e.; the decline or ‘degeneration’ of the 4th International – in the case of PR this involves classifying the ‘United Secretariat of the Fourth International’ (USFI) as having ‘collapsed into opportunism).
This takes us up to point 6 of the ‘founding statement’, which consists of 14 points in all. The following 8 points all, to one degree or another, mark the analytical differences that then form the necessary conditions for the new move (the founding of a new group).
At it’s most exciting and interesting existentialism brings to the fore the problem of the core of my very being and even if it may fall back on the model of the human in its own attempt to think through this problem, the fact that the problem is posed in large part derives from existentialist thought. This ‘core’ sounds naive and simple, as though some ‘true me’ can be found if we look hard enough. This implies something like a essence and the first crucial step that existentialism began to make explicit was was that this core is not some essence to be understood through the philosophical process of distinction and definition supported by argument. Sartre’s crude formulation of this shift in existentialist thought found itself expressed in his famous slogan – ‘existence precedes essence’. Kierkegaards’ investigation of the case of Abraham and his faith is also, however, reliant upon this kind of shift from essence to existence.
A core, like the core of an apple, might be missed by being unthinkingly passed over, almost as though it were waste. Custom and practice where I live is for the core of an apple to be thrown away after eating the flesh and pulp. I’ve always found that strange, always eating my apple cores and once I had children often eating theirs too. The core of an apple is crunchy, tasty and – more importantly – the very point of the apple. It is the seed carrier, which all this flesh and pulp is there to sustain. It contains a small forest within, an orchard of life. My own, naive, magical, thinking has always taken the core of the apple to be that which is the most vital, life-containing element of the fruit.
This core of my own being I also take to be that which is most vital, life-containing. Assuming, as I do, that I am not a deterministic being this core is also something that doesn’t cause anything, including my being. It is, instead, that which is within the eyes that see, not as a pre-existing soul but rather as the confluence of all those forces that have coalesced to form this moment of subjectivity in which I see or feel. At times this core will be in one form, at times in another, though at each time it will present as an eternity. At times, indeed, the core might might be in a ‘non-dual’ form, presenting itself not as my core but as the core of everything.
How can such a shifting form in any sense be called a ‘core’? Moreover, how could such a core be both continuously shifting and yet also ‘that which is most vital’? Implicit in the notion of a variable core is something like a ‘variable object’. Why is it difficult to imagine an object that has enormous variation? It seems that at the point at which we allow the enormous variation the object is no longer identifiable. We cannot recognise something as an object unless there is enough stability of identity, so it might be argued – and yet we seem entirely capable of handling the weather, of handling things which have enormous variability. The lower intensity of the rate of change in many objects perhaps inoculates us from the pressure of handling the higher intensity objects. It seems that if a core does exist, almost by definition this core must be that which is most vital – these two notions seem to co-define each other. The difficulty is not, then, in recognising this core and this vitality but rather in handling an intense core, that intensity now being understood as a high degree of flux.
The snoring man on the train, just behind and to our left, revolts us. Their noise is more penetrating – more cutting – even though it is lower in decibel than the irritating child a few seats in front with their high pitched and hyperactive voice testing the patience of the father figure accompanying them. The snoring man is filthy in his activity, that rasping breath, that grasping for life calling out to be silenced – and with its silence comes death. The sound of the breath is a broken tool that reveals its function, its equipmentality as Heidegger would call it, precisely by being heard. That filthy, contaminating breath, no gentle rythmn of life but a crushed, rushing in-out-in-out intimacy that brings the Other too close, too far within the experience of living together that repulses us within our modernity, repulses us because of its forced confinement amongst each other. Read the rest of this entry »
There’s an interesting online psych project over here at Project Implicit…an interesting thing mentioned on Thought Capital’s blog post about the use of ’empirical data’ in ’evidenced-based meta-analyses’. I presume these EBMA’s are some sort of peculiar category of philosophical activity, perhaps connected to the idea of ’experimental philosophy’ which, whilst fascinating, seems to sometimes miss the point. Can evidence ever establish particular principles of thought? If not, then is it for a philosophy a question of giving up principles or of giving up evidence? Is there a dichotomy here that cannot (in principle or in fact) be resolved?
This difficulty, of what we might call the distinction between the quid facti and the quid juris is critical to any attempt to understand transcendental philosophy. There is an argument being made (James Williams, Dan Smith etc) that it is in fact principles that are crucial for Deleuze, that the quid juris has in some sense a priority derivable from an affinity of Deleuze’s method with that expressed by Leibniz ’Principle of Sufficient Reason’. Everything has to have a reason for existing, a ratio existendi, rather than simply a reason for being, ratio essendi. In fact, Smith argue, Leibniz in fact added other epistemological and metaphysical conditions in the PSR with the notions of ratio cognoscendi (a reason for how we can know the thing, the principle of indiscernibles) and a ratio fiendi (reason for becoming out of that which already is or law of continuity preventing arbitrary MacGuffin like inventions during the course of an account). The PSR aims to fulfill all that we would ask for in either of the quid moves, such that a question of fact or principle is capable of being responded to by understanding the sufficient reason for a thing.
Books I like and some hardware/software as well (not much)
(This is a list produced by Alan Sondheim – not me – and something that he does maybe once or twice a year. I’ve known Alan online for a good few years now, in fact since I was first at University as an undergrad, and his eclectic and curious reading patterns are reflected in his strange and fascinating work as both a theorist and artist. He also simply offers leads and possible avenues of research that I simply couldn’t find anywhere else and as such is a fantastic connection to plug into. In this list I’m particularly interested in the The Alpbacj Symposium 1968 papers, the Steve Talbott, The John Franklin Bardin Omnibus and the Olympus WS-300M, …the last list of these I posted was in November last year and you can see some of Alan’s current work on avatars, utilising the Second Life interface, over here on YouTube.)
I’m behind in my reviews; the last few months have been a mess. I may be missing some books. I may have misplaced. others. I hunger for reading, but it’s all transparent, pathetic, collapsed. There’s nothing to say about reading that hasn’t been said before. Humans compress history’s repetition until the world’s squeezed out. If I’m missing a book in what follows, forgive me; the oversight wasn’t deliberate, just an effect of physiology. The following books are in no particular order; for the most part, they’re books that have been more than useful, have been inspirational, works I’ve returned to at times. I’m including some miscellaneous reviews of software/hardware as well. (First off, apologies for the poor style below; it’s hard for me to convey sustained excitement, but such underlies most of what follows.)
Buddhist Dictionary, Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines, Nyanatiloka, Buddhist Publication Society, Sri Lanka. This is an amazing and often technical work, documenting the terms of the Pali Canon and beyond; it has information I literally haven’t found elsewhere. The Pali vocabulary is extensive, often highly structured conceptually, and this has proved, not only to be an invaluable guide, but also an interesting read in itself.
I am a Cat (three volumes), Soseki Natsume, translated Aiko Ito and Graeme Wilson. The original Japanese work appeared in the first decade of the 20th century; it’s an amazing rumination on everything by a cat. The work is reminiscent of Sterne and I found myself enveloped in it (in a manner similar to reading something like The Journey to the West); it says a great deal about Japanese modernization and city life, and is beautifully written. It’s not an ’animal’ story in any sense of the term. The work’s available from Tuttle. (Alexanne Don introduced me to this years ago.) Read the rest of this entry »
This time of year is always slightly hectic, with marking and ’student progress boards’ and the like – and for me it’s the first time I’ve been really involved because previously, as a visiting lecturer, most of this work was left to the full-timers. What’s good about it of course is seeing the students work come to fruition and knowing that this step is done with and the next is to come but at the same time it’s a time when my own research and writing has to be put on hold. So it’s curious to take a break and look back at what’s going on in your own work…
