musings – Page 4 – PretenseSoup

And yet, I am left with the feeling that we are still doomed: Slavoj Žižek’s First as Tragedy, Then as Farce

Note: I started a new job last week, which has temporarily reduced my available time for drawing. Also I am doing battle with the wallpaper in our first floor bathroom, so that is taking up a lot of my time. I hope I’ll have a comic next week. In the meantime, please enjoy a few of the reviews I write.

Žižek, Slavoj. First as Tragedy, Then as Farce. London and New York: Verso, 2009. 978-1-84467-428-2

So here are the things you need to know about Žižek: First, if you decide to write about him, his name is kind of a typographical clusterfuck for the English keyboard. Second, he’s a Marxist. Third, he’s essentially an intersectionalist[1], but because of point two, ultimately all the systems of discrimination are caused by capitalism. Fourth, he is extremely entertaining and charismatic, albeit in a weird way. He is often referred to as the rock star of modern philosophy.[2] He personally divides his books into the easy stuff (nothing books) and the deeper philosophical works (like The Parallax Effect). This book is one of the easy ones—it is a straight-up Marxist critique. Finally, he takes a psychoanalytic perspective toward his philosophy, with a particular focus on Lacan. This means the book is filled with terms like objet petit a and subject supposed to know. Don’t worry about it.

Ok, so the book: ostensibly, Žižek is comparing 9/11 and the 2008 financial collapse. But in reality, he’s mostly focused on the financial collapse and the implications for global capitalism. Basically, the story is that capitalism is inherently exploitive. Since 1968 we have this thing called cultural capitalism, which is where we pretend that capitalism is not totally bad because we can come up with these market-based solutions to our problems. Like Starbucks sells water and donates five cents per bottle to giving people water. Or fair trade coffee. Or organic (and nowadays, non-GMO) foods.[3] Essentially, there are these stories we tell ourselves about how we are not being terrible people because when we spend our money, we are affecting positive change as we simultaneously get ourselves a latte. But we are still lying to ourselves. When we buy bottled water, Starbucks is still taking the resource from somewhere and essentially screwing the people who live there out of their water, and they are exploiting the labor of the barista who is standing there making your triple-pump caramel macchiato heated to one hundred and eighty degrees. Organic foods have no real benefit other than costing more money but they make you feel like you’re doing something good for the environment. You are not really being an anti-consumerist rebel because you are still consuming things, but you can fool yourself into believing that you have done something good and anti-consumerist.

Ah, hell, go watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g. I’ll wait here.

There are a lot of things wrapped up in capitalism that are bad: It is inherently exploitative of workers. It is inherently greedy, and that greed is now so out of control that we are allowing the wholesale destruction of the planet to the point where we may render large chunks of it uninhabitable. Probably the 80/20 principle is the best example of this—the idea that twenty percent of the workers produce eighty percent of the profit. Because eighty percent of the profit actually amounts to more profit when you only have to pay twenty percent of your workforce with it, companies have (since the crash) taken up cutting down employees significantly, which is why we have so many damn unemployed people who can’t find a job, and meanwhile the stock market goes up when a company announces layoffs because even though the stupid fuckers who are buying the stocks are probably also workers and thus at risk of getting laid off if these trends continue, the having of more profits to share with stockholders is considered a net positive. We have poverty, disease, ever-increasing class divisions, anti-Semitism[5] and other forms of xenophobia, homophobia . . . more than that, we have a political system which is essentially built to make politicians more concerned about getting reelected than actually doing anything useful or effecting any real change in the world, and yet we continue to vote and pretend that we think that somehow, change is possible, that somehow this time it will be different.

The solution, of course, is communism, because these harms are not harms that can be rectified by the system—they are harms that are embedded in the system itself. (And also, I suppose, because if you’re giving a Marxist reading, you have a certain responsibility to follow him along.) The Ziz places the blame for the failures of early twentieth century communism squarely on the shoulders of Stalin (with Trotsky sharing a little bit of it for refusing to take over for Lenin and thus opening the door for Stalin and his followers). His argument seem to be less of “this time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything” and more “try again. Fail again. Fail better.” At least he’s realistic.

I am willing to accept communism as the solution to our current problems. Not without some reservations, but for the sake of argument let’s assume that the Ziz is right and communism is the answer. So now we come to another issue: changing is difficult. In fact, it is very, very difficult. To judge from the sheer number of commercials, it is incredibly difficult to even get someone to change their breakfast cereal,[6] so how do we convince approximately 314 million people to change their government? Spoiler: You can’t.

Or at least, according to Foucault, you can’t.[7] According to Foucault, the way the power structure is set up, you can’t ever really change things, because the system is essentially set up to be self-producing. For example, truly revolutionary politicians can’t get elected—if they do, it’s because they moved their views into line with what the majority of people in the electorate think. The Ziz is somewhat dismissive of Foucault, leaving him behind early on after an argument about Freudian analysis, but he even provides evidence of the system doing this himself. Key quote:

Those who hold power know very well the difference between a right and a permission. . . . A right in a strict sense of the term gives access to the exercise of a power, at the expense of another power. A permission doesn’t diminish the power of the one who gives it; it doesn’t augment the power of the one who gets it. It makes life easier, which is not nothing. (Quoting Jean Claude Milner, Žižek, First as Tragedy, 59)

After a lot of revolutionizing (i.e. the 1960s), we have what Žižek terms “the permissive society” that allows for “divorce, abortion, gay marriage, and so on” (ibid.) without actually giving anyone more power or rights. The system shifted enough to relax the protestors, thereby preserving the system without ever really changing in any meaningful way.[8] This tendency of the system is something the Ziz doesn’t really deal with, which is too bad. The problem of how to change a system that is willing to bend to acclimate revolutionaries without actually changing is a big problem when one wants to be a revolution. The closest that he comes to resolving this difficulty is in the aforementioned Beckett quote: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” While it would be a stretch to suggest that each successive (Communist) revolution came closer to the workers’ utopia that Marx originally envisioned, it is possible that the sustained movement toward a goal (i.e. successive failed revolutions) might be a way to begin to improve the situation gradually. Maybe.

I personally, as I think I’ve said, find this convincing enough. I am certainly willing to give it a try, anyway. But where to begin? To paraphrase Žižek at the outset of this book, perhaps it is time to spend a moment in thought before blindly rushing off (c.f. p. 11). I’ll let you know when I figure it out.

Postscript: When I showed a draft of this essay to a friend, he asked if this was my attempt to make myself feel better about capitalism. It’s not; I don’t really “feel good” about capitalism. But when I wrote this, I didn’t have a job; now I have one again. So I feel a little better about the system, now that it’s working for me again.

—
[1] I just tried to read about Marxist-feminist theory and I had like a seizure or something because it was so boring. Whatever. I think this term is probably being used correctly here.
[2] Better him than Peter Singer, I guess.
[3] The single most hilarious joke of the twenty-first century is that someone has convinced a certain segment of the population that eating GMO food is bad for them. Organic foods are like the second most hilarious joke of our modern era.[4]
[4] There was a footnote here that I’ve decided to omit, but I don’t feel like renumbering the other notes.
[5] And/or anti-Islam sentiment, depending on how much you want to go with Said in defining anti-Semitism as being anti-all Semitic peoples or not. I just had an argument about this with one of my brothers.
[6] To be fair, breakfast cereal is an important decision.
[7] I think these arguments are in Discipline and Punish. But also in basically everything he wrote.
[8] The Ziz actually views social issues as a smokescreen that politicians (in particular conservatives) use to distract the people from what’s really important—this is essentially why low income voters so frequently vote against their own economic interests. I have mixed feelings on this point—of course he’s right, but social issues are also important (even if only in a tautological way).

Em oi! #393: Domestic Dog Comics

A few scenes that didn’t work exactly right on their own, so I thought I’d put them together. I have one more dog comic to do and then I’ll get back to drawing comics about philosophy and suchlike. And yes, Maya does actually stick her entire face into the snow and seem to be sniffing it. What is she smelling? I ask myself this constantly. What can she smell under there?

We’ll file these under SF427.45 L86 2014, for Animal Culture–Pets–Dogs–Exercise and amusements.

Anyway, it’s the new year, and I have to admit that if another website I’ve had passing interactions with sends me a year-end summary, I’ll…delete it and be quite cross. (I mean, it’s an email, what can you do?) But to provide a few exciting(?) facts for you, my dear readers:

This was the most popular comic of the last year.
I ran 2,163.86 miles, biked 396.6 miles, and swam 291,425 yards (165.5 miles) last year. I missed my goal of 2,500 by just a bit, probably because of the whole plantar fasciitis thing.
I ran nine different distances of race last year. The top times were: 24:40 (5k), 54:41 (5 mi), 50:25 (10k), 1:56:41 (20k), 2:00:07 (13.1 mi), 3:21:41 (20 mi), 4:08:43 (26.2 mi), 5:09:44 (50k). I placed in the top ten in five races, or in the top five in four!

That’s all my interesting things at the moment. Currently I have one race for the spring I’m actually signed up for (The Ice Age 50 mi/50k/half marathon [I’m doing the half marathon]), and two other races I’m pretty sure I’m going to do (the new duathlon and the Mad City 50k). My big goals are to hit 1:45:xx (or even 1:40!) for the half marathon and go sub-5 hours at the MC50k. And don’t get injured. Right.

The rest of my life is spent alternately searching for jobs and convincing myself that getting a job makes me an exploited tool of capitalism. So I guess actually I’m searching for jobs and alternately I’m reading and fomenting rebellion. Fun times. It has been cold here, but it turns out that I can run on the dreadmill and read at the same time, so I’ve been enjoying myself.

Em oi! #384: Stages of Thesis

The past two weeks have been a bit stressful. At the beginning of the summer, when it became apparent that I was not going to finish in time to defend at the end of spring term, I set August 9th as my official personal deadline for completing the draft of my thesis. Around the same time, B accepted a role in a play (The Merchant of Venice) that was set to perform the weekend before my deadline, meaning that we had dinner with several relatives that weekend. I also went to the show twice. It was a great performance, but that’s still a loss of time.

We also passed an unhappy personal anniversary on August 3rd. And finally, for reasons that I swear seemed reasonable at the time, we decided to start looking for a house.

Anything else? Yes. I hurt my foot and had to take a week off running at the time I most needed to be able to run.

That’s actually the whole reason I drew this comic. I wanted to blog about my plantar fasciitis.

I’m not really sure what happened. My pet theory is that getting a huge bruise on my shin at Dances with Dirt made me roll in a weird way during aikido the next week. This probably put more strain on my plantar fascia and led to the injury.

After swimming seven miles per week for two weeks, I finally saw my sports medicine guy last Monday (the 5th) and got a diagnosis. The sheet the guy gave me said “limit running,” but not no running, so with the help of a pair of orthotics, I’ve been running about every other day since then, a total of maybe 30 miles last week. (That figure includes time on the elliptical, though.)

I can’t tell if my foot is doing better than it was last Sunday. I did just spend seven and a half hours over the past three days at an aikido seminar (my present to myself for finishing the thesis) and it didn’t fall off. Conversely though, it doesn’t feel amazing after all that. The weather changing a lot today was a confounding factor too.

I am trying to put into practice some of the zen techniques I learned at my seminar, but it’s hard. I have difficulty just relaxing and waiting until I get better. (Obviously, right? Because I am still running.) I think the problem is, you can’t just force yourself to be calm. You can’t force yourself to find enlightenment.

But, as they say, you can clean up your room. You can open the window and sit. And when the breeze comes through, you can notice it.

So I will clean up my room. Not just so I can sit, but because we have to sell the condo now.

This is wandering a bit. I hurt my foot but I finished my thesis. Yay.

I’ll file this one under LB2385 L86 2013 for Theory and practice of education–Higher education–Academic degrees-M.A..

Em oi! #379: “Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration…”

Sometimes when I don’t draw for a while, the art comes out looking like I’ve had some kind of weird neurological event. Nothing of the sort here, just lack of ability.

My mom really does say that getting older beats the hell out of the alternatives, by the way, and has for years.

So I turned thirty last week. And, you know, I wondered if I was going to freak out about it. I actually felt like society wanted me to freak out about it. After all, we live during a time in which youth and vitality are valued so highly that there are actresses who haven’t moved their eyebrows in DECADES in an effort to prevent wrinkling. Not being able to look cross or confused is a high price to pay to maintain an unrealistic standard of beauty, isn’t it?

Anyway, I decided after a while that I feel pretty good about myself. Part of it is that, unlike five years ago when the majority of my friends were single twenty-somethings, I now run (literally) with a circle that stretches from twenty-two to mid-sixties. Some of my friends have kids who are my age (or a few years younger, I guess. College age.). That gives one a sense of perspective that isn’t available when all of the people one speaks with have the same anxieties (not finding a job/not getting into grad school, being single forever, dying and getting eaten by wild dogs…). I do see people I know who have kids and just become…I don’t know, the kind of boring grown ups I remember from my childhood, who spend all their time looking stern and shouting and dealing with Serious Things and who have jowls. Ok, basically I am describing the nosy next door neighbor from Bewitched (Gladys was her name?). Poor Gladys, no one would ever believe what she saw going on over at the Steven’s house.

My larger point is that I get to decide who I am and what it means to be the age I am. If I want to keep running marathons when I’m 65, I’m allowed. I don’t have to “act my age,” whatever that means. To paraphrase one of my mother’s other sayings, “I may be getting older, but I refuse to grow up.”

File this under PR830.A394 L86 2013 for English literature–History of English literature–Prose–By form–Prose fiction. The novel–Special topics–Other special topics, A-Z–Aging.

I will get to my race reports for the last two races (a 50k and a 20k) plus my discussion of free will a bit later in the week, I hope. Now that I have a job demanding 40 hours/week of my attention, PLUS my thesis, I have a bit less time than I’d like for blogging. But that will get better eventually. I hope.

Em oi! #377: Sene-can

So I came across Seneca (founder of the Stoics) the other day and immediately realized I was dealing with a kindred spirit. Seneca actually did advocate spending some time every day meditating on what could potentially go wrong in your life, because then if it did go wrong, you’d be psychologically prepared for it. Alain de Botton implies that this philosophy grew out of the fact that Seneca lived among the Roman elites, who were a fairly angry and unstable group from the emperor on down. And I actually do this quite a lot, though I refer to it as “reining in my expectations.” For example, if I had a job interview that went really well, I tell myself that they are not only not going to give me the job, but they will probably come and burn down my house for wasting their time. Then if they actually give me the job (please give me the job–you know who you are), I am surprised and happy, and if they reject me, I am less sad.

Anyway, despite all that, I couldn’t resist making fun of him a little. It could be worse, I guess–Schopenhauer advised his readers to swallow a toad every morning, so that would be the worst thing that happened to them all day…

We’ll file this under B618.L86 2013, for Philosophy (General)—Ancient (600 B.C.-430 A.D.)—Occident—Greco-Roman philosophy—Individual philosophers—Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, ca. 4 B.C.-65 A.D.—Biography and memoirs. Criticism and interpretation—General Works.

I should point out that in the time between when I drew this and when I inked it, my hair streak was dyed over (so I could look respectable for job interviews). You can check it out in the below photo, in which I failed to do it and maybe I didn’t even brush it this morning? And also I look a little cranky. (Hah. Take that, Cameron Russell?)

There have been so many good, philosophical articles in the news lately, from the issues of justice and punishment versus rehabilitation raised by the conviction and sentencing of Malik Richmond and Trent Mays, to the question of deciding when someone becomes a person raised by the North Dakota Personhood amendment to all sorts of interesting problems raised by SCOTUS hearing arguments on Proposition 8 and DOMA. But then Bryan posed me a fascinating problem about epistemology and free will, so I’m going to write about that. Actually, I’m going to write down the problem as posed to me now, and then next week I’m going to write about my thoughts on the issue.

Here we go: Bryan doesn’t believe in free will. His proof for this goes thusly:

Bryan is a materialist, which means he believes that there is no mind/brain dichotomy–the mind is just our perception of the workings of the brain. The brain is controlled by various chemicals.
Because the brain is made up of particles, if we really understood the brain (and quantum physics), we could build a computer that could predict what someone is thinking.
So now that we know what someone is thinking, given a set of initial conditions, we can predict someone’s behavior.
Since all choices can be accurately predicted, there is no free will. We are essentially controlled by chemicals. Free will is just an illusion we have because we ourselves don’t entirely understand the workings of our brains. But we might as well live with this illusion, because we can’t build a computer that can predict things like that.

(Bryan, you will have to let me know if I have misconstrued your argument.)

So I have been reading and thinking about quantum physics, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, Newcomb’s problem and meta-Newcomb’s problem (even rereading my senior philosophy thesis), and also looking into the works of a lot of theorists from about 1950-present. It has been quite a knotty problem, I will tell you. If you have any comments on it, please feel free to post them in the comments section here, on FB or G+, or email them to me at ehlupton(at)gmail(dot)com. I will try to address any worthwhile opinions I receive.

Em oi! #376: นักแปล [nakplae, the translator]

Another sketch from our trip to Thailand. This actually happened at a down-at-its-heels hotel in Chiang Mai. Eventually Andy and Sara got to move to a slightly better room…but they didn’t manage to get one with a double bed. At the time, I complained that we had landed in the Chiang Mai version of Pham Ngu Lao, a street in Ho Chi Minh City known for cheap/seedy backpacker hotels. I think, having looked at a lot of other hotel reviews, that most places in Chiang Mai are like that. It wasn’t a bad hotel, exactly…well, it was. But it was clearly a nice hotel about ten or fifteen years ago when it was built. And then nothing was updated again.

There was a fiendish device on the bedside table. You can see it in this photo to the right (and now you all know the name of the hotel, oops.). You push a button and the lights turn on or off. Somehow we managed to push the buttons so that around about five o’clock in the morning, the lights started to turn on and off by themselves. You can imagine, given how jet lagged I was, how well that went over. I thought the place was haunted. I guess this was state-of-the-art in like…1980.

I’m maybe a bit bitter because the room smelled like smoke. But later on that day, after our freaky awakening, B got sick and basically slept in the room for 12 hours. I figured at least the sheets were clean and the AC worked.

These are my preliminary sketches of Andy, done to prep for this comic and Em oi! #374. I guess he’s lost a fair amount of weight since he got back to Texas, so these are not entirely accurate.

Today we went to see Oz the Great and Powerful, Sam Raimi’s prequel to The Wizard of Oz. I found that in the years since I first saw the original, the details of the land of Oz have gotten tangled up in my head with other fantasy places, like Wonderland, Middle Earth, and Australia. There were some details that struck me as kind of bizarre–why would you have a field of poppies that can cause everlasting sleep right next to the Emerald City? Isn’t that a liability case waiting to happen? The witches were also interesting, although I was sad that they went with the old trope of “dark hair bad, blond-y good-y.” Glinda the good witch, played by Michelle Williams, reminded me of Galadriel (blond hair, long white gown, kind of ethereal expression). Then I remembered that amazing scene where Galadriel almost takes the ring, but doesn’t. Wow, she’s a really interesting character in that scene. Too bad Glinda was just blandly kind. Of course it is nice to have one character who is kind, but… Also I am not sure how I feel about the turning-green-as-externalization-of-internalized-self-loathing? And of course no one can out-evil Margaret Hamilton.

There was a lot about families in it though, and a kind of magical scene where Oz (played by James Franco) glues a little china doll’s legs back on. I maybe got a little verklempt.

Now that I think about it, maybe Glinda was a bit more manipulative in the first film, since she doesn’t tell Dorothy how to use the slippers to get home until the very end of the book…

Today I got up and ran 18 miles (well, 18.25). It was an interesting run. I was up in the night with indigestion (from 2:30-4 am) and only got out of bed around 8:30, an hour later than my alarm was set for. Actually, at 8:15, Bryan rolled over and said, “Why are you still here?” I took some drugs and set out, going easy, waiting to see if anything bad would happen…but nothing did. I got tired, since I did the whole run on only 190 calories (two gels, one 90 cal, one 100 cal) plus the glycogen stored from yesterday’s overeating (the thing that caused me so much trouble). Anyway, I mostly shuffled along at 10:30-10:40 minutes/mile, more than a minute slower than my planned race pace. Toward the end, I tried to pick things up and ran a 9:54, but then my stomach started to ache and said, “Don’t ever do that again,” so I finished slow. (I wasn’t going to call B to pick me up with two miles to go.) At least I finished.

This is wandering, probably because of my weird interrupted sleep. I’d better bring things to a stopping point.

This comic will be filed under P306.94 .L86 2013, for Philology. Linguistics—Language. Linguistic theory. Comparative grammar—Translating and interpreting—Translating services. In case you were curious, if you search for the heading “translation,” all you get is class numbers related to specific translations–translating the bible, translating Emile Zola into English, etc. The correct subject heading for translation as the subject of a work is “translating and interpreting.” I had to look it up.

Em oi! #373: What We Talk About on Long Drives

This was drawn from a conversation we had on our drive back to Madison on Xmas Day. I had the comic 80% done before we left for Thailand, but I didn’t manage to get the last two panels colored and the whole thing scanned until just now. I should add that I know Berkeley was really refuting Locke more than Descartes, but I understand the objections to Descartes much better, so I drew him.

This is hardly the first time I’ve touched on Berkeley’s philosophy in the comic. He has long been an obsession of mine, given that immaterialism (also called idealism) is so damn weird.

The gentleman with the wig there is Samuel Johnson. According to legend (and Boswell), Johnson had this to say about Berkeley:

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley’s ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, ‘I refute it THUS.’¹

Of course, Berkeley would not have accepted this as a refutation, because both the stone and Johnson’s foot exist in Johnson’s mind.

Finally a comic dating from Ly’s tenure in the Czech Republic. If you happen to be an atheist or agnostic, Berkeley’s philosophy becomes very strange, because whose intellect is watching the entire world? It’s troubling. Having just come from Thailand, I suppose I’m pretty sure that it still exists, or at least I’ve got friends there who might tell me if it ceased to exist. But I can’t be sure.

For simplicity’s sake, we’ll file these under B1348 .L86 2013, B1348 .L86 2007, and B1348 .L86 2007b, for Philosophy (General)—Modern (1450/1600-)—By region or country—England. Ireland. Scotland. Wales—18th century—Individual philosophers—Berkeley, George, 1685-1753—Criticism and interpretation.

Yesterday we came back from Thailand. Yesterday was Friday, but we actually got on a plane in Chiang Mai at 17:30 on Thursday to fly to Bangkok. From Bangkok, at 23:30 we got on another plane and flew to Incheon airport in South Korea (a very nice but intensely baffling place). We’d all been up since about 7:00 on Thursday (although we dozed on the plane, it was that weird fugue sleep you slip into on an airplane), so when that plane landed we were a bit loopy.

We got breakfast. I took some photos:

B's strawberry cream cheese waffle — B’s strawberry cream cheese waffle

Sara's blueberry bagel. I think the other available flavors were "garlic" and "plane." — Sara’s blueberry bagel. I think the other available flavors were “garlic” and “plane.” When I saw the flavor list is when I began to suspect that something about Korea is a giant joke being played (on me, I guess?).

This was called "stick pie." It was crispy. — This was called “stick pie.” It was crispy.

Those are the only photos I took in the airport. I took lots of photos in Thailand, though (about 300 I guess). Here are a few:

ผัดพักบุงไฟแดง, or stir-fried morning glory. In Vietnamese, the plant is called "rau mung." (Please excuse my lack of diacritics.) — ผัดพักบุงไฟแดง, or stir-fried morning glory. In Vietnamese, the plant is called “rau mung.” (Please excuse my lack of diacritics.)

Sara makes a friend at the place we studied cooking.

Cooking the morning glory with Maew's instruction. — Cooking the morning glory with Maew’s instruction.

I also took photos of wats, monks, that sort of thing. I’ll upload those later.

Anyway, I started training for my upcoming 50 km races this morning after I got up. The first is April 30th and it’s about 14 weeks away, which also means I have about 14 weeks until my birthday and until my THESIS has to be done and and and. So the 50k is really what I am focused on, since it is a lot less frightening. I thought running was going to be terrible because it is cold out (about 46 degrees colder than Chiang Mai was). But in fact I had a great run. I hit my planned tempo for the majority of the miles, had a runner’s high all day, and felt very strong. I stopped at 14.4 miles, but I could have gone much farther, I think. The only way it could have been better is if I’d remembered to bring water. Whoops.

Well this entry is already treatise-length, so I’ll leave off here. Hope you are all having a good winter/January!

¹ Boswell, James. Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson. Abridged and edited, with an introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood. Project Gutenberg, 2006. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1564/1564-h/1564-h.htm. 12 January 2013.

Em oi! #372: But is it Art?

Comic to be filed under: B3209.B583W6 L86 2012, for Philosophy (General)—Modern(1450/1600-)—By region or country—Germany, Austria (German)—By period—Later 19th and 20th centuries—Individual philosophers—Avenarius – Brauer—Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940—Separate works, A-Z. What a mouthful.

I have been trying to find a good summary of Walter Benjamin’s (say it like an academic: Ben-ya-mean) “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (or, alternatively, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility”) essay. Because it is the most oft-quoted essay of the 20th century (maybe), there are a few available. Wikipedia has a very bare-bones, straightforward summation. Yale’s Modernism Lab (perhaps unsurprisingly) has a much better, more detailed explanation. Finally the (much beloved?) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy offers some critical notes, not just on that piece (or rather the two pieces, since he wrote two versions of the essay) but on the themes of art and aura in Benjamin’s work.

Basically there are two things you probably need to know in order to understand the essay: The first thing is that Benjamin is worried about methods of reproducing art–specifically, methods like photography and film–and how they change the original. For example, when I was in college, I had a poster of the Creation of Man (by Michaelangelo) on my wall:

And G-d said, “Let there be naked people!” And lo…

Philosophically speaking, there are a lot of differences between the poster and the original version on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I mean, one is a fresco and one is a photograph printed on (high quality) paper, but also, as Benjamin puts it, “reproduction…[places] the copy of the original in situations which the original itself cannot attain” (21). In other words, the Sistine Chapel would never fit in my dorm room, while the poster will. So reproducing the image creates this loss of authenticity, or what Benjamin refers to as “aura.” In his words,

It might be stated as a general formula that the technology of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the sphere of tradition. By replicating the work many times over, it substitutes a mass existence for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to reach the recipient in his or her own situation, it actualizes that which is reproduced. These two processes lead to a massive upheaval in the domain of objects handed down from the past–a shattering of tradition which is the reverse side of the present crisis and renewal of humanity. Both processes are intimately related to the mass movements of our day. (22)

By “the present crisis,” I believe Benjamin means the rise of fascism, specifically in Germany. And by “mass movements” he means both fascism and Marxism. That’s the second thing you have to understand about Benjamin: he was a German Jew who escaped to Paris in the early 1930s, from whence he published this essay; eventually, he committed suicide while trying to escape France to the US via Spain when the situation looked grim [edited to add: or perhaps he was killed by Stalin’s agents in the area!]. He had a brother who was killed in the Camps. Beyond this, he was a Marxist. So while his discussion of aura, as the Stanford Encyclopedia suggests, has been accused of being overly nostalgic, I don’t think that’s really the case–he doesn’t seem nostalgic about the changes he’s describing, more just trying to explain how he thinks art has changed since the advent of (specifically) the moving picture.

So as a good Marxist, Benjamin when confronted by film suggests that it is the masses who essentially control film–more than perhaps any other art, it has a clear economic driver behind it. “While [the screen actor] stands before the apparatus [camera], he knows that in the end he is confronting the masses. It is they who will control him” (33). This changes the relationship between the masses and the art (36). Here he leans heavily on some psychological theory (Freud among others) to suggest that because of the way film acts on the mind (conscious and unconscious), it can act as an “immunization against…mass psychoses” (38). However that means, in a sense, that film can also brainwash people.

Now, fascism (which Benjamin views as Marxism without the dissolution of property/class), is not the first political movement to have used that old lie, “Dolce et decorum est pro patria mori.” Sparta comes to mind, and Rome (that phrase comes from Horace), and the Vikings/Norse all glorified death in battle, to say nothing of the Crusades, the Samurai, WWII-era Kamikaze units (maybe?)… However, fascism’s “logical outcome…is an aestheticizing of political life” (41) which results in war. “War, and only war, makes it possible to set a goal for mass movements on the grandest scale while preserving traditional property relations” (ibid.). In essence, the fascists create an aesthetic glorification of war in order to promote this agenda. If you have ever seen Triumph of the Will, you will know exactly what Benjamin was talking about.

Benjamin concludes, famously:

“Fiat ars–pereat mundis,” [Let art flourish and the world pass away] says fascism, expecting from war…the artistic gratification of a sense perception altered by technology. This is evidently the consummation of l’art pour l’art [art for art’s sake]. Humankind, which once, in Homer, was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, has now become one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached the point where it can experience its own annihilation as a supreme aesthetic pleasure. Such is the aestheticizing of politics, as practiced by fascism. Communism replies by politicizing art. (42)

I have occasionally had reason to read Benjamin–his essay “The Task of the Translator” is another classic–and I often have this problem where I will have issues with the particulars of his argument but on the whole, I cannot refute his overall point. After reading this essay, I wondered if I could justify watching films that continue to glorify war.

I’m still going to see Skyfall. But one interesting problem to address in my own writing (as I think the more recent Bond writers have tried to do) will be to examine the non-glorified outcomes of violence.

References

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility.” In The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, edited by Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin, translated by Edmund Jephcott, Rodney Livingstone, Howard Eiland, et al. (19-55) Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008. (Also found here.)

Owen, Wilfred. “Dolce et Decorum Est.” The War Poetry Website, edited by David Roberts. Last updated 2011. http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html. Retrieved 26 December 2012.

Flowers from Mormon Central

I took this picture at the Mormon Holy See in SLC a few weeks ago. Tonight my brother Daniel helped walk me through the process of making it “less red” (per B’s request). I think it looks pretty good now.

Say what you will about the Mormons (and I’m sure you will), they certainly have some nice gardens in Temple Square.

Book Review: Inside of a Dog by Alexandra Horowitz

Horowitz, Alexandra. Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know. New York: Scribner, 2009. 978-1-4165-8340-0.

Worldcat. (This link may not work for everyone.)

Amazon.

I grew up with cats, although I spent much of my youth desperately wanting a dog (specifically, a cocker spaniel I would name “Wolfgang,” precocious little shit that I was). In retrospect, it’s a good thing I didn’t get one, since I would never have suspected how much work dogs require in order to keep them happy.

Almost as soon as I got my first apartment, I got my first personal cats. It wasn’t until last March, over ten years after moving out of my parents’ house, that I finally got the dog I’d longed for (not a cocker spaniel, thank goodness). There is still one resident cat in the household, and I like it that way. I would not define myself as either a cat person or a dog person—someone who prefers one animal to the exclusion of the other—but more of an animal lover in general.

(Full confession: As I write this, the cat and dog are wrestling, an activity that provokes a lot of yowling, and I am rethinking my desire to have pets.)

Anyway, at my age everyone has either a dog or an infant, or (in the case of some unlucky souls) both. I find infants tedious*, so it’s nice to have a good reserve of dog facts in case I need to one-up some oblivious acquaintance who persists in explaining how intriguing her spawn actually is.

Alexandra Horowitz is an unabashed dog person, and also a Ph.D.-holding cognitive scientist with experience studying a variety of mammals, including humans, rhinoceroses, and dogs. In Inside of a Dog, she gives a brief overview of research on dog cognition, behavior, and umwelt—the “subjective or ‘self-world’” (20). For example, humans are primarily visual creatures. Dogs are far and away primarily olfactory-dependent. What does this mean for how they perceive the world in which they live?

In exploring these and other questions, Dr. Horowitz gives a comprehensible but not overly complex review of the current literature regarding dogs. Her tone is conversational and lightly humorous (no surprise to anyone who recognizes the source of the book’s title as that old Groucho Marx line, “Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”). While a few of her sentences fall short (in particular, one retelling of an old Woody Allen story made me wish for my red editor’s pen), she’s a competent writer on the whole and the book is a quick and delightful read.

As an academic, I’m used to making my way through somewhat more complicated works—the stuff published by university presses with a hundred pages of bibliographic notes and a full index in the back, to say nothing of analysis of the statistical data in the referenced studies. Here, there is none of that—although some (probably most) papers and books she referred to are listed by topic at the end, there are no in-text citations or notes. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not leveling accusations that something vital has been omitted, but I could have handled (and would have enjoyed) a slightly more scientifically rigorous book.

Horowitz’s book is not about dog training, but it does contain some information on how to train a dog. Ms. Horowitz here differs from the majority of trainers in that she feels that teaching too many commands to a dog somehow loses part of the dog’s dogness: “When come here has been learned, a good argument can be made that there is little else by way of commands that an ordinary dog needs to know” (286). She also does not approve of punishment (much like B.F. Skinner, the father of operant conditioning) and suggests that inappropriate behavior should be allowed to die out through ignoring it—what Skinner called extinction. There are problems with this, however. For example, when one’s dog is playing too rough with the cat, simply ignoring the behavior is not sufficient, since the cat’s response to the behavior is rewarding to the dog (not to mention that, depending on the size of the dog, the cat may risk physical harm from unrestrained play). Some better way of terminating the behavior is necessary. However, Dr. Horowitz makes a good point when she says that we have to allow

"Wait...inside of a what?"

for the dogness of a dog in training it, and recognize that regardless of how well trained a dog is, it’s still a dog, not a tiny furry human.

An anecdote: My dog, a shiba inu got from a rescue in northern Illinois, knows fewer than ten commands. She does the usual sit, stay, prone [i.e., “lie down”], down [i.e., “off the sofa”], and up [“jump into the car”]. More interestingly, despite not being formally taught that the cat is referred to by the word “cat,” and despite not having any herding instincts (I mean, shibas were originally bred for hunting small game), when we say, “Maya, where’s the cat?” she will run and find the cat and herd her to us. So how does that happen? Horowitz offers a few clues: When sheep dog puppies are raised with sheep (which they have to be, in order to become good sheep dogs), they come to believe that the sheep are essentially other dogs. So the dog may believe that “cat” is just a name applied to this other dog in the household. After all, they both have pointy ears and whiskers. She had also seen us go through the motions of looking for the cat (and of evicting the cat from the bedroom, where she is not allowed to go). The first time Maya noticed the cat trying to go into the bedroom, she herded her away from the dog. Our laughter and periodic praise for this kind of behavior probably led to her understanding, in some way, that we like it when she responds to our inquiries about the cat by finding the cat (dogs are keen observers of human behavior; while Derrida felt discomfort at his cat’s gaze reminding him of “the animal that therefore I am,” the gaze of a dog is more of an inquiry into our humanness, an evolutionary attempt to bridge a gap between two species that have long lived together). So without conscious effort on our part, we suggested to the dog that her assistance in surveilling the cat would be appreciated. If only we could train her to bark when she wants to go outside or something.

Dr. Horowitz brings the book to life with little drawings and descriptions of life with her dog, Pumpernickel. Somehow these descriptions wound up being really touching, instead of just illustrating various points she was trying to make. I’ll admit it, at the end of the book, when she talked about Pump’s inevitable old age and death, I cried. I’m a soft touch when it comes to animals, though. I can’t help but take this as an important warning delivered in an almost Daoist way: over and over again, Horowitz implores us to pay attention to our dogs. Look at them, really see them. Apart from the benefits in understanding canine behavior, it really drives home the point that, although now you have a partner, a dog, a cat, a child, eventually things will change and you will not have these beings anymore. So pay attention–they’re standing right there. Do you really see them?

At the end, Inside of a Dog has at best whetted my appetite for more information. I have a lot of questions about the evolution of companion animals, both dogs and cats, and what we can expect to see in these terms in the future. But unfortunately, neither this work or others is likely to answer my questions regarding my dog—Why does she bark at cardboard boxes? Why the phobia of paper towel rolls? As Dr. Horowitz points out, there’s a lot of individual variation among dogs, things that cannot be accounted for on the basis of breed or genetics. Just because there are some dogs out there that understand more than 200 words doesn’t make my dog a genius. It just means that some dogs are really smart.

* Also ugly. I am vaguely acquainted with one woman who seems to spend an incredible amount of money getting professional portraits of her infant every few months, and it’s not helping. I assume that parents are compelled to post photos and declare how adorable their offspring are on various social networking sites almost from the moment of birth by the twin demons of sleep deprivation and oxytocin, because really there’s no other explanation. I should also add that if you’re reading this and you have kids who are over the age of, say, two or three, I do find them pretty interesting and you shouldn’t take this personally.