1. Setting the Stage: 1948-1976
After the victory of the Purified Nationalist Party in the 1948 elections, the South African state embarked on a program of hardened social boundaries along "racial" or "ethnic" lines.*1 Passport laws were hardened, control of influx to the cities were strengthened, the Immorality Act banned interracial marriages etc. In the 1950s Sophiatown was dismantled. Afrikaans gained recognition as an official language on par with English. On short, the attempt to suture the social by erecting non-permeable boundaries between whites and non-whites was pursued to the full extent of its logic. Cities were to be white, while non-whites were moved into townships and homelands.
This policy wasn't implemented without protest. The demonstration that in some ways inaugurated the modern resistance to apartheid was a peaceful protest by women burning their passports with the slogans "with passports we are slaves" and "women don't want passports." The period also saw the establishment of the PAC, the ANC Youth League, and the Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC, led by Nelson Mandela, who was later convicted for treason in the Rivonia trials. By 1976 the protests were widespread and organized, to some extent, around popular imagery, such as the widely circulated picture of Nelson Mandela behind pridon bars. When the state, then, introduced Afrikaans as a compulsory language in schools, riots broke out in the South-Western Townships of Johannesburg (Soweto) and other areas. Schoolchildren refused instruction in what was perceived as the oppressor's language, and took to the streets, marching and singing songs of protest. The state responded with bullets. (See, e.g., Sarafina (starring Whoopi Goldberg) for a Brechtian rendition.) The international community responded with sanctions against the apartheid state.
2. The Total Strategy
By the time PW Botha took power, then, it was beyond doubt that the regime was in a serious crisis. It was threatened both from within and without, and the state articulated the juncture as a conspiracy of communists set to wreck havoc.*2 Botha's remedy, termed the total strategy, was two-pronged. Domestically, the state would attempt to manufacture and coopt a "black middle class" (this concept is still prominent in contemporary discourses on South African society), while, as a matter of promotion, it would reformulate a number of oppressive mechanisms to make them appear as more contemporary.
Hence, the homelands were now increasingly referred to as nations, with a degree of political autonomy. Passports controls were eased, while other forms of influx control was intensified. The powers and resources of the secred police grew immensely. Various programs of more "scientific" population control was investigated, such as the infamous project by Dr "Death" Besson to devise a chemical agent that would only kill people with a dark complexion. Foreign operations were intensified. (There is still suspicion that the South African Secret Service may have been behind the murder of Socialist prime minister Olof Palme, perhaps because of his vehement, principled and articulate opposition to the South African regime.)
In short, the total strategy consisted of intensified surveillance, increased powers of detention and detainment, and an attempt to appropriate modern discourses of democratic nationalism and free, individual choice as means to sustain the order. It was, however, not successful.
3. The aftermath: Articulating a chain of signification
The 1980s saw an increasing fragmentation within the hegemonic bloc. Business leaders got concessions on the National Party traditionally anti-capitalist line, signalling a shift from state intervention in the political economy to an increasing focus on maintaining an orderly social climate for business. The Wiehan report in 1979 recommended easing the long-standing ban on African trade unions in order to prevent wild strikes, and the Riekert Commision advised dismantling white job reservation while maintaining a rigorous control on influx to the cities. Complusory primary eduction was also introduced, though multiracial schools could only be run privately. Public amenities, such as hotels, restaurants and theatres, were no longer compulsorily segregated. In line with the 'total strategy', these measures were introduced to "intensify class differentials while reducing racial ones" (Hyslop 1988, Worden 1994), or, in a word, to make it possible to preserve entrenched social division within a global discourse of 'fair capitalism'.
With the failure of the tricameral constitution and intensified sanctions from the international community, FW de Klerk was may have been put in power with the task of dismantling the apartheid state as quietly and gracefully as possible. Hence, by the time the multiracial Mass Democratic Movement launched their civil disobedience campaign (the first sign of a major movement against the regime that included large numbers of those who had benefitted from it), the National Party was already busy repealing some of its most unpopular measures, such as the banning of ANC and PAC, the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela and the colonization of Namibia. In 1991 the Group Areas, Land and Population Registration Acts were repealed, and the CODESA negotiations instituted. After South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994, Nelson Mandela and the ANC took over as custodians of the South African state.
Let's fast forward a bit, to Thursday August 16, 2001. We are at a racism conference in the Western Cape province, an event held in conjunction with global UN conference on racism to be held in Durban, South Africa, later in the month. In Durban, leaders of states, international organizations and NGO will give well-meaning speeches on their fight on the scourge on racism. Tonight, however, we are about to witness Wanda Stoffberg taking the stage. She has been running the butchery Vleis Paleis in George, on the South African garden route, in face of increasing protests from neighbouring small- holders. As she serves a predominantly black clientele, her neighbours have successfully petitioned the local zoning authorities, controlled by the Democratic Alliance, to have her butchery closed. Stoffberg, in return, contacted the local branch of the ANC to recruit their support, and announced as much in the local newspaper. Tonight she will tell of the reaction from her local community.
At the gate of her smallholding, two men attacked her from behind, hitting, kicking and throttling her. Then one of them, who she saw from his hand was a white man, carved a "K" into her left breast.
"He said: This is a message from our boss. Those were his exact words. And kaffirboeties like me can't stay in George." The men said the "K" was "because I'm a kaffir-lover".
While goodwill prevails among ordinary people, she says, white supremacist attitudes had been forced on whites during the apartheid reign.
> As a child growing up in Beaufort West racism was "force-fed" to her every
> day of her life and at one stage she was even scared of black people.
>
> "One day you wake up and realise you have been part of something so bad
> and so wrong, for so long."
>
> People felt guilty when they realised this. Some ignored the guilt but
> others chose to deal with it.
>
> She said she had reservations about coming to speak at the conference,
> "but I decided to stand up for the truth for once in my life, a truth
> which many of us are still in denial of.
>
> "We should not tolerate any form of discrimination or racism in our
> country. The perpetrators should be punished. This is the humble message I
> want to bring to you," she said.
>
> "I want something positive to come from this. We are a nation in the
> process of healing... and I learned and believed today there are enough
> people in this country with goodwill to heal this country."
>
> Stoffberg, sitting on the stage after delivering her testimony, later
> broke down as another victim of a racist attack, Zola Plaatjie, wept as he
> was describing how he was assaulted by whites in Milnerton, Cape Town.
(http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?sf=13&click_id=13&art_id=qw99796494157 0B653&set_id=1)
I am not suggesting here to view 1994, the year of South Africa's first parliamentary elections under general suffrage, as a moment of democratic redemption, of sorts, in the history of the country. Confining the practices with which apartheid is associated to the past enables the type of "current amazement that the things we are experiencing are 'still' possible [which] is not philosophical," as Benjamin demonstrates. By allowing the present to be defined as a state of emergency, it performs as the rule of which fascism becomes a normal expression. "One reason why Fascism has a chance is that in the name of progress its opponents treat it as a historical norm," Benjamin notes in his "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (249). With Benjamin, it might be necessary to work in tandem with two different notions of time. The dominant notion of time, the "homogeneous, empty" version, would perceive fascism as an aberrant form of politics, and, consequently, confirm the normality of the hegemonic formation.
Against this temporal conception, Benjamin holds the thought-image [Denkbild, in Weigel 162] of the "angel of history," a figure, who, while facing the past, is propelled backwards by "a storm blowing from Paradise" into the future, "while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress" (Benjamin, 249).
*1 The categories that became dominant towards the end of the apartheid epoch was "white/European," "coloured," "Indian" and "African." These categories were of course highly problematic, both in their implementations and conceptualizations.
*2 By this time, the theological justifications for white rule was of less importance. Dominantly, the situation was articulated as one of an embattled agent of order against a sea of disorder and chaos.
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
Diderik Humble jr. had just finished his letter to the editor of TRU Times, complaining that his mentor and benefactor in spe Darwin P. Johnson had been misinterpellated as Darwin P. Erlandsen, “a wholly different animal altogether,” in Humble’s own words. “Darwin will not take lightly on this mistake on your part, and may be persuaded to take legal precautions to have such gross misrepresentation rectified,” Humble had written, well aware of Johnson’s generosity to his friends.
Only last week Humble had to ask his sickly mother, stored away, as she was, in a barn somewhere in the Middle Kingdom, to extend him a small grant, “for a new coat,” as he put it. It was dire times for Humble, even though he had succumbed to the call to join the new corporation. For one, he had been unable to have his interjection on the debate on Solyaris. I was bending paper clips, rolling cigarettes ferociously, trying to know something about the movie, all the while Diderik repeated the same phrases, “Allow me to interject,” and “Not to be presumptious or facetious in any way, but,” and so on. I asked him to write his ideas down, if he could find the time in between composing his Compleat Theory of the World and Everything Else (Vol. I). Last night I received this note in my post box:
I had already passed my remarks on the movie to the TRU Times, and, not having seen “the new American version,” saw no reason to post an addendum. Instead, I sent him an text message, inviting him out for a cup of tea at The Spectre of Kabool.
It was a seedy joint, crammed with the usual racket of hypocrites, do-gooders and other bleeding heart liberals. We found a table in the darkest corner of the bar, where only the occasional prostitute would pop by, thinking we might just be some potential paying customers. When she saw us, she would invariably turn on her heels, displaying a somewhat repulséd look.
When Diderik finally arrived, he was not alone. Sinsemilla, his estanged wife, came stumbling through the door, holding on to the sleeve of his jacket, behind his ghostly apparition, like some shadow of a metaphor.
“Stop it now, Sinsemilla. I said you could come with,” Diderik started.
“What is she doing here,” I said, staring directly at Diderik.
“She wouldn’t be left alone.”
“I thought you said you’d killed her. Killed her good.”
“I thought I had. But I hadn’t. Or so it seems.”
Sinsemilla needed to use the restroom, and Diderik had to come along. He couldn’t leave her alone. He’d brought a thick brown envelope to the bar, and left in on the table while he was escorting Sinsemilla. I looked at it thoroughly, considering whether it could be some primordial version of the manuscript he’d been working on. I glanced around furtively, and quickly slid the envelope into my lap.
Diderik Humble jr.'s thesis
I managed to slip the manuscript back into the envelope and slide it back onto the table just in time for Diderik not to notice. I think. He pushed his body over the floor, dragging his ghost behind him like some metaphoric shadow.
“Stop it now, Sinsemilla. I said you could come with,” Diderik said.
Only last week Humble had to ask his sickly mother, stored away, as she was, in a barn somewhere in the Middle Kingdom, to extend him a small grant, “for a new coat,” as he put it. It was dire times for Humble, even though he had succumbed to the call to join the new corporation. For one, he had been unable to have his interjection on the debate on Solyaris. I was bending paper clips, rolling cigarettes ferociously, trying to know something about the movie, all the while Diderik repeated the same phrases, “Allow me to interject,” and “Not to be presumptious or facetious in any way, but,” and so on. I asked him to write his ideas down, if he could find the time in between composing his Compleat Theory of the World and Everything Else (Vol. I). Last night I received this note in my post box:
Curious the way Tristero placed those two post horns on the wall in Tarkovsky’s Solyaris. Wonder if those horns are there in the new American version?
I had already passed my remarks on the movie to the TRU Times, and, not having seen “the new American version,” saw no reason to post an addendum. Instead, I sent him an text message, inviting him out for a cup of tea at The Spectre of Kabool.
It was a seedy joint, crammed with the usual racket of hypocrites, do-gooders and other bleeding heart liberals. We found a table in the darkest corner of the bar, where only the occasional prostitute would pop by, thinking we might just be some potential paying customers. When she saw us, she would invariably turn on her heels, displaying a somewhat repulséd look.
When Diderik finally arrived, he was not alone. Sinsemilla, his estanged wife, came stumbling through the door, holding on to the sleeve of his jacket, behind his ghostly apparition, like some shadow of a metaphor.
“Stop it now, Sinsemilla. I said you could come with,” Diderik started.
“What is she doing here,” I said, staring directly at Diderik.
“She wouldn’t be left alone.”
“I thought you said you’d killed her. Killed her good.”
“I thought I had. But I hadn’t. Or so it seems.”
Sinsemilla needed to use the restroom, and Diderik had to come along. He couldn’t leave her alone. He’d brought a thick brown envelope to the bar, and left in on the table while he was escorting Sinsemilla. I looked at it thoroughly, considering whether it could be some primordial version of the manuscript he’d been working on. I glanced around furtively, and quickly slid the envelope into my lap.
Diderik Humble jr.'s thesis
Laertes in his «Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers» notes that «When somebody asked Heraclit to decree some rules, she showed no interest because the government of the city was already bad. Instead, she went to the temple and played dices with children. Finally she withdrew from the world , and lived in the mountains feeding on grasses and plants. However, having fallen in this way into dropsy she came down to town and asked the doctors in a riddle if they could make a drought out of rainy weather. When they did not understand she buried herself in a cow-stall, expecting that the dropsy would be evaporated by the heat of the manure; but even so she failed to effect anything, and ended her life at the age of sixty».
I managed to slip the manuscript back into the envelope and slide it back onto the table just in time for Diderik not to notice. I think. He pushed his body over the floor, dragging his ghost behind him like some metaphoric shadow.
“Stop it now, Sinsemilla. I said you could come with,” Diderik said.
Monday, November 24, 2003
What is I fighting for?
I fought the law but the law one,
I fought the law I fought for fun
I fought the law but the law won.
I fought the law but the
Why is the walrus such a bore?
I fought the law but the law one,
I fought the law I fought for fun
I fought the law but the law won.
I fought the law but the
What am I but a metaphor?
I fought the law but the law one,
I fought the law I fought for fun
I fought the law but the law won.
I fought the law but the
I fought the law but the law one,
I fought the law I fought for fun
I fought the law but the law won.
I fought the law but the
Why is the walrus such a bore?
I fought the law but the law one,
I fought the law I fought for fun
I fought the law but the law won.
I fought the law but the
What am I but a metaphor?
I fought the law but the law one,
I fought the law I fought for fun
I fought the law but the law won.
I fought the law but the
The Future is a Genre
(and therefore iterable)
On Solyaris (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972, based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem).
Notes
Kris is a psychologist charged with considering the possible conclusion of the Solaris space project. Before departing he meets Berton, who was ejected from the mission after reporting on all sorts of queer visions while on a mission to rescue a fellow cosmonaut who had been lost on the planet. Berton has some insight, hardly communicable to someone with "the mind of an accountant," as he claims Kris has. He urges Kris not to recommend bombarding the Solaris -- it would not be a moral thing to do, Berton claims.
Here are two summaries from http://www.imdb.com/:
Summary by Dan Ellis:
> The Solaris mission has established a base on a planet that appears to
> host some kind of intelligence, but the details are hazy and very secret.
> After the mysterious demise of one of the three scientists on the base,
> the main character is sent out to replace him. He finds the station
> run-down and the two remaining scientists cold and secretive. When he also
> encounters his wife who has been dead for seven years, he begins to
> appreciate the baffling nature of the alien intelligence.
Summary by Philip Brubaker:
> This film probes man's thoughts and conscience, as it follows a
> psychologist who is sent to a space station situated over the mysterious
> Solaris Ocean. The two other scientists there tell the psychologist of
> strange occurrences in the station, and the Ocean's eerie ability to
> materialize their thoughts. After being in the station for a while, the
> psychologist finds himself becoming very attached to it's alternate
> reality...
After a short while at the station, Kris meets an apparition of his late wife, who had committed suicide after he left her. She is very much flesh and blood. They watch a film from his childhood that he had brought with from earth. In the film, there are images of Kris' mother in a fur coat.
The issue of "Khari"'s true identity is further complicated as the head scientist of the station, Dr. Sartorius, demonstrate that she does not have blood in her veins, and that can not be killed. He is propagating bombarding the planet, as that must be the source of the cosmonauts' delusions. Kris, who originally championed the same solution to the problem of Solaris, now has second thoughts. Nothing Sartorius says can alter the fact the he loves his wife.
Dr. Snaut, the third cosmonaut on the station, has invited his colleague to his birthday party, to be held in the library, the only space in the station without windows. It is decorated with all sorts of contraptions of European High Culture. Kris brings Khari to the festivities, which Dr. Sartorius does not approve of. Dr. Snaut recommends Kris not to worry about the bookkeeping of science, but rather to delve in texts that will provide understanding, such as Don Quixote. He opens the book in front of Kris and Khari, and quotes from Sancos Pancha's Ode to Sleep:
Dr. Sartorius reminds Kris that he is a scientist, and that that entails certain obligatory relations to objects of observation:
This scene is followed by a confrontation between Dr. Sartorius and Khari and the exchange of some harsh words:
Notions
(and therefore iterable)
On Solyaris (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972, based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem).
Notes
Kris is a psychologist charged with considering the possible conclusion of the Solaris space project. Before departing he meets Berton, who was ejected from the mission after reporting on all sorts of queer visions while on a mission to rescue a fellow cosmonaut who had been lost on the planet. Berton has some insight, hardly communicable to someone with "the mind of an accountant," as he claims Kris has. He urges Kris not to recommend bombarding the Solaris -- it would not be a moral thing to do, Berton claims.
Here are two summaries from http://www.imdb.com/:
Summary by Dan Ellis:
> The Solaris mission has established a base on a planet that appears to
> host some kind of intelligence, but the details are hazy and very secret.
> After the mysterious demise of one of the three scientists on the base,
> the main character is sent out to replace him. He finds the station
> run-down and the two remaining scientists cold and secretive. When he also
> encounters his wife who has been dead for seven years, he begins to
> appreciate the baffling nature of the alien intelligence.
Summary by Philip Brubaker:
> This film probes man's thoughts and conscience, as it follows a
> psychologist who is sent to a space station situated over the mysterious
> Solaris Ocean. The two other scientists there tell the psychologist of
> strange occurrences in the station, and the Ocean's eerie ability to
> materialize their thoughts. After being in the station for a while, the
> psychologist finds himself becoming very attached to it's alternate
> reality...
After a short while at the station, Kris meets an apparition of his late wife, who had committed suicide after he left her. She is very much flesh and blood. They watch a film from his childhood that he had brought with from earth. In the film, there are images of Kris' mother in a fur coat.
In KRIS' cabin: KHARI watching herself in a mirror.
KHARI
I don't even know my own self. Who am I? As soon as I close my eyes I can't recall what my face looks like. Can you?
KRIS
What?
KHARI
Do you know who you are?
KRIS
Yes, all humans do.
KHARI
Ah... (pause) That woman in the fur coat, she hated me.
KRIS
That's your imagination. That woman died long ago, before we even met.
KHARI
I remember her very clearly. What makes you deny it? I tell you I do remember. I came over for tea, and she told me to leave the house. So I left at once, I remember it very well. And what happened after that?
KRIS
After that I went away and that was the last time we ever saw each other.
KHARI
Where did you go?
KRIS
To another city.
KHARI
Why?
KRIS
I was transferred.
KHARI
But why didn't you take me with you?
KRIS
It was you who refused to come.
KHARI
Ah... Yes, now I remember.
The issue of "Khari"'s true identity is further complicated as the head scientist of the station, Dr. Sartorius, demonstrate that she does not have blood in her veins, and that can not be killed. He is propagating bombarding the planet, as that must be the source of the cosmonauts' delusions. Kris, who originally championed the same solution to the problem of Solaris, now has second thoughts. Nothing Sartorius says can alter the fact the he loves his wife.
Dr. Snaut, the third cosmonaut on the station, has invited his colleague to his birthday party, to be held in the library, the only space in the station without windows. It is decorated with all sorts of contraptions of European High Culture. Kris brings Khari to the festivities, which Dr. Sartorius does not approve of. Dr. Snaut recommends Kris not to worry about the bookkeeping of science, but rather to delve in texts that will provide understanding, such as Don Quixote. He opens the book in front of Kris and Khari, and quotes from Sancos Pancha's Ode to Sleep:
Senor, I know only one thing, and this is when I... (pause) and that is when I sleep I know no sadness, no fear, no hope, no blessing, no work. Praise be the gentle sleep's creator. That currency [...] has only one defect for it lacks too much of death.
Dr. Sartorius reminds Kris that he is a scientist, and that that entails certain obligatory relations to objects of observation:
In the library.
DR. SARTORIUS
At least I know why I'm here. I am here to work. Nature created man so that he might gain knowledge. (Slams his hand holding his glasses in the table so the glasses fall out of their frame. Continues calmly.) In his ceaseless march to truth man is condemned to knowledge. The rest is of no consequence. (pause) If you will permit me to inquire about a colleague, exactly what are you doing on Solaris?
KRIS
What a question.
DR. SARTORIUS
It can't be your work that brought you here. Except for your trust with your ex-spouse absolutely nothing here seems to interest you. Your time is spent in bed discussing scientific ideals. And I'm supposed to appreciate the great job you're doing. I fear you've lost contact with reality. If you ask me you're plain lazy.
KRIS
Oh, stop it.
This scene is followed by a confrontation between Dr. Sartorius and Khari and the exchange of some harsh words:
KHARI
I'm not finished. I'm a woman! Treat me with consideration.
DR. SARTORIUS
Woman? How can you say that? You're not even a human being. Try to understand that, if in some way you are capable of understanding. KHARI is dead. She doesn't exist. As for you, you're only a reproduction, a mechanical repetition of the form, a copy from a matrix.
KHARI
Yes. Perhaps, yes. But I... I have become a human being. I can feel just as deeply as any of you, and I feel pain.
Notions
- How we imagine the future is structured by the genre of future (cf. software companies' etc. scenarios of "the future", Sid Meyer's Civilization prominently; the dependecy of Luc Besson's Fifth Element on Ridley Scott's Blade Runner etc.).
- We know what we're coming from by not where we're going. (Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.)
- On teaching Aristotle's Ars Poetica: In some elementary textbooks it is the claimed that we can imagine all sorts of odd curves in a drama (i.e., that the drama doesn't have to be structured as exposition, increasing tension, crisis, decreasing tension, climax/catastrophe, but that the order may be different or some other such change). In other words, these books are inventing Aristotle. But what's the purpose of the curve? It is as if these textbooks assume (with Boileu) that it was a prescriptive tool?
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
“Don’t freak out, now.” It’s a terrifying moment after the OS starts up and I wait motionless and for the mother board to finish her processes. I still have the resolution to move the mouse so as to cause the pointer to mark the white square with the green “R” at the top right corner of the screen, but the enforced period of impassivity inflicts an increasing sense of doubt. My mind starts wandering, thinking of the Spider game, and, as a result of it, the man dressed in a Spider Man costume in London, fighting for his rights to custody over his daughter, which, again, causes me to think of Robert Bly and the Howl of the Wild. Bly had this idea that Men needed to Get Out More. “If we’d only get out more,” he reasoned, “we would become milder characters, more gentle in our manners and cetera.” So what he did, like, you know, what he’d do, kind of, was to take a bunch of guys into the forest, you know, like, kind of, and Howl. This procedure was undertaken in order to bring the Male Id in junction with the Male Ego, hence manufacturing a kind of sutured response in the subject, abnegating the effect of the Mirror Stage and the Symbolic Order, as it were.
(All these observations must be meticulously noted in the Journal, so that future biographers won’t miss (out on) all the clever theoretical observations I was actually undertaking while playing, say, Civilization or Age of Emires. The latter of which being, of course, a Microsoft game. Let it also be said now and henceforth that I am, also and as a matter of fact, aware that one shouldn’t start a paragraph with a parenthetical remark, I mean, that’s just not on. But let US stick to the moot point, which are that Bill Gates, while being a nasty sort of guy, being up to all sorts of wickedness, I am sure, is not the cause of his blame. Or to blame for his cause, for that matter. Mr Bill, as we call him here in the Colonies, should not be killed (terrible movie, by the way, not even boring, fell asleep after an hour, good sleep though, wish he’d turn down the volume a bit on Vol II, but -- maybe he won’t --), but seen as what he is -- a lackey in a white shirt. He’s got his little Mansion on the Hill, now, with all kinds of nice gadgets running around greeting him, “Hi, Bill,” when he gets home at night, usually late, ‘cause he’s got to work Long Hours at the Office, sincerly, and these robots are perfect replicas of the dolls in Ridley Scott’s house. (Note to Big Other: Please make a Cultured Reference note.)
All articulation is directed to a future self, the self of the Other, a becoming self, never there in-it(’s)-self. (Derrida scholars, et so on.)
But, yeah, I was talking about Mr Bill. A moot sort of wickedness. Thing is that he’s extremely successful at what he claims to be doing, he would be considered the cream of the puff to the dudes in his kind of social field. (Bourdieu-scholars, take note.) He’s the cherry on the icing, the cream of the doughnut, the paste of the cut of the [relatively new, at least in it’s ideological formation] managerial class. The logic of accumulation goes: I want more money. Simple, really. Thing is that it’s exponential (yes, Paul Stone, you can calculate it’s “growth”), and, hence, and because of it, if the capitalist want 10 Norwegian Kroner return on his “loan” today, you can be sure he’ll demand 100 Kroner tomorrow, and you’d better deliver, or he’ll bump you down to the previous level. (Very few participants stay on ‘till the end in this game, as you may appreciate.) Here is the major difference between a neo-liberal logic of The Economy and the socialists ditto [and it is to be noted that neo-liberal economic ideology has now become part of the (neo-)conservative stock, and, hence, and because of it, a conservative virtue, and, because of it, indicating both the need to rearticulate the ideological juncture of this kind of logic, it’s ideological home, so to speak, and to reassess the strategies outlined in the work of Pierre Bourdieu, founded, as it is, on the linkage of stragegies of the “neo-liberal” at his moment (downsizing, privatisation, globalisation, etc.), which are now associated with conservative political movements]:
* We are eating a cake, but each of us wants more to eat every day (in an exponential fashion). This is not a problem, dude, because the cake keeps growing, courtesy of our magical system, called (fan fare) Capitalism (in it’s neo-liberal/conservative ideological articulation).
* Or: We are sharing a cake in such a way that a few (and they are decreasing in numbers) get to eat more and more of the cake (in an exponential manner) and, even if it was the case that the cake is growing, the growth of their increasing demands are outstripping any possible growth of the cake, and, as a consequence, the vast majority of eaters have to eat LESS every day. If, however, the majority of cake eaters would realize their common situation, they would grab their forks in a stabbing motion (and, yes, that is a brutal metaphor -- there is another version, the one I tend to favour, in which the greedy cake monsters -- they’re kind of like Mr Kreosot of Monty Python fame -- take up arms to force the majority of cake eaters to eat less, and the majority must take up arms to DEFEND their selves (hence the prevalence of the term Defence force as signifying the armed wing of the state, as if it was never used against state’s OWN POPULATION)).
Structuralist Marxists would say that the state under capitalism serves as the armed wing of the Kreosots of thishere world. It is myths (in it’s collective form also referred to as Ideology, dominantly in the singular) that masks this Reality. If people (the vast majority of increasingly starving cake eaters) would only see past the veil, turn their faces from the back wall of their cave and turn to See The Light, they would be transposed from the realm of the fake to the realm of the real, the realm of darkness to the realm of light. It is, however, and according to Zizek, not that easy.
It is, actually, impossible to imagine a state in which reality could ever be unmediated. [Anarchists would say that that is because we need to Abolish State.] Because, if notions like Meaning and Reality are to have any Social Implications, they must by constructed as matters of iterativity. If I want Meaning to signify ‘Terrorists are really Wicked People’, I may do so, and it may be meaningful to me in a system(at)ic manner, but not if my systems are screwed up, see what I mean. Meaning can’t mean whatever I want it to mean, if I want it to mean anything to anyone but me. But that doesn’t mean that the word meaning can’t have more than one meaning. So, hence and in other words, it is not possible to imagine a social meaning without some sort of structure, or mediation, or iterativity.
* Iterativity implies structure.
But, says the post-structuralists, the fact that there must be structure for us to communicate, doesn’t mean that it can only be One Structure, now, does it? I could coomunicate with Tom at this moment, but not with Dick and Tracy, and with, say, Dick at the next moment, but not with Tom nor Tracy, so as to imply that there could be different ways of communicating with Tim, Dick and Tracy (or Jerry, or whatever). But oh, squeek the structuralists with their grumpy old-men’s voices, “but at the Deep Level, young man, and this is something you will realize when you Grow Up (and See the Light etc.), all structures are really One, the One Deep Structure. And if you try to take that Faith away from us, vee veel Cut Off Your Chonson.” Anyway, this is still an ongoing debate in Certain Circles.
Which is a long way of saying that “You don’t have to be deep to be structured.”
(All these observations must be meticulously noted in the Journal, so that future biographers won’t miss (out on) all the clever theoretical observations I was actually undertaking while playing, say, Civilization or Age of Emires. The latter of which being, of course, a Microsoft game. Let it also be said now and henceforth that I am, also and as a matter of fact, aware that one shouldn’t start a paragraph with a parenthetical remark, I mean, that’s just not on. But let US stick to the moot point, which are that Bill Gates, while being a nasty sort of guy, being up to all sorts of wickedness, I am sure, is not the cause of his blame. Or to blame for his cause, for that matter. Mr Bill, as we call him here in the Colonies, should not be killed (terrible movie, by the way, not even boring, fell asleep after an hour, good sleep though, wish he’d turn down the volume a bit on Vol II, but -- maybe he won’t --), but seen as what he is -- a lackey in a white shirt. He’s got his little Mansion on the Hill, now, with all kinds of nice gadgets running around greeting him, “Hi, Bill,” when he gets home at night, usually late, ‘cause he’s got to work Long Hours at the Office, sincerly, and these robots are perfect replicas of the dolls in Ridley Scott’s house. (Note to Big Other: Please make a Cultured Reference note.)
All articulation is directed to a future self, the self of the Other, a becoming self, never there in-it(’s)-self. (Derrida scholars, et so on.)
But, yeah, I was talking about Mr Bill. A moot sort of wickedness. Thing is that he’s extremely successful at what he claims to be doing, he would be considered the cream of the puff to the dudes in his kind of social field. (Bourdieu-scholars, take note.) He’s the cherry on the icing, the cream of the doughnut, the paste of the cut of the [relatively new, at least in it’s ideological formation] managerial class. The logic of accumulation goes: I want more money. Simple, really. Thing is that it’s exponential (yes, Paul Stone, you can calculate it’s “growth”), and, hence, and because of it, if the capitalist want 10 Norwegian Kroner return on his “loan” today, you can be sure he’ll demand 100 Kroner tomorrow, and you’d better deliver, or he’ll bump you down to the previous level. (Very few participants stay on ‘till the end in this game, as you may appreciate.) Here is the major difference between a neo-liberal logic of The Economy and the socialists ditto [and it is to be noted that neo-liberal economic ideology has now become part of the (neo-)conservative stock, and, hence, and because of it, a conservative virtue, and, because of it, indicating both the need to rearticulate the ideological juncture of this kind of logic, it’s ideological home, so to speak, and to reassess the strategies outlined in the work of Pierre Bourdieu, founded, as it is, on the linkage of stragegies of the “neo-liberal” at his moment (downsizing, privatisation, globalisation, etc.), which are now associated with conservative political movements]:
* We are eating a cake, but each of us wants more to eat every day (in an exponential fashion). This is not a problem, dude, because the cake keeps growing, courtesy of our magical system, called (fan fare) Capitalism (in it’s neo-liberal/conservative ideological articulation).
* Or: We are sharing a cake in such a way that a few (and they are decreasing in numbers) get to eat more and more of the cake (in an exponential manner) and, even if it was the case that the cake is growing, the growth of their increasing demands are outstripping any possible growth of the cake, and, as a consequence, the vast majority of eaters have to eat LESS every day. If, however, the majority of cake eaters would realize their common situation, they would grab their forks in a stabbing motion (and, yes, that is a brutal metaphor -- there is another version, the one I tend to favour, in which the greedy cake monsters -- they’re kind of like Mr Kreosot of Monty Python fame -- take up arms to force the majority of cake eaters to eat less, and the majority must take up arms to DEFEND their selves (hence the prevalence of the term Defence force as signifying the armed wing of the state, as if it was never used against state’s OWN POPULATION)).
Structuralist Marxists would say that the state under capitalism serves as the armed wing of the Kreosots of thishere world. It is myths (in it’s collective form also referred to as Ideology, dominantly in the singular) that masks this Reality. If people (the vast majority of increasingly starving cake eaters) would only see past the veil, turn their faces from the back wall of their cave and turn to See The Light, they would be transposed from the realm of the fake to the realm of the real, the realm of darkness to the realm of light. It is, however, and according to Zizek, not that easy.
It is, actually, impossible to imagine a state in which reality could ever be unmediated. [Anarchists would say that that is because we need to Abolish State.] Because, if notions like Meaning and Reality are to have any Social Implications, they must by constructed as matters of iterativity. If I want Meaning to signify ‘Terrorists are really Wicked People’, I may do so, and it may be meaningful to me in a system(at)ic manner, but not if my systems are screwed up, see what I mean. Meaning can’t mean whatever I want it to mean, if I want it to mean anything to anyone but me. But that doesn’t mean that the word meaning can’t have more than one meaning. So, hence and in other words, it is not possible to imagine a social meaning without some sort of structure, or mediation, or iterativity.
* Iterativity implies structure.
But, says the post-structuralists, the fact that there must be structure for us to communicate, doesn’t mean that it can only be One Structure, now, does it? I could coomunicate with Tom at this moment, but not with Dick and Tracy, and with, say, Dick at the next moment, but not with Tom nor Tracy, so as to imply that there could be different ways of communicating with Tim, Dick and Tracy (or Jerry, or whatever). But oh, squeek the structuralists with their grumpy old-men’s voices, “but at the Deep Level, young man, and this is something you will realize when you Grow Up (and See the Light etc.), all structures are really One, the One Deep Structure. And if you try to take that Faith away from us, vee veel Cut Off Your Chonson.” Anyway, this is still an ongoing debate in Certain Circles.
Which is a long way of saying that “You don’t have to be deep to be structured.”
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
“Watching Suy Kui act is deeply disturbing,” Diderik said. “She is a seemingly seemless display of trenchant display of phallic imagery.”
We were seated in the Spectre of Kabool, drinking green leaf tea and chewing chiabattas.
“Burp,” said I. “I’ll get another pot. You want one?”
When I returned, Diderik was still staring into space, in exactly the same posture as I’d left him. I put the cup of tea in front of him.
“So, what else have you been up to lately,” I asked.
“Well, it’s uncomfortable to work for TRU. I mean, I was used to the restrictions in the tried and tested EyeRak system, but there’s a whole different set of pre and pro scriptions now. I can’t go into them. I mean, they’re classified for one,” Diderik said.
“No, I meant what have you been up to after Sinsemilla left.”
“Oh, that,” Diderik said, but I know he merely pretended not to be bothered. It was a secret, albeit public, scandal that Diderik’s compulsive wife, 20 years his junior, had left him for a bouncer at the TRU Executive’s Club. She passed me in the rush the other day, driving a red BMW convertible. Diderik was still driving his hammered old Trabant. It was parked across the street from the bar we were patronizing, with a coating of white tape around the left side mirror, probably put there to keep it from falling apart, standing out from the grime and rust of the battered vehicle.
“No, listen, I mean that
‘I’m not comfortable in this corporation,
but this corporation has made itself comfortable in me!’”
“Stop quoting Ekelöf and get to the point, I said, waving my hand vigorously, as if to scare away some fishy flies from his discourse.
“No, I mean that Suy Kui offers no resistance to the imaginary. She’s the terrifying spectral image of phallic desire.”
“As in Natural?” I said. “Nonsense. What do you know about Hardcore?”
“Well, I know it was a boook written by Linda Williams, in which she discourses upon the porn genre.”
In the book, Diderik said, Williams elaborates the concept of visual spectacle, using at is a vehicle to explain the prevalence of the cumshot as an ocular gimmick. The cumshot constitutes the high point of a hand-job sequel, usually around 15-20 minutes in duration. The sequel typically opens with some narrative pretension: a lightly clad sorority girl gets a visit from the post-man, or horny house-person is having one’s cable fixed, and so on. Then her step-sister or room-mate emerges from the shower or bed-room, preferable in the nude, and the action begins. This sequence is tightly scripted, and, finally, ending in the infamous, and already-mentioned, cumshot. What Suy Kui had managed in her work, Diderik said, was no less than the most perfected embodiment of the phallic imagining to date.
“It’s brutal. You never know if you’re watching a machine or a person.”
“A personal machine, perhaps,” I said, in an, admittedly failed, attempt to be witty.
“Or a mechanical person,” Diderik explicated, while fishing out another cigarette from his packet with his hand-implants. He’d stopped wearing the skin cover, and the metal screws holding his hands together were on display in their cruel and senseless honesty.
We were seated in the Spectre of Kabool, drinking green leaf tea and chewing chiabattas.
“Burp,” said I. “I’ll get another pot. You want one?”
When I returned, Diderik was still staring into space, in exactly the same posture as I’d left him. I put the cup of tea in front of him.
“So, what else have you been up to lately,” I asked.
“Well, it’s uncomfortable to work for TRU. I mean, I was used to the restrictions in the tried and tested EyeRak system, but there’s a whole different set of pre and pro scriptions now. I can’t go into them. I mean, they’re classified for one,” Diderik said.
“No, I meant what have you been up to after Sinsemilla left.”
“Oh, that,” Diderik said, but I know he merely pretended not to be bothered. It was a secret, albeit public, scandal that Diderik’s compulsive wife, 20 years his junior, had left him for a bouncer at the TRU Executive’s Club. She passed me in the rush the other day, driving a red BMW convertible. Diderik was still driving his hammered old Trabant. It was parked across the street from the bar we were patronizing, with a coating of white tape around the left side mirror, probably put there to keep it from falling apart, standing out from the grime and rust of the battered vehicle.
“No, listen, I mean that
‘I’m not comfortable in this corporation,
but this corporation has made itself comfortable in me!’”
“Stop quoting Ekelöf and get to the point, I said, waving my hand vigorously, as if to scare away some fishy flies from his discourse.
“No, I mean that Suy Kui offers no resistance to the imaginary. She’s the terrifying spectral image of phallic desire.”
“As in Natural?” I said. “Nonsense. What do you know about Hardcore?”
“Well, I know it was a boook written by Linda Williams, in which she discourses upon the porn genre.”
In the book, Diderik said, Williams elaborates the concept of visual spectacle, using at is a vehicle to explain the prevalence of the cumshot as an ocular gimmick. The cumshot constitutes the high point of a hand-job sequel, usually around 15-20 minutes in duration. The sequel typically opens with some narrative pretension: a lightly clad sorority girl gets a visit from the post-man, or horny house-person is having one’s cable fixed, and so on. Then her step-sister or room-mate emerges from the shower or bed-room, preferable in the nude, and the action begins. This sequence is tightly scripted, and, finally, ending in the infamous, and already-mentioned, cumshot. What Suy Kui had managed in her work, Diderik said, was no less than the most perfected embodiment of the phallic imagining to date.
“It’s brutal. You never know if you’re watching a machine or a person.”
“A personal machine, perhaps,” I said, in an, admittedly failed, attempt to be witty.
“Or a mechanical person,” Diderik explicated, while fishing out another cigarette from his packet with his hand-implants. He’d stopped wearing the skin cover, and the metal screws holding his hands together were on display in their cruel and senseless honesty.
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
It was a strange time in the history of EyeRak Inc. After many years under the fraternal leadership of Comrade Mistos, followed by the attentive command of General Mistos, and the glorious paternity of Cardinal Mistos (the same Mistos after converversions), the competing Terror "R" US, ok!? had finally managed to wring control of the corporation after an aggressive knife-to-the-throat attack on EyeRak shares. It had installed its leader, Managing Director Sotsim, who persistently declined to comment rumors that TRU planned to downsize all "non-essential" staff and replace them with robots supplied the mother corporation.
Primarily, though, it was expected that TRU was interested in the rights to important mineral assets under the ownership of EyeRak Inc. It was a matter of a number of gold and diamond mines in the Accessories Division of the corporation, and the Spring of Muses, an ancient site of pilgrimate for poets on the TRU payroll, who would now have free or a significantly reduced price on access to the shrine, which would enable TRU to cut costs and put more money in the Future Fund, a large vault of money only accessible to the Inner Trust, a cabal of Managing Directors of the Clan Chosen by Mammon.
It was a strange time, indeed, for employees of EyeRak Inc. With the spectre of mass firings looming, they had adopted a number of strategies to better their own chances in the new corporation, however it might be shaped. Some had started writing long, elaborate letters to the new management team, laying out how their husbands were out of work, their daughters lacking the most essential of winter clothing, and how desperately they needed to keep their job. Others would take extreme measures to find out when a manager might stop by their particular part of the corporation, and would then put on their best clothes, and bring a parcel of tea-leaves from their own garden to present the manager as a token of appreciation of and confidence in their leadership. Yet others would make complex plots to undermine the chances of fellow employees in the competition for work in the new corporation. Project papers would accidentaly dissapear in the shredder, memos from junior managers prompting urgent action would get lost, compromising the position of employees considered rejectable by a certain push of fate.
Primarily, though, it was expected that TRU was interested in the rights to important mineral assets under the ownership of EyeRak Inc. It was a matter of a number of gold and diamond mines in the Accessories Division of the corporation, and the Spring of Muses, an ancient site of pilgrimate for poets on the TRU payroll, who would now have free or a significantly reduced price on access to the shrine, which would enable TRU to cut costs and put more money in the Future Fund, a large vault of money only accessible to the Inner Trust, a cabal of Managing Directors of the Clan Chosen by Mammon.
It was a strange time, indeed, for employees of EyeRak Inc. With the spectre of mass firings looming, they had adopted a number of strategies to better their own chances in the new corporation, however it might be shaped. Some had started writing long, elaborate letters to the new management team, laying out how their husbands were out of work, their daughters lacking the most essential of winter clothing, and how desperately they needed to keep their job. Others would take extreme measures to find out when a manager might stop by their particular part of the corporation, and would then put on their best clothes, and bring a parcel of tea-leaves from their own garden to present the manager as a token of appreciation of and confidence in their leadership. Yet others would make complex plots to undermine the chances of fellow employees in the competition for work in the new corporation. Project papers would accidentaly dissapear in the shredder, memos from junior managers prompting urgent action would get lost, compromising the position of employees considered rejectable by a certain push of fate.
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