Tuesday 30 October 2012

Bataille and Marechera: terror as totem

Bataille 's writing suggests to me that if we establish a direct relationship with terror, we will be able to resist the imposition of terror from the outside. Alternatively, not to face the terror of life is to remain intoxicated by false assurances as to our ability to escape our own demise.   We all die. Also, when we are afraid, we find out what we're really made of -- what we are prepared to hold onto, and what we are willing to discard.

Marechera concurs by his rejection of the rest of humanity, to be alone with his own terror:


Nothing but blows and kicks
Greet the friendly eye of thought
Which bloodied muddied shakes the dust
To all humanity
And discovers terror the totem of truth.

Atmospheres and fetuses


Romney promises the wind, whilst Obama promises birth control.  Is that all there is to US politics? 


Art Jesse: I am jumping in with the old favorite "God helps those that help themselves" maybe a few people need to step up and assume control of their own lives instead of depending on the government. Also if you don't want us to have a say in your life don't demand we pay for birth control AND abortions. IMHO
Art Jesse: Romney just wants to take the gov't out of your reproductive cyle, not outlaw birth control or abortions. and I agree

Jennifer Frances Armstrong: The thing about some Americans is they are very stupid. For instance, they will assert something like "Jennifer demanded an abortion." Suddenly the idiots are "in my life".

Nina Selah: .......and every time I see some conversations like this.....it's white American men.......

Jennifer Frances Armstrong: And every time I see one, they have this complete fantasy idea about the kind of person I am, what I believe or don't believe, my level of education (they assume it must be equal or less than theirs, at least in terms of the knowledge that really matters). They keep assuming I'm from the USA, or that I share their cultural knowledge, even when I point out this is not the case.

Nina Selah: ....yes Jennifer ....it's LOL funny how these assumptions are actually made...
...
Jennifer Frances Armstrong: Not just that they are made as assumptions, but you can correct the error over and over, and still the fixed ideas remain.

Nina Selah: yes

Art Jesse: you are right about assumptions sticking even if not right. That goes for the assumptions about Mitt Romney. Maybe you should see what he is really about and his opinion of everyones rights (not just women).

Jennifer Frances Armstrong: Why don't you educate me about his opinion on actual human beings' rights?

Art Jesse: well so far he has stated he will follow the US Constitution and all people are entitled that coverage . He is pro-life and respects the US Supreme courts decisions. He does not have to agree with them, just recognise and support the judgements. If he follows the constitution as written we will be in better shape than we are now. As a business man he recognises that regulations and high taxes drive business out of our country and we lose revenue and JOBS.

Jennifer Frances Armstrong: So he's promised what to the actual human beings? I take it that you consider a fetus a human being, but I'm asking, what about the humans themselves? How are they covered?

Art Jesse: well he will not take over an entire industry-to control it, yes a fetus is a human being but those of us that are lucky enough to survive to birth he will live by the constitution so we can live our lives with less goverment control. he is not promising any money, free stuff or even a job. Just to give us an atmosphere that encourages the businesses to grow and hire more employees. There by letting those that wish to, to work and buy their own stuff. the best government if the one that does less governing.

Art Jesse: if people just want to life of the government than they need to be motivated to take control of their own lifes and earn their own keep.

Art Jesse: Obama has the welfare rolls at an all time high and growing, (among other things) this needs to change. So vote him out.

Jennifer Frances Armstrong: Well, all I can say is good luck with your "atmosphere" that promotes business growth, and may you have many, many fetuses to care about.

Nina Selah To @Art Jesse........many people who do not want Mitt Romney in power know exactly what he's on about - and that is why we don't want him.......the assumption that if we knew what he was about we would therefore want him in the White House is just plain wrong......Mitt Romney is a Republican and a millionaire and he has stated many, many positions that are the opposite of what I want in this world. So to not want Mitt Romney does not mean we don't know about him. Like most Republicans he wants less resources headed toward the poorest people. Less healthcare, less education and the list goes on. I believe taxation is a GREAT thing, because the people with resources re-distribute some of their wealth toward the more needy. I love paying my tax - and I pay big tax - because here in Australia I do not see nearly as many homeless and poor people as I see every time I go to America. I am married to an American, and I think America is the best example in the world of what is so wrong with capitalism.........there's nothing "free" about free enterprise as it's practiced in America. So yes, we know all about Mitt Romney and guess what? We just don't like him. Plain and simple........It's called an educated opinion........and the best thing about democracy is that i'm allowed to have my opinion.......you can even have yours too......even if it's uneducated........LOL.......

Jennifer Frances Armstrong: I also wish Americans good atmospheres...atmospheres for business. This is what Romney will deliver them. Personally I prefer the cool breeze on a hot day.

Art Jesse: Obama is a democrate and a millionaire and never held a jod in the public sector. So?
Jennifer Frances Armstrong: Doesn't matter, because he can't deliver you less than Romney is promising: "atmospheres" and fetuses.

Art Jesse: If you love to pay you taxes I bet you could give even more if you really wanted to. You have enough problems in Australia so why not fix your country instead of screw with mine? If redistribution is so great , why don't all the people that feel that way give their money to the gov't?

Jennifer Frances Armstrong: If I gave my money to the government, where would the fetuses get their money? They would become homeless.

Monday 29 October 2012

killing substance: FREE


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This is the longer version of TOM FREUDIAN. The refrain explores the psychology of submissiveness to patriarchal mores: the rule of The Father. There are echoes of Freudian psychoanalysis and Christian ideology, as the events pound out to their conclusion. I had some fun with this, because I wanted to show what it is like to realize you are surrounded on every side, after you have been set up to be a sacrifice to another's whims.

The calm in the eye of the storm

I've experienced what is described in terms of Andy's reactions, in the quote below.  When after several months of torture, I finally 'clicked' that what was happening in the workplace had been deliberate and intentional abuse, something switched in my head.

My focus became much sharper, my intentions ruthless

And suddenly I became calm.

The Psychopath Makeover - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

[In the lab, our pulse rates are significantly higher than our normal resting levels, in anticipation of what's to come.
But with the change of scene, an override switch flips somewhere in Andy's brain. And the ice-cold Special Forces soldier suddenly swings into action. As vivid, florid images of dismemberment, mutilation, torture, and execution flash up on the screen in front of us (so vivid, in fact, that Andy later confesses to actually being able to "smell" the blood: a "kind of sickly-sweet smell that you never, ever forget"), accompanied not by the ambient spa music of before but by blaring sirens and hissing white noise, his physiological readings start slipping into reverse. His pulse rate begins to slow. His GSR begins to drop, his EEG to quickly and dramatically attenuate. In fact, by the time the show is over, all three of Andy's physiological output measures are pooling below his baseline.
Nick has seen nothing like it. "It's almost as if he was gearing himself up for the challenge," he says. "And then, when the challenge eventually presented itself, his brain suddenly responded by injecting liquid nitrogen into his veins. Suddenly implemented a blanket neural cull of all surplus feral emotion. Suddenly locked down into a hypnotically deep code red of extreme and ruthless focus."
Despite the title of the article, there is no sense in which I am psychopathic, which is why, when I originally had my strange change of mental gears, I thought this ability to throw care to the winds and focus on extricating oneself effectively from a very bad situation must have been part of everybody's brains.

The writer's discussion implies that this isn't so, however it is likely that one would have to be put through a very prolonged, grueling experience, first, in order for the brain to ultimately resort to this extreme mode of adaptation.  Sitting in a lab doesn't cut it.

I do empathize with people deeply, under normal circumstances.  However, having been to this extreme point and back, I know that should somebody physically attack me, I would not require the build-up of months of provocation, in order for to move into the zone where I could adequately defend myself.

I'm capable of entering the eye of the storm because I've been there before. I also know that my mind calms down and that I am supremely confident in doing what has to be done to prioritize my own survival.

MINDBLAST


I recommend Marechera's MINDBLAST.  It starts with a youth being indoctinated by a giant cat.  The cat wants him to say 2 plus 2 equals 4, but the youth insists it equals 5. The cat  become more and more condemnatory:  "I will reeducate you!"  whilst the youth insists that reality can mean whatever he wants it to mean.

This is paradoxical criticism of the stifling of creativity, especially that of writers, under Robert Mugabe's Marxist regime.

There were only a few hundred copies made of this excellent collection of sketches, poetry and some unfinished works.  The order that it wasn't allowed to be published in Zimbabwe was temporarily reversed  -- (or perhaps permanently so, but still there are no books available for purchase, and sellers request over 100 pounds for old copies).  My university library copy, hurriedly printed by College Press, was yellowing, with many of the pages inserted in the wrong order (duplications, along with some pages missing).

Other sections of the book are veiled criticisms of the regime, which tried to co-opt ambitious writers by offering them unproductive jobs in 'The Ministry of Education'.

Here's another criticism of censorship from one of the long poems:

Minds of every hue intermingle with matter
Only of concern to the Censor;  Athena
And Malcolm X are the hosts, dealing
Out dagga [marijuana] and kachasu (a lethal homebrew spirit) to freedom's veterans.
Black sky, dark stingray --- O To drown in deep waters!
This dried-up Lake Kariba
Of censorship peering over
Homer's shoulder;
That tumultuously waterless
Victoria Falls
Of writer after writer
Hurled to the seething hell below.
I gave her the pure bloom of jacaranda
The fiery ecstasy of flamelilies
The continuous gnawing delight
That now is nothing but painful memory;
And few the luminous seasons in her eyes
Which to sheer adoration toss grudgingly
Bits of psychological speculation,
Bits of political condemnation.

Were Hell other people
And not myself I could willlingly
Diagnose the scratchings at the other side
Of the door.
The telephone rings;  from the other end of the line
My name an voice introduce themselves:  Poet.

Avoiding booby traps

What Offends You, the War on Women or That It’s Being Discussed? | Clarissa's Blog


If I am a woman speaking about women’s issues, a man may stand up and say, “Let’s try to be rational about all this.”

On the surface that statement would be impossible to disagree with. It’s good to be rational. Everyone should be rational. Let’s progress rationally.

However, beneath the surface, it has the opposite meaning. The way most people will hear it, because our ears are attuned to patriarchal symbolism, and because the issues being discussed concern gender, will be: “She’s going on and on, in an emotional and irrelevant way, and it’s time someone put a stop to this, so we can focus on what’s important.”

That’s what makes for the confusing aspect of the situation. The words have the opposite meanings to what they seem to have. Yes, in that sense it’s about like Orwellian language, because patriarchal metaphysics is like The Ministry of Peace. And, unless you have been exposed to its reverse logic, you won’t quite believe it. You will think that patriarchy is all about promoting rationality and aiding progress. I notice, though, that many women in the Labor party, Nicola Roxon. Penny Wong and Julia Gillard, all have a very shrewd understanding of how this game is played, which is why they have managed to reach high positions without being knocked down. Most women don't fully understand this. I was a late learner.

The booby trap in the patriarchal construct is that always, if try to oppose it’s method of silencing, you end up looking like you’re opposed to rationality — like you desire chaos to reign.

Gillard and others have done a remarkable job in side-stepping many of the patriarchal booby traps.

When people try to change you

 | Clarissa's Blog


People have tried to change me ever since the end of the Second Chimurenga, in 1980.  Both political leftists and political rightists have tried it for reasons best known to them.

This eventually caused me layer upon layer of traumatisation.

Once you get pulled into the power of evil people, the effect of their force field is hard to resist.  Other people won't let you get away. I’ve even had people imply that the fact because I was in such a hard place that I tried to accommodate all the demands for change, this meant I had an unstable sense of self.  If you try to give people what they're forcing you to give, it means you had something wrong with you from the start.  The ideology of dominance and submission typically reverses cause and effect.   "If you comply with me, I will prove you are evil!" is the ideology of evil and self-hating people.

The good news is, I’ve finally found a way through — by giving up.

You know, if an assailant has you in a bear hug, you can find that difficult to resist, but if he grabs you when you have a lot of air in your chest, you can suddenly let all the air out and make your body go limp. You can then drop to the ground and escape.

This is what I’ve finally managed to do on a psychological level, because I had learned over the years that the more I resisted, the worse it would become for me.

Women and Cockroaches | Clarissa's Blog

Women and Cockroaches | Clarissa's Blog


That’s why I had a bad reaction to my attempt to try therapy, too. It was like, “How could you possibly be angry at a situation that would enrage a normal human being? Your anger is inappropriate for someone like you! You should get along and comply with what others expect of you.”

The metaphysics of right-wing populism

What Offends You, the War on Women or That It’s Being Discussed? | Clarissa's Blog



Nothing that is said by the current English-speaking right wing parties is any different from what the metaphysics of patriarchy has already installed in our consciousness for eons.

The above statement draws on the presupposition that women’s issues are necessarily trivial, indeed in some sense not REAL at all.

So, if you want to complain you were raped, that is trivial.
If you want to equal pay, you are asking for something that the fabric of reality can’t accommodate.
If you disagree with misogyny, it is because you can’t get your pretty little head around the way REALITY NECESSARILY WORKS
If you talk about women’s health, you are trying to bring into the public sphere a measure of unreality.

Consequently, there is no war on women and never has been one. There have only been rational people — namely men — avoiding trivial and unreal things.

Authoritarian leftists

“If the Soviet Union was so bad, then why didn’t people flee?” | Clarissa's Blog


 One of the worst situations I faced was working at a Labor union, where they tried to change my character structure. There was a profound degree of cynicism in this place about human nature. You couldn’t do anything pleasurable, because it was a sign you were giving in to your humanity. I think the core of this ideology was driven by the Catholics in the organisation. The right faction of the left-wing Labor party in Australia has a lot of union support and I was working at a relatively conservative union.

Human dignity was degraded because the goal was to “shape” people, and to make them earn their respect. Any amount of protest against this was considered to be a sign of attempted political or emotional manipulation.

Trying to put up with this ended up breaking down my digestive system, which hasn’t fully recovered to this day. I wish people would learn we can’t shape adults, who have already developed a shape of their own. Trying to shape children isn’t all that better, but adults already have a character structure and working to break that down is abusive.


Knowledge and being

Shamanism's quest is ontological, to do with the nature of being, rather than epistemological, to do with developing a theory of knowledge.  It hardly denies the importance of knowledge.  Rather, it pursues knowledge in order to enhance the quality of existence.  Knowledge, here, is a form of mystical self-revelation.

My existence, of course, like any other, moves from the unknown to the known (relates the unknown to the known).  No difficulty; I believe I am able, as much as anyone I know, to surrender to operations of knowledge.  This is, for me, necessary -- as much as for others.  My existence is composed of steps forward, of movements which it directs to point which are suitable.  Knowledge is in me--I mean this for every affirmation of this book [INNER EXPERIENCE]; it is linked to these steps forward, to these movements (the latter are themselves linked to my fears, to my desires, to my joys).  Knowledge is in no way distinct from me; I am it, it is the existence which I am.  But this existence is not reducible to it; this reduction would require that the known be the aim of existence and not existence the aim of the known.  ( p110)

Save or kill?


I’m currently rereading Georges Bataille’s INNER EXPERIENCE, which I was scared to read again, because of the traumatic nature of his postulates. He’s got this kind of Roman Catholic Nietzschean thing going, where everything necessarily has to end in a bloodbath.
Mike says, “Oh, it’s just the era he was writing in. He was trying to wake people up.”
So this is the opposite of guilty-minded self-chastising reading, although not in the outcome, which always makes you feel like you need to save the world. Or kill it. Or save it. or…

Bataille and violence

Bataille notes that if you try to ascend the mystical summit, God demands that you start to kill people.  It's far better to rest in your insufficiency, not to try to be a perfect ape for God, because you'll end up unsufficient and wanting to kill yourself anyway.

To laugh, however, is to pull the rug out from yourself and others: It is to enter the realm of insufficiency and enjoy oneself doing so.

My memoir is somewhat on this level, at least it ultimately became so, even though it began as a search for sufficiency and an ascent to the summit.

Sunday 28 October 2012

Interview with Murenga: 2


Blogger Murenga said...


What do you mean by "I’m always going to be too African for my own good"?
In the example scenario at "Reclaim the Night", do you mean that it is African to be permissive and tolerant enough to allow the two guys to take over your instructor's role and session? Is it also Western for the lady to not know how to tell the two guys to go away? Also is it African not to be sensitive to what the lady may have preferred in your decision to allow the guys to take over?
Did you feel the same way when you visit Africa - Zimbabwe in particular?
I read your work, especially relating to Marechera and your teenage life in Rhodesia. I grew up in Rhodesia on the victim end of the racism in that society and of course I say that you were not responsible for Rhodesia's existence in its racist form. You and me were born around the same time in Rhodesia. I just have a bunch of questions for you.
How did you manage to retain your Africanness after having left Zimbabwe at 15 years? Could it be what the hostile Ausie environment that you experienced - causing you to reject being part of it/integrated?
Lastly, what will be the visible aspects and impact of this particular decision on you as a person and as a writer?


Blogger Jennifer Armstrong said...
Now you are sounding like a ... Westerner who makes a moral equation out of everything. How disappointing. And the identity politics you bring in is also inappropriate and distorts my original meaning. This is precisely what I criticize the Westerners for in ALL MY WRITING.

What was it in my text that made you read between the lines that these two men, who had come up after the short speech I gave, were taking away my authority in any way? Is is because they were male? I assume this is what the woman I had already demonstrated the techniques to may have been thinking -- but I was not to know this at the time. 


I train with males on an equal basis almost every day, so I don't have the conception that if a male enters the scene, my authority immediately vanishes. These men were gentle and were adding something new.

So, to answer your question, it is African to take things in your stride. Identity politics is Western, even to the degree that people in Africa may also take it up. It has its origins in Western culture and as a way of psychologically dealing with guilt in the post-colonial era.

The way you asked me your first couple of questions shows that you are immersed in this notion of identity as equaling degrees of guilt. I should be held responsible for not anticipating someone's discomfort, otherwise I am guilty.

If you want to accuse me of that, I will say that I did actually apologize to the woman once she made it clear that there had been a problem.

Is this important? Do you need to know that I'm still capable of self-policing? Imagine if a black gentleman such as yourself had walked up to me whilst she was standing there. That may have frightened her even more. Would you require me to give her a double-apology in that case: once for your gender, and another for your race?
Blogger Jennifer Armstrong said...
I'll address the other questions here:

Q. How did you manage to retain your Africanness after having left Zimbabwe at 15 years? Could it be what the hostile Aussie environment that you experienced - causing you to reject being part of it/integrated?
-----

A. There were a number of factors. Quite a few. The greatest of these was I ended up in Aus in the mid-eighties, when Western culture could never have been more crass. This was the era of materialism and Ronald Reagan. People just wanted to make money and listen to mind-numbing pop music. I took an instant dislike to the whole arrangement. By the mid-nineties, we had become more multi-cultural, and the cuisine and attitudes were starting to broaden. But, initially, the environment was pretty arid.

Also, I kept having the experience I have outlined above, where people policed my emotions. I was keen to assimilate as a practical goal, but emotionally, my heart wasn't in it. I had to keep persuading myself to try. I'm sure the combined factors of other people policing me and me policing myself made me socially awkward, to the point that not many of my ventures succeeded.

-----

Q.Lastly, what will be the visible aspects and impact of this particular decision on you as a person and as a writer?

A. Being African isn't a decision. That was the whole point of my post above, as well as much of my previous writing. It's something deep in my bones, so I will continue to listen to my bones and obey what they tell me.



Q. What do you mean by "I’m always going to be too African for my own good, though."?

---

A. It means I have no wish to adjust to a situation where I'm not living in harmony with nature and with other people.

Recent decisions


I recently determined that I had been trying to fit the mold of a Western personality. This hasn’t been working out for me at all, because it requires me to over-think everything before I speak, and then I get tied up in knots trying not to offend someone in a way that would make me seem a political monster. It also fed my creativity, though, in that it seemed desirable to compensate by saying monstrous things. What I lost on one side of the equation, I could gain on the other side.

Right now, I’ve decided not to bother anymore. I have accepted that I am rather insensitive to a lot of things that Western people consider important. I’m also very much in tune with aspects of reality they are oblivious to. I’ve understood that there is nothing I can do to change this. My force of will over twenty years has done nothing to change my innate tendencies, particularly what I am sensitive or insensitive to.

I don’t like being made sensitive to those things Westerners are generally attuned to. I even start to feel queasy and uncomfortable after a while, and much more quickly when I am cajoling myself into making an effort.

So I accept that I am going to automatically come across as anti-social at times, but not as much so as if I am intentionally sparring with myself and trying to bring myself in line with cultural values I consider to be inherently arbitrary. In those cases, I rebel against my own self-policing and become even more unrefined.

I’m sticking to the path of least resistance. It’s kind of weird to enter that mode of relaxed indifference after all these years, instead of being on edge. I know that I will upset some people by being me, but since I am not trying to carve out a career for myself, in Western culture, the stakes are extremely low.

This more relaxed state does enable me to be much more efficient in what I ordinarily do. I can easily do my job without second-guessing myself, and I can engage with most people in that way without offending them. I used to doubt whether I had the right to speak authoritatively on any given topic, but suddenly this is gone.

I’m always going to be too African for my own good. People confuse me when they make assertions about the need for greater sensitivity. It even happened at the Reclaim the Night rally, where I gave a short speech on self defense. Afterwards a woman asked me to show her one of the techniques again, and she seemed really nervous. Then two guys also came up to us to talk about the technique and to explain it to her in finessed terms. I thought that was fine, but she later mentioned that this hadn’t been what she’d expected and she didn’t know how to tell them to go away. So I guess I wasn’t being territorial enough, which is something I’ve also decided to stop attempting, since I don’t find it very natural or harmonizing.

I guess there will always be problems with mis-communication in my sphere, but I think the best way to minimize those are to enjoy life is to accept that I will  end up doing things differently.

The Freud versus Nietzsche showdown.


The psychoanalysis article is good, in terms of defending psychoanalysis and perhaps even its practice, for those who need it.

I can particularly agree that knowledge has a value in and of itself. The idea that knowledge isn't real unless it produces results is exactly what Nietzsche and Bataille, who were very productive writers, have struggled against.  It's the quintessential enemy of the nobility of thought.  After all, if thoughts are only valuable for their utility, we end up only able to recognize the thoughts that make use useful within the system as it currently stands.   Other kinds of thoughts that do not go to making us more useful are cast aside.  Where does this ultimately lead, but to the reorganization of the University along the business model.

As for the content of psychoanalysis, which the article represents as knowing what your conflicts are, I'm not so sure how useful it is to know what one's conflicts happen to be.  It may make one wiser, in a certain sense.   Wisdom is not bad or wrong -- but there is something to be said for not knowing, too.  In terms of the paradigm of psychoanalysis, one may be led to assume that all conflicts produce pathological states.  I say this because psychoanalysis adopts a medical model of sickness versus health.  According to the two writers I've mentioned above, even though it might be conceded that some unconscious conflicts are very useful for generating creativity.

Nietzsche thought that everybody's character has some attributes that are weaker and some that are stronger.  If someone happened to have social authority, they could turn even their weaker attributes into something everybody wants to emulate, so creating a fashion. To intuitively rework the weaker components of one's being into a complete character would be a way of decisively overcoming 'pathology'.  One engages with oneself and one works with oneself, however, not in terms of a model of pathology.  Nonetheless one's health improves through this creative endeavor.

The contrast here seems to be between knowledge and creativity.  They're not entirely separate, but to some degree the sobriety inherent to obtaining knowledge works against the kind of creativity that would simply redirect the streams of one's internal conflicts into more productive and exciting wholes.

Freud and Nietzsche aim for different outcomes and use different methods to achieve these.  I tend to see more value in Nietzsche's view that we should strongly redirect our urges, on the basis of an intuitive reading of one's subconscious.   In fact, this is what I mean by 'shamanic doubling' -- it's the capacity to be one's own physician in service of one's own creativity.

The writer who defends psychoanalysis argues that coming to knowledge about one's unconscious drives gives the client more choices as to how to live their life.  He also points out that conflicts will be ongoing throughout the life of the client.  While that seems reasonable enough, there remains an unspoken question as to whether gaining wisdom through psychoanalysis adds or subtracts from a client's overall state of being.  One assumes that it will add something, but that assumption is based on the idea that knowledge of any sort is always useful.  I think one may also simply assume that one is tasked with plucking out a pathological component of the mind when one aims for psychoanalytic wisdom.  This much has not been proven.

To the contrary: one may need one's conflicts for creative fodder, so long as they are not too overwhelming.   It may also be beneficial, under certain circumstances, that one does not become too aware of what they are -- Otherwise one may almost certainly have to seek out other conflicts and states of stress, in order to get the creative juices flowing again.

Bourgeois ambiguity

My assessment of bourgeois society, after twenty years, is that it's fundamentally passive.   You can see the ways in which it's passive, and they're numerous.

One is that people don't address issues directly as social issues.  I'm sure I just read in Simone de Beauvoir's Force of Circumstances, that when she was in a colony, people did not wait until blood was spilled to separate a fight. In France, she said, they would not have intervened.

So it is in bourgeois societies all over the place. I've just come from an amazing conversion on Facebook, where some insistent gentleman I'd never met before urged that women should not violently, and with lethal force, stop a rapist in his tracks, whilst he was raping them, but rather wait until he actually had succeeded.  Above all one should not kill a rapist.   One is obliged to restrain him.

This urge to passivity, to a wait-and-see mode, when we all know how it's going to end up, is quintessentially bourgeois.  My statement, "If a man tries to rape you, kill him", did not express any ambiguity regarding a rapist's intent.  The intent is already present in the words, "tries to rape you".  If it's just a misunderstanding, or if he isn't trying to rape you, don't kill him.

Exhorting someone to accept a sense of ambiguity, when there isn't any, is a fundamental posture of those representing bourgeois mores.   Everything is always, necessarily, ambiguous, especially malicious intent, but not by virtue of the fact that the reality one encounters is ambiguous, or that any statements of fact have any inherent lack.    Rather, one reads ambiguity into situations that are anything but unclear.  One imposes one's interpretation of lack of clarity on a situation because one is afraid to face what is obvious.

Facing facts has the drawback that one may then be compelled to act.   Acting is dangerous, because it immerses one in the mud and blood of the political world.   How much better, to remain clean!

The false assumption that passivity is goodness is really just a stance of plausible deniability.   I could go on and say it dangerously reinforces the rights of criminal to commit crimes, but who wants to go there? I plan to tread gently.

Bourgeois society!  Personally, I find it suffocating even when it's not a jumble of evasiveness and incoherence.

If someone wants to make a clear statement into an incoherent one, I know that they have much to hide.  They may be afraid of themselves, simply because they haven't tried and tested their own strength.  They may not understand ethics, or the imperative to be engaged in the real world.  Their fear of themselves may lead them to stand up for oppressors and violent individuals, for fear that changing the reality will make them feel uncomfortable.



Saturday 27 October 2012

Joe Bageant: AMERICA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM?

Joe Bageant: AMERICA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM?

Self-defence

Today, I have a natural capacity for physical self-defence, but only because I've trained my mind and flesh.   It's a totally different mind-set to be able to defend oneself.   Knowing that one can stand one's ground, one moves in a different way from how one used to.  I always make use of my peripheral vision, but this has much to do with being genuinely curious about what's going on around me.

When considering how to defend myself, I always visualize the body divided into four segments as follows:


The angles of my strikes would often follow the angles in the large black X superimposed over the human body.  A strike coming from the side is harder to deflect than one that comes from the front.

By dividing the body in this way, it is also possible to consider how each of those four parts -- even in the attacker -- work as separate weapons and may be targeted as separate sections by working the angles of the X shape. Also take-downs work best on a diagonal line.

Which part would YOU attack?

If you attack the throat, watch out for one or both hands coming out to grab you.  Feet and legs can kick, but you can also be kicked back.

The head can attack you with a head butt or a bite.

You need to act fast to target the most vulnerable parts of the body.

Friday 26 October 2012

Reclaim the night -- short clip

The wisdom in dividing morality from history

A Very Stupid Video About a Macho Freak « Clarissa's Blog

“- I don’t think you can glorify a period in history without approving of everything that took place during that period. Say, somebody is telling you that the Third Reich was a phenomenal thing. Could you avoid reminding them that the low unemployment and very low crime rates of the Hitler era happened alongside of (and at the cost of) murdering crowds of people in concentration camps?”

I’m of the very different opinion that it is both possible and necessary to distinguish between someone’s conceptions of a glorious past and the moral qualities of that past. This is absolutely imperative, because if we do not do this, we cannot distinguish between psychology and morality. These are absolutely two separate things, and I also hold that if they are conflated, one ends up at best with a distorted view of morality and the idea that people are either inherently good or inherently bad.

It is a core part of my philosophy to hold that people could enjoy and benefit from The Third Reich and that nonetheless, the regime was hateful and morally repugnant. It is false to say, “only the bad people found anything psychologically beneficial about The Third Reich”. You would spread “evil” too widely and make many boring, silly, or uneducated people retroactively to blame. I’m very much against condensing all sort of human foibles and inadequacies under the rubric of morality. That makes morality too demanding and impossible to attain within the context of historical time. One would have to overcome one’s lack of education, idiocy and/or contingency to be able to fully redeem history whilst it was actually happening.

It is far better to have psychology as one thing and morality as another, because that enables one to make a better moral critique of the kind of behavior shown in the video. Psychologically, the guy in the video linked to above is obviously depressed about something. Perhaps he misses a different sense of humanity, or indeed regrets a sense of losing male status. It may be entirely logical to miss one’s loss in status. He could be commended for psychological honesty in admitting his truth, rather than condemned for not acknowledging the wrongs of history. (Unfortunately, he himself falls into the stupid mode of conflating history with morality, which makes his whole rant ridiculous.)

I think there would be far fewer angry white men and far more intellectual development of thought if we could acknowledge that their psychological issues are valid and perhaps logical up to a point, but that psychological issues do not constitute morality. One has to consider the moral issues separately, without denying that various people have been hurt by a changing society.

In the same way we could say, “Feminism does not wish you harm. It doesn’t want to deny you your experiences, values or being. It just wants to open up your mode of being to an understanding that is more inclusive, because it is more just.”

Contrast this with, “Feminism sees you as evil, because you are historical oppressors.” This kind of rhetoric creates enemies, because it makes people feel that their subjective experiences somehow amount to evil.

***


The speaker's rant in the video didn't strike me as making a profound political statement, but was as a way of conflating his psychology with broader moral issues, which is absolutely typical of Americans.   Australians also make the same equation, albeit in a subdued manner.

I really do think morality and psychology need to be separated.

My memoir is a psychological investigation of what happens when they are not.


****

 I also felt like the speaker in the video, and deeply lamented that what I thought was “great” would never return. That feeling went on for years. Then, I got deeper into psychology and history and reality, and when I embraced the sense that all of these were contingent, and far from being morally absolute, as I had been taught, the impossible thing happened: What I felt to be “great” actually returned to me. It was a weird thing, like a second birth. I went back to Zimbabwe, and it had actually become better. There was a mood of left libertarianism in the air, which had always been part of me, but would have been impossible to express in white Rhodesia. Communication had improved and everybody cracked a joke, or were really open with each other.

 It became apparent that my sense of reality had been falsely informed by conflating morality with regimes and status. Those assumptions turned out to be largely wrong.

***

The reason there are so many stunted individuals could be because we conflate morality with subjectivity, which we shouldn't. Personally, I was absolutely unable to analyse my position whilst I was doing that. The answer just kept coming up that I was evil -- which I felt I wasn't. I had to come to a point where I actually experienced history and subjectivity as contingent to get out of the moral bind and indeed to get beyond my fixation on a lost, glorious past.

Reclaim the night, Fremantle 26 October 2012

Thursday 25 October 2012

genre

A Weak Woman in a Bar « Clarissa's Blog

I had a huge amount of difficulty determining genre in Marechera’s writing. He really mixes it up and obeys no rules. His posthumously published work, The Black Insider, reads a bit like a Platonic discourse. It starts off an an adventure novel and ends as one, but the parts in the middle are about considering the political state of the world from the position of an black intellectual, and raising metaphysical speculations about the nature of life on this planet. There is also a drama, representing dialogue within the government of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, which appears early on in the book. And when I say there is a drama, I mean it is written out in that way, with character parts.  It reads like a satire with aspects of pantomime.  The book also has significant autobiographical aspects and reflections in it. Many of the ideas are quite poetic and aphoristic.

Psychology? Or metaphysics?

Gender Stereotypes I Learned « Clarissa's Blog

In terms of my shamanistic studies, the capacity to retain visual information is precedes the capacity to verbalize. This implies that verbalization is a higher function that visualization, but also perhaps in some respects less fundamental to existence. Consequently, men might want to claim the more primary aspect for themselves as somehow representing depth. Certainly, this is the construct of gender one sees in Nietzsche’s philosophy. He argues that men do eventually gain the capacity to express intelligence, despite being more primal, because their primal energy drives them further than women in general. Women kind of reach intelligence, and then stop. They don’t have the deep undercurrents necessary to push them ahead.

Of course this all sounds very metaphysical, but I’ve given a different sort of analysis as to why this seemed to be the case to men from earlier eras, here:

http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com.au/2010/02/nietzsches-views-on-feminism.html

Limited conceptions of reality

A Very Stupid Video About a Macho Freak « Clarissa's Blog

You know, I used to look at things in a similar way to this fine fellow in the video linked above. 
I was brought up in a very nationalistic culture, and we used to paste our stickers everywhere, proclaiming, “Rhodesia is super.”
Then the war ended and nothing was super any more. Nothing could be super.
Then I read Dambudzo Marechera’s work, which from a right-wing perspective was on the “opposite” side to us. Only he turned out not to be so opposite, but rather warlike in his own right and complex in a way I hadn’t anticipated.
This was a huge revelation to me — that other people and things could be super; that the world was bigger than it had initially seemed, and bigger than we had made it.
The realm of reality suddenly seemed incredibly rich to me, through Marechera’s eyes.

Consider what most people need to thrive

Consider what most people need.  Free time and sunshine.

People do need money but not much.

And furthermore?  People need a free sexuality, not in the sense of being uninhibited, but instead, free from monetary enticements.   To have to express or repress one's sexual nature on the basis of financial rewards or punishment is to have a bound sexuality.

Beyond this, people need two extra enticements to enjoy living: friendship and adventure.   These are not expensive, and to some extent the less money you have the more opportunities for adventure become
available.

People also need to the wind to blow in their windows every night, with perhaps the sound of the gentle ocean.

Good books could bring additional pleasure, and they are not expensive.

Laughter and wine are also necessary, and perhaps some mbanje if that suits your pleasure.

People need to be able to go for walks in the forest and to camp in the outdoors, and to combat insects and imaginary monsters.





Tuesday 23 October 2012

The madness of King USA

Feminist Theory Urgently Needed « Clarissa's Blog

I’ve been mistaken for most types of US feminist, I’m sure. I don’t know the difference between a spiritual type and a power type, but I would say the first believes that women are intrinsically goddesses, and the second says, no, we have to beat men at their own game.

My feminism is not defined by USA culture, but is African. 

I suffered from a lot of emotional repression growing up, but then learned that extreme, masculinist society used emotional repression as its own means of dominance. I was pilloried for being a feminist and mistaken for a man. Both events happened simultaneously, so I see there is a lot of room for error in the game of categorization.

Monday 22 October 2012

Strolling through some basic self defence moves

Just walking through a few useful self-defense moves to combat street harassment.

Ongoing sexism


Q. How much sexism and discrimination against women do you think currently occurs in the following?
A lotSomeA littleNone at allDon't knowA lot/some TOTALA lot/some MENA lot/some WOMEN
In workplaces17%38%32%6%7%55%49%62%
In the media19%37%29%9%7%56%49%62%
In politics25%36%25%8%7%61%55%67%
In advertising31%28%26%8%7%59%50%67%
In sport24%34%25%10%7%58%50%66%
In schools12%31%33%14%10%43%39%48%

source:http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4327520.html

QUOTE:

To have our first female Prime Minister share her deep offense at being described as a man's bitch provided a powerful point of connection for women, many of whom may now have access to the trappings of equality yet still feel trapped by the straightjacket of society's judgement.

Tears

If Only They Didn’t Weep « Clarissa's Blog

I used to think it was a shame to weep in public. It was a sign that something aggravating had really got through to you. Now I think it doesn’t matter so much. I wouldn’t do it to be manipulative, though. That’s not my way. I remember in the workplace bullying situation we had, tears were quite a common occurrence after a while. It was cynically said that when they broke me down I was crying to be manipulative, but that was far from true. It was actually frustration and bottled up rage.

Restoring lost things


People have said to me in not precisely these words, "How dare you go on about the same thing, this African thing? Why not give it up?"

The answer has always been: "No! Impossible.  One cannot mingle mechanically in the realm of things and systems when there are those lost items missing."

Now I understand -- although I didn't then -- why I was hell-bent on recovering lost facets of reality; how this task preoccupied my every waking moment.   To recover lost possibilities -- that was the meaning of my memoir and forms its basic structure.   These experiences were primarily those of my father, who had lost everything.

My allotted task, whether I denied it or not, was to be a better mother to my father than his mother had been.

That is why I had to find these missing items, which were facets of experience.   Once I found them, I would not only understand my task better, but I would be more effectively equipped for the main task.

The attempt to understand unconscious processes through writing led to the absurd result that I ended up writing a memoir that wasn't really about me, but about "my task", and if asked, even up to a couple of years ago I couldn't define it.

"Restore what was lost."  That is what my father had communicated to me via his subliminal language.

Something was very much lost and I had to find it.   Finding it would make things good again.  Find the lost elements; the lost facets.  Then you can restore everything.

My father's lost childhood, then his lost brother, then his lost war, then his lost home from the backdrop to my writing.   Everything lost.

When I finished writing the book, I felt that I had begun the restoration process, which was far from finished. I had at least established, "things were lost".  But then people confused me.  They said the book was about me, when I didn't see so much of myself in the book, but rather my overwhelming project, the project that preoccupied me night and day, and made me feel on the verge of failure. I was getting older and still hadn't found "it" yet.  That made everything seem more urgent.   Every email sent to me might have contained a clue.

I realize now, the sense of urgency I had come from the role of mother I'd been allotted.  The mother saves.  Only she didn't.  She deposited her child in boarding school and left him at the mercy of his cold, adoptive father.  So, now I was given the task to save my father, part of whom had been left in boarding school, and part back in Rhodesia.   Yet, my father made me mad, very mad, and angry.

He was an unpleasant fellow to be around, viewing me very hazily as if I had been some ephemeral ghost, whilst making gender-stereotyping pronouncements.  He had a short fuse, and responding in unconventional ways to anything would be enough to set him off.

He liked to see everything about the world only in one way.   In this perspective, there were no problems or difficulties.   If you brought a difficulty to his attention, it was because you were being an undependable child, showing a lack of faith and trust in something higher than you were.   You were trying to tear down the social system with your little issue.   I deserved the severest censure, and no reprimand could be harsh enough.

My father also demanded that despite being worthless and a failure, it was still my job to save him.   I had to save him from his worthlessness and sense of failure, which was actually an emotional state.

My thesis was, in a way, trying to save him; my memoir, definitely so.

But then people said I was writing it about myself, and that confused me, since I couldn't see where I appeared in this.

Sunday 21 October 2012

Soul loss and recovery



Cultural barriers to objectivity