`Fury said to a
mouse, That he
met in the
house,
"Let us
both go to
law: I will
prosecute
YOU. --Come,
I'll take no
denial; We
must have a
trial: For
really this
morning I've
nothing
to do."
Said the
mouse to the
cur, "Such
a trial,
dear Sir,
With
no jury
or judge,
would be
wasting
our
breath."
"I'll be
judge, I'll
be jury,"
Said
cunning
old Fury:
"I'll
try the
whole
cause,
and
condemn
you
to
death."
Monday 30 September 2013
Tony Abbott as Minister for Women
Sunday 29 September 2013
Rein it in, just so much
Why don't Americans just rein it it a little bit, especially nowadays that reality has shown itself to be objective. In the past, in the 90s, everybody was prepared to speculate about what reality was. Many thought they could convince others that their reality was supreme.
But those days are long gone and the global influence of American culture is starting to drop off. Getting rid of psychiatric drugs( as one of the first answers to feeling down) is a necessary measure to reform American culture.
Beyond this, to no longer view everything from the point of view of a hungry consumer intent on getting one over on someone else or getting something for nothing, is required.
Also, Americans need to develop critical thought patterns in areas like feminism and the like. That way, they won't be led around so easily by their intense emotions.
But those days are long gone and the global influence of American culture is starting to drop off. Getting rid of psychiatric drugs( as one of the first answers to feeling down) is a necessary measure to reform American culture.
Beyond this, to no longer view everything from the point of view of a hungry consumer intent on getting one over on someone else or getting something for nothing, is required.
Also, Americans need to develop critical thought patterns in areas like feminism and the like. That way, they won't be led around so easily by their intense emotions.
New Year's Revolution
I feel rather literal and prosaic these days, but perhaps this is not a bad thing -- it is too easy to get drawn in by poetic language, to the point that one becomes hypnotised by one's own notions about the world.
Poetry is all very well but it won't pay the bills -- nothing really does.
To realize that most people are satiated -- either by their own preoccupations and forms of indulgence or their terrible misfortunes -- is to realize the redundancy of poetry. We are all already entangled in a poetic mesh and some of it is not to my taste, but, to the person completely enmeshed, aesthetic taste is irrelevant. They are simply absorbed in the fibres of life because they have to be.
There's no use talking about different states of being as pathologies either. One man's poison is a another woman's bread and butter. The aim to live safely, with one's life plotted out, is the direction of civilisation. I used to think people had to constrain themselves to live this way, for instance by applying foot binding from an early age, but it turns out the excruciating hardship was almost only in my head. Being indoors under the fluorescent lights is gravy for some.
I had to cure myself of universalizing tendencies, just to perceive this. But the truth is, I ought to have cured myself long before, in fact the minute I realized that others were not on the same level as per my own particular ideas of Cloud Nine.
I've never wanted recognition, but an encounter with the fundamental lifeforces -- life and death. I guess people are taught these days that what they should be craving is financial recompense -- recognition being a bit too earnest, a bit too narcissistic and too nineties. The ladder to recognition is fraught with weird excesses and identity politicians pulling your legs down all the way. Critical thinking is unheard of when power and ambition charge into the fray. "Ah, me! My, elemental identity! It;'s gotten overshadowed again. A great, galumphing ape took all my steam. Actually, colliding with another identity is not the same as having your identity tortured and so long as there are people taking up your case, your identity remains intact -- although, regrettably on a lower rung of the ladder than those clambering up on other forms of steam.
Your identity isn't being tortured. You don't have a tortured identity, just less of the limelight. We can see your untortured identity quite clearly just by the amount of lights already focused on it. There is is --- and VOILA!
Scrutinizing the feminist lists is like viewing a lot of un-tortured identities. They're un-tortured for all sorts of reasons, mostly through having a good job and being able to indulge in petty power speculations. There's no grit, there's not guts to this. I don't see any rite of passage. There's no taking of the bull by the horny, horn, horns.
Blandisme is the new US politically correct -- or perhaps I was always late to this party. Even moral indignation seems on helium these days -- so shrill it resonates on wavelengths yet unheard.
Clambering skywardly whilst giving lip service is the new genteel.
Tsk, tsk, tsk.
I never wanted any of this, but a rite of passage. If the forces facing me were intense enough, I would KNOW.... I would KNOW something because..... I would know.
I held back and prevaricated, creating various reasons not to move on forward -- beecause I was waiting. Every pressure to comply with getting under the electric lights met my resistance. I wouldn't do it. I didn't want to meet the spotlight, but to sink into the darkness until finally I had encountered dragons.
To want what others want -- the high appraisal of a fundamentally half-done identity -- was impossible. I had to burn and scauld myself and combat things.
But then the goal of having recognition becomes less important, nothing really. What is the appraise of those half-baked?
Truly, the half-baked are insane. They want only convention in one of its forms: the old state of affairs dressed up new. They make sandwhiches for their potential hubbies and have no notion that reality and fame don't coincide.
When one's reality is filled up, what's done is done.
I no longer wish to clamber forth and honestly I never wanted that for me, for anybody else I've cared about.
Time to revolt.
Poetry is all very well but it won't pay the bills -- nothing really does.
To realize that most people are satiated -- either by their own preoccupations and forms of indulgence or their terrible misfortunes -- is to realize the redundancy of poetry. We are all already entangled in a poetic mesh and some of it is not to my taste, but, to the person completely enmeshed, aesthetic taste is irrelevant. They are simply absorbed in the fibres of life because they have to be.
There's no use talking about different states of being as pathologies either. One man's poison is a another woman's bread and butter. The aim to live safely, with one's life plotted out, is the direction of civilisation. I used to think people had to constrain themselves to live this way, for instance by applying foot binding from an early age, but it turns out the excruciating hardship was almost only in my head. Being indoors under the fluorescent lights is gravy for some.
I had to cure myself of universalizing tendencies, just to perceive this. But the truth is, I ought to have cured myself long before, in fact the minute I realized that others were not on the same level as per my own particular ideas of Cloud Nine.
I've never wanted recognition, but an encounter with the fundamental lifeforces -- life and death. I guess people are taught these days that what they should be craving is financial recompense -- recognition being a bit too earnest, a bit too narcissistic and too nineties. The ladder to recognition is fraught with weird excesses and identity politicians pulling your legs down all the way. Critical thinking is unheard of when power and ambition charge into the fray. "Ah, me! My, elemental identity! It;'s gotten overshadowed again. A great, galumphing ape took all my steam. Actually, colliding with another identity is not the same as having your identity tortured and so long as there are people taking up your case, your identity remains intact -- although, regrettably on a lower rung of the ladder than those clambering up on other forms of steam.
Your identity isn't being tortured. You don't have a tortured identity, just less of the limelight. We can see your untortured identity quite clearly just by the amount of lights already focused on it. There is is --- and VOILA!
Scrutinizing the feminist lists is like viewing a lot of un-tortured identities. They're un-tortured for all sorts of reasons, mostly through having a good job and being able to indulge in petty power speculations. There's no grit, there's not guts to this. I don't see any rite of passage. There's no taking of the bull by the horny, horn, horns.
Blandisme is the new US politically correct -- or perhaps I was always late to this party. Even moral indignation seems on helium these days -- so shrill it resonates on wavelengths yet unheard.
Clambering skywardly whilst giving lip service is the new genteel.
Tsk, tsk, tsk.
I never wanted any of this, but a rite of passage. If the forces facing me were intense enough, I would KNOW.... I would KNOW something because..... I would know.
I held back and prevaricated, creating various reasons not to move on forward -- beecause I was waiting. Every pressure to comply with getting under the electric lights met my resistance. I wouldn't do it. I didn't want to meet the spotlight, but to sink into the darkness until finally I had encountered dragons.
To want what others want -- the high appraisal of a fundamentally half-done identity -- was impossible. I had to burn and scauld myself and combat things.
But then the goal of having recognition becomes less important, nothing really. What is the appraise of those half-baked?
Truly, the half-baked are insane. They want only convention in one of its forms: the old state of affairs dressed up new. They make sandwhiches for their potential hubbies and have no notion that reality and fame don't coincide.
When one's reality is filled up, what's done is done.
I no longer wish to clamber forth and honestly I never wanted that for me, for anybody else I've cared about.
Time to revolt.
Thursday 26 September 2013
Tuesday 24 September 2013
Intersection between theory and politics
They both have the similarity of providing a critique of instrumental reason, only Bataille was more flamboyant about that.
Bataille was very suspicious, although not altogether hostile, toward transcendence. To take that path seems to implicate you more in society’s mores, even as you seek to transcend them. Bataille’s views were let’s cut out the middle man, and transgress. We don’t need to transcend the DOXA (presuming this means the morality of mores) when we can just horizontally oppose this.
A lot of Bataille’s attacks are on transcendence, instrumental reason and narrow empiricism.
In effect, and listen closely to this, he seemed to want to destroy trust in these things – that is, to destroy the “I” – which was also an anti-rational conquest, to destroy the “eye” as an instrument of reason.
I guess these were just ideas he had at the time.
In place of the “I’” (the narrow, instrumental sense of selfhood), he wanted to put the pineal eye.
The pineal eye is directly attuned to the sun, and thus is a primeval eye.
You can see the pattern here: destroy the narrowed and overly civilised “ I” and recover the primeval basis for experience – not that one has to become narrowly primeval: this is a means of negation on the way to a negation of the commanding system of consciousness so that one may live without being commanded by one’s narrowly conditioned mind.
But Bataille’s strained relationship with transcendence was also his attitude to the entire bourgeois order. There were some things to admire, but he didn’t want to play their game. He thoughtNietzsche played it as well as can be – and lost.
One has to wonder, when one destroys the limitations imposed by the social order and incites an uprising of primeval sensations and reactions, what the consequences could be.
But this is an overall picture of Bataille’s philosophy and the political agenda that underlies it.
Heidegger seemed a bit superficial, then, in approving of Bataille so readily.
Comments on “Anti-Oedipus: a feminist solution?” ‹ Nietzsche's hairs — WordPress
Comments on “Anti-Oedipus: a feminist solution?” ‹ Nietzsche's hairs — WordPress
Are you familiar at all with the work of Melanie Klein or any of the object relations theorists? If so, are you aware that the work of Deleuze and Guattari works on the basis of heavily emphasizing a preference for an object relations state of mind, over viewing others as complete, free-standing persons?
If, then, males are viewed by human children (adults taking an infantile perspective) as the occasional whip-hand on their consciousness (just a hand) and women are taken, according to capricious emotional flooding, alternatively as a "good breast" (nice nurturing source of origin) and a "bad breast" (evil withholding object), I suppose fully grown women have nothing to fear from that????
I suppose if fully grown women are already assured of a job and protection of their intellectual and emotional integrity from the vagaries of the system and the psychical forces within it, fully grown women have nothing to fear from early childhood notions and perspectives dominating the public space.
BUt that is entirely a contradiction in terms. In fact, one has everything to fear from that, above all psychical disintegration and extreme material impoverishment. Even the capacity to be logical about this and to even SEE the contradiction I have outlined above will not be possible for people who simply immerse themselves in a field of objects and act in ways conditioned by their early childhood experiences.
Are you familiar at all with the work of Melanie Klein or any of the object relations theorists? If so, are you aware that the work of Deleuze and Guattari works on the basis of heavily emphasizing a preference for an object relations state of mind, over viewing others as complete, free-standing persons?
If, then, males are viewed by human children (adults taking an infantile perspective) as the occasional whip-hand on their consciousness (just a hand) and women are taken, according to capricious emotional flooding, alternatively as a "good breast" (nice nurturing source of origin) and a "bad breast" (evil withholding object), I suppose fully grown women have nothing to fear from that????
I suppose if fully grown women are already assured of a job and protection of their intellectual and emotional integrity from the vagaries of the system and the psychical forces within it, fully grown women have nothing to fear from early childhood notions and perspectives dominating the public space.
BUt that is entirely a contradiction in terms. In fact, one has everything to fear from that, above all psychical disintegration and extreme material impoverishment. Even the capacity to be logical about this and to even SEE the contradiction I have outlined above will not be possible for people who simply immerse themselves in a field of objects and act in ways conditioned by their early childhood experiences.
Sunday 22 September 2013
Data is key to tackling sexism in the workplace and beyond
Data is key to tackling sexism in the workplace and beyond
By Carol Adams, Monash UniversityViolence against women, rape, bungling of rape cases, sexism at work and in leadership are prominent topics in news headlines. Such crimes and injustices are borne out of cultures that tolerate them. Poor cultures in the workplace reflect and influence attitudes and behaviours more broadly in society.
Organisations are obliged to ensure equal opportunities and the starting point for doing something about inequity is revealing it – making it visible through data.
Data can make visible the extent of the problem and exactly where it lies. Information on the proportion of women at different levels of the organisation and on governance and senior committees and quantification the gender pay gap are standard disclosures included in the Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) G4 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. In some countries, such data has to be made publicly available by law, but it is often not widely communicated or in a way which allows problem areas to be identified. It should be tabled at appropriate meetings, compared across business units and with previous years and benchmarked with other similar organisations where possible.
Such data allows employees, government agencies, unions and other stakeholders to hold organisations to account. It also provides organisations the opportunity to demonstrate that they are being proactive and providing equal opportunities.
I’ve spoken at women’s events where participants who have experienced discrimination have felt isolated and helpless. They have not been aware of the extent of it or of any activity to address it. I have seen well-intentioned men — shocked by such data — become defensive. It can be confronting. But once there is realisation and acceptance that something needs to be done, action can be taken.
CEDA’s recently published Women in Leadership: Understanding the Gender Gap contains a number of recommendations. Embedding Gender in Sustainability Reporting a joint project of the GRI and the International Finance Corporation, World Bank Group, was developed through extensive stakeholder consultation and with the guidance of an Advisory Group (on which I served). It provides examples of information that organisations can provide on performance as well as ways to improve it.
The failure to attract and retain good women can be as much to do with process, institutional issues and culture rather than the manager who is doing the hiring. These quotes from corporate annual reports of the 1950s and 1960s demonstrate how societal norms have contributed to the social and economic disadvantage of women, and how companies have perpetuated them despite the clear economic disadvantage to the company in doing so. It was a time when men were explicitly appointed to manage and women to serve; a time when women were required to leave jobs upon marriage.
“It is now more important than ever that our younger men should be given every opportunity to develop fully their abilities and personalities. The proportion of men to total staff continues to decline and in consequence a greater proportion of male staff will be required to fill an increasing number of managerial and executive positions. The opportunities for our younger men are greater than they have ever been, and promotion will tend to come at an earlier age.” National Provincial Bank, 1956 corporate annual reportIt is obvious that such practises did not make business sense. Yet some 50 years on, the existence of a gender pay gap for new graduates is inexplicable, and in this context it should be no surprise to find pregnant women experiencing unacceptable discrimination.
“We have opened a number of new branches during the year, including one in the West End of London under the management of a member of our women staff, Miss E. M. Harding. This interesting experiment has been hailed in some quarters as a portent, as indeed in a sense it is, but it may also be regarded as a natural and perhaps somewhat belated recognition that the holding of responsible posts in contact with our customers is no longer necessarily an exclusively male preserve.” Barclays Bank, 1958 corporate annual report
“The NP struck a blow for female equality in October last year with a new pay and promotion deal which enabled women staff members to take their place for the first time alongside men as branch managers…” National Provincial Bank, 1967 corporate annual
“…we also appointed… Miss P. Downs, who is personnel controller in charge of our female staff. We … congratulate Miss Downs in particular on being the first woman in our business to have attained top management level. For a business whose customers are predominantly women this seems a most logical step.” British Home Stores, 1968 corporate annual report*
CEDA’s Women in Leadership: Understanding the Gender Gap found that the association of leadership with male paradigms is a barrier to the appointment of women leaders. Indeed, senior managers often don’t see value in attributes they don’t have. This is a significant issue when women’s leadership styles have been found to differ from those dominant amongst men, who fill the majority of senior positions.
Why it matters
The obvious benefit of being an equal opportunity employer is that you have access to the best staff. But the risks of not providing equal opportunities for women and men go beyond losing out on talent. Dissatisfied, even frustrated and angry workers are not productive workers and poor equal opportunities practices and workplace cultures bring reputational and financial risk, particularly where legal action is taken. This is bad for business, yet it is too often tolerated — even tacitly encouraged — to maintain the status quo in power balance. Diversity in gender and skills matters to providers of capital. It should matter to boards both in terms of ability to achieve strategy and to manage risks.Ultimately for companies, poor equal opportunities practice affects the bottom line. The costs to individuals affected by workplace discrimination, bullying and undermining are significant. The impacts are economic, psychological, social and emotional.
Too many women have experienced male violence outside work and discrimination at work. Those experiencing domestic violence and rape are too often not taken seriously by authorities. These survivors are strong people who are entitled to be treated fairly and with respect at work.
We don’t have a complete picture of what goes on in the lives of colleagues and employees outside the work place. Improving equality in work practises will change our society and the way women and men experience life more broadly.
Employers have an ethical as well as a legal responsibility to ensure fair treatment at work. Workers and trade unions have a responsibility to hold them to account. This goes for discrimination on the grounds of race, age, disability and sexual orientation too.
*Note: The quotes from corporate annual reports are a sample of those collected for Adams CA and Harte GF (1998). The Changing portrayal of the employment of women in British banks’ and retail companies’ corporate annual reports,Accounting, Organizations and Society 23(8): 781–812.
Carol Adams has received funding from the ACCA for her work on gender and accountability. She was a member of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) / IFC (World Bank) joint working group on gender in sustainability reporting and is a member of the GRI Stakeholder Council.
This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.
Saturday 21 September 2013
Friday 20 September 2013
Thursday 19 September 2013
Headless
I think Bataille is best understood as a surrealist. This is not a claim that he is a superlative surrealist, or whatever. When I state a principle, sometimes the weight I am prepared to give to that is undecided. In this case, it is undecided.
But certainly, a mutilation of the eyes or of the stabilizing (transcendence seeking) structure of the mind can lead one to have very interesting visions or hallucinations. That, I think, is Bataille’s recipe for enjoyment.
Now, certainly, consider my situation and why he and I resonate. This is much less to do with my appreciation for theory than it has to do with the fact that my own transcendence was severed and taken from me – very much against my will. This was for all sorts of reasons, but primarily because I lost my culture and my country. I suffered a really significant mutilation and had to make do.
But certainly, a mutilation of the eyes or of the stabilizing (transcendence seeking) structure of the mind can lead one to have very interesting visions or hallucinations. That, I think, is Bataille’s recipe for enjoyment.
Now, certainly, consider my situation and why he and I resonate. This is much less to do with my appreciation for theory than it has to do with the fact that my own transcendence was severed and taken from me – very much against my will. This was for all sorts of reasons, but primarily because I lost my culture and my country. I suffered a really significant mutilation and had to make do.
mental fractures
I had a very, very clear image….going back to Africa, of course….of some sudden military contact along a sandy fork in the Road in the Rhodesian bush. There was extreme fatigue, and horror, like you get when you are suddenly knocked to the ground. I’ve been felled in that way before, because I have very unstable ligaments in my knees. I’d go to do a leaping kick and landing slightly wrongly, my knee would give way and the perspective would suddenly change. I’d be on the ground, shot through with adrenalin, with the intensity of the pain producing a slowing down of time and mental numbness. People would slowly, slowly, walk over to me and say things looking down at me. And I would want to laugh and say, “I’m not in the same zone as you are, anymore. Can’t you tell? I’m having to relate to things on a different level and I can’t give you a logical answer right now.”
We can break the spell and say we are talking about the Lacanian Real – but it is a very familiar state to me. In the vision I had last night, all the soldiers were recoiling at the fact that they had actually been hit. I could feel they were on their radios – and this was the end of MY civilization, all over again.
So, what does one do but relive it? Immanence isn’t always a choice, but if one can enter it more deeply, it becomes more voluptuous and worthwhile.
As Marechera says, “One scratch and the sky bleeds visions.”
So there are ruptures in the mind, certainly, perhaps in all of our minds, but they can produce beautiful visions. I do take those visions as a consolation prize. They are clearly not the first prize one could wish for in life, which is to have both one’s immanence and one’s transcendence in place, but if there is nothing else to be had, they will do.
In a situation where we have all been damaged and fractured – such as Bataille’s World War 2, or Marechera’s and my cruel bush war – we need to make do with what we have. As Bataille says, “We feel each other through our wounds.” These mental fractures become a basis for an experience of solidarity.
We can break the spell and say we are talking about the Lacanian Real – but it is a very familiar state to me. In the vision I had last night, all the soldiers were recoiling at the fact that they had actually been hit. I could feel they were on their radios – and this was the end of MY civilization, all over again.
So, what does one do but relive it? Immanence isn’t always a choice, but if one can enter it more deeply, it becomes more voluptuous and worthwhile.
As Marechera says, “One scratch and the sky bleeds visions.”
So there are ruptures in the mind, certainly, perhaps in all of our minds, but they can produce beautiful visions. I do take those visions as a consolation prize. They are clearly not the first prize one could wish for in life, which is to have both one’s immanence and one’s transcendence in place, but if there is nothing else to be had, they will do.
In a situation where we have all been damaged and fractured – such as Bataille’s World War 2, or Marechera’s and my cruel bush war – we need to make do with what we have. As Bataille says, “We feel each other through our wounds.” These mental fractures become a basis for an experience of solidarity.
We might see, one day
For years they said to me, “We didn’t hurt you and you are not hurt. We will not believe you are traumatized either by us or by anyone, unless you show us more and more clearly, so that one day we can see it. “
But it was all a joke and a lead-on. The point is that colonials took liberties with morality that they don’t readily permit themselves, and so now I am in a vulnerable position, I have to be punished for the behavior of my tribe – its arrogance.
They saw they’d captured an enemy combatant and they were now throwing me down the pyramid in ritual sacrifice, after dismembering me slowly.
So, now, really, I DO get the joke at last – haha! It’s quite a well planned one and quite effective revenge, but somehow I am not inclined to play the game anymore. I won’t write for them and I won’t show them my wounding so that they can see what they are capable of achieving surreptitiously, without having to be overt “colonials” and without having to be transparent about their sadism.
I now understand them in a very, very deep way – much more deeply than they understand themselves.
And furthermore, oddly enough, I do not find their attitudes or behavior enlightening or seductive.
But it was all a joke and a lead-on. The point is that colonials took liberties with morality that they don’t readily permit themselves, and so now I am in a vulnerable position, I have to be punished for the behavior of my tribe – its arrogance.
They saw they’d captured an enemy combatant and they were now throwing me down the pyramid in ritual sacrifice, after dismembering me slowly.
So, now, really, I DO get the joke at last – haha! It’s quite a well planned one and quite effective revenge, but somehow I am not inclined to play the game anymore. I won’t write for them and I won’t show them my wounding so that they can see what they are capable of achieving surreptitiously, without having to be overt “colonials” and without having to be transparent about their sadism.
I now understand them in a very, very deep way – much more deeply than they understand themselves.
And furthermore, oddly enough, I do not find their attitudes or behavior enlightening or seductive.
Against personal narratives
To maintain a narrative about one’s life is initially helpful, but in the long-term it can be too mind-consuming. You get to the point where you don’t need one. Narratives are a kind of ego-defence. Also, and I think what sealed this decision for me above all was the understanding that whatever narrative I formed, the mechanics of patriarchal power would always subvert my narrative to make its own story out of my story. That is how it goes. In a sense, meaning is patriarchal, at least in our current historical time and place.
What is not patriarchal, and what is therefore rarely expected, is that one can slip the noose by denying one’s reliance on patriarchal meaning for sustenance. In fact, the less meaning one has, the better — and the easier it is to slip out of the noose. You know when someone is grabbing you in a bear hug, and just before they grab you, you inflate your lungs.
Then, as the grab takes hold, you suddenly release all the air from your lungs and your chest becomes narrower. You can fall out of the hold, if you deliberately make your body go limp. But, whilst you inflate your chest and struggle, you only make it worse.
Patriarchal power sets us up to struggle against it, but that is the worst thing you can do. You will lose your energy that way, which is what was happening to me. Far better to let the air out of you body and shrink out of its grasp.
I like Bataille’s following formulation, and learned a lot from it. He reflects, in his book, On Nietzsche, that what is free cannot be defined. Rather than firming up the narrative and strengthening one’s self-definition, which will only tighten the rope of power around your neck, you can seek not to be defined. Formlessness doesn’t mean one doesn’t know one’s own mind. In fact, from experience, I can say one has to know one’s own mind inside and out in order to attain the external appearance of ephemeral smoothness that gives ones enemies nothing to latch onto. One can’t do it without a high level of maturity — and not of the ordinary sort, either, but that which comes from strong self-observation and honesty with oneself.
Those who don’t know themselves easily get roped in to conform to others’ definitions of them. That’s because their egos are needy; hungry. Some people even rope themselves in by reading themselves into texts that do not address them personally and are hence not directly related to them. The desire to see oneself reflected in the mirror of the ‘other’ can be very strong. But, whilst it seems to offer some benefits to one’s ego, placing one’s ego in relationship to another also makes one at the mercy of their appetites and desires. The relationship flows both ways, although one had perhaps only expected it to flow in one direction, toward admiration for oneself and one’s ‘identity’.
To be “formless” in Bataille’s sense is to be free from having to rely on the scaffolding of language to support one’s identity. Language leads one to misunderstand oneself. At best, it is a crude instrument, which calls out to those who are similar to us, but not the same. As Nietzsche says, one cannot draw out from a text knowledge that isn’t already in us in some way.
To cultivate, then, a tolerance for formlessness, at least in the sense that one doesn’t wish to appear to other people in any particular manifestation that they could easily tear apart and devour, is the ultimate goal of intellectual shamanism. It involves not being needy, so as not to be eaten. It’s path is self-knowledge leading to self-reliance.
It’s not that one must reject language altogether as a result of following this path, just that one must realize its limitations and not use it to develop or reinforce an identity. That way leads to an eternal recurrence of the same pathological interactions. One must get beyond the point where ‘identity’ and narrative are the means to make oneself whole. Those who cannot do that often end up perpetuating precisely the problem they are trying to solve. They haven't been able to let the air out of their lungs, and slip free from the embrace of language and political control.
What is not patriarchal, and what is therefore rarely expected, is that one can slip the noose by denying one’s reliance on patriarchal meaning for sustenance. In fact, the less meaning one has, the better — and the easier it is to slip out of the noose. You know when someone is grabbing you in a bear hug, and just before they grab you, you inflate your lungs.
Then, as the grab takes hold, you suddenly release all the air from your lungs and your chest becomes narrower. You can fall out of the hold, if you deliberately make your body go limp. But, whilst you inflate your chest and struggle, you only make it worse.
Patriarchal power sets us up to struggle against it, but that is the worst thing you can do. You will lose your energy that way, which is what was happening to me. Far better to let the air out of you body and shrink out of its grasp.
I like Bataille’s following formulation, and learned a lot from it. He reflects, in his book, On Nietzsche, that what is free cannot be defined. Rather than firming up the narrative and strengthening one’s self-definition, which will only tighten the rope of power around your neck, you can seek not to be defined. Formlessness doesn’t mean one doesn’t know one’s own mind. In fact, from experience, I can say one has to know one’s own mind inside and out in order to attain the external appearance of ephemeral smoothness that gives ones enemies nothing to latch onto. One can’t do it without a high level of maturity — and not of the ordinary sort, either, but that which comes from strong self-observation and honesty with oneself.
Those who don’t know themselves easily get roped in to conform to others’ definitions of them. That’s because their egos are needy; hungry. Some people even rope themselves in by reading themselves into texts that do not address them personally and are hence not directly related to them. The desire to see oneself reflected in the mirror of the ‘other’ can be very strong. But, whilst it seems to offer some benefits to one’s ego, placing one’s ego in relationship to another also makes one at the mercy of their appetites and desires. The relationship flows both ways, although one had perhaps only expected it to flow in one direction, toward admiration for oneself and one’s ‘identity’.
To be “formless” in Bataille’s sense is to be free from having to rely on the scaffolding of language to support one’s identity. Language leads one to misunderstand oneself. At best, it is a crude instrument, which calls out to those who are similar to us, but not the same. As Nietzsche says, one cannot draw out from a text knowledge that isn’t already in us in some way.
To cultivate, then, a tolerance for formlessness, at least in the sense that one doesn’t wish to appear to other people in any particular manifestation that they could easily tear apart and devour, is the ultimate goal of intellectual shamanism. It involves not being needy, so as not to be eaten. It’s path is self-knowledge leading to self-reliance.
It’s not that one must reject language altogether as a result of following this path, just that one must realize its limitations and not use it to develop or reinforce an identity. That way leads to an eternal recurrence of the same pathological interactions. One must get beyond the point where ‘identity’ and narrative are the means to make oneself whole. Those who cannot do that often end up perpetuating precisely the problem they are trying to solve. They haven't been able to let the air out of their lungs, and slip free from the embrace of language and political control.
Wednesday 18 September 2013
In Freudian terms
Revisiting the concept of the Oedipus complex:
To begin with, a quick consideration of how NOT to read Marechera.
An incorrect way of reading Marechera is:
1. nihilistically -- as a "postmodern" and as if he were merely rearranging ideas "on the surface", somewhat dadaistically, and in order to amuse himself, whilst not criticising the established orders that he was actually intent on criticising.
Also, via the lens of Post-oedipal blindness.
2. Since, according to Michael Mack's Freud, Kant's Categorical Imperative is "The Oedipus Complex", one ought not to reads Marechera in a kind of subconscious tone of, "Yes, but all the moral answers are already entirely obvious to my abstract thinking mind." If one does so, your own Oedipus complex is blinding you to what the author has to say about historical change engendering psychological complexity.
In fact, more often than not, the points the author wants to make are naturalistic (about society and how we actually experience it without a divine law to mediate its effects) and empirical. "Blindness" is a feature of assuming one has already grasped everything about the world when there is still something more to grasp.
The "Oedipus complex" in terms of the author's own autobiography and experiences may be reinterpreted (of course metaphorically, which is in terms of what I perceive the whole Freudian system of complexes to be -- a huge metaphor about one's relationship to power...) as a form of intellectual gigantism triggered in the genes and perpetuated by not knowing who one's own parent really is. In terms of this, one is never satisfied by having "assimilated language". One is already in doubt whether this language is not the true language, the most efficacious language, the language that will nurture and not mislead one, the language of a true progenitor and not of a spurious host, the language that is likely to last, and not be cast aside by more superior linguistic forms, the language that really is what-it-seems-to-be and not something other.
To introject the father's law through language under these terms is not an easy matter. One may introject the law entailed in a number of languages -- but who is it to guarantee that this is THE language? -- the one guaranteed forever? The resolution of the Oedipus complex through the acceptance of castration is the gateway leading away from awareness and experience of personal impulses and away from the bliss of mystical enjoinment with the world, but into an excessive reliance on the pure potency of language itself.
This produces a cascading quality of experience where one finds more and more layers to the onion of identity. The self is never to be found in a completed condition, but always somehow perpetually changes before one's eyes. One keeps growing and growing as one assimilates new information about language and about its insinuations about realities concerning us that differ from our self perceptions. At the same time, one keeps shrinking and shrinking (as we find more in the language we had come to trust, which we had already assimilated and introjected as our own law), turns out to be false. The self is thus constantly in the throes of change. One can never be satisfied with the result because one is never satisfied that truth has been furnished. (Hence the autobiographical quality of Marechera's writing as a kind of self-inquisition regarding the matter of how much truth had settled into him at any one time.)
Any colonial child (for example, I, or Marechera) is the bastard child of an elusive father whose ideology would not stick around long enough for it to have become entirely entrenched. Colonialism is therefore an ideology which produces children with an identity on the move. We fail to 'grow up' in the sense of what's expected, never becoming crystalised and firm and never-changing in the selves our fathers would have begotten. Those who mistake our personalities for those of plants or grass, that have established their identities through their acts and appearance once and forever more, will be variously, shocked and scandalized -- but rarely disappointed. In Marechera's terms, "we are changelings." --But only insofar as we are still looking for our rightful place.
Apart from that we are ourselves, mischievous, manic and very, very, stable.
Apart from that we are ourselves, mischievous, manic and very, very, stable.
Tuesday 17 September 2013
Political persecution and losing one's religion
I made this video for the Americans who do not yet get me. Actually nobody wants to admit that out of a spirit of righteousness and belief in a correct moral order, there was mob retaliation in the industralized West against their white immigrants from the ex-colonies. The Pieds-Noirs are a case in point. Given that this was (and is) actually so, not a feature of my imagination, losing my belief in West culture and its moral precepts has been of benefit to me, personally.
Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pied-Noir
"Those who moved to France suffered ostracism from the Left for their perceived exploitation of native Muslims and some blamed them for the war, thus the political turmoil surrounding the collapse of the French Fourth Republic. In popular culture, the community is often represented as feeling removed from French culture while longing for Algeria. Thus, the recent history of the pieds-noirs has been imprinted with a theme of double alienation from both their native homeland and their adopted land."
The Rhodesian solution
The Rhodesian solution to the problem of emotionality was simple. You lay down certain laws and you require everybody to follow them. These laws are the laws of the land and a priori they are considered “rational”. There is no room for objection or dissent. Those who have a problem with the established order are considered irrational. Having deemed them irrational, the next step is to make publicly evident that there is something psychologically unbalanced about them. That way, public consensus will confirm that only what already exists – the established order and its rules – are truly rational.
This solution works for those at the top so long as one’s creature comforts are supplied. They genuinely don’t feel any emotional hardship and they can occupy a higher strata -- not only of society, but of their minds. They can truly administrate a political state and even experience a certain amount of death and destruction without really experiencing any emotional bumps along the road.
The problem with the Rhodesian solution is that one doesn’t know how to value or even evaluate one’s own individual interests. One develops a purely abstract persona and in fact lives in accordance with it. One thinks in terms of abstractions, but not in terms of one’s individual needs and wants. So long as those wants don’t become pressing, the Rhodesian solution is very beautiful and spiritual. One can really feel as if one is floating. But if the individual becomes important, because let us say the individual as such comes under attack, one may as well be a defenseless puppy.
Post Hoc | Clarissa's Blog
Post Hoc | Clarissa's Blog
I think people do need to be aware that if they’re in a job where they’re using secondary functions rather than their primary ones, which they feel more natural using, they will get an inferiority complex eventually. Me, I am suited to abstractions and understanding complex systems. I can watch endless episodes of air crash investigations, because engineering fascinates me. But if you try to make me into a people person or force me to concentrate on details very much, I start to wonder what is wrong with me. My emotions get hurt when my hardware won’t do the job that others expect from it.
I think people do need to be aware that if they’re in a job where they’re using secondary functions rather than their primary ones, which they feel more natural using, they will get an inferiority complex eventually. Me, I am suited to abstractions and understanding complex systems. I can watch endless episodes of air crash investigations, because engineering fascinates me. But if you try to make me into a people person or force me to concentrate on details very much, I start to wonder what is wrong with me. My emotions get hurt when my hardware won’t do the job that others expect from it.
Monday 16 September 2013
Repost
1. When you look deeply into it what are therapists actually trying to do?
They are representing themselves as experts in "human psychology". This is a field that relies upon an abstraction and generalisation from certain kinds of human behaviour in the possibly relatively near past. But people's lives are generally more complicated and specific than these generalizations can express.
What does one gain from therapy? One's life must be simplified to fit the generalizations based on common experiences, or else, perhaps one could try to make use of the generalizations about other people's problems to see how they might apply to your specific instance.
No matter which way one chooses to respond, it seems to me that there remains a significant risk in terms of losing a great deal of one's life's previous intelligibility in talking to a therapist. What may have been important but specific to one's own experiences can be all too easily lost to the power of generalizations.
By contrast, certain types of shamanism offer a more holistic approach than conventional psychology, by embracing individually lived realities and experiences.
2.One might seek them for the pursuit of psychological knowledge. However, in contemporary industry, I have rarely seen it put to good use. The knowledge becomes an instrument of torture rather than a method of release.
The problem of knowledge in terms of the way it is applied in Western culture gave the writer, Georges Bataille, reason to coin the term, "non-knowledge" as indicative of deep inner experience, because contemporary knowledge tends to overlook the meaning of being an experiential subject and tends to produce, instead, narrow objectification and conformity.
They are representing themselves as experts in "human psychology". This is a field that relies upon an abstraction and generalisation from certain kinds of human behaviour in the possibly relatively near past. But people's lives are generally more complicated and specific than these generalizations can express.
What does one gain from therapy? One's life must be simplified to fit the generalizations based on common experiences, or else, perhaps one could try to make use of the generalizations about other people's problems to see how they might apply to your specific instance.
No matter which way one chooses to respond, it seems to me that there remains a significant risk in terms of losing a great deal of one's life's previous intelligibility in talking to a therapist. What may have been important but specific to one's own experiences can be all too easily lost to the power of generalizations.
By contrast, certain types of shamanism offer a more holistic approach than conventional psychology, by embracing individually lived realities and experiences.
2.One might seek them for the pursuit of psychological knowledge. However, in contemporary industry, I have rarely seen it put to good use. The knowledge becomes an instrument of torture rather than a method of release.
The problem of knowledge in terms of the way it is applied in Western culture gave the writer, Georges Bataille, reason to coin the term, "non-knowledge" as indicative of deep inner experience, because contemporary knowledge tends to overlook the meaning of being an experiential subject and tends to produce, instead, narrow objectification and conformity.
Sunday 15 September 2013
Saturday 14 September 2013
Friday 13 September 2013
Bataille's ontological split: the subject at odds with itself
Bataille's notion of mystical experience is hardly redemptive, but rather comes as a result of the subject trying to come to terms with a basic foundational split within itself. The subject (you or I) is not assured the objective means to communicate itself. Yet one will compulsively seek knowledge to continue to try (and fail) to bridge the incommunicability of subjective experience. Mystical experience occurs with a sudden realization that one cannot achieve deep and lasting satisfaction in the communicability of personal meaning. The shattering of the subject in response to this knowledge leads to a greater depth of understanding.
Thursday 12 September 2013
Self-possession
Most people are suckered in by ideologies of one sort or another. These range from "just so" versions of the universe to externally imposed moral imperatives concerning what one should or shoudn't be doing with one's life. Psychological maturity produces a turning point where organic nature and intellect combine to allow one to take back the reins of power.
cf.http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com.au/2011/03/thus-spoke-zarathustra-its-inner-logic.html
Re-thinking hormones
Male Sex Drive Depends on Both Estrogen and Testosteronewww.bloomberg.comEstrogen, the main sex hormone in women, plays a bigger role in male libido than previously thought, according to research that may guide development of sex-drive treatments.
Very interesting--and I suspect women's sex drive does too...I am certain of it. Sex is, after all, not something you do TO someone, but with someone, thus one needs attunement for interaction.
John M. Kawano likes this.Anark Istani amen to that.23 minutes ago · LikeJennifer Frances Armstrong That's why people who say, well men and women are entirely different and the boundaries that separate them should be preserved from intrusions by the imagination are actually denying their human nature22 minutes ago · Like · 1Anark Istani Indeed, they are. I love my estrogen as much as I love my testosterone, and seek out people who are cool with that, because ultimately, it's nuanced understandings and breaking down of gender binaries and gender roles that will lead to a whole lotta patriarchy to be snubbed out.19 minutes ago · Like · 1Jennifer Frances Armstrong I think effective sexual interaction relies on a kind of chemical empathy. If you only experience your own side of things, what, really is the point? There can't be any intimacy or anything interesting like that17 minutes ago · Like · 1Jennifer Frances Armstrong real sexual interaction breaks down gender binaries, which is why fundamentalists are afraid of sexual intimacy and have laws that all but prevent it16 minutes ago · Like · 1Anark Istani It does, and real sexual intimacy and interaction inherently is about surrendering and being a giver more than a taker of pleasure.14 minutes ago · LikeJennifer Frances Armstrong Well I don't know about surrendering, as I think that is a religious construct, but having awareness of what the other person may be experiencing is important12 minutes ago · LikeAnark Istani Yes, you're right. By surrendering, I guess I was being a bit polemic. In plain terms, what I meant was that one needs to be a sexual empath and ideally be with someone who is the same, so that there isn't a gradient, but rather an egalitarian balance of sexual dynamics and expression.3 minutes ago · Edited · LikeJennifer Frances Armstrong Yes, yes, that is what I was getting at. I mean, otherwise, you're just walking into walls4 minutes ago · Like · 1Jennifer Frances Armstrong Like the macho man. Have a few beers and walk into a wall. Nothing to it. But very unsexy and they do not keep their wives3 minutes ago · Like · 1Anark Istani Being macho is for chumps. What's saddening, though, is when women - regardless of their sexuality - perceive un-macho behaviour as weakness or as a state of being 'lesser' than one'sabout a minute ago · LikeJennifer Frances Armstrong It's ideology-driven, not experience-driven. You can be as macho as you like, so long as you have your inner counterbalance. Femininity in a macho male is the hugest turn on. I mean, an engaging mysteryA few se
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