Mannheim

"Historical questions are always monographic, either because of the limited manner in which the subject is conceived or because of the specialization of treatment. For history this is indeed necessary, since the academic division of labour imposes certain limitations. But when the empirical investigator glories in his refusal to go beyond the specialized observation dictated by the traditions of his discipline, be they ever so inclusive, he is making a virtue out of a defense mechanism which insures him against questioning his presuppositions."

Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia. p 90. 

Distinctions generate meaning

"The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it." $26 from the *Enquiry*

And that's why I'm enjoying Hume.

the hard problem

L’Élève: la République a donc le droit d’intervenir dans les conditions du travail et dans le règlement des prix et des salaires?

L’Instituteur: Sans doute, elle a ce droit. Elle l’exerce au nom du Peuple. Que serait, que pourrait un industriel ou un négociant sans le travail du peuple et sans la protection de la République? La République, en assurant au commerce et à l’industrie leur liberté, acquiert par là même le droit de soumettre cette liberté à toutes sortes de conditions tirées de l’intérêt commun. C’est ce qu’on appelle organisation du travail.

L’Élève: Donnez-moi une idée de cette organisation.

L’Instituteur: Tout ce que je puis vous dire, c’est qu’elle se fondera sur deux choses: 1), l’association des travailleurs; 2) le règlement de l’industrie et du commerce par les lois de la République. Mais, c’est un sujet sur lequel je ne m’étendrai pas davantage en ce moment; il n’est pas nécessaire de vous rendre si savant. Moi-même, j’attends les Représentants du Peuple et j’espère apprendre à leur école beaucoup de choses que j’ignore.

from: Renouvier, Charles. Manuel Republican de l'homme et du citoyen. 1848. pp 23-24.

On eating too much

But Knowledge is as food, and needs no less
Her Temperance over Appetite, to know
In measure what the mind may well contain,
Oppresses else with Surfeit, and soon turns
Wisdom to Folly, as Nourishment to Wind.

John Milton
Paradise Lost, bk VII, 126-130.

Sources of Reaction

Il existe aujourd’hui un genre de fanatisme scientifique qui menace d’être funeste à la science: il ferait tout sauter pour éprouver un explosif, il perdrait un État pour tirer des archives et mettre en lumière un document ‘intéressant’. Ce système anarchique et révolutionnaire est de source métaphysique. Il n’a rien de rationnel. Proprement il consiste à remplacer le dieu des Juifs par la Curiosité, dite improprement la Science, mis sur un autel, faite centre du monde et revêtue des mêmes honneurs que Jéhovah. Cette superstition ne mérite pas plus de respect que les autres. Bien qu’elle soit fort à la mode parmi les savants, Sainte-Beuve ou l’empirisme organisateur lui donne son nom véritable: tantôt passion féconde, tantôt pure monomanie.

Maurras, Charles. Trois idées politiques: Chateaubriand, Michelet, Sainte-Beuve. [1898]

how not to write

This is again from the Quaderni del carcere

Q14 §36. Criteri metodologici. Una manifestazione tipica del dilettantismo intellettuale (a dell’attività intellettuale dei dilettanti) è questa : che nel trattare une quistione si tende ad esporre tutto quello che si sa e non solo ciò che è necessario e importante di un argomento. Si coglie ogni occasione per fare sfoggio dei propri imparaticci, di tutti gli sbrendoli e nastri del proprio bazar ; ogni piccolo fatterello è elevato a momento mondiale per poter dare corso alla propria concezione mondiale, ecc. Avviene poi che, siccome si vuol essere originali e non ripetere le cose già dette, ogni altra volta si deve sostenere un gran mutamento nei ‘fattori’ fondamentali del quadro e quindi si cade in stupidaggini d’ogni genere.

Jeffersonian apocalypse

In the struggle which was necessary, many guilty persons fell without the forms of trial, and with them some innocent. These I deplore as much as any body, & shall deplore some of them to the day of my death. But I deplore them as I should have done had they fallen in battle. It was necessary to use the arm of the people, a machine not quite so blind as balls and bombs, but blind to a certain degree. A few of their cordial friends met at their hands the fate of enemies. But time and truth will rescue & embalm their memories, while their posterity will be enjoying that very liberty for which they would never have hesitated to offer up their lives. The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood? My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause, but rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam & an Eve left in every country, & left free, it would be better than as it now is.

The Jefferson quote above (from a letter to the representative of the US government in France, dated Jan 3, 1793), given in more length than is usual, displays a range of justifications for the violence then underway in France. Politics is a battle, and people die. The violence was committed for a noble cause, “the liberty of the whole earth,” one for which those who perished would have been glad to make the sacrifice. And, anyway, “was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood?” But then, as though it was a necessary consequence of the need to overcome his own affective suffering in the face of the instrumentalist logic and the impossible goal he had just invoked, Jefferson’s language becomes apocalyptic. Rather than a few hallowed martyrs, he now speaks of desolating half the earth—and more—the revolutionaries would be justified, like the wrathful God of the Old Testament, in destroying humanity and starting over. It is enough to make one think that there is, perhaps, a terrible destructive logic wrapped up in 18th century natural right doctrines.

Gramsci on Croce

[Il Croce] crede di trattare di una filosofia e tratta di una ideologia, crede di trattare di una religione e tratta di una superstizione, crede di scrivere una storia in cui l'elemento di classe sia esorcizzato e invece descrive con grande accuratessa e merito il capolavoro politico per cui una determinata classe riesce a presentare e far accettare la condizioni della sua esistenza e del suo sviluppo di classe come principio universale, come concezione deol mondo, come religione, cioe descrive in atto lo sviluppo di un mezzo pratico di governo e di dominio.

Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcare, Quaderno 10, $10I.

Grande est la série de ceux qui les suivent

Three really remarkable ideas struck me in reading over Etienne de la Boétie’s Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (the link is to a modernized French version). The first, perhaps the most remarkable, is simply stated at the beginning, and said over again in different ways in the whole first quarter of the essay. Governments function because people allow them to do so. A king does not rule on a daily basis through violence. He is the ruler because when he gives an order, people obey him. If one day he was not obeyed, he would cease to be king. Therefore, the servitude of his subjects is voluntary. Here’s a paragraph:

Or ce tyran seul, il n’est pas besoin de le combattre, ni de l’abattre. Il est défait de lui-même, pourvu que le pays ne consente point à sa servitude. Il ne s’agit pas de lui ôter quelque chose, mais de ne rien lui donner. Pas besoin que le pays se mette en peine de faire rien pour soi, pourvu qu’il ne fasse rien contre soi. Ce sont donc les peuples eux-mêmes qui se laissent, ou plutôt qui se font malmener, puisqu’ils en seraient quittes en cessant de servir. C’est le peuple qui s’asservit et qui se coupe la gorge ; qui, pouvant choisir d’être soumis ou d’être libre, repousse la liberté et prend le joug ; qui consent à son mal, ou plutôt qui le recherche... S’il lui coûtait quelque chose pour recouvrer sa liberté, je ne l’en presserais pas ; même si ce qu’il doit avoir le plus à cœur est de rentrer dans ses droits naturels et, pour ainsi dire, de bête redevenir homme. Mais je n’attends même pas de lui une si grande hardiesse ; j’admets qu’il aime mieux je ne sais quelle assurance de vivre misérablement qu’un espoir douteux de vivre comme il l’entend. Mais quoi ! Si pour avoir la liberté il suffit de la désirer, s’il n’est besoin que d’un simple vouloir, se trouvera-t-il une nation au monde qui croie la payer trop cher en l’acquérant par un simple souhait ? Et qui regretterait sa volonté de recouvrer un bien qu’on devrait racheter au prix du sang, et dont la perte rend à tout homme d’honneur la vie amère et la mort bienfaisante ? Certes, comme le feu d’une petite étincelle grandit et se renforce toujours, et plus il trouve de bois à brûler, plus il en dévore, mais se consume et finit par s’éteindre de lui-même quand on cesse de l’alimenter, de même, plus les tyrans pillent, plus ils exigent ; plus ils ruinent et détruisent, plus on leur fournit, plus on les sert. Ils se fortifient d’autant, deviennent de plus en plus frais et dispos pour tout anéantir et tout détruire. Mais si on ne leur fournit rien, si on ne leur obéit pas, sans les combattre, sans les frapper, ils restent nus et défaits et ne sont plus rien, de même que la branche, n’ayant plus de suc ni d’aliment à sa racine, devient sèche et morte.

What if they had a war, and nobody went ? It’s the same idea.

Secondly, and this is axiomatically stated, we humans all are equal. It is of course true that we aren’t all the same in body or in mind, but first of all much of that difference should be attributed to environment, rather than nature. Secondly, the basic differences of strength and capability that do exist innately were obviously not given to us by God so that some might dominate others. Rather, our obvious underlying sameness is a sign that we are to practice brotherly love and support one another. Here is another chunk of the text:

Ce qu’il y a de clair et d’évident, que personne ne peut ignorer, c’est que la nature, ministre de Dieu, gouvernante des hommes, nous a tous créés et coulés en quelque sorte dans le même moule, pour nous montrer que nous sommes tous égaux, ou plutôt frères. Et si, dans le partage qu’elle a fait de ses dons, elle a prodigué quelques avantages de corps ou d’esprit aux uns plus qu’aux autres, elle n’a cependant pas voulu nous mettre en ce monde comme sur un champ de bataille, et n’a pas envoyé ici bas les plus forts ou les plus adroits comme des brigands armés dans une forêt pour y malmener les plus faibles. Croyons plutôt qu’en faisant ainsi des parts plus grandes aux uns, plus petites aux autres, elle a voulu faire naître en eux l’affection fraternelle et les mettre à même de la pratiquer, puisque les uns ont la puissance de porter secours tandis que les autres ont besoin d’en recevoir. Donc, puisque cette bonne mère nous a donné à tous toute la terre pour demeure, puisqu’elle nous a tous logés dans la même maison, nous a tous formés sur le même modèle afin que chacun pût se regarder et quasiment se reconnaître dans l’autre comme dans un miroir, puisqu’elle nous a fait à tous ce beau présent de la voix et de la parole pour mieux nous rencontrer et fraterniser et pour produire, par la communication et l’échange de nos pensées, la communion de nos volontés ; puisqu’elle a cherché par tous les moyens à faire et à resserrer le nœud de notre alliance, de notre société, puisqu’elle a montré en toutes choses qu’elle ne nous voulait pas seulement unis, mais tel un seul être, comment douter alors que nous ne soyons tous naturellement libres, puisque nous sommes tous égaux ? Il ne peut entrer dans l’esprit de personne que la nature ait mis quiconque en servitude, puisqu’elle nous a tous mis en compagnie.

The final and most remarkable point made in this short Discourse is something like a sociological theory of autocratic governance.

The king rules because there is a social structure of domination that supports his rule. In short, it is a chain of direct interpersonal fear and greed that ties the whole people to the government of the tyrant. A final substantial quote:

Ce ne sont pas les bandes de gens à cheval, les compagnies de fantassins, ce ne sont pas les armes qui défendent un tyran, mais toujours (on aura peine à le croire d’abord, quoique ce soit l’exacte vérité) quatre ou cinq hommes qui le soutiennent et qui lui soumettent tout le pays. Il en a toujours été ainsi : cinq ou six ont eu l’oreille du tyran et s’en sont approchés d’eux-mêmes, ou bien ils ont été appelés par lui pour être les complices de ses cruautés, les compagnons de ses plaisirs, les maquereaux de ses voluptés et les bénéficiaires de ses rapines. Ces six dressent si bien leur chef qu’il en devient méchant envers la société, non seulement de sa propre méchanceté mais encore des leurs. Ces six en ont sous eux six cents, qu’ils corrompent autant qu’ils ont corrompu le tyran. Ces six cents en tiennent sous leur dépendance six mille, qu’ils élèvent en dignité. Ils leur font donner le gouvernement des provinces ou le maniement des deniers afin de les tenir par leur avidité ou par leur cruauté, afin qu’ils les exercent à point nommé et fassent d’ailleurs tant de mal qu’ils ne puissent se maintenir que sous leur ombre, qu’ils ne puissent s’exempter des lois et des peines que grâce à leur protection. Grande est la série de ceux qui les suivent. Et qui voudra en dévider le fil verra que, non pas six mille, mais cent mille et des millions tiennent au tyran par cette chaîne ininterrompue qui les soude et les attache à lui, comme Homère le fait dire à Jupiter qui se targue, en tirant une telle chaîne, d’amener à lui tous les dieux.

I was prompted to read this because I’ve been reading about les années ’68 in France—it seems that Etienne de la Boétie was quite popular among the student revolutionaries. It makes sense. We are all basically equal; tyranny functions through greed and fear, which is to say the dominance of one person over another; tyranny would cease to exist if we simply refused to obey the tyrant. I’m not sure that the revolutionaries really heard the force of the argument about equality as mutual obligation; maybe they never even got past the first pages and the parts about how all we’ve got to do is stop obeying.

Conrad

In fact, I thought the Bastions a very convenient place, since the girl did not think it prudent as yet to introduce that young man to her mother. It was here, then, I thought, looking round at that plot of ground of deplorable banality, that their acquaintance will begin and go on in the exchange of generous indignations and of extreme sentiments, too poignant, perhaps, for a non-Russian mind to conceive. I saw these two, escaped out of four score of millions of human beings ground between the upper and nether millstone, walking under these trees, their young heads close together. Yes, an excellent place to stroll and talk in. It even occurred to me, while we turned once more away from the wide iron gates, that when tired they would have plenty of accommodation to rest themselves. There was a quantity of tables and chairs displayed between the restaurant chalet and the bandstand, a whole raft of painted deals spread out under the trees. In the very middle of it I observed a solitary Swiss couple, whose fate was made secure from the cradle to the grave by the perfected mechanism of democratic institutions in a republic that could almost be held in the palm of one’s hand. The man, colourlessly uncouth, was drinking beer out of a glittering glass; the woman, rustic and placid, leaning back in the rough chair, gazed idly around.

There is one particularly wonderful paragraph from Under Western Eyes (p 129 of the OWC edition). I have been told that Edward Said’s first book is an entirely unremarkable study of Conrad. It is hard to imagine such an excellent critic writing an unremarkable book about such an excellent novelist.

Memory and Intellect

     perché appressando sé al suo disire,

nostro intelletto si profonda tanto,

che dietro la memoria non può ire.

Dante, Paradiso, I.7-9

Magic table

From Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition [1958]:

The public realm, as the common world, gathers us together and yet prevents our falling over each other, so to speak. What makes mass society so difficult to bear is not the number of people involved, or at least not primarily, but the fact that the world between them has lost its power to gather them together, to relate and to separate them. The weirdness of this situation resembles a spiritualistic séance where a number of people gathered around a table might suddenly, through some magic trick, see the table vanish from their midst, so that two persons sitting opposite each other were no longer separated but also would be entirely unrelated to each other by anything tangible. (pp 52-3)

Cognition, on the other hand, belongs to all, and not only to intellectual or artistic work processes; like fabrication itself, it is a process with a beginning and end, whose usefulness can be tested, and which, if it produces no results, has failed, like a carpenter’s workmanship has failed when he fabricates a two-legged table. (p 171)

At first I thought that these two examples, both employing a table, as she often does, were in contradiction with one another. Now it seems to me rather that while action is not work, work is none the less required to erect the space of action (the disappearing table). It would be worth going back to On Revolution to see if she discusses the actual practical activity of ‘making revolution’ as work. Work, then, could found new politics in a way that labor never could. Makes sense.

Freudo-Marxism mark 3 (or higher)

Le capitalisme, au XXè siècle, a fait de la libido sa principale énergie : l'énergie qui, canalisée sur les objets de la consommation, permet d'absorber les excédents de la production industrielle, en suscitant, par des moyens de captation de la libido, des désirs entièrement façonnés selon les besoins de la rentabilité des investissements. Or, aujourd'hui, cette captation de la libido a fini par la détruire, et ce fait majeur constitue une immense menace pour la civilisation industrielle : elle conduit inévitablement, à terme, à une crise économique mondiale sans précédent.

The work of Bernard Stiegler was recommended to me the other day. I was told that I could start with the writing available on the website of the Ars Industrialis, the organization he co-founded in 2003. Their manifesto is remarkable. The above is a chunk from its 3rd proposition that gives an idea of how they are updating Marx.

Codgers and Hair

Very occasionally, I regret not knowing more about contemporary fiction. I know nothing, for instance, about Padgett Powell except the pages that I have just read in the June issue of Harper’s.

Here, with only an approximate typography, are the first few lines, which appear under the subtitle ‘manifesto,’

I will miss looking at the little creek, pointing out as I must that there is not a famous cathedral within five thousand miles of us, or ten.

What is it about the little creek?

Its forlornness, its slightly iridescent stagnation, its unsupport of anything alive that one can see, its dubious mission, its helplessness, its pity, its bravery, the miracle of it withal in even remaining wet—

Which sometimes it does not—

—Exactly.

You see in the creek us.

Yes I think I do.

It is our mirror.

It is.

Well let us not be so vain.

All right. We shall cease going to the creek.

Our hair is also not good but I do not see that we can stop it. In our hair is us bet we must have it. We are not good and we must admit it.

I think we do a fair job of that. As good a job as might be asked of anyone.

Tell that to the codgers.

It would stop them for a moment in that calm stream of strong silent knowingness they so gallantly ride.

Those codgers get you worked up.

I had intended to copy out less, but it’s hard to find a place to stop. I hope this much isn’t some kind of infringement. The unmarked dialog of two lightly differentiated voices is surprisingly effective at providing a motive force to what would, I think, be unreadable in monolog form. The juxtapositions in this first chunk of text, its variously considered objects—the creek, the absent famous cathedral, wet, us, hair, codgers—the mutual positioning and interweaving of these is quite attractively done. Other elements that I would expect to fail also came off, for instance the balance of what I want to call ‘surrealisant’ imagery with not just real places and celebrities, but even with sociologically marked slang (an early example is “Everestage”). This is prose that works, but is also formally interesting. My obligatory academic comment, perhaps over-determined by the word dialog, would be to Bahktin, but with an emphasis on his interest in sociologically anchoring the various competing voices. Here is it objects that are so ‘anchored’ in a knowing but also estranged way. When I first read through, I registered the title as ‘Afraid to be Mean.’ In fact, in reference to a different part of text than I had thought, the title is ‘Afraid to be Men,’ which is less interesting. Maybe all of this works on me because I’m reading it in an airport? Anyway, it’s another reason that I’m glad to be subscribed to a print magazine.

on adding verbs

Das objektive Sittliche, das an die Stelle des abstrakten Guten tritt, ist die durch die Subjektivität als unendliche Form konkrete Substanz.

The objective sphere of ethics, which takes the place of the abstract good, is substance made concrete by subjectivity as infinite form.

Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, $144

Excess

The fact is that the greatest crimes are caused by excess and not by necessity. Men do not become tyrants in order that they may not suffer cold; and hence great is the honor bestowed, not on him who kills a thief, but on him who kills a tyrant.

Aristotle, The Politics, book II (1267, 14-16)

Service professionals

Outre ces trois classes des citoyens laborieux et utile qui s'occupent de l'objet propre à consommation et à l’usage, il faut encore dans une société une multitude de travaux particuliers et de soins directement utile ou agréables à la personne. Cette quatrième classe embrasse depuis les professions sceintifiques et libérales les plus distinguées jusqu’aux services domestiques les moins estimés.

I should really read more in the 18th century. A wonderfully anti-elitist way to divide up the world of work. Hints of biopolitics? The above is from the opening of Qu'est-ce que le tiers état?

A definition

Theory begins when we put these historically-grounded categories to work to forge new interpretations. We cannot, by this means, hope to explain everything there is, nor even procure a full understanding of singular events. These are not the tasks which theory should address. The aim is, rather, to create frameworks for understanding, an elaborated conceptual apparatus, with which to grasp the most significant relationships at work within the intricate dynamics of social transformation. We can explain as general propositions why technological and organizational change and geographical reorganizations within the spatial division of labour are socially necessary to the survival of capitalism. We can understand the contradictions embedded in such processes and show how the contradictions are manifest within the crisis-prone historical geography of capitalist development. We can understand how new class configurations and alliances form, how they can be expressed as territorial configurations and degenerate into inter-imperialist rivalries. These are the kinds of insights that theory can yield.

...

The mutual development of theory and of historical and geographical reconstruction, all projected into the fires of political practice, forms the intellectual crucible out of which new strategies for the sane reconstruction of society can emerge. The urgency of that task, in a world beset by all manner of insane dangers - including the threat of all-out nuclear war (an inglorious form of devaluation, that) - surely needs no demonstration. If capitalism has reached such limits, then it is for us to find ways to transcend the limits to capital itself.

From the closing pages (450-1) of David Harvey's The Limits to Capital (1982).

squabbling children

...und die sich durch den Widerspruch mit sich selbst die Freude erkaufen, miteinander im Widerspruche zu bleiben.

Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit. $205

the charms of charles dickens

MR. BOUNDERBY being a bachelor, an elderly lady presided over his establishment, in consideration of a certain annual stipend. Mrs. Sparsit was this lady's name; and she was a prominent figure in attendance on Mr. Bounderby's car, as it rolled along in triumph with the Bully of humility inside.

For, Mrs. Sparsit had not only seen different days, but was highly connected. She had a great aunt living in these very times called Lady Scadgers. Mr. Sparsit, deceased, of whom she was the relict, had been by the mother's side what Mrs. Sparsit still called 'a Powler.' Strangers of limited information and dull apprehension were sometimes observed not to know what a Powler was, and even to appear uncertain whether it might be a business, or a political party, or a profession of faith. The better class of minds, however, did not need to be informed that the Powlers were an ancient stock, who could trace themselves so exceedingly far back that it was not surprising if they sometimes lost themselves - which they had rather frequently done, as respected horse-flesh, blind-hookey, Hebrew monetary transactions, and the Insolvent Debtors' Court.

The late Mr. Sparsit, being by the mother's side a Powler, married this lady, being by the father's side a Scadgers. Lady Scadgers (an immensely fat old woman, with an inordinate appetite for butcher's meat, and a mysterious leg which had now refused to get out of bed for fourteen years) contrived the marriage, at a period when Sparsit was just of age, and chiefly noticeable for a slender body, weakly supported on two long slim props, and surmounted by no head worth mentioning. He inherited a fair fortune from his uncle, but owed it all before he came into it, and spent it twice over immediately afterwards. Thus, when he died, at twenty-four (the scene of his decease, Calais, and the cause, brandy), he did not leave his widow, from whom he had been separated soon after the honeymoon, in affluent circumstances. That bereaved lady, fifteen years older than he, fell presently at deadly feud with her only relative, Lady Scadgers; and, partly to spite her ladyship, and partly to maintain herself, went out at a salary. And here she was now, in her elderly days, with the Coriolanian style of nose and the dense black eyebrows which had captivated Sparsit, making Mr. Bounderby's tea as he took his breakfast.

The above text, from the beginning of Part One, Chapter Seven, of Dickens' Hard Times, is copied from the Gutenberg site, and can also be found on pages 46-47 of the Penguin edition.