I realize I haven’t posted much to the blog recently, and I’d like to change that. I’ve been up to a lot in the last few weeks, and I figure it’s worth showing.
I went on vacation with my family in South Carolina at the end of May.
A large alligator
A path to the beach
The Atlantic
Still of an episode of Viva La Bam, in which Bam Margera buys a new house
Why had Viva La Bam been so successful? Obviously, it had a major broadcasting corporation marketing and distributing it internationally, but the show also has an additional appeal, which is that it presents the world as a playground, in which Bam is a somewhat ordinary citizen, who wakes up each day and decides on a new “adventure” for himself. Money is never an obstacle (given Margera’s own wealth, and the staggering budget of MTV), and—with only a few phone calls—Bam transforms his world into the realization of his dream. The strictures of social conduct don’t concern him, as is often the case with the air of celebrity. His roles as a stuntman and professional skateboarder make him seem invincible if only because his body withstands so much violence. As silly as his creations are, the audience takes delight in imagining themselves in that situation. Needless to say the show is childish, but that is part of its appeal, and even its most admiring fans knew this. But like children who are told to use their imagination while listening to a story, the audience is allowed to pretend to be free and play games. Perhaps the enjoyment of the show, and the desire to be in Margera’s shoes—if only for the productive capabilities he wields in the world of the show—is all the stronger because he is presented as a normal person with accidental fortune. The temptation is thus to believe that the freedom manifested in Margera is only a function of the accumulation of funds.
Covers of McDevitt’s Deepsix and The Engines of God
“It seems like everyday the lake is a different color.”
“That’s because the sunlight changes.”
“It’s also because we change.”
What is it that one must ask of schools today? Academia is in the strange positon of offering the means by which we might pursue bourgeois ideals on the one hand, and on the other hand offering—because they must—specialized training for the job market. If you ask an institution what it can offer, it will say it can allow you the means by which you might grow as an individual. But the next question becomes, what does that mean in today’s society? Self-improvement appears to be determined by the salability of one’s labor-power on the market. We know it truly can’t be reduced to that, and yet, we know it is. This is an antinomy that must be overcome. But knowing that it can’t be overcome without the overcoming of capital itself, how does one work in academia as it stands now? It almost seems as if academia must procede as if we were already free, so that all topics might be broached as mere historical peculiarities. If only.
Contentment with life cannot be reduced or found only in the practice of having the right thought.
Adorno and Horkheimer noted that today’s anti-intellectualism can in part stem from resentment of perceived happiness that the intellectual appears to have achieved mentally. This appearance of happiness, which isn’t true, raises such ire because it is a reminder of the question of the crisis of society, a reminder of an unfree society, which one even unknowlingly participates in its reproduction.
And speaking of that reproduction, even thought participates in labor that is the total mediation of society. There are those who can trace the movement of Spirit to trace its trajectory, to see how the crumbling totality is sick, but—as Nietzsche points out—its sickness is pregnancy, and it is pregnant with a classless society. The problem is that such an outcome requires the overcoming of this sickness. Either that or barbarism. Perhaps the intellectual is discontent because of a more acute sense of the latter.
The Platypus Review recently published an an interview with Eduardo Maura, the spokesperson of Podemos.
Two major themes in Maura’s responses are tied up confusingly: democracy and identity. In answer to David Mountain’s request for Maura to specify what he means by “democracy,” Maura states: “Doing new politics means not addressing people in a finalistic way, e.g. ‘This is the goal: socialism, or a society not ruled by classes.’ It’s not like that. Identities are not shaped that way anymore.” The convergence of politics with identity here is striking. Is politics merely a mechanism for forming identities? Not only is there the implication that socialism is too antiquated for the character of identities today, but that today’s “identities” must fundamentally be more progressive than they once were. This is the unfortunate state of the present, in which the past is disdained. Socialism is presumed to be inadequate due to its inability to accept difference.
Bringing the topic of vocabulary or rhetoric into the accommodation of identities, Maura continues, “The language of ‘Left and right’ in Spain has become so discredited that you cannot possibly build upon it. […] But, the words that used to mean those things, like ‘socialism,’ the ‘Left,’ and even ‘communism’—the whole European tradition of making the rule of law and communism compatible, part of the same political project—none of that is now meant by these metaphors of Right and Left.” That Maura associates socialism with reformism is telling. Again he emphasizes the need for new words and their ability to bring democracy into society: “We have new metaphors to help build a better, more democratic society.” Does this mean anything other than the idea that we’d have democracy if only we invented new words for the same ideas?
The question of the distance between society and politics brings about the most symptomatic character of Maura’s, and Podemos’s, ideas. Maura states, “There is no logical transition from the social to the political. Everything is social and everything is political, in different ways, but no political articulation is derived from a social problem.” But why must it appear to Maura that the social and the political are completely separate? As Lenin points out in State and Revolution (1917), this thought-figure is “inseparably tied up with” “petty-bourgeois utopia[n]” thought that amounts to mere reformism, which will never overcome the contradictory mode of production.1
Maura confirms my guess concerning Podemos’s reformist character when he says, “So let’s stick to demands, more than to words. To put it more academically, let’s speak the language of hegemony, rather than the language of ideology.” This is an avowed renunciation of Leftist ideology, and an affirmation that politics might only be approached in the manner of Realpolitik, which forecloses the potential for change. It implies that Leftist ideology is impossible. The spokesperson of Podemos continues, “Moreover, the people have a plurality of demands, and this plurality cannot be deleted. It cannot be easily resolved. So, politics is about framing things. The way you put things, the way you build your position in a symbolic space.” This is a bold admission to opportunism that the interviewers are right to question further. What does this make Podemos if it sees politics as the striving for power through rhetorical flourishes?
One last motif in Maura’s remarks that I picked up on was the continual deference to the emotions or feelings of the people and even himself. I note this because it is made clear that Podemos seeks to channel emotions for the sake of electoral success: “This all [Podemos] allows people to feel part of a process that is greater than simply building a party, but amounts to building new prospects for change. That is something new in European politics” and “What we do [..] is to build a chain of equivalence between political demands and the actual feelings of the people[..]” Maura surprises us by saying that he did his Ph.D. on Walter Benjamin. It’s shocking because Maura finds nothing wrong with conceiving of politics as a frame in which the masses might feel themselves participating. One should remember Benjamin’s statement on Fascism in his most famous essay (and also his most misread essay!): “Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property. The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life.”2 After reading that even Maura is “not a rational actor in the political field,” are we supposed to applaud this relegation of reason coupled with the use of aesthetics in place of politics?
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1 V. I. Lenin, State and Revolution in Essential Works of Lenin, ed. Henry M. Christman (New York: Dover Publications, 1987), 287.
2 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”