In my graduate seminar today we took a look at rhythm science, a book by Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid. It's something of a manifesto of sampling, the musical equivalent to open source or copy left models of social organization or distribution. Miller's work is engaging, for me, since it celebrates freedom and creativity within the potentially alienating ebbs and flows of capitalist driven globalization--he claims that "the old notions of left wing-right wing need to be remade, because in an information economy it's all about how information creates identity as a scarce resource." In other words, its a whole new ballgame and a one-dimensional resistance to capitalism as an evil is the wrong political paradigm.
What we need, instead, is a version of an imminent critique, the kind DJ Spooky calls for through a George Clinton quote, which I in turn have sampled for the title of this post. That is to say, we take from the system of information, the sounds and waves, the cultures and identities, in a continually recreative process that is an engagement with those things on their own terms. Capitalism and multinationals, globalization and corporate music are all part of that system and we need to realize it. There's no such thing as authenticity or purity in Miller's logic, only repetition and citation. But, of course, repetition with a difference. Several times in rhythm science he cites the Situationists, not a surprising move, since Situationism was itself a form of imminent, creativity, constructing psycho-space and celebrating indeterminate action.
However, I also had the opportunity this week to attend two discussion sessions and a public lecture offered by Alain Badiou, a philosopher I've mentioned on this blog before and who, I think, would strongly disagree with DJ Spooky. According to Badiou, and against the dominant mantras of critical theory today, philosophy is the thinking of Truths, universal and always applicable. Truths, however, are eternally new--that is to say, they occur in time as newness, new things which philosophy then connects to that which is eternal. The virtue of such thinking is that there is a place for universality and particularity, imminence and the eternal. The event, another key term for Badiou, is that newness breaking into the world, and art is one of the realms which can bring about events.
The reason Badiou would critique Miller's position, I think, is because That Subliminal Kid seems to disavow the possibility of event. Or, in other terms, DJing is an endless series of events, which perhaps results in no real event. It is the same critique Badiou has of capitalism--despite appearances, there is no new in capitalism, simply the repetition of the Same.
And yet, I like both of these thinkers. I sometimes feel like I want to be a sampler of thought, mixing together literature, philosophy, theology, love, the NYTimes, the Simpsons, and Jack Totten into a sweet flow of utltra-conscious grooves since, after all, it ain't illegal yet. And, at other times, I feel like a Badiouian: radical thought don't come easy or cheap and demands the rigorous fidelity to a rupture with the world. But that's probably why I'm neither a DJ nor a French philosopher, and that's pretty good after all.
This is the kind of political parody I got used to on Canadian TV. I don't care what you're political stripes, anything this funny beats the heavy breathing and moral outrage of the NYTimes cold.
The following is not entirely organized, but I don't have time right now to clean it up into something more legible.
I was recently in a brief altercation with a fellow literature student over a contemporary sonnet sequence. Unfortunately I don't remember the poet's name or the title of his book, but the reason for our debate was the fact that the sequence was written for a 14 year old girl. My friend's argument was, quite simply, "that's f*cked up." My argument was that there is a long tradition of female exploitation by male authors, particularly in sonnets. From Petrarch on, men are looking at women, idealizing them, removing their speech, and then using them as objects of praise to stroke the male poet's ego. Thus, I was arguing that, as disturbing as the sequence may be, it seemed to me that part of its value was that it radically called attention to that exploitative and, at times perhaps pedophilic tradition.
My friend wasn't convinced.
As I thought about it more, I realized that this poet's move was even more powerful than I thought. Suppose you responded with the general liberal ethos of "perhaps girls as young as 13 or 14 are married off in other times and places; that was ok in that context, but we, of course, are not in that context." The poet (lets call him Jeff) is calling you on it and asking you "why can't I?" If, however, you take the more hardnosed and "realist" perspective, you would say "it's wrong for them to do it then and its wrong for us now." Ah, responds Jeff, but in that case you'll want to throw out Plato (double whammy, since he was sleeping with 12 year old boys), Shakespeare, and the entire Western literary tradition of exploitation and violation, the very tradition to which you appeal to make your moral argument. Hell, maybe even the Bible. The Virgin Mary was pretty young, after all.
The fact of the matter is that to live as responsible human beings we have to be able to say that something is wrong while recognizing the very limitation of our ability to do so. An epistemological double-movement, so to speak, exactly the kind of move made by our risk-taking sonnetteer. Essentially, we have to be willing to condemn ourselves while we condemn others: "Yes, ethnocentrism is wrong. And yes, so is female genital mutilation."
I bring all of this up as an indirect response to the number of interesting comments made by friends at home and abroad regarding the recent furor over certain cartoons, as well as the gyrations Western media and governments have been demonstrating in an effort to save face and free speech at the same time. It seems to me that we are in a difficult position. If we say "don't do things that are going to upset group X, since they get really mad," then we are setting ourselves up as "the grown ups" managing an unruly child. A position of superiority. If, on the other hand, our response is "screw you, you need to grow up". . . well, you see where that gets us. The exact same place.
Of course, there are those who would say "But we are superior and we don't need to worry about acting that out. In fact, your weeny liberal introspection just makes matters worse." The fact is that ethnocentrism is more problematic than we often think. In fact, the nature of subjectivity, being limited, reveals that we just don't know everything and that we often do things we think are right only to result in terrible consequences. Thus, I cannot see the superiority argument doing anything but create a huge blindspot, the blindspots which historically tend to result in a moral backalley.
But that doesn't mean we don't act. Here's where we have to make the double-move I was talking about earlier, which doesn't feel very comforting but has to be done. We have to defend the right to publish freely while calling for people to act responsibly with that right. We have to defend the right of people to get pissed off and organize protests when someone publishes something they don't like (a part of free speech). We have to stop people from killing other people, even if their epistemological and ethical and political values are radically and fundamentally in opposition. And we have to recognize that such opposition is not something we can just ignore or shake off.
Essentially, we have to act in different ways at the same time. If we don't, we'll be in trouble.
I'm sitting in front of my computer contemplating art and the avant-garde, working on an outline for my master's essay. But I need a break. So I blog.
I got a new book a few days ago. It was a pseudoimpulse buy. They just came out with a complete translation of Lacan's Ecrits. It's very sexy. You can see a picture of it here.
I say pseudoimpulse because I'd been eyeing it for a while and Lacan is a weak spot in my reading. Then I was at a meeting regarding the future of English as a discipline and someone was talking up Lacan, so I went home and bought the book.
Up to this point, he had been one of those people I could vaguely cite ("Desire is absence," "The mirror-stage of development," "subjectivity is a process of signification") while having read very, very little. The trouble is, like most people we all ought to have read, he's a bit difficult. Although he's cited as a philosopher and through the guises of cultural theory, he was clearly writing as a psychologist to psychologists.
I finally borrowed The Thin Red Line from the library; it's been on my list for a while. I'll probably watch it this weekend.
I don't know if I've mentioned it yet, but I've started playing online poker again. If any of my old poker buddies want to try and coordinate a weekend online tourney or something to that effect, let me know. I use Paradise Poker, but I could start an account on another server.
OK, back to work.
The Steelers did it. What an amazing postseason.
I'm going to hear Seahawks fans moan all day that it was the bad calls. I'll admit that they got some bogus decisions. But I will also contend that it didn't make the crucial difference. The Steelers pushed through at a few points where the Hawks just didn't. And how about the flea-flicker? Genius.
I also suffered for my faith -- a druken Hawks fan shoved me as I was walking out of my apartment building wearing my Steelers hat. I dropped the empty casserole dish I was carrying and it smashed on the ground. Somehow I cut my hand in the whole process.
But, of course, who got the last laugh?
This is a cool list. Even though I am generally opposed to "top 100" thinking. T. Pynchon and Joyce, of course, show up pretty highly.