Quick Note on Foucault

The Subject and Power in "Power" is a masterful, concise, and clear essay on the workings of power. It deals with the the situating, categorizing, naming, and isolation of the subject in order to normalize him.

From the Just comes the Unjust, in Arrogance

"You must nevertheless bear in mind what I am about to say to you: in the seed of the city of the just, a malignant seed is hidden, in its turn: the certainty and pride of being in the right -- and of being more just than many others who call themselves more just than the just. This seed ferments in bitterness, rivalry, resentment; and the natural desire of revenge on the unjust is colored by a yearning to be in their place and to act as they do."

-- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, from Hidden Cities 5


This is the last city Marco Polo describes in Calvino's book, wrapping up the tour by explaining the virus that grows within what must inhabit the city: Justice. The call to order mankind makes beautiful monuments which elevate its stature and make ever more grand statements about its existence. But as Hidden Cities 4 describes, immediately before, nothing else may flower:

"The city, great cemetery of the animal kingdom, was closed, aseptic, over the final buried corpses with their last fleas and their last germs. Man had finally reestablished the order of the world which he had himself upset: no other living specieis existed to cast any doubts."

Foucault and Continuum

Foucault takes Merleau-Ponty's essential philosophical task as his own, making a beautiful treatise on academic work and literal self-consciousness in thought:

"Never to consent to being completely comfortable with one's own presuppositions. Never to let them fall preacefully asleep, but also never to believe that a new fact will suffice to overturn them; never to imagine that one can change them like arbitrary axioms, remembering that in order to give them the necessary mobility one must have a distant view, but also look at what is nearby and all around oneself. To be very mindful that everything one perceives is evident only against a familiar and little-known horizon, that every certainty is sure only through the support of a ground that is always unexplored. The most fragile instant has its roots. In that lesson, there is a whole ethic of sleepless evidence that does not rule out, far from it, a rigorous economy of the True and the False; but that is not the whole story."

--Foucault, For an Ethic of Discomfort


In my studies of Foucault thus far (the never ending quest and digestion of his thought, the rotation and rearticulation of all points), this passage is one of the most meaningful in light of his work. At the beginning of the essay, he encounters the question asked in a German journal: "What is Enlightenment." Kant responds, but Foucault sees the question more important than the answer. For him, the question implies a sort of self-consciousness that manages to rupture the Enlightenment simply by calling it into question; there are no static periods of time, only fluid movements of thoughts and discourses which, when called into question, double back on themselves and analyze, reinterpret, and rearticulate towards a horizon of distance. The question is an important thing in life -- the self and the public or society -- because it asks for reexamination, and thus an understanding that we are located in an infinite continuum where our beliefs and practices constantly change around us. We must ground ourselves in the middle of the stream in order to understand its current.

Blogging / Bookwriting

While reading on sexuality I came across this quote, seemingly unrelated.

"I also reminded myself that it would probably not be worth the trouble ofr making books if they failed to teach the author something he had not known before, if they did not lead to unforeseen places, and if they did not disperse one toward a strange and new relation with himself. The pain and pleasure of the book is to be an experience."

--Foucault, Preface to The History of Sexuality, Volume Two


Though blogging is not the same experience as writing a book, my project views the experience in much the same way. I am reaching for limbs of knowledge I've not yet encountered, and the processing of them is what is rewardingly transformative.

Rhizome metaphor

Rhizome
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

A rhizome is, in botany, a usually-underground, horizontal stem of a plant that often sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. They are also referred to as creeping rootstalks, or rootstocks. A stolon is similar to a rhizome, but exists above ground, sprouting from an existing stem.
Many plants have rhizomes that serve to spread the plant by vegetative reproduction. Examples are asparagus, Lily of the valley and Sympodial Orchids. The spreading stems of ferns are also called rhizomes.
A tuber is a thickened part of a rhizome that has been enlarged for use as a storage organ. They are typically high in starch. An example is the common potato.

Herzog lecture

I saw Werner Herzog give a talk today at Amherst which was truly brilliant. He's such a charismatic fellow. He filled my head with thoughts and I hope I can get some of them down for processing and perhaps editing into a Div III of sorts.

Most potent: The way Herzog shifts the focuses of his movies and riffs off tangents which truly isolate the "reality" of his films. He showed a clip from The White Diamond, which I haven't seen, in which the camera moves from the scientist to the local man who is formally uneducated but really quite wise. For me, this sort of work goes to show the ways in which narratives can fragment themselves in search of what Herzog referred to as a "truth". He distinguished fact from truth, asserting that truth was something more profound and emphemeral than a solid fact. Information, particularly the new realms of information brought on by digitality, present ways in which tangential elements can form a more individualized space and what is actually taken from "an exploration" is quite unique. This is obviously related to my hypertext project from the collector. Perhaps I could use his films as a catalyst to re-explore some of the themes I was trying to articulate through hypertexts.



I'm in the midst of passing my Division II. I hope to be able to work out some of the groundwork for my Division III in this space.

From a recent meditation of Space, Knowledge, and Power

From Foucault's Space, Knowledge, and Power

Another interesting aspect of power that Foucault touches on in this section is the relationship of architecture, and more generally space or geography, to power. For him, infrastructure had a great effect on the way that society in the modern sense was molded; the development of railroads and later electricity definitively changed the ways that people interact within a space and, more broadly, feel about themselves as a nation. On a more microscopic level, the development of architecture was both liberating and confining depending on its usage: an enclosed square could be a very nice open public space while simultaneously being available for unending surveillance. Thus, there is a tension with individual’s interaction with space, and their tendencies within. This relates to Foucault’s important idea of the Panopticon and Panopticism, which draws the connections between action and surveillance. The element of knowledge and communication comes forth in both the micro and macro levels; accessibility and mobility increased, communication increased. This notion of infrastructure is even more interesting in light of more advanced technology that he didn’t live to see in an operable state. The internet in particular, with its ability to traverse the globe and glean information from millions of sources changes the way in which we interact with the world. A new power relation is formed in the way this accessibility and knowledge effect us, one where control is perhaps (optimistically) further relinquished in favor of the individual.
Conversely (and sticking with the internet tangent), the internet also allows greater surveillance in the sorts of information that is digitally transmitted. Take, for example, Google’s recent move into China under the pretense of government controlled censorship. Further, the inexplicable advertisements that seem to know exactly where you live and the sorts of products you consume, due to the advancement and manipulation of “cookies” embedded within folder in your hard drive.

Sleepiness

The problem with narrative which relies on sleep as its launchpad is that its rhythm and movement resemble sleep too much. I realize that this is the point, but also beside it. However, reading such work slows the mind, inducing it into a sleep which is both brilliant (for its catalyst and its self-realization) and unfortunate (because it closes the text and makes it inaccessible). I read books on memory and sleep in order to reveal worlds in web-outlines and periscopic views on individual moments. This is beautiful. But like a dream you never remember it all and feel as if you are doing an injustice to the author by only half-completing their book and half-forming your own memories about what was actually drawn from the page. Nonetheless, reading these sorts of books can still be enjoyable, if only because of the happiness of realizing what's going on between you and the piece.

Beyond Good and Evil

The notion of the Will to Power describes the will as both commanding and obedient; the orb that floats between magnets, constrained by both positive and negative elements.

"It is almost always a symptom of what is lacking in himself when a thinker senses in every "causal connection" and "psychological necessity" something of constraint, need, coompulsion to obey, pressure, and unfreedom; it is suspicious to have such feelings -- the person betrays himself. And in general, if I have observed correctly, the "unfreedom of the will" is regarded as a problem from two entirely opposite standpoints, but always in a profoundly personal manner: some will not give up their "responsibility," their belief in themselves, the personal right to their merits at any price (the vain races belong to this class). Others, on the contray, do not wish to be answerable for anything, or blamed for anything, and owing to an inward self-contempt, seek to lay the blame for themselves somewhere else."
--Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

The will is classically indicted for some form of manipulation. It seems that both strong and weak willed, as examples, mingle with each other. Most often one wants true credit for their merits, but will take no responsibility for an error or failing.

Nietzsche also talks about the way that the modes of interpretation affect truth. One takes a necessary jumping-off point and assumes correctness because of fluidity of connections. Different intentions reveal different readings.

[As an aside, I mistakenly sat down at an extremely well concealed Christian cafe. A missionary group wandered in as I was reading this quote, and I was struck by it:]

"Books for all the world are always foul-smelling books: the smell of small people clings to them. Where the people eat and drjnk, even where they venerate, it usually stinks. One should not go to church if one wants to breathe pure air."
--Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Here Nietzsche is showing his nihilism and dislike of humanity, because he sees it as ignorant and superficial. The intelligent man, he claims, recognizes the ignorance and superficiality in other men. There is a repression of awareness and a laziness to question in the indigent, causing them lie to themselves for the sake of themselves.

"A man whose sense of shame has some profundity encounters his destinies and delicate decisions, too, on paths which few ever reach and of whose mere existence his closest intimates must not know: his mortal danger is concealed from their eyes, and so is his regained sureness of life. Such a concealed man who instinctively needs speech for silence and for burial in silence and who is inexhaustible in his evasion of communication, wants and sees to it that a mask of him roams in his place through the hearts and heads of his friends. And supposing he did not want it, he would still realize some day that in spite of that a mask of him is there -- and that this is well. Every profound spirit needs a mask: even more, around every profuound spirit a mask is growing continually, owing to the constantly false, namely shallow, interpreation of every word, every step, every sign of life he gives.--"
--Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

So the common man constitutes an image of the intelligent man(a philosopher for Nietzsche) by the way that his words are misinterpretted and taken to mean different things than their honest meanings. A mask is grown around this man because he is considered in the way others see him; he is alienated from the common man because his views must be digestible and accessible.

Judicial and Juridical

Distinction:


An anthropological penal system punishes the person(ality) for their ability or dispostion to commit a crime. It is purely psychological.

A Juridical system punishes the act, not the personality. It is purely circumstantial.

The current system is a mixture of the two. This system is set within a true binary: Free and Confined.

Language as a weapon

"To condemn someone to a perpetual prison term is to transpose a medical or psychological diagnosis onto the judicial sentence; it is to saqy, "He is irredeemable." To impose a detminate sentence on someone is to ask a medical, psychological, or pedagogical practice to give a content to the judicial decision that punishes."

Foucault, To Punish is the most Difficult Thing There Is

The marking of a criminal, or perhaps rather the creation of one, is based on the judicial and medical language that occurs before conviction. There, the narrative is constructed which shows that the accused is predisposed to commit the crime. No bother his very predisposition labeled on him may be out of his control. To send someone to prison for life is to give up on them, to make the extreme discision that they will never be able to control themselves, that they will never be able to be just.

OuLiPo and Structures of Texts

Abilities to harness a structure, to bend it to your will, allow a flexing of a work which further brings out the elements written within it. OuLiPo, for example, used mathematic structures or formulas for constructing works; it is in these structures that they are most able to exploit and subsequently articulate an idea, ultimately breaking it free of the mold or pattern. It is this method - a method of constraining a text - that allows it to grow and develop within certain bounds. Once properly developed, it is released, and it can serve as an example of an exploitation while simultaneously representing itself as a unique specimen of thought, of a potentiality.

Perec's meditation of spaces and structures of our lives resonate with the unthought; it is precisely what certain spaces represent and go unnoticed that is most interesting.

Historicism (through Von Humboldt)

Historicism seems to be based in an interesting, though weak, metaphysics. It takes on a poetic element and composes the fragments of narratives and places in order to design the future. Von Humboldt goes so far as the claim that a truly accurate representation of history is impossible because we would be able to tell the future. Though my interpretation may be a bit literal, the point resonates a deterministic tone which doesn't sit well. As I see it, there is an authoritive history which, indeed, represents a configuration of reality today. But this history seems to be doubled back on itself; it justifies itself within the context of history (cause) and the present (effect). However, I am interested in the admittance that history is fragmentary. There becomes a desire to see history as art and as a representation of humanity; things that are ultimately beautiful thoughts but I'm not sure if history is represented as art and humanity in its practical application today.

By this, I simply mean that history in historicisms view is a justification and an appologist; it is less a discourse and more a monologue for the present.

Notebook Layout / Grizzly Man

I just discovered the Notebook Layout in Microsoft Word for Mac. The formatting capabilities are amazing and functionable; I had no trouble taking fabulous notes while watching Grizzly Man.

Herzog's piece of Timothy Treadwell shows the beauty that can happen simply by accident. The narratives overlap and interact with each other; Treadwell is creating a documentary narrative while also (perhaps unintentionally) forming another narrative about himself. The openness, meditation, and self-reflection that we see in Treadwell is striking. Herzog overlaps his own narrative voice on this footage, complicating Treadwell, who is often portrayed as merely crazy. Quite a beautiful film and one that is probably superficially rejected on several obvious premises.

I think through this, there's a lot to be said about animalism or hyper-anthropomorphism. The binary between a civilized world and a wild one is blurred through explorations such as Treadwell's. Regardless of opinions on righteousness or harmfulness, Herzog stretches his film to carve out this blurred space.

Tracking Semiology

Is the birth of a thoughtful mankind based in the semiology of animal tracking? From the sight of tracks in the mud, we gain the ability to abstract the animal that left it. Perhaps it is our attention to detail that sets up apart?

Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History

"There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism."

--> Benjamin is here talking about historicism, which translates today's world in relation to its past (history). Thus, it always ends up siding with the victor. We study Ancient Greece and later the Roman and English Empires because that is where historicism locates our present moment: those victors are responsible for our civilization today. To historicism, these victors require respect.

Historical Materialism on the other hand situates the present day in relation to economic and technological events. I've heard the term before in Marxisms.
Historical Materialism presents a unique experience with the past.


"History is the subject of a structure whose site is not a homogeneous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now." (The now being a mystical now, an ever-presentness perhaps(?))
Further: "Thus, to Robespierre ancient Rome was a past charged with the time of the now which he blasted out of the continuum of history. The French Revolution viewed itself as Rome reincarnate"

The Historical Materialist may 'blast' his way into history, thus affecting the era and thus the entire course of history? Benjamin's take is a Historical Materialism which accounts for the movement of thoughts and stops them at various points in order to achieve a singularity (translators word: monad). Better put:

"Materialistic historiography, on the other hand, is based on a constructive principle. Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well. Where thinking suddenly stops in a configuration pregnant with tensions, it gives that configuration a shock, by which it crystallizes into a monad. A historical materialist approaches a historical subject only where he encounters it as a monad."

Depth, Records, Jacks

"I concentrated on Jack: Prep school and Harvard accounted for my pleasurable fear and his overalls and red chamois shirt; I knew others who used poverty for depth."

--Robert Gluck, Jack the Modernist


Some topics: Jacks-of-all-Trades, Hybridity, Bio-Politics, Self-Policing. Gothamist appalled me today by posting a mug shot. I tried to join in on the discussion but people were generally unresponsive to me, but flamed another (incidentally, his name username was Jack). (Reading two Jack-related books... Just finished Jacks: A Gothic Gospel by Anne Stone, now reading this Robert Gluck book.)

Record keeping is a form of marking; personal histories can ultimately come back to haunt someone because of an assumption of "predisposition." We mark someone as problematic, digging a certain channel by which other events and circumstances can be interpreted. Situating someone in such a position binds them, indicting them for character issues and not for actual events. Cheating once means, for the rest of your life, you will be considered a cheater. Criminals, even when paroled, are always former prisoners. The record creates a spectre which haunts. And by reflection, ultimately constitutes an identity which is intimately linked with this conception. With records, people are prevented from actual change; their actions may change, but their historical relationship remains the determinate for the rest of their lives.

Science as Power

Genealogies' or genealogists' answer to the question "Is it a science or not?" is: "Turning Marxism, or psychoanalysis, or whatever else it is, into a science is precisely what we are criticizing you for. And if there is one objection to be made against Marxism, it's that it might well be a science." The question or questions that have to be asked are: "What types of knowledge are you trying to disqualify when you say that you are a science? What speaking subject, what discursive subject, what subject of experience and knowledge are you trying to minorize when you begin to say: 'I speak this discourse, I am speaking a scientific discourse, and I am a scientist.'"

Foucault, from Society Must Be Defended, Lecture 1


By Genealogists he's refering to a thinker who refers to the connections that seem apparent between different objects and link them in complex relationships. I think of it in terms of a spider weaving her web.

The Beginning

I won't publish a manifesto because I don't want to set any standard. This is just application of the thoughts I'm having, mostly related to tangents of what I'm studying. Current interests are animalism (though not through Deleuze... yet), specifically lycanthropy and datura, knowledge/hypertext/interactivity/hierarchy, power, narrative/text, technology, post structuralism, and other truly obscene topics.

This is also a test run for an idea I have in conjunction with my Div III. Best of luck to myself.