Author alert: Sheryll Vint & the question of "animal alterity"

Derridata, I think I can start to get back to you on some ideas for a collaborative journal publication that we discussed yesterday. I notice that the above author has an upcoming book on animal alterity and science fiction, and it would be fascinating to do something with that as a way of extending the themes of this blog (I think she also edited an animal themed issue of Science Fiction Studies). Vint engages too with the Wess' Har series of novels by Karen Traviss, as you can see here (Google had to use a cached page so I hope this link works). Traviss has used her novels as a platform to explore ethical issues related to identity, including those related to clones in the Star Wars universe. This is the kind of stuff we've tried to talk about before using the umbrella term "seriality". So I can see real potential for branching out in some interesting directions. I put it here rather than email though as it may be easier to keep track of material as it comes to hand.

Moving along to a not entirely unrelated topic, I remember years ago, I think it was even in your Re/Search Industrial Culture Handbook, reading about Graeme Revell's post-SPK sound experiments with "insect musicians". Well, I've just come across the Criminal Animal website and there are some pretty interesting resources to be found there, especially under the category of "genetic music". I love the following description particularly:

Algorithmic Arts Software for Generative Music
http://www.algoart.com/dnamusic/

"Interesting b/c you can hear samples of protein sequences! -nice for the ears and gives a good idea of what molecular music is all about -eerie sounding but pretty amazing".

Incidentally, the concept of molecular music reminded me too of the "Prima Belladonna" story in Ballard's Vermilion Sands, which featured singing plants. Furthermore, as much as the film Silent Running has a compelling central premise, (the pathos of a lonely astronaut tending his garden heterotopia floating in space), I felt the film failed in its choice of music. Clearly a more innovative organic ambient style score would have worked better in that context. Sadly though, there was no Linda Long or Jeff Greinke around back then when they were really needed (*sigh*), so we have to make do with the well-intentioned, but somewhat dated, Joan Baez instead:

A Brief History of the Future

Editing work piling up again so I can only be brief today. If you haven't already, I recommend picking up a copy of Jacques Attali's A Brief History of the Future. A useful way of critically contextualising the genre of such futurist writing in general is to revisit Andrew Ross's essay in his Strange Weather. More specifically on Attali's book though, I got the impression that he pretty much ignored the cultural significance of the biological sciences, choosing instead to talk about wars over resources. And how about at least mentioning the future of space exploration and its possible benefits for our collective humanity? Check out the essays in this issue of Futures and you can catch a tantalising glimpse of what Attali ignored.

Notwithstanding these shortcomings, I think his book is worthwhile because it offers a progressive vision of the future. To be sure, homo sap is portrayed as going through some truly hellish times over the course of the next 50 years before what Attali describes as "hyperdemocracy" emerges triumphant. In this respect he breaks with the comparatively unambitious and pessimistic outlook that tries to always warn us in advance that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" (I suspect this is the motto of those conservative futurists known as "risk managers" the world over, who are most eager to ensure their own viability). I regard Attali as closer then to Steve Fuller's maxim, "the present is the site in which the future is constructed...we get the future that matches our current judgements by carefully selecting the chain of historical precedents that lay the foundation for them".

So the next half century may well be the "age of stupid", meaning we have to survive that before we have any chance of arriving at anything like a sparkling Syd Mead type world organised along hyperdemocratic principles. I've included a clip from The Cove (exposing a killing frenzy by fishermen against dolphins in Japan) as further evidence of the ongoing battles over resources we can expect in the "age of stupid".

Precarity

Precarity - trailer
Uploaded by gourgandin. - Watch the latest news videos.

A toolbox to investigate about the increasing precarisation of our existence

Martine Beugnet & the cinema of transgression

I was reviewing the list of influences on Coffin Joe and it got me thinking more generally about transgression and the need to complicate the gender blindness that can follow on from uncritical use of this concept. I thought one promising starting point would be to get hold of Martine Beugnet's book on the so-called "new French extremity", entitled Cinema and sensation: French film and the art of transgression. Derridata, have you encountered this book in your travels, and if so, do you feel it departs in any significant ways from Shaviro's The Cinematic Body? Methodologically, does it follow the default setting of the continental philosophy blogosphere of performing deep readings of canonical texts and applying them in an analytically suspect way to this cultural phenomenon, or does it really contextualise them social theoretically so that they are saying something about life in France at the beginning of the 21st century?

Given the biological themes of this blog, it is hard to ignore her starting point that film is a "medium of the senses". I like the description of the book though how it claims to move from the cinematic apparatus itself to broader social issues:

"Martine Beugnet focuses on the crucial and fertile overlaps that occur between experimental and mainstream cinema. Her book draws on the writings of Deleuze, Merleau-Ponty, and Bataille, among others, but first and foremost, she develops her arguments from the films themselves, from the comprehensive description of specific sequences, techniques, and motifs that allows us to engage with the works as material events and as thinking processes. In turn, she demonstrates how the films, envisaged as forms of embodied thought, offer alternative ways of approaching today’s most burning sociocultural debates—from the growing supremacy of technology, to globalization, exile, and exclusion".

I'm intrigued by the prospect of encompassing "today's most burning sociocultural debates", particularly how the foregrounding of globalization would seem to intimate the applicability of her critical approach to comparable studies of other films as epiphenomena of cultural transgression. I don't know the extent to which she undertakes a feminist analysis that is reflexive enough to epistemologically qualify Bataille's contribution in light of the formative influence of his companion Laure (as per, for example, Michel Surya's Georges Bataille: An Intellectual Biography).

But I do know that when I start to think about this topic I admit to feeling a lot like I imagine Herbert Marcuse did in Eros & Civilization, shyly tiptoeing past the cavalcade of perversions he attempted to introduce on account of their [alleged] radical emancipatory potential. For me, reading or thinking about such possibilities demands something like Martine Beugenet's approach: I treat the reading as a material event. If I am repulsed by it I admit I will have a hard time moving forward by articulating why I feel that way, letalone changing my reaction, irrespective of whether a prima facie political reason can be advanced to try to convince me otherwise. So my test in the first instance is gauging how you respond to these kinds of positions. Be sure to drill down to the comments in that post about bell hooks before you try to reach any decisions about your receptiveness to transgression. Another affirmative perspective can be found here, along with the aforementioned Shaviro's extreme take on its biological ramifications, thanks to a reading of Michel Foucault. Transgressors would no doubt sneer at the idea of opposition (claiming it presupposes transgression), but a representative example is Ashley Tauchert's Against Transgression. Closer to my own social theoretical views are Anthony Elliott's objections to queer theory more generally (of which transgression forms a subset), which can be found in his Concepts of the Self.

But I'll finish up here by leaving it to some examples of transgressive filmmaking to serve as a litmus test. That is my only justification for posting them here. I fear they are treading some dangerous misogynistic territory, so I advise extreme caution in case anyone else chooses to watch them (especially the second half of the final clip). But the test for me is whether the advocates of transgression would be willing to redeem even these activities, letalone their filmic representation, or do they agree that limits and distinctions occasionally have to be drawn because some things are simply beyond the pale? By the same token, how much latitude must be given in light of the fact that there is a diverse range of cultural logics, or are they merely accentuated for the reasons Beugnet adduces i.e. an explosion of difference in response to globalization?

Graphic Sexual Horror is an interesting case though because it documents political censure of a bondage website by an administration under the Patriot Act that was itself willing to use torture as an interrogation technique, in addition to the greed of the website's creator (and its effect on his "models"), so I certainly don't wish to imply that the issues are always cut and dried. It would be interesting to compare the motivations of that webmaster with those of the Japanese maker of genki porn. In the latter case the documentary makes little effort to establish how representative such an extreme genre is, letalone attempt to challenge any justification behind it.

My only point then in regard to each is that Beugnet's book might help me to get a better critical perspective on what is at stake in these kinds of debates, thus also hopefully making it unnecessary to automatically appeal to Videodrome as sole evidence of a transgressive "postmodern" media culture.

Intense material hailing from the Portuguese speaking lands......

I ducked out during the day a week or two back to go the movies. I won't talk about the film I saw (truth be told, it didn't really make much of an impression on me), and this was a strange feeling because what I found far more evocative was sitting in the front row of the virtually empty cinema listening to my iPod while I waited for the show to begin. The blank screen and the quietness of my surroundings acted as a feedback loop to the dark ambient soundtrack I was listening to. I had barely recovered from the brilliance of Les Joyaux de la Princess when Thermidor's 1929 kicked in. I hereby declare Thermidor the most stunning new artist I have heard for a long time. This even extends to the album's concept art, which is very reminiscent, to me at least, of Sam Von Olffen's steampunk style, which I posted on this blog before. I'm trying to chase more information about Thermidor, but I think the artist wishes, like Les Joyaux, to preserve anonymity as much as possible. Be sure to check out Thermidor's website to get a better idea of what I'm so enthused about.

OK, I described Thermidor as offering a dark ambient soundtrack, but it's hard to see the style as complementary to that mad visionary José Mojica Marins, try as I might. Any connections are tangential, aside from their speaking the same language, suffice to say I would be curious to know how this Brazilian filmmaker has been received in Portugal. As far as explicit musical affinities go, I don't think Rob Zombie would hesitate to admit how he has been influenced by Coffin Joe. For now at least I'll have to content myself with posting Pt 1 of a fascinating documentary about a director who has been described thus:

"Marins’ furiously subversive anti-religion/anti-government interpretation of the genre took shape in the midst of a brutal dictatorship and remains wholly without parallel.

Over his nearly half-century-long career, he has created some of the most inspired, inflammatory and hallucinatory imagery in the history of fantastic cinema. His Coffin Joe character is equal parts the Marquis De Sade, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Salvador Dali and Friedrich Nietzsche, channeled through a love for confrontational horror films and the darkest of carnivalesque spook show iconography".

8th Wonderland

I've seen the trailer for Cameron's Avatar, albeit not in 3D, and my initial impression is that the film may be impressive on a conceptual level (not least for the depiction of a militarised future reminiscent of Aliens), but perhaps lacking in its execution. Therefore I concur with the many bloggers who have complained about the character design resembling the dreaded Jar Jar Binks from the Star Wars universe.

I don't have much else to go on at this stage, and I'm also not particularly interested in following the Fanboy type arguments too far, so I've directed my attention elsewhere. I've come across 8th Wonderland, which is already starting to generate some positive advance notices (visit the accompanying "virtual" nation here). I regard the film as effecting a thematic displacement of the Darwinian model of evolution embodying adaptive fitness towards a greater emphasis instead on creativity, as per the vitalism of Henri Bergson and, perhaps more importantly, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's conception of the "noosphere".

Hence I foresee critical discussion devolving on the issue of whether the emergent noosphere depicted in the film is representative of a new "post national" stage of human evolution. One should remember in this context that nationalism is a discourse intended to heal the contingency associated with modernity (which is why it has been described by Benedict Anderson as equating to an "imagined community"). It is analogous to Walter Benjamin's urban archetypes, such as the detective, who attest to the power of consciousness to retain its synthesizing powers. In comparison this makes the hacker a dangerously ambiguous figure: on the one hand very creative and autonomous, in the manner of the detective who also steps back from the circumstances at hand through a sheer force of will and intellect. Of course the difference is that the hacker is ultimately less interested in rationality as a restorative agent for law and order, leading us to understand that anarchist movements always remain a possibility because self-organizing networks are an inherent feature of complex systems, including social systems.

Because I have yet to see the film, I can't judge the extent to which it acknowledges this fact as either a good or a bad thing. The former could exist anywhere on a continuum spanning from Rheingold's electronic homesteaders to Negri and Hardt's emergent "multitude", whilst the latter would dovetail with Jean Baudrillard. Judging by the capsule review I've pasted below and the representation of violence in the trailer, it is probably closer to a Baudrillardian dystopia insofar as it is [seemingly] not amenable to rational planning and democratic control by human beings. I haven't read Julian May's Galactic Mileu series so I can't cite it as a sci fi precedent for the themes of this movie. In any case, here are some details about 8th Wonderland:

They are of all nationalities, all professions and creeds. They’ve never met face to face but they share a common secret. Together they form a clandestine community based in 8th Wonderland, the planet’s first virtual country. Motivated by the same goal, they communicate daily to concoct strategies for counteracting the Machiavellian plans of the world’s capitalist societies and create a land on Earth where, at last, peace reigns. After disabling a project that might have started a war, 8th Wonderland finally attracts the attention of the global media and with it, that of anti-terrorist organizations. Risking the worst, the inhabitants of the synthetic nation elect to move ahead with plans to impose their laws on all the world’s leaders. A new era is beginning to emerge, even if it’s threatened buy the sudden intrusion of someone claiming to be the creator of 8th Wonderland.

Easily one of the most fascinating genre films of the last half-decade, 8TH WONDERLAND, by newcomers Nicolas Alberny and Jean Mach, is a triumph on every level. By imagining an alternate world that would no doubt have intrigued Jean Baudrillard, the French filmmakers offer a smart consideration of the place of new media in contemporary society. The undeniable political power of Web communities has never been so effectively presented in cinema. Though editorial commentary is the leitmotiv, Alberny and Mach dodge intellectual heavy-handedness by incorporating it into a gripping story of suspense, a conspiracy tale loaded with humour, tension and surprising twists and turns. This captivating trip across the Web culminates in a climax that matches that of Park Chan-wook’s OLDBOY in its impact. With a multitude of mini-stories woven into a massive narrative and a precise and original use of the split screen (the scenes occurring inside the 8th Wonderland site are a feast for the eyes), Alberny and Mach succeed where Zack Snyder failed in his transposition of the spirit of Alan Moore’s comics to the big screen. 8TH WONDERLAND may well be the film of its generation, for whom Facebook and Twitter are part of a daily existence split between the real and the virtual, one that demands justice and equality for those denied them, one that wants to see its utopian dreams at last realized.

—Simon Laperrière (translated by Rupert Bottenberg)

The Feminization of Poverty within a corrupt Narco-State: Rethink Afghanistan

Rethink Afghanistan

"The Wal-Mart Wall of Heroes"

Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers is the story of what happens to everyday Americans when corporations go to war.
Acclaimed director Robert Greenwald (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed and Uncovered) takes you inside the lives of soldiers, truck drivers, widows and children who have been changed forever as a result of profiteering in the reconstruction of Iraq. Iraq for Sale uncovers the connections between private corporations making a killing in Iraq and the decision makers who allow them to do so. Watch documentary…

"Why Invite regret, When you can get the sort of rape You'll never ever forget."

"Please note this vid deals with issues of rape and consent. More specifically, it’s a playful yet critical look at the troubling presentation of these issues in the Fox television show 'Dollhouse'.

"The vid is fittingly titled 'It Depends on What You Pay' by vidder Gianduja Kiss who expertly combines clips from the first season of Joss Whedon’s new television show 'Dollhouse' with music from the 1960’s off-Broadway musical 'The Fantasticks'.

"For those unfamiliar with the premise of the show, it’s set inside a secretive corporation called the Dollhouse. People are coerced into handing over their bodies to the Dollhouse which then rents out those bodies for profit. The 'actives' or 'dolls' have their minds wiped and are then re-programed with the personalities and skills desired by each new 'client'.

"Gianduja Kiss’s vid brilliantly exposes the fact that these “dolls” have no way to consent to any of their 'engagements' – sexual or otherwise – an issue the show ignores. The vid names this disturbing lack of consent for what it is – rape. This calling out of the show’s narrative is an important step in countering the current rape culture and its place in our culture of violence."

from Political Remix Video




It Depends On What You Pay

Rape!
R-a-a-a-pe!
Raa-aa-aa-pe!

A pretty rape!
A literary rape!

We've the obvious open schoolboy rape,
With little mandolins and perhaps a cape.
The rape by coach; it's little in request.
The rape by day, but the rape by night is best.

Just try to see it.
And you will soon agree, señors,
Why Invite regret,
When you can get the sort of rape
You'll never ever forget.

You can get the rape emphatic.
You can get the rape polite.
You can get the rape with Indians:
A very charming sight.
You can get the rape on horseback;
They'll all say it's new and gay.
So you see the sort of rape
Depends on what you pay.
It depends on what you
Pay.

The kids will love it.
It depends on what you pay!
So why be stingy?
It depends on what you --

The spectacular rape,
With costumes ordered from the East.
Requires rehearsal
And takes a dozen men at least.
A couple of singers,
And a string quartet.
A major production.
Requires a set.

Sounds expensive!

Just try to see it.
And you will soon si,si señors,
Why
Invite regret,
When you can get the sort of rape
You'll never ever forget.

You can get the rape emphatic.
You can get the rape polite.
You can get the rape with Indians:
A very charming sight.
You can get the rape on horseback;
They'll all say it's new and gay.
So you see the sort of rape
Depends on what you pay.
It depends on what you
Pay.

So why be stingy?
It depends on what you pay!
The kids will love it.
It depends on what you --

The comic rape.
Perhaps it's just a trifle too unique.
Romantic rape:
Done while canoeing on a moonlit creek.
The gothic rape!
I play "Valkyrie" on a bass bassoon!
The drunken rape.
It's done completely in a cheap saloon.

The rape Venetian
Needs a blue lagoon.
The rape with moonlight
Or without a moon.
Moonlight is expensive but it's in demand.
The military rape:
It's done with drummer and a band.

You understand?
I understand.
It's very grand.
It's very grand.
It's done with drums and a great big brass band!
Yeah!

Just try to see it.
I see it!
I see it!
And you will soon si,si señors,
Why
Invite regret,
When you can get the sort of rape
You'll never ever forget.

You can get the rape emphatic.
You can get the rape polite.
You can get the rape with Indians:
A very charming sight.
You can get the rape on horseback;
They'll all say it's new and gay.
So you see the sort of rape
Depends on what you pay.
So you see the sort of rape
Depends on what you pay.
So you see the sort of rape
Depends on what you pay.
So you see the sort of rape
Depends on what you pay.
Depends on what you pay.
Depends on what you pay.
Depends on what you pay.
Depends on what you pay.


So why be stingy?
It depends on what you pay!
The kids will love it.
It depends on what you

Ra-aa-aa-pe!
Ole!

Creativity always builds on the past

Water Wars

Watch Blue Gold - World Water Wars in Educational & How-To | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

John Urry has presented a detailed sociological analysis of a dystopic "quantum of solace" type future in his book Mobilities. One thinks of J.G. Ballard's Crash and The Drought when reading Urry, as well as Kim Stanley Robinson's California trilogy and, of course, Frank Herbert's Dune. This proves, yet again, how William Gibson was correct when he argued that it is becoming more difficult to write science fiction because the gap between fiction and non-fiction (or social theory at least) is closing too quickly.


Urry foresees the impact of the civilian use of military technologies, such as Global Positioning Systems to monitor car use in addition to acting as travel guides, in ways that also feed into the themes of this blog. Note though that Urry is acting only in the interest of rethinking our priorities to ensure we not only face the following:

"...there is a stark choice for sustaining a planetary future. On the one hand, there is the dystopic barbarism of unregulated climate change, the elimination of many existing 'civilizing' practices of economic and social life, and the brutal reversal of many mobility and network capital developments of the past few decades. And on the other hand, there is the dystopic digital Orwell-ization of self and society, with more or less no movement without digital tracking and tracing, with almost no-one within at least rich societies outside a digital panopticon and with a carbon database as the public measure of worth and status" (p.276).

Be sure to continue browsing though to read how he qualifies "a sociology of the future". To keep the focus tight, I won't be commenting on the new Yes Men film here. If you don't feel like clicking through the Google Books version, read this condensed paper instead.

Let Them Eat JunkHow Capitalism Creates Hunger and Obesity

"This is the first book to analyse the food industry from a Marxist perspective.Respected economist Robert Albritton argues that the capitalist system, far from delivering on the promise of cheap, nutritious food for all, has created a world where 25% of the world population are over-fed and 25% are hungry. This malnourishment of 50% of the world's population is explained systematically, a refreshing change from accounts that focus on cultural factors and individual greed. Albritton details the economic relations and connections that have put us in a situation of simultaneous oversupply and undersupply of food.This explosive book provides yet more evidence that the human cost of capitalism is much bigger than those in power will admit."

"Let Them Eat Junk: How Capitalism Creates Hunger and Obesity"
Robert Albritton

Zombie Boot Camp

This clip I've posted here is from Pink Tentacle. It's very easy just to laugh and dismiss it as trivial, but I'm more inclined to the view that there may be an undercurrent of telling satire in this publicity stunt. So what kind of a logical extreme in biocultural planning could be relevant according to current theorists? Moreover, what about actual policies the Japanese government has considered implementing? Even if there is an element of hyperbole to such a reading strategy, sometimes I think that is ok, in the same way that science fiction can serve as a form of social theory, a yardstick to measure prospects for dystopia, or the progressive spirit of utopia.

It follows that the idea of the "bootcamp" is actually not far removed from recent plans devised to deal with Japan's growing population of "shut ins" (which I've blogged about previously) and NEETS (Not in Employment Education or Training). Apparently the asocial/non productive must be subject to the utilitarian calculus; the decommodified must be recommodified, given that they mark the failure of the liberal subject to pull itself up by its own bootstraps.

Perhaps this might be considered as further ratification of Nick Turse's thesis in The Complex that military culture is threatening to increasingly colonise everyday life (here though in response to the global recession, as Turse's book preceded this event)? To begin thinking of camps also logically leads to consideration of Agamben's dystopic thesis of "the state of exception" and its connections to the biosocial management of a population. To be deprived of your autonomy, a hallmark of what it means to be a living human being, is on a continuum with the zombie laborers familiar from films such as I Walked With a Zombie. But we should be attentive to a historical shift to more accurately capture the biopolitical dimension I've introduced here. William Bogard in his Empire of the Living dead (published in: Mortality, Volume 13, Issue 2 May 2008 , pages 187 - 200) describes it thus:

"The corpse is no longer a dominant organizing figure of power and knowledge in postmodern network society. Limited by its own corporeality and tied to modern notions of the individual, its utility in controlling life has been superseded by technologies that control birth. This essay draws a line from Foucault's analysis of the dead body as an object of biopower to Baudrillard's and Deleuze's vision of control societies, in which the body disappears and biopower becomes a function of information and genetic modification. It uses the popular film image of the “living dead” to trace this evolution of biopower from the dissection of bodies at the end of life to the pre-programming and simulation of life at its inception: an evolution from the corpse to the clone, from the individuated dead body to the hybrid, dividualized body".

So before getting to zombie boot camp specifically, the broader social context in Japan should be taken into account. Were the dystopia to ever be more fully realised then, these "disciplinary techniques" would, if we take on board Bogard's perspective, mark only the beginning of a more efficient form of "pre-programming":

"The ruling LDP is contemplating a plan which would see hikikomori, NEETs, the unemployed and other undesirables bundled off to army boot camps to learn such useful trades as tree felling and ditch digging.

The issue of the supposedly endemic hikikomori (socially isolated people typically not in conventional employment) and NEET problems has vexed politicians desperate to shore up tax revenues for some time; a recent law ensured they would get help whether liked it or not, but this new proposal goes a step further.

The plan will see unemployed from throughout the nation gathered up and collected in military camps, where they will live for six month periods.

The state will there feed and house them, and they will be drilled in the sort of pork barrel schemes which have been so successful in lifting Japan out of its economic malaise; they will work tending forests and abandoned farmland, as well as gain qualifications useful in the construction industry, such as in the operation of heavy machinery.

The politicians proposing the measure all happen to be leading figures involved with the military, agriculture, or construction. It will be tacked on to an upcoming economic stimulus bill.

The scheme is modeled directly on the organisations formed by President Roosevelt to attempt to combat the impact of the Depression.

There is at this stage apparently no talk of making the scheme compulsory, although just how they will get notoriously recalcitrant hikikomori into the camps is not clear. Miruku may not be enough…"

Via Asahi.

Suffice to say, I will continue to test the theoretical application of biopower to social policy by referring to concrete examples if, (as seems likely), and when, they arise. With a gentle smile, I can now turn to the zombie boot camp in question:

"The Saikyō Senritsu Meikyū (”Ultimate Horror Maze”) — a 900-meter-long zombie-infested labyrinth at Japan’s Fuji-Q Highland amusement park — is billed as the world’s longest and scariest house of horror.

However, at a “press conference” staged last month, organizers announced they had temporarily shut down the facility because the zombie staff had lost their edge and were not frightening people enough. While the haunted house was closed, the undead employees were put through a rigorous training program designed to upgrade their zombie skills.

Here’s some video showing the treatment they had to endure...."

The horror house has since reopened and the camp-hardened zombies are reportedly as scary as ever.

[More zombie training camp videos]

20th Century Boys

Making the university safe for intellectual life

In Twitter type mode today: only time for a brief rejoinder to my previous post. I just want to re-emphasise that the aim was to argue that there is something worth saving in the institution, something irreducible to the character types laboring under the limitations of current conditions. I've said enough in the past to make it very clear [I hope] that it would be very foolish to throw the baby out with the bathwater, which would leave only the blogosphere as a public sphere. It's not clear to me that much can be done for the blogosphere that would be capable of approximating the kind of prescription implied by the title of this post. But anything that could be done is precisely what is downgraded by certain tenured philosophers.

It's ironic that said academics can recklessly skate over the kind of argument I'm presenting here. I'm thinking, for example, of speculative realist Graham Harman, who on his blog makes some incoherent points about the kind of "mouthy punks" whom, he argues, dominate the blogosphere. Harman explains that his interest is only in democratising access to knowledge, rather than democratising knowledge production. I applaud Harman that he is willing to publish a book on Bruno Latour and make it available through open access. He is also willing to debate Latour in a public forum, thereby confirming the social epistemological imperative of having a democratic right of reply. But his distinction between access and production really makes no sense at all. Wouldn't it be the case rather that democratising access would have a "knock on" effect of collectively improving the quality of critical responses, thereby also holding the academic accountable by putting them on "trial"? It is also somewhat disingenuous of Harman to complain about bloggers flaming him behind pseudonyms, rather than standing behind their words. As an academic Harman should already be familiar with anonymous peer review, so in principle he has no grounds for taking exception to anonymous interlocutors. Harman should also understand that not everyone is employed by an organisation that values the expression of "academic freedom" to the extent to which he has grown accustomed as an academic, so it is entirely legitimate for bloggers to protect their true identities. An excellent critical entry point to get at the stakes of this argument can be found here (I recommend reading the responses to that post also, as well as following the links to Harman et al). Not coincidentally, much of that posting chimes with the reservations I've expressed many times about the continental philosophy blogosphere.

I say again: constructive criticism is indispensable, but it can only take place once some ground has been cleared by finding weaknesses in the arguments in question. Harman appears unconvincing then when he says that critics are only motivated by the resentment of not having a "project" of their own. Bullshit. I'm talking about a form of creative destruction that will clear a space for something else. I've always been consistent in this respect in the choice of alternatives I've substituted for the object of each critique. So in this spirit I will invoke again Fuller's social epistemological imperative of the integration of teaching and research in the university as a means of ensuring the continuous destruction of social capital:

"It’s a commonplace to describe the functions of the modern university as the integration of teaching and research. The original idea was for this integration to take place in each professional academic, whose duty to push back the frontiers of knowledge was matched by an equal obligation to make that knowledge available to the widest audience possible. In The Sociology of Intellectual Life, I discuss these two phases as constituting the creative destruction of social capital. Here’s what I mean.

Research involves the accumulation of social capital, as academics, investors and clients create the networks needed to produce and maintain new knowledge. Most, if not all, of these people are motivated by the desire for competitive advantage in the economy, the intellectual field or society more generally. However, the Enlightenment norms of the university prescribe that this knowledge not be limited simply to those able to pay for it; hence, the pedagogical imperative. For its part, teaching requires the translation of knowledge claims into a language comprehensible by those who were not directly involved in its production or, for that matter, are likely to extend it in the directions intended by those so involved. In other words, teaching aims to destroy whatever initial competitive advantage the researchers had. This in turn triggers a new cycle of knowledge-based social capital creation, which will be itself overturned over time, etc. The overall result is a constant stream of innovation that ensures the dynamism of the social order".

Fuller argues that as teaching and research have become more split, this ideal of creatively destroying social capital becomes a more remote possibility. The danger then of Harman's petty style of pedagogy, which necessitates a policing of his interlocutors, is that it attests to academia becoming the victim of its own success in a manner consistent with an emphasis on greater technical specialisation in the period since WW2. Breadth is consequently sacrificed for depth (remember Harman's injunction about not democratising production) and Fuller here echoes Ben Agger's basic argument that was cited in my previous post. The net result of the breakdown each describes is an absence of dynamism in the social order and a mirroring in the blogosphere of the worst excesses of a university unsafe for intellectual life.

So why can't we try instead for something other than the self-serving protection of academic real estate? If Harman's statements demonstrate the extent of his willingness to become reflexive about his knowledge practices, and their effect on others, then he does little to encourage greater interest on my part in his work. It's the reason I've stuck with Fuller. Perhaps it would be an interesting exercise to compare Fuller's critiques of Latour with Harman's general approach in his book The Prince of Networks (just Google to find the free downloadable copy). But until such a time, I will avoid his book like the plague.....

To get a greater sense of Fuller's perspective, I recommend listening to these podcasts:

Steve Fuller (Sociology), The Sociology of Intellectual Life

• Sociology of Intellectual Life
• Academic Authority in a Digital Age
• Experts, Intellectuals and Academics
• The Unholy Alliance of Bullshit and Plagiarism

More on the psychic economy of higher education

I've felt my interest in this topic heating up lately, what with all that discussion over on the Crooked Timber blog and elsewhere about the precarious nature of independent scholarship, the need for public intellectuals (complemented by a "public sociology") to compensate for the careerism that threatens to make academia a symptom of fast capitalism (i.e. one writes primarily to amass a publication record for the sake of the impressive curriculum vitae that will advance your career). I am someone who believes in constructive criticism though, so I point toward six conditions for realizing the university in these difficult times. I believe that the characteristic difficulties described in the links that feature in the later part of this post are well covered by the sixth of the aforementioned conditions i.e. communicative tolerance: the quietness of staff is not a sign of high morale. Everyone must be encouraged to express themselves, even if this carries the risk of more whistle blowing.

Of course, there must be interaction between each of the conditions before there is any chance of realisation. Condition 6 is very closely allied with condition 1 i.e. critical interdisciplinarity: different schools might find themselves having to work more collaboratively for a greater interest, rather than continually forming strategic alliances inhouse which merely encourages the politics of cloning- mentoring others to say the same things as you- albeit not quite so well expressed (according to sociologist Liz Stanley). Indeed, derridata tipped me off to some eloquent testimony of how academic business as usual can foster disenchantment:

"The scariest thing a young faculty member experiences is not, as is conventionally supposed, the “need to produce” and therefore her/his experience is not aided by the “mentorship” of an experienced scholar. Rather, the young scholar’s fear stems from the fact that no one in the department is talking to each other about scholarship. Faculty are socializing, going out, schmoozing all the time, and the ideas that supposedly drive the work they do are not being discussed. The mentor, if assigned, will try to teach the young faculty member how to navigate the minefield of the department, but that is exactly what is alienating. . The mentor, especially when well-intentioned, may be the model for what is wrong, not an aid in coping. Indeed, if the mentor is really similar to the young faculty member in terms of ideology or social identity, the mentor may be a model for what the young faculty member does not wish to become.

The one conversation everyone is having incessantly is the one about the micropolitical maneuvers within the department. This conversation is, of course always done with armor on, with an eye toward alliances and enemies already made, with everyone watching to find out which camp the new faculty member will join. And while there is a relationship between micropolitics and geopolitics, it is far more tenuous, far more mediated by local institutional conditions, than the new faculty first imagines.

Because no one is talking about substance, only alliances, and because alienation is general, a vacuum exists at the center of institutional power which is not filled by talent or argument, but by those who feel most comfortable or justified taking advantage of it. For those in power, and for those who hope to attain power, the arrival of a new junior faculty member is to be watched closely for his/her schmoozing choices. As a result, it is not simply the case that junior faculty fear senior faculty, but that the senior faculty fear the junior faculty, walking around wondering whether this new person will contribute to their already hatched plan to take over the curriculum. The fact that the new person was hired with accomplishments and expectations much higher than so many senior faculty members does not help this form of fear, of course.

While it remains true that the power differential between tenured and untenured faculty makes the ubiquity of fear particularly threatening to the careers of junior faculty members, the longer one stays the more one discovers that one’s unhappiness is simply an example of the larger misery of faculty members. Senior faculty don’t exactly help or support one another either. Tenure might lead to a sense of security; it surely does not breed happiness".

This anecdotal evidence about micropolitics certainly squares with my ex-university. The school of sociology split into two mutually hostile camps, meaning that collegiality was almost non-existent, to the point where certain staff members would not even acknowledge each other in the hallway. It's probably not unreasonable to surmise such generative factors have played a part in other professions of exhausted patience. During the course of my own postgraduate work it was a piece written by Jill Blackmore and Judyth Sachs that left an indelible impression on me. This may have had something to do with the fact that I had already read so many books by Ian Craib, in addition to, somewhat ironically, (given they were faculty at my university that had split into the opposite camp), Game and Metcalfe's Passionate Sociology. What particularly haunted me in that book was the admission that the "deception is cruelest" when the academic poses as a "friend" to the student, as this masks the power/knowledge inequalities in the relationship. These authors buttress their case through a semiotic reading of graduation ceremonies: the student ascends the stage to tip the mortarboard to the academic, and for that fleeting moment is symbolically acknowledged as the academic's "equal", before walking back down the steps and assuming the "lower" position.

And yet I appreciate this must be hard on some academics too, as they must feel forced, sometimes in spite of themselves, to shut off their emotional responses so as not to get too personally involved, even when they have previously enjoyed talking about the subject for which they and their student "share" (a word loaded with all sorts of ambiguous connotations in this context) a mutual love. This "lost love" is what Game and Metcalfe wish to reignite in their "passionate sociology". Irrespective of the prospects for its realisation, I have some sympathy for the commitment behind it, at least to the extent it dovetails with Ian Craib's shrewd insight that sociologists may otherwise be particularly prone to normotic (i.e. no internal life) personality structures.

There is something else I would like to say about this issue but it will take a while longer for it to crystallise, so another time perhaps.