Jouissance, Eudaimonia, & the Grotesque

Re: The Chomsky/Foucault Debate

2012-01-10T13:32:00.000-08:00

As relevant now as it ever has been.

Music Listens for January 2-6

2012-01-06T16:02:00.000-08:00

I've still been playing with the idea of putting together a best-of list, which would require I take a thorough accounting of every album I've listened to this entire year, then making a list of what I thought were the best ones. Fun fun.

Anyway, here's my list for this week.

Sun Ra - The Futuristic Sounds of...
Someone how I pulled this out of the stack and listened to it quite a bit.

Snowman - Absence
I've always enjoyed this album , but each time I listen to it I wonder about just what it contributes to the landscape of post-rock. In any case, it's a joy to listen to.

Miles Davis - Sketches of Spain
Needless to say, this is a classic.

Grant Green - First Session
This guy plays jazz guitar like few others.

New Book (Cover): The Garden of Eden, by Ernest Hemingway

2012-01-04T11:16:00.000-08:00

I hadn't even heard of this novel until a few months ago. This is an unfinished, and consequently controversial novel by Hemingway; however, from the reviews I've read, it's quite good.

New Book (Cover): The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut

2012-01-04T11:15:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know. I've never read it. But now I've got the book, so I can, and I'm looking forward to it!

Music Listens for December 26-30

2011-12-30T10:50:00.000-08:00

I can't believe this is the last week of the year! Well, I've been toying with the idea of creating a best of 2011 list (each year I question whether I should put one together or not, and each year I inevitably put one together.)

Anyway, here's my list for this week, which, I must say, has been mostly a week of oldies.

Elder - Dead Roots Stirring
Here's some amazing heavy, doomy, rifftastic music. I'm not sure that I have a favorite doom metal album for this year, but I'm leaning towards this one.

Graveyard - Hisingen Blues
I think the title is supposed to sound like "high singin' blues," but who am I to say. It sound a lot like Radio Moscow or a more southern bluesy version of the Black Keys. It's good.

Free - Fire and Water
What is there to say about such an awesome band?

Bill Evans - Sunday at the Village Vanguard
And again, what can I say about such a legendary musician.

Jimmy Reed - Live at Carnegie Hall
For me, Jimmy Reed has been an underrated blues musician. One must listen to him with an intent ear because his high points are subtle. Here's a good one.

New Book (Cover): The Prague Cemetery, by Umberto Eco

2011-12-30T10:28:00.000-08:00

And here's another novel for reading group. I'm excited to read this one. I've only read Eco's theory (of the superman), so I'm curious about his prose.

New Book (Cover): The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Euginides

2011-12-30T10:27:00.000-08:00

Here's another one for reading grop. I've heard that this book is a good, fast read.

New Book (Cover): Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro

2011-12-30T10:26:00.000-08:00

Here's another one for reading group. I've never heard of Alice Munro (nor have I done any research on her). So this ought to be a plunge.

New Book (Cover): Blue Nights, By Joan Didion

2011-12-30T10:22:00.000-08:00

Here's another one for reading group. I heard Stephen Greenblatt's NPR interview with Didion, and I get the impression this book's going to be a solemn one.

New Book (Cover): One Hundred Great Essays, edited by Robert Diyanni

2011-12-30T09:15:00.000-08:00

And here's a dry-looking offering--or reading with a purpose. This is my hope for adding new essays to my rhetoric class.

New Book (Cover): Spending, by Mary Gordon

2011-12-30T09:13:00.000-08:00

Here's a reading group read. I have no idea what to expect from this one, which is the beauty of reading group!

New Book (Cover): The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury

2011-12-30T09:12:00.000-08:00

I've never read this classic, but I've wanted to for years and years. Woohooo.

New Book (Cover): The Quiet American, by Graham Greene

2011-12-30T09:00:00.000-08:00

I've never read Graham Greene. Well, here goes.

RE: Steve Jobs - Billion Dollar Hippy (BBC Documentary)

2011-12-16T13:43:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's the whole thing, the whole hour.

Music Listens for December 12-16

2011-12-16T10:48:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's been a few weeks since I've compiled a list of music I've been listening to. I'd been busy grading lots of papers, finishing up the quarter, and working on a new article for Reconstruction.

Without further ado, here's my list. (I'm debating whether to put together a 2011 best of list; I probably will.)

M83 - Hurry Up. We're Dreaming
I had procured this album a few months ago and discarded it without much thought, then a friend suggested I try them again. There's quite a bit of filler, but the gems are just that: gems.

M83 – My Tears Are Becoming a Sea on World Pop Videos

Liturgy - Aesthethica
It's like black metal, add a dash of math metal, then sprinkle a little garage band wankery in there to keep things fresh and interesting. When they're on, they slay, but there may be too many filler songs on this album.

Nicolas Jaar - Space is Only Noise
This microhouse, minimalist techno, whatever you want to call it, album is a welcome, groovy, heavy, and interesting LP. Nicolas expands the James Blake form by adding samples and providing a bit more sound spectrum without losing the intimate aspect. This is some heavy, heavy mellow music.

Charles Bradley - No Time for Dreaming
Yes sir. This sweet soul album was released this year, by the way.

Vektor - Outer Isolation
And, of course, I shall save the best for last. I only procured this album yesterday, so I haven't had a chance to really soak it up, but what I have heard slays.

New Book (Cover): Wild Palms/Old Man (or If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem), by William Faulkner

2011-12-08T11:45:00.000-08:00

This isn't really a new book; we started reading it in book group in September and just discussed it a few nights ago.

However, there were some things that I didn't have the energy or proper articulation to discuss. Here are my notes and thoughts:

First, it seems that the title was changed (with the 1990 printing of the "corrected text") to If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem. That Faulkner didn't originally title the dual novels using this resonant title tells me that reading the new title within the context of the novel's goals may not provide a meritorious reading if one does so while considering the author's intents. However, the new title still bears consideration within the greater meaning of the two intertwined stories. The title is taken from Psalms 137:5. The passage intimates at forgetting the song of Jerusalem, and the punishment for forgetting is becoming out of sync with God's song and being cast out of Jerusalem itself. This notion carries over to the two stories in that both protagonists, Harry and the inmate, cannot quite carry the tune that would offer them admission into their world's Kingdom, or the Jamesonian notion of "social order."

Putting the notion of social order and the two protagonists place in it aside for a moment, one can also consider the dialogic aspects of the the two stories. Each speaks to the other and mirrors each other in various ways. Here's how I see the two elements intertwining and speaking to each other:

The first sections can be seen as points of departure for each protagonist; they are both roused from their slumber. Harry, an inexperienced, passive young man cannot meet his desired effectiveness as he sees it in the context of the world (of the ordinary). Likewise, the inmate is also inexperienced which the reader can see in his unsuccessful attempt to live out his "effectiveness": he uses pulp novel stories guide his failed bank heist.

The second sections can be seen as an upheaval for both men. In each the protagonists are jolted from their existences via catalysts from the (ordinary) world. For Harry, this comes in the form of Charlotte Rittenmeyer and all she has to offer (56). For the inmate, this comes in the literal form of his chains being unlocked and removed.

The third section brings up the issue of normativity and how it affects each protagonist. In the case of Harry, normativity signals the decline in his and Charlotte's hyperbolic relationship. The reader can find this normativity when the couple relaxes into the complacent, quotidian life of "normal" people who eat at normal hours, and who make a livable wage (74, 78). The respectability that they earn makes their relationship something that's acceptable, which their plan to "vacation" in Minnesota shows to be a bane. For the inmate, normativity is disrupted when he must learn to navigate the skiff around the tumultuous waters of the flood. His normativity is then redefined again for him as he faces it head-on: he helps the pregnant woman have her baby. From this point forward, he becomes the pseudo father in the group as he cares for their safety and procures food for them.

The fourth section in each protagonist's story shows a shift in each of their roles. They must become more resourceful for each of their charges. Becoming more resourceful means that they must let go of their sense of self in exchange for the greater good of "the family." The inmate acclimates more smoothly to this role, while Harry does not.

And then my notes skip to the final sections where I see a marked contrast in how Faulkner portrays the two men. Harry, during his incarceration, receives food, coffee, and the police officer stands over him passively (218). In contrast, the inmate is treated as an item on a ledger. The prison books are off, and either he must disappear or go back to prison, regardless of the fact that he turned himself in. This contrast presents an overt picture of the social order each faces, and their reactions to this force are telling.

At this point, my notes peeter out. However, I find a number of key issues to consider and take away from the novel.

*Hapless submission does not necessarily equal self-preservation. For the initially (and eventually) submissive protagonists, their ability to preserve anything in their lives comes into question.

*Reading the novel as parallel and contingent stories. Doing so raises the question of reading the novel to discover the relationship between independent values and societal values regarding freedom and order.

*Issues of gender. Upon conception (and birth) comes the moment of cuckolding for each man. When Charlotte becomes pregnant, the couple's incendiary love dies immediately because, as Charlotte notes, if they had loved hard enough, the baby would have been burned out of her. When the pregnant woman gives birth, the inmate is immediately removed as the object of affection in place of her baby.

*Issues of choice. The novel creates moments in which the protagonists must make choices, whether it's Harry's choosing to take up with Charlotte, or the inmate's choice to continue down the river or turn himself in. These choices call into question the finite and infinite laws of "life" (culture) versus the potential for vitality the two men may be searching to find.

New Book (Cover): A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway

2011-12-07T11:30:00.001-08:00

I've read many of Hemingway's novels and all of his short stories, but I've never picked this one up. Here goes.

New Book (Cover): The Stranger, by Albert Camus

2011-12-07T11:24:00.001-08:00

I haven't read it. I know, I know, I know, but I'm going to.

New Book (Cover): On Photography, by Susan Sontag

2011-12-07T11:20:00.001-08:00

I've been wanting to get my hands on this one so that I can reflect on and use the rhetorical appeals that Sontag uses in my rhetoric class (, and you know, I'm into photography).

New Book (Cover): Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester

2011-11-16T16:18:00.003-08:00

I haven't read anything by Alfred Bester since my undergraduate days, yet I've been meaning to pick this up and read it for a while. Hopefully the anticipation won't ruin the read.

New Book (Cover): Falling Up, By Shel Silverstein

2011-11-16T16:17:00.001-08:00

Oh, this one brings me back. Although I'm sure I've read a few out of this Silverstein, I haven't read the whole book. I'm looking forward to it.

Music Listens for November 14-18

2011-11-16T09:43:00.001-08:00

Besides one instance, seems like it's been a mostly oldies week.

Atriarch - Forever the End
This new album caught my interest. Brutal yet restrained. The vocals aren't annoying, and the atmospherics add resonance. Reminds me of something, but I can't remember what.

Mono - Under the Pipal Tree
Talk about an oldie. I didn't realize that they released this album way back in 2001! Mono just never ceases to amaze me. I wonder if or when they'll release a new album.

Jakob - Subsets of Sets
The pretty country in New Zealand must have provided (and continues to provide) some grand musical inspiration. Jakob are another band who must release a new album (soon).

Beast in the Field - Lucifer, Berarer of Light
The Destroying Angel is from Beast in the Field's newest offering Lucifer, Berarer of Light, and although I'm not sure how much I like it compared to 2010's World Ending, the new album has some slimy, distortion soaked doom metal goodness to ponder.

Dr. Stephen Resnick: Econ 305 @UMass: Marxian Economics

2011-11-14T08:53:00.001-08:00

I found this cool lecture series over here at Dialogic.

I've never taken an econ class, so I look foward to watching this entire series as it will provide a new and interesting perspective on Marxist theory.

I've included the first three lecture videos below.

Music Listens for November 7-11

2011-11-11T15:17:00.001-08:00

Yes, and finally, I've started blogging on my music predilections for the week.

Destroyer - Kaput
It's kinda weird, but the LP is growing on me.

Jesse Morris - Wanna Take it All Back: In Memory
He's a dead wringer for Johnny Cash, and, sadly he just died a few days ago.

Black Joe Lewis - Scandalous
Fabulously fun rhythm & blues that keeps you interested throughout.

Black Cobra - Invernal
Bring it on. I've been waiting for these guys to release a new disc for a while, and their new offering doesn't disappoint a bit.

RE: "Does religion answer factual questions?"

2011-11-11T15:03:00.001-08:00

Here's an interesting piece from the Talking Philosphy blog.

Does religion answer factual questions?
BY RUSSELL BLACKFORD ⋅ NOVEMBER 11, 2011 ⋅ In a recent article in The Guardian ’s “Comment is free” opinion section, Keith Ward defends religion as a source of factual knowledge that eludes science. Thus, Ward rejects (as do I) the principle of Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA) advocated by Stephen Jay Gould - according to which, religion and science, properly construed, have separate epistemic territories or areas of authority. According to this view, religion and science investigate different sorts of questions and so can never give conflicting answers unless they stray from their legitimate roles.
Instead, Ward argues that, “Many religious statements are naturally construed as statements of fact – Jesus healed the sick, and rose from death, and these are factual claims.” I agree with this - various religions do make factual claims that could be just plain false: false in an empirical sense.
It could be - I think it most likely is - just plain empirically false that someone approximately meeting the traditional description of Jesus of Nazareth was executed by crucifixion, then rose from the dead, approximately 1980 years ago. However, it does seem like a factual issue, and one about which Christians have traditionally made claims. To that extent, Ward and I are in agreement. The claims made by religion, or at least some of them, can be seen as answers to factual questions.

Read the whole article here.

New Book (Cover): The Elements of F*cking Style, By Chris Baker and Jacob Hansen

2011-11-10T08:25:00.001-08:00

I noticed the writer over at biblioklept.org posting newly acquired book covers, so I thought I'd do a similar thing on my blog.

I just picked up this little gem, The Elements of F*cking Style, to inspire my class grammar discussions and to help me develop good examples. It's a little too uncouth for direct use in class, but I like the book's verve.

RE: "How Marriage Became Optional: Cohabitation, Gender, and the Emerging Functional Norms"

2011-11-09T08:43:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting study/history on the status of marriage.

How Marriage Became Optional: Cohabitation, Gender, and the Emerging Functional Norms

J. Herbie DiFonzo Hofstra University - School of Law

Rutgers Journal of Law & Public Policy, Vol. 8, No. 3, p. 521, Spring 2011 Hofstra Univ. Legal Studies Research Paper No. 11-29
Abstract: In 1960, two-thirds (68%) of all Americans in their twenties were married. But by 2008, just over one-quarter of twenty-somethings (26%) were wed. According to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, married-couple family households constituted only 49.7% of all households in 2009. The Census Bureau reported in 2009 that 96.6 million Americans eighteen and older were unmarried, a group comprising 43% of all U.S. residents eighteen and older. Children’s living arrangements have also undergone substantial change. In the past generation, the percentage of children in the United States who live with two married parents has markedly declined. Although our culture is still ambivalent about families not based on genetic ties, social acceptance of a wider range of family forms has increased. This multiplicity of family structures means that marriage has become an optional arrangement for creating a family. How did this happen? And where is the American family headed, in both cultural and legal terms? This Article sketches out a framework for analysis of this central social question, and argues that family law is moving in the direction of adopting functional norms for determining family composition and adjudicating family disputes.

RE: "A Death on Facebook - The Atlantic"

2011-11-09T08:39:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting piece from the Atlantic centering around my Facebook derision obsession, yet this piece offers something a bit more than the usual type of Facebook voyeurism.

A Death on Facebook
Intimacy and loss in the age of social media

By KATE BOLICK
Marcos Chin

I MET “S” SEVERAL years ago, when she was hired by the magazine where I worked as an editor. She was an assistant in a different department, so we had very little day-to-day contact. I somehow learned that she went to nightclubs a lot, and I once overheard her tell a colleague that she wanted to be the editor in chief of a magazine someday. It was a snippet that stayed with me, as her partying lifestyle seemed contrary to such a career goal, and for a while whenever I passed her desk I would worry over the incongruity. Eventually I found resolution in the idea of Bonnie Fuller, doyenne of celebrity journalism. That’s what S meant, I decided: she would be an editor like Fuller, rather than someone bookish, like the legendarily reticent New Yorker editor William Shawn. She even had a haircut like Fuller’s.

A Death on Facebook - The Atlantic

"Existentialism Explained..." by Computer Voices

2011-11-08T13:47:00.000-08:00

Oh, absurdity.

Reverting Back to Stock Template

2011-11-08T09:52:00.001-08:00

Well, it looks like html and widgets haven't been enabled yet in the new blogger dynamic views, so I shall have to revert to a vanilla template until google gets their dynamic view design in the now.

New Blog Format

2011-11-08T08:44:00.001-08:00

Yes, I changed my blog's title. I was sick of the old one and felt that I've been moving from such topics to broader ones. I hope you aren't jolted too much, but I doubt that you have been.

And here;s what I've not been doing for a long, long time: posting my top listens for the week. I promise to get back on that, this week in fact.

Cheerio

RE: The Trouble with the Electoral College

2011-11-08T08:28:00.000-08:00

This ought to become a bigger issue as we get closer to next November.

RE: "Slavoj Zizek: 'Now the field is open'"

2011-11-07T16:43:00.000-08:00

Interesting stuff.

Taken from here.

From the Middle East to the streets of London and cities across the US there is a discontent with the status quo. Whether it is with the iron grip of entrenched governments or the widening economic divide between the rich and those struggling to get by. But where are those so hungry for change heading? How profound is their long-term vision to transform society?

Slovenian-born philosopher Slavoj Zizek, whose critical examination of both capitalism and socialism has made him an internationally recognised intellectual, speaks to Al Jazeera's Tom Ackerman about the momentous changes taking place in the global financial and political system.

RE: "Modern Horror Defined By Edgy Realism Of The 1970s"

2011-10-10T08:46:00.000-07:00

I just found this interesting article on Slate. I've pasted the first 4 paragraphs. You can find the full text here.

Modern Horror Defined By Edgy Realism Of The 1970s
by NPR STAFFOctober 8, 2011By the late 1960s, classic horror movies pioneered by Vincent Price and Boris Karloff had run out of steam. What took their place in the period after that was something different, edgier and altogether more terrifying.
"To some extent you could say that modern horror started with the Universal classics, but I do think there is this significant turning point starting in 1968," says Jason Zinoman, author of the new book Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror.Zinoman tells weekends on All Things Considered guest host Robert Smith the horror film genre is bigger today than it has ever been, and many of the tropes and motifs we see in modern horror films come from the period of the late 1960s through the end of the '70s.
"I think it was a huge transition from the old horror – (Boris) Karloff, Vincent Price and the old monster movies – to the kind of new brand of scares that you saw in Rosemary's Baby, Alien and Halloween," Zinoman says.

Reconstruction Vol. 11, No. 3, 2011: Gender and Popular Fiction

2011-10-07T09:25:00.000-07:00

Reconstruction Vol. 11, No. 3, 2011: Gender and Popular Fiction

Editors’ Introduction: Gender and Popular Fiction, by Cameron Leader-Picone and Matthew Schneider-Mayerson

Articles

Everything But the Kitchen Sink: Popular Novels by Women in the Great Depression, by Jan Goggans

Pamela, Twilight, and the “Mary-Sue” in Literature: Patterns of Popular Criticism, by Ashley Barner

On Getting Lost in a Good Book: Bibliomania and the Harry Potter and Twilight Series, by Erin Hollis

Gender and Genre Bending: The Futuristic Detective Fiction of J.D. Robb, by Linda Ledford-Miller

Highbrow, Lowbrow, No-brow: Women’s Reading Practices and the Vitality of New-Format Fiction, by K.C. Harrison

Blood Meridian...Coming

2011-10-04T16:58:00.000-07:00

The quarter, once again, has taken all my time away from writing. Here's to keeping the blog alive.

Blood Meridian, by Cormac MacCarthy, is one of those resonant, horrific books that stays with you for weeks, months, even years. I'm curious about the movie.

interview with Horror Director John Carpenter

2011-08-18T09:44:00.000-07:00

It seems that the summer is almost over and I haven't written much of anything new. Here's some more cribbing until I get around to finishing the multiple writing projects I've started.

Here's an interesting interview with John Carpenter, director of horror movies such as Halloween, The Fog, and The Thing.

RE: "The Self, the Novel and History. On the Limits of Bakhtin's Historical Poetics" by Vladimir Biti

2011-07-12T09:32:00.000-07:00

Ah ha! I new, probably interesting article based on Bakhtin's theories. I'll have to check out the full text when it's available for free.

The Self, the Novel and History. On the Limits of Bakhtin's Historical Poetics
Vladimir Biti

Article first published online: 12 JUL 2011
DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0730.2011.01018.x

Keywords:

self
;
novel;
history;
historical poetics;
post-colonial theory

This article considers Bakhtin's historical poetics as a particularly enthusiastic representative of the European evolutionary paradigm with a series of disquieting (post-)colonial implications. It starts with a genealogy of several basic modernist categories like the self, the novel, history and historical poetics. In order to lay bare the underlying novelistic pattern of the modernist conception of history, it continues with a comparison between the philosophical and sociological theories of the novel of Bakhtin and Luhmann respectively. Both of them connect the advancement of the self with a devaluation of the other, which is a typically colonial pattern according to the argument in the conclusion of the paper.

Democracy Now: Julian Assange and Slavoj Žižek

2011-07-05T14:36:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting discussion between philosopher Slavoj Žižek and WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange which provides their insights into pressing issues of our time.

Watch live streaming video from democracynow at livestream.com

First as Tragedy, Then as Farce by Slavoj Žižek

2011-06-16T09:33:00.000-07:00

In this RSA animate, Slavoj Žižek provides a thought provoking take on the interrelations between capitalism and charitable giving.

Professor Renata Salecl on Choice

2011-06-16T09:25:00.000-07:00

I just can't get enough of these. This one ruminates on philosophical issues surrounding individual choice as argued by Professor Renata Salecl.

RE: "Oil and the Regime of Capitalism: Questions to Philosophers of the Future" by Tere Vaden

2011-05-28T13:27:00.000-07:00

Here's a piece that was sent to me last year, but the issues of oil and the future that it raises are still quite poignant. The piece was originally posted in CTHEORY.

Oil and the Regime of Capitalism: Questions to Philosophers of the
Future
==============================
====================================

~Tere Vaden~

"What if the hegemony of the West was not, after all, defined
by modern natural science and technology, enlightenment and
individualism but by a one-time offering of coal, gas and oil?"

The anthropological record suggests that, typically, in pre-modern
and non-industrialized communities the foundation of meaning is not
separate from the world of material income: utility objects are
beautiful and beauty is purposeful. Contrary to this, industrial
civilization has often been described as a divider of the world of
values and tools, means and objectives, which, through calculated
reason, extracts everything it can without actually knowing why or
for what purpose.

There is much truth in this bi-partition theory, but perhaps an even
more disturbing picture of industrial civilization is obtained if it
too is seen as a uniform culture that reveals the foundation of
meaning through its utility objects. In places all around the globe,
on land and in the sea, pipes protrude from beneath the ground,
meandering towards enormous containers and networks of more pipes.ct
Oil tankers and tank trucks haul acrid-smelling liquids further and
further away to increasingly smaller containers and tanks, until the
thin pipes end up in a pressure chamber where droplets split into gas
are continuously combusted. What does this simultaneous foundation of
meaning and for material life say about us? At the very least, it
tells us that if it is the foundation we are blind to it, and the
bi-partition theory is one form of blindness.

Capitalism and the bottlenecks
------------------------------

Let us examine two claims often presented about capitalism. According
to the first claim, capitalism is an endlessly adaptive system and
ideology. In an awkward way -- one that a revolutionary may almost
loathe -- capitalism can adapt to any circumstances. It swallows all
forms of resistance, transforming them into part of itself. Revolt
becomes commercialised and made into a product, big brother's
extra-large trousers become hip-hop fashion, and ethnic identity
becomes commercial bric-a-brac. The second claim is that negative
limits can be set for capitalism, particularly in relation to
environmental problems such as pollution and climate change.
Supposedly, there is a physical limit to growth-oriented capitalism
after which nature can no longer withstand the use, and a
psycho-social, or even biological limit, beyond which man can no
longer endure life under capitalism.

Our wager is that we can begin thinking about the future in
opposition to these claims. Firstly, capitalism is a very fragile
system. Indeed, the contemporary complex capitalist system is not
particularly flexible or strong, but is instead stiff and weak.
Secondly, environmental problems have no limit beyond which they
become intolerable. As long as it happens slowly enough, they can
always become worse. Likewise, human psycho-social or biological
environments can radically deteriorate without becoming impossible.
More than once the last century demonstrated that the zero point of
psycho-social conditions can be reached without provoking systemic
breakdowns.

It is true that capitalism -- as an abstract notion, as an image of a
system where there exists private property, and a society where one
is rewarded for ownership and where capital must grow -- is, of
course, extremely flexible and not dependent on any single value or
social order. It can operate in many different climatic conditions,
and accommodate many different religious, as well as secular,
environments. No single issue determines the fate of abstract
capitalism. For this reason, undermining capitalism is difficult
because of its ability to escape final grounding not only in any
single issue but also in any complex of individual issues.

The counter-argument is that every concrete form of capitalism, every
really existing capitalism -- for example, the system that prevails
in Finland, the Nordic countries or northern Europe in general, or
something even so abstract as Western capitalism -- is sufficiently
concrete and consequently sensitive. Marx emphasised that capitalism
itself always produces crises, its own crises, moments when it
changes its preconditions. Indeed, the fact that capitalism is a
system that produces internal crises also demonstrates the claim that
capitalism is fragile. Crisis is always crisis: and it can also lead
to destruction.

This is linked with a morphological observation concerning forms and
sizes which is easiest to explain with an animal allegory. Let us
think, for example, of an animal in the shape of a mouse: the mouse
has thin legs, an oblong body, a relatively large head with a long
snout, etc. There exist other animals that are roughly the same as a
mouse, such as the shrew and rat. "Mouse-shaped", however, cannot be
any size, for instance the size of a dog or horse. Its constitution
would not function at that scale. The head would be too heavy, the
legs too thin, or something else along those lines. "Mouse-
shapedness" cannot arbitrarily grow so that the proportions of all
parts remain the same. For the same reason, capitalism reaches a
crisis point. It cannot continuously grow so that the proportions of
different parts remain the same. The parts and the proportions of the
parts must change. From this follows delicacy. Every concrete
capitalism is extremely frail at some point and in some way delimited
by a morphological bottle-neck, namely scarcity. At different moments
and in different concrete forms of capitalism the bottleneck is
different.

A second claim, according to which environmental problems, pollution,
climate change and so forth have no limits, is simultaneously related
to the claim concerning life under a capitalist system. In his book
_Planet of Slums_ [1] Mike Davis describes the mega-cities of Africa,
Latin America, India, China and Indonesia, where tens of millions of
people, and in continuously increasing numbers, live in slum
conditions. Davis tells about the single mother in the slum, who
already lives in unbearable conditions, is the poorest of the poor,
having two jobs, but with no comforts, no water or sanitation. What
happens when one more child is born? The mother will bear it. What
about when the old and sick grandmother has to be taken care of? The
mother will bear it because she has to. There is no limit after which
the slum mother can no longer bear it because the option of not
bearing it does not exist. Demands can always be increased,
circumstances made worse, and she will always endure. The same can be
said for more widely based living conditions and the environment. As
long as change occurs slowly enough, conditions will not likely
appear so negative that people would not consent to accommodating
themselves to their (capitalist) fate.

Following these leads, we must take a closer look at present
capitalism. Do we encounter a negative limit after which we no longer
tolerate it? No. The limit of capitalism must therefore be looked for
from the positive side through morphological frailty. What are the
preconditions -- environmental prerequisites, raw material
prerequisites -- that present capitalism needs? Due to the frailty of
capitalism, one must concentrate on what is particular and concrete,
what this capitalism needs. What is *this* capitalism?

Capitalism, which is based on the principle of economic growth,
necessarily needs raw materials, free trade, world trade, and
globalization -- though there do perhaps exist forms of capitalism
that do not need, for instance, world trade. Is there a form of
capitalism that does not need economic growth? That is already more
debatable. Can one date the birth of present capitalism? One of the
best indicators is the start of economic growth. Roughly during the
1820s in Europe there began a long period of economic growth and
increased production, which also corresponded with the growth in
population: these are depicted by the famous "hockey stick" graph,
where the point where the handle reaches the blade represents, at the
latest, the 1950s. Economic growth is not a generally applicable or
common phenomenon. Rather, the incipient economic growth had
comparatively clear reasons and forms: coal and the steam engine, the
electric motor and the combustion engine, oil and natural gas. The
era of fossil fuels and the motors and machines that utilise them is
inseparable from economic growth and the bottleneck of present
capitalism.

Therefore, a philosophical claim: to a great extent, theoretical
discourse concerning capitalism concerns *this* concrete capitalism
and not abstract capitalism, even though such discourse is always
aware of its own limited knowledge. For example, when Marx and Engels
in _Manifesto of the Communist Party_ (1848) characterise capitalism
as a system where "all that is solid melts into air and all that is
holy is profaned" [2] the question then is about *this* concrete
capitalism based on economic growth that has been fed with cheap
fossil fuel energy. This capitalism changes with the economy of coal
and oil, like a mouse becomes a dog and a dog becomes an elephant.
These metamorphoses are not the platonic phenomena of abstract
capitalism but are instead directly attached to the movements of
black raw materials.

Oil dependency and the oil peak
-------------------------------

Oil dependency means that the present capitalism needs cheap oil. Oil
is a non-renewable natural resource. "Non-renewable" means that as
oil is used it runs out. The question, however, concerning when oil
*completely* runs out is not particularly interesting. What is
decisive is the bottleneck question: when does the sufficiently
cheap, easy oil that can be pumped in large amounts, run out? Oil may
"always" be available somewhere at some price but the point where it
starts to hurt, however, is the lack of abundant, cheap oil. The
question becomes philosophical when we remember that the Marxist
theoreticians describe themselves as materialists, who pay attention
at the ground level to the concrete forms of production and their
conditions. Fossil fuel or energy in general have, however, been
relatively little discussed in Marxist theory.

Famous Marxist political leaders certainly realised the importance of
energy -- Lenin had his motto "socialism = electricity + the power of
the soviets"; Stalin began his career by organizing strikes and
blockades in the Baku oil fields -- but not necessarily the
limitations to productivism caused by the finite nature of fossil
fuels. Cuba and Latin American countries may provide the crucial
exceptions to this pattern. In Cuba, the so-called "Special Period"
after the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the decades-long US embargo
have, without a doubt, made energy a prominent topic for political
thought. In his autobiography, speaking with Ignacio Ramonet about
the environmental disaster, Fidel Castro makes the crucial
observation: "Marx thought that the limit on the development of
wealth lay in the social system, not in natural resources, as we know
today." [3]

Let's think, for example, of work. Production can be increased in two
ways; by doing more work or by doing the same tasks more efficiently,
more productively. The history of contemporary capitalism is the
history of both these branches: efficiency is increased by the
division of labour, specialization, technology and automation. At the
same time, also more work is carried out: human work and non-human
work powered by energy. Both Marxists and anti-Marxists have had much
to say about how a new labour force is created by turning people into
paid labour. Yet surprisingly little has been said precisely about
the increase of non-human labour, and its morphological effects. Oil
is not, of course, "produced", even though the term is generally in
use. Oil is not "man-made". It is discovered, extracted and then
used. The use of oil as energy is, according to the definition in
physics, "the ability to work": when burned and manipulated, oil does
work. Which factors in *this* capitalist system depend upon the
amount of easy and cheap non-human labour? Which of these
dependencies are arbitrary, and which ones are necessary?

In the 1950s, M. King Hubbert, a geologist working for the Shell
company, predicted that oil production in the USA would reach its
peak in 1970, which subsequently proved correct, one consequence of
which was the oil crisis of the 1970s. [4] The calculations regarding
availability and sufficiency of oil are, for many reasons, virtually
secret. First of all, the starting points are obscure because the oil
producing countries and oil companies have many reasons to keep the
estimates for oil production and the resources a secret or to distort
them. This is already in itself an interesting fact about the
"transparent market economy": the market economy itself hides the
basis for its continuity as a side product of its own actions.
Scientifically peer-reviewed information about oil quantities simply
does not exist. In the same way as the stock market can act only
under the circumstances of unfree and unbalanced information, the
combustion engine of *this* capitalism can only keep running if the
fuel gauge is unreliable.

There are many different ways, however, of assessing the situation.
Hubbert's classic calculation was based on a simple observation: the
production of a single oil well can be described roughly with the
help of the Gauss curve. Production increases, reaches its peak and
then decreases. This is represented by a bell curve, where the
highest point represents the moment of peak production (*peak oil* or
*Hubbert's peak*). When the output indicators of individual oil wells
are added together we still get a bell curve -- a much bigger one. Of
course a curve describing production is not totally symmetrical.
Hubbert's first estimate from 1956 was based on the idea of how much
oil reserves there were in the USA (adding together the already
produced oil, the known resources and the assumption of still to be
found oil wells). [5]

When the amount of total reserves as well as the rise in production
are known, it is also possible to estimate the peak point and
decrease in production with the help of the bell curve. Hubbert's
second method used as its starting point a curve that included the
amount of oil discovered. Production followed the curve of the
(total) amount of discovered oil with a delay of about 10 years.
Already then the number of discoveries was declining, anticipating
future decreases in production. Hubbert also calculated the time of
the peak using a third method based on the assessment of the success
of oil exploration: how much oil has been discovered when 10 million
feet has been drilled in exploration. The (total) amount of oil
discovered per drilled million feet decreased exponentially. Hubbert
predicted that peak production for the entire world would occur in
around the 1980s and 1990s. His methods and starting points have
subsequently been made more precise, but the basic assessments have
remained the same. [6] The discovery of new oil reserves have
decreased for decades and a large number of oil producing nations
have already passed their oil producing peak. A good example is the
UK, which thanks to the oil discovered in the North Sea in the 1970s
became an important oil exporter in the 1980s, passed its peak in
1999, and after that slid into an oil importing country at the
beginning of the 21st century.

EROEI, or does the cake grow by eating it?
------------------------------------------

Oil is a quite incredible, lyrical, metaphysical substance. [7] A
natural scientist would say that oil consists of long hydro-carbon
chains. Depending on the different lengths of chains and adjacent
impurities, crude oil is classified as light, heavy, low-sulphur,
high-sulphur, and so on. Hydro-carbon chains are interesting
chemically: they are difficult to manufacture, making them requires a
lot of effort and energy, and they have many beautiful properties.
The formation of the hydro-carbon chains of oil required an
unimaginably long period of time. Generally, it is estimated that the
largest oil deposits began to form about 400 million years ago (the
human species is about 200,000 years old, the first oil rig was built
in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859). One of the oldest known oil
properties is that it burns. And in recent times it has been
discovered that it is possible to make almost anything from it:
microphones, walls, medicines, bags, computer parts, plates,
fertiliser, artificial joints, floor planks, and so on. In a way long
hydro-carbon chains are the alchemist's dream, a substance from which
you can form anything you desire -- albeit not gold. Even when trying
to describe oil in a soberly natural-scientific way -- chemically,
geologically, paleobiologically -- one ends up almost inevitably with
ecstatic and mystic visions.

In one year approximately one cubic mile of oil is used globally. [8]
Correspondingly, in the 21st century global consumption has been
about 85 million barrels per day. Contained in a cubic mile of oil is
an enormous amount of energy, the ability to carry out work. The same
amount of energy would be obtained if 50 nuclear power plants of the
type at Olkiluoto in Finland would produce electricity continuously
for 50 years (or put differently, if 2500 Olkiluoto nuclear power
plants would operate continuously for one year). Similarly, 104
coal-fired power plants of 500 megawatts would be needed to operate
for 50 years (or 5200 such plants for one year). Nobody is prepared
to calculate how much carbon-dioxide emissions that would create. In
the same vein, one could consider what it would mean to build 2500
new nuclear power plants. Would there be enough steel, concrete,
uranium, time, money... Here is a view into the cruel beauty of oil:
a cubic mile is, after all, not an impossibly large mass, [9] but the
energy it creates is virtually stellar. Only the sun exceeds oil in
energy amounts, and oil is, of course, "preserved sun".

The enormity can be further illustrated by transforming these issues
into human labour -- these transformations are, naturally, a mere
play of ideas and contain simplifications and unsubstantiated
assumptions. It is estimated that the energy consumption of the
entire world in 2005 was 15 terrawatts. [10] Out of this roughly 13
terawatts was accounted for by fossil fuels. Let us presume that one
human can work with an efficiency of 100 watts. If in 2005 there were
6.5 billion people on the planet their total annual work efficiency
(maximally) was 0.65 terawatts. Fossil fuel, in other words, gave
each person a 20-fold work increase (and other types of energy about
a triple increase). Because the energy increase has not been spread
evenly around the globe, one can assume that a typical Westerner has
tens of "oil slaves" in his service. If all this work were carried
out with human labour, 20 times more labour would be needed in the
world.

The gauge of the enormous work ability of oil is also accounted for
with a ratio called EROEI, "Energy Return on Energy Invested". The
matter in itself is simple. EROEI measures how much energy is
required when a certain amount of energy is used; in other words, how
much potential additional energy is acquired by doing some actual
amount of work (e.g. how much heating energy is obtained when
firewood is chopped for a couple of hours). EROEI is not the same as
thermal efficiency, which measures how large an amount of the used
energy goes towards the intended purpose and how much goes wasted as
heat, etc. At the most, EROEI could be seen as the thermal efficiency
of energy acquisition work: i.e. how much work must be done, for
example, to fill a barrel with oil; is the amount of work greater or
smaller than the energy contained in a barrel of oil? EROEI is
calculated by dividing the amount of energy gained by the energy
expended. If the number is greater than 1 we get an "energy profit",
but if it is smaller we get a loss. Again, an example from the animal
kingdom will help to illustrate. The capercaillie in the wintry
forest needs energy to keep warm, for digestion, to move about, and
maybe a little bit for growth and renewal. Energy is obtained by
eating spruce needles. If the frost condition is severe, the bird
will need to fly far to obtain sustenance. Energy-wise, its day is
likely to flip to the negative side of the EROEI calculation.
Realistically, it would have been better for the bird to have
remained in its snow shelter. Obviously, a state of negative EROEI
cannot last long.

So now we return to the bottleneck of capitalism when studying the
best oil and gas fields, which have an EROEI ratio in the tens.
According to the most optimistic claims, the EROEI of some oil fields
would have been even over 100; in other words, with the work of one
oil barrel one would have gotten 100 new barrels of oil. [11] Maybe
it is possible to believe such claims when one remembers how in old
films oil is shown spurting from the ground. At its easiest, oil can
indeed be found directly under the surface. These most easily
discovered and productive oil fields are naturally used up first, and
the EROEI of the fields in present production is well under 100,
under 50, if not even under 20.

Virtually free -- or at least manifold rewarding -- energy spurting
out from the ground: herein lies the material and mystical foundation
of growth-oriented capitalism. It is mystical because it masks its
existence so that neither capitalist nor anti-capitalist theory
refers to it when explaining economic growth and changes in the
economic systems over the last 150 years. The oil of the high EROEI
is the pulse of the economy but, to employ a different metaphor, it
also produces a blind spot in the middle of the theoretical analysis
of growth.

From the same black spot slither out also horrific tentacles.
Division of labour and technological development have raised
productivity. Billions of people have taken up and been born into
paid labour instead of life. From this obviously follows economic
growth. But at the same time the best energy sources of all time have
been bled dry. The stored solar energy of countless ancient years has
been used up in mere moments. As mentioned earlier, the work carried
out by this extra energy is ten times larger in comparison to human
work. The capitalist and socialist economic systems of the last
century received a unique gift; unique in the sense that there is
only one gift, and unique in the sense that the gift has soon been
used up. Worst of all is how dependent the post-green revolution
intensive farming is on the high EROEI oil. Farming with tractors,
combine harvesters, and artificial fertilisers made from natural gas
are not "primary production" but, from the EROEI perspective, a way
to consume energy. [12] We eat tons of fossil-fuels.

From uniqueness follows, inevitably, further questions. If many
generally applicable observations of political economy science are
concerned not with abstract capitalism (or socialism) [13] but rather
the uniquely oil-injected capitalism, then could the same category
error be evident also in some critiques of modernism, technology or
the Western lifestyle? What if the hegemony of the West was not,
after all, defined by modern natural science and technology,
enlightenment and individualism but by a one-time offering of coal,
gas and oil? As is well known, natural science and technology,
enlightenment and individualism cannot be exported -- and have not
once been exported -- without also exporting and using coal, gas and
oil. The Catholic faith needed only coal and wind.

From the Bottleneck to Tate
---------------------------

In Alfonso Cuaro's film ~Children of Men~ (2006) people in the year
2027 are living in a dystopian world where no children have been born
since 2009. At one point in the film, the sympathetic character
Jasper (played by Michael Caine), who was apparently modelled on John
Lennon, tells a joke. All the geniuses of the world have been
gathered together in a conference that tries to establish the cause
for the infertility: chemicals, radiation, mutation... In the corner
sits an Englishman who does not participate in the discussion but
gorges himself on the conference food. Eventually others ask for his
opinion on why "we can't make babies anymore?" And he replies, "I
haven't the faintest idea, but this stork is quite tasty isn't he?"

Calculating the EROEI of different forms of energy is not easy if
indeed possible at all. What should be taken into account when
calculating the EROEI of, for example, nuclear energy? Building the
power plant itself surely, as well as quarrying the uranium and
transport. What about the final disposal of the waste? For what
period of time? And what about the power grid, transformers,
accumulators...? What about the training required for experts in
nuclear power? In any case, the number of energy slaves goes down
rapidly with diminishing EROEI. No known energy source can even get
close to the EROEI figures of the best oil fields (coal comes
closest), particularly not nuclear energy, the EROEI calculation of
which may be less than one. Not a single nuclear power plant has been
built without a considerable consumption of fossil fuel. [14] Roughly
the same applies to all so-called alternative energy sources. Their
planning, construction and maintenance requires considerable amounts
of high EROEI fossil fuels, and they themselves produce energy with a
much lower EROEI. "Why is there continuously less energy left over?"
"I don't know, but come here and have a look at what kind of solar
panel we built..."

Nobody knows the steepness of the down-slope of the bell curve.
Besides the Export Land Model (see footnote 6), it is steepened by
the decrease of the EROEI of the producing oil wells. The new and
already productive oil wells are increasingly in more difficult
locations -- deeper under the sea, etc. -- and contain crude oil of
an increasingly inferior quality, such as the famous "oil sands" of
Canada, which are really a tar-like substance, if not asphalt-like
stone. When descending along the down slope of the bell curve, an
increasingly larger part of the economy must be directed at energy
production; in other words, an increasingly smaller part of energy is
in the service of the rest of the economy.

It is possible that there exists an unknown limit for what the EROEI
of the energy economy must be so that *this* capitalism can function.
[15] One part of the ongoing crisis is that the summit of the bell
curve has already been passed. Since 2003 the oil consumption of the
OECD countries has been on a slight decline. Correspondingly, the
price of oil went up from the 2001 level (20-30 dollars a barrel) to
the crazy price peak of 2008 (at its highest almost 150 dollars a
barrel; in 2009 almost 70 dollars a barrel). These two trends
together describe, with the help of the law of demand, the
unrenewability of oil; even though the price of oil multiplied in a
few years production (or consumption) did not go up. The peak moment
of global oil production was somewhere around the summer of 2005. How
far down the slope are we now? Nobody knows, but in any case it has
come so far that production cannot be compared to what it was in
2005, and the time of sustained industrial economic growth and the
very cheapest oil has passed. [16]

In the beginning of the 1980s the energy consumption per capita in
the USA ceased to grow. The increase of energy no longer functioned
as a motor for economic growth, as it had during the whole time since
the 1860s, with the exception of the 1970s. From then onwards, US
economic growth has been reliant on debt. The ending of the energy
excess is one reason for the increase in the number of loans. And the
waning of cheap oil is one reason for the increase in costs for the
continuous taking of loans. The financial crisis and the oil crisis
are closely linked; amidst the lost growth shines the black light of
the oil well. The recession that we are currently living in is the
first one of its kind since the Second World War, at least according
to two gauges: for the first time the world's economic production is
decreasing and for the first time the number of miles driven by car
is decreasing.

Due to the present crisis, the famous invisible hand cannot optimally
use up resources. When the price of oil per barrel is simultaneously
too high for the consumer and too low for the producer, that too is a
fault of the decreasing EROEI. Instead of the law of demand putting
things in order, it pushes a wedge between consumers and producers.
Consequently, new drilling projects are put on hold and productive
oil wells are abandoned; the invisible hand masks the resource while
at the same time there is a shortage. 'The invisible hand' may be one
of those thought experiments that only work in a capitalism into
which one can continuously feed more cheap energy. The invisible hand
has a harder time under the conditions of a shrinking or stagnant
economy.

Also, in the era of "negative growth" division of labour as a cause
of prosperity becomes suspect. Division of labour is surely one of
the reasons for economic growth during the last 150 years, but was it
itself a result of the high EROEI ratio of fossil fuels? Lasse
Nordlund [17] has shown in experiments that in the living conditions
of eastern Finland an adult can feed himself by using a 400m^2 area
of farming land, as well as additionally picking mushrooms and
berries in the surrounding forest. According to Nordlund's
calculation, this requires about 4 hours of work a day divided evenly
throughout the whole year. Nordlund is suspicious not only towards
animal husbandry but also towards metal tools, because in a
self-reliant economy they are easily more trouble than they are
worth. From this viewpoint, specialization, and becoming tool and
technology dependent, explicitly require a continuous feed of excess
energy. It is possible that an important part of the specialization
and technologization of the modern world is dependent on and caused
by the magnificent, uniquely high EROEI of large oil wells. If this
is the case, then the claim that modern prosperity is mainly the
effect of improved technology and specialization, has to be revised.

And finally to the beginning
----------------------------

The first conclusion in this situation is somewhat self-evident. If
economic growth is based on more work [18] (in terms of either amount
or productivity) and if the EROEI of all known energy sources is
considerably weaker than the EROEI of the oil fields that have
already been used up or are now in production, then the future
possibilities for an economy that continuously has to grow (in other
words *this* capitalism) seem weak. In fact, only a technological
miracle can save continuous growth and technological novelty cannot
be anticipated ~a priori~. Empirically, we see that all methods of
energy production in use are based on rather old technology and
science (the first versions of solar panels are from the end of the
1800s, the modern versions form the 1940s and nuclear power from
roughly the same decade). Does this promise fast breakthroughs or
rather the opposite? In any case, barring ground-breaking new energy
technology such as cold fusion, economic growth will in the future be
local and short term. What does the continuous shrinking of the
economy mean for science, technology, modernism and individualism? If
it means something significant at all, we have to realise that many
of the theories concerning these phenomena -- which are based on the
idea that fossil fuel driven economic growth has nothing essential to
do with them -- turn out to be limited and maybe even unfounded.

Emphasis on economic growth, technology and efficiency have
characterised the major part of the political thinking of the last
century. Therefore it is perhaps not surprising that an ideological
blindness to the basis of economic growth has been widespread. A
culture that is not aware of its own basic prerequisites can be
called not only blind but also nihilistic. If many
socio-philosophical ideas have unknowingly been based on the
assumption that a unique and in some sense arbitrary phenomenon
(i.e., economic growth based on high EROEI fossil fuels) is
universal, and have incorporated this blind spot into almost all our
thinking concerning modern economy, politics and technology, then our
glass is both half empty and half full. Half empty in that not many
philosophers, economists, critics of modernism or social thinkers
have said a rational word about the future where the economy shrinks
year after year. We have arrived in an uncharted region, where the
unknown is fully equivocal. Half full: talk about the end of history
and other cultural saturation should be forgotten. Even a large part
of philosophy can be started again from the beginning.

Notes
-------------------

[1] Mike Davis, _Planet of Slums_ (London: Verso, 2006).

[2] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, _Manifesto of the Communist
Party_ (1848)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/
index.htm (accessed on 18 June 2010).

[3] Fidel Castro, with Ignacio Ramonet, _My Life_ (London: Penguin,
2008), 355. Interestingly, Castro also speculates that the reason for
the low fuel efficiency of Soviet cars was based on the fact that the
Soviets got more than enough gasoline (petrol) as a by-product of
their massive production of heavy fuel, such as diesel, for
agriculture, industry and the military, ibid., 357.

[4] On Hubbert's calculations see David Strahan, _The Last Oil Shock_
(London: John Murray, 2008), 36-56.

[5] In the calculations for the oil peak, the estimation of future
finds is usually taken into account. For this reason, the claim
sometimes presented that some new find will overthrow the oil peak
theory is erroneous. An individual find would have to be the largest
and most easily accessible of all time for it to considerably effect
the time of the oil peak. It is this second condition, easy access,
that seems impossible to fulfill.

[6] There are two central public organisations for monitoring oil
production; the Energy Information Administration (EIA), which is
under the US Ministry of Defence, and the International Energy Agency
(IEA). The assessments of EIA and IEA on production and consumption
are published with a delay of a couple of months or sometimes even
years. Also, the reliability of the assessments has been questioned,
most recently by an anonymous whistleblower from inside the IEA, as
reported in November 2009 in the _Guardian_ by Terry Macalister, "Key
oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower",
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/09/peak-oil-
international-energy-agency2009 (accessed 18 June 2010). Consultant
companies and oil companies have real time information that is not
published or is only available at a price. Therefore the best public
assessments are compiled by various peer groups and independent
researchers and journalists. Networks exist that gather information
from several sources; for example, counting (on the basis of
satellite photos) how many oil tankers pass through the Strait of
Hormuz at a certain time period, or how much oil drilling equipment
has been ordered recently, and so forth. In this way it is possible
to estimate, for example, the oil production of Saudi Arabia, which
otherwise is a closely guarded secret. The information is compiled
and assessed on many different internet sites, including Wikipedia
(e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_megaprojects). A good example
of the oddities of the "scientific" information concerning oil --
whether economic or engineering science -- is the so-called Export
Land Model (ELM). ELM has been developed on the Internet site "The
Oil Drum" (http://www.theoildrum.com), where professionals and
amateurs in different fields -- oil engineers, investors, geologists,
environmental activists, prophets of doom -- discuss oil news.
According to the ELM model, the right side of the bell curve, that
is, the recession, will be much steeper than the left edge, that is,
the growth period. This is because the producer countries' own
consumption increases (as they get richer) at the same time as their
production decreases. Often, in the producer countries consumption of
oil goes *up*, when price goes up. There is thus less oil for export
than what one might expect based merely on geological depletion. Even
such a simple thing has had to be invented outside the "official"
economic science and research because the public information and
research concerning oil is rather limited and basic.

[7] Correspondingly, some of the best descriptions of the
world-historic relevance of oil are literary. The metaphysical and
mystical character of oil is beautifully exposed in Reza
Negarestani's _Cyclonopedia_ (Melbourne: Re-press, 2008) where one of
the themes is the blind but necessary infestation that oil exerts.
See also the devastatingly prophetic text _Petroleum Petroleum_,
http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/?id=12&xid=1848&kapitel=43&cHash=
925ba3ce332 (accessed 18 June 2010) written in 1903 by Gustav
Meyrink, about a man-made oil-leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

[8] The cube model and its energy correspondences have been developed
to illustrate oil use, but the correspondences have also with good
reason been criticised. See, for example, Harry Goldstein and William
Sweet, "Joules, BTUs, Quads -- Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" _IEEE
Spectrum_, January 2007.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/fossil-fuels/joules-btus-quadslets-
call-the-whole-thing-off (accessed 14 October 2009) and the Wikipedia
entry "Cubic mile of oil",
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil (accessed 18 June
2010).

[9] It is estimated that the glaciers of Greenland lost 36-60 cubic
miles of ice between 2002 and 2006; NASA, 23 March 2007, "Gravity
Measurements Help Melt Ice Mysteries",
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/grace-20070320.html,
(accessed 14 October 2009).

[10] Vaclav Smil, _Global Catastrophes and Trends_ (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 2008), 83.

[11] For EROEI figures see, for example, Charles A.S. Hall and Cutler
Cleveland, "EROI: Definition, History and Future Implications".
Presentation at the ASPO-US conference, 10 October 2005.
http://www.esf.edu/efb/hall/talks/EROI6a.ppt (accessed 14 October
2009).

[12] Calculating the EROEI figure for mechanised modern agriculture
is difficult and depends on many details. It is often stated that its
EROEI figure would be approximately 0.1; in other words, by using the
energy of ten barrels of oil, the amount of food corresponding to the
energy of 1 barrel of oil is achieved. See, for example, Chad
Hellwinckel and Daniel De La Torre Ugarte, "Peak Oil and the
Necessity of Transitioning to Regenerative Agriculture", _Energy
Bulletin_, 6 October 2009. http://www.energybulletin.net/50316
(accessed 14 October 2009).

[13] It has been suggested that the passing of the oil peak in 1987
was a contributing reason to the collapse of the Soviet Union. See,
for example, Douglas B. Reynolds, "Peak Oil and the Fall of the
Soviet Union", _Energy Bulletin_, 28 August 2006.
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/19837 (accessed 14 October 2009).

[14] The only non-labour intensive way of getting rid of nuclear
waste is probably to dump it in the sea, in the style of the Italian
mafia. See, for example, Greenpeace, "Mafia Links to Toxic Waste
Trade - Europe".
http://archive.greenpeace.org/majordomo/index-press-releases/1997/
msg00375.html (accessed 18 June 2010).

[15] Experts have presented estimates varying between 5 and 50. See,
for example, Charles A. S. Hall, Stephen Balogh and David J. R.
Murphy, "What is the Minimum EROI that a Sustainable Society Must
Have?", _Energies_ 2009, 2, 25-47; doi:10.3390/en20100025,
http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/2/1/25/pdf (accessed 18 June 2010).

[16] The widespread collapse of the economy could possibly lower the
price of oil back to a level of 20 dollars a barrel. The collapse
would, in itself, be the end of *this* capitalism.

[17] Lasse Nordlund, _The Foundations of Our Life. Reflections about
Human Labour, Money and Energy from Self-Sufficiency Standpoint_ (New
Delhi: SADED, 2008).

[18] The calculated and reported economic growth can also be based
on, for example, taking loans, printing new money or the rise of the
value of stock shares. For these no or minimal additional labour
would be needed.

----------------

Translation from Finnish: Kristina Kolhi and Gareth Griffiths.

Tere Vaden is a philosopher living in Tampere, Finland. He teaches
interactive media and philosophy at the University of Tampere and is
an editor of the philosophical journal _niin & nain_. Most recently
he has published the books _Wikiworld_ with Juha Suoranta, (London:
Pluto Press 2010) and _Artistic Research_ with Mika Hannula and Juha
Suoranta, (Gothenburg: ArtMonitor 2005).

_____________________________________________________________________

*
* CTHEORY is an international peer-reviewed journal of theory,
* technology and culture. Articles, interviews, and key book
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RE: "How to Live" by Simon Glendinning

2011-05-28T13:21:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting article by Simon Glendinning on the topic of post WWII philosophy.

You can find full texts of part I and part II.

A Life Worth Living: Part I
Simon Glendinning

In post-war Britain academic philosophers did not talk about the meaning of life. Analytic philosophy dominated British philosophy, and this kind of philosophy was dominated in turn by philosophy of language and by epistemology. Moral philosophy, along with aesthetics, mostly hid in a corner.

But in 1976 a distinguished analytic philosopher, David Wiggins, delivered a paper called “Truth, Invention and the Meaning of Life”:

Even now, in an age not given much to mysticism, there are people who ask “What is the meaning of life?” Not a few of them make the simple “un-philosophical” assumption that there is something to be known here. (One might say they are “cognitivists” with regard to this sort of question.) And most of these same people make the equally unguarded assumption that the whole issue of life’s meaning presupposes some positive answer to the question whether it can be plainly and straightforwardly true that this or that thing or activity or pursuit is good, or has value, or is worth something. Finally, something even harder, they suppose that questions like that of life’s meaning must be among the central questions of moral philosophy.

The question of life’s having a meaning and the question of truth are not at the centre of moral philosophy as we now have it.

Not at the centre of moral philosophy – and nowhere near the centre of philosophy in general. Not in 1976. Not in Britain. And while it is true that in Continental Europe philosophy was being done in ways that were at least more congenial to raising the question, still, there too, generally speaking, such ambitious efforts were rare.

They are still rare, but not so rare today and I know of a number of professional philosophers who are grateful that they can now write about the deepest questions of human life without embarrassment. Why has this happened at this time? Why has it become possible to discuss this kind of theme again?

Let us begin by asking why it might be that discussion about the meaning of life went off the radar in philosophy during the twentieth century – and also off the radar beyond academia too, off the radar in the West during the last hundred years or so.

At the risk of gross simplification, I want to suggest that the background to this state of affairs can be framed in terms of the acceptance by European intellectuals of what has been called “the secularisation thesis”. This thesis was developed by different thinkers in different ways, but social theorists like Weber, Durkheim and, in his own fashion, Marx, led the way in thinking we could describe the historical movement of modernity in Europe in terms of a transition from a society dominated by magic, myth, superstition and religion, into one with a cognitively superior outlook in which these things are disclosed as illusions and delusions which we shed in the name of reason, criticism and science.

This story belonged with an even more long-run picture: one which conceived the movement of the whole history of the world in terms of a transition from an origin that was primitive, barbarian, savage – and basically animal – moving slowly and in stages through developments in human society towards a modern, rational and scientific end. There is here the idea of History as Progress towards an ideal End of Man and towards an ideally civilised form of social life. The secularisation thesis dovetails with that wider discourse of modernity: it is the idea that the movement into a rational and scientific age is one which is likely to see primitive and traditional conceptions not only of the world but also of the significance of our lives increasingly give way to rational and scientific ones. The old illusions will, in all likelihood, wither away, and in the future, soon, we will have finally emancipated ourselves from myth, superstition and religion. We will have finally learned how to live.

The secularisation thesis became increasingly matter of course for European intellectuals in the late 19th and 20th centuries. So when people were writing at that time – in philosophy, in history, in politics and in sociology – there was this unquestioned background that, while there were still some foolish believers around, the proper methods were finally making their way; and the methods with a future were rational and scientific, and would have nothing to do with religion at all.

Before I explore this thesis – a thesis which concerns nothing less than the becoming-secular of the world – we should pause to acknowledge that for many people the claimed changeover in our thinking and believing that the secularisation thesis presents was a cause for considerable anxiety. For many, though they may have kept quiet about it, the sense of loss of a religiously articulated understanding of the significance of our lives was not the loss of an illusion or delusion at all, but rather the loss of a way, perhaps finally the only intelligible way, through which we could make sense of the idea that there is something to be known in this most important of domains. What seemed to be disappearing was the most profound, rich and satisfying (“cognitivist”) discourse through which we might hope to come to know what is to be known about the meaning of life. And when religion falls away or is eclipsed then all you are left with is an utterly mundane life in which it is totally unclear why, ultimately, we should think that there is anything more to life than shopping.

You can find full texts of part I and part II.

RE: "A New Reading of Capitol," by Fredric Jameson

2011-05-28T12:51:00.000-07:00

It seems that Fredric Jameson has published book that provides a new reading of Marx's Capitol, which ought to be interesting. I've excerpted his introduction to the book below. You can find the full text to the article here.

A New Reading of Capital

Fredric Jameson

My title promises a preview of my forthcoming book, Representing Capital, a commentary on Volume I of Marx’s Capital, which I read somewhat differently than many of the standard interpretations. So I will tell you something about that and then draw some practical conclusions about Marxism today and its political and intellectual mission.
I am anxious that this work of mine not be understood as a “literary” reading of Capital: not only have those few such attempts been either weak generic classifications or fairly obvious notes on style and metaphor: indeed, the very term literary in this context is bound to trivialize the effort and to suggest that those debating the technical details of Marx’s economic analyses will have little interest in cultural epiphenomena like the textual status of the book as such. And it is true that I take little interest in Marx’s facts as he presents them or in the relevance of the laws he is alleged to have deduced from them. What I have wished to emphasize is the representation of capitalism as a totality, as an infernal machine which can only be described dialectically. I regard the truth of the labor theory of value as a metaphysical issue; I find the extrapolation of Marx’s model to the current third or globalized, postmodern, stage of capitalism to be of the greatest interest, but think that so far this can take many forms. And at the same time I consider that Marx’s description of capital is fully vindicated by recent events and remains as valid today as it ever was. Meanwhile, in this reading I limit myself to the only completed work, namely Volume I of Capital, and I claim that it gives a complete picture of capitalist totality. I should add, to justify my formal approach (which as I have said I would not want to call literary exactly, but which some will certainly continue to characterize as formalist in that way) — I should add that for me the central formal problem of Capital Volume I is the problem of representation: namely how to construct a totality out of individual elements, historical processes, and perspectives of all kinds; and indeed how to do justice to a totality which is not only non-empirical as a system of relationships, but which is also in full movement, in expansion, in a movement of totalization which is essential to its very existence and at the heart of its peculiar economic nature. Yet also essential to this structure is a process of perpetual breakdown: so we have here a machine which is necessarily and inevitably breaking down and which must therefore, to remain in existence, constantly repair itself by enlarging itself and its field of control. How such a peculiar and indeed such a unique phenomenon can be represented or made to appear in our mind’s eye is I believe explained by the equally unique and peculiar powers of dialectical thought, which might almost be considered a new type of thinking invented specifically to overcome the dilemmas of representation posed by this unique and peculiar totality called capital: but I will not pursue any more extensive account and defense or apologia of the dialectic here.
So now we begin, and with a scandalous proposal, namely to bracket the whole of Part One: it is of course the most famous section of the whole work, the one everyone reads even if they get no further; nor is my proposal motivated by quite the same concerns as those of Althusser and Korsch, both of whom suggested that the neophyte or working class reader skip these chapters, at least in part because both these thinkers were for different reasons adamantly opposed to the dialectic as such.
My reasons are somewhat different, though I would agree to this extent, namely that readers can become so mesmerized by the commodity form, fetishism and the like that they cease to explore Marxism any further. I remind you that Part One is what the Grundrisse’s editors call “The Chapter on Money”: it is not yet about capital, money has here not yet undergone its crucial metamorphosis into capital, and to that degree Part One stages something like capitalism’s pre-history (as does, in a very different way, Part Eight, on primitive accumulation), so that strictly speaking Marx’s description of capitalism as such can be limited to Parts Two through Seven. Certainly, in a society dominated by commodification, the analyses of Part One are politically more relevant today, just as the dimension of culture more generally is in our third stage of capitalism. Nonetheless in formal terms, I propose that Part One be considered a kind of complete work in its own right, a kind of overture to the main work, or better still a Vorspiel on the order of Das Rheingold, whose fundamental action will then come with the official Ring trilogy.
One of the reasons for doing so is that Part One has proven to be a fausse piste or as Heidegger calls it a Holzweg, a path leading nowhere. Part One is essentially an attack on the very notion of exchange, on the equation which suggests that there can be such a thing as an exchange of equals, or that the equation can be reversible. This means that there can be no such thing as a just price, and with this the whole project of social democracy or of the equitable reform of capitalism falls to the ground. But this result — politically productive — leaves us back at our starting point, with only one acquisition, namely a methodological one, which will now guide my reading of the rest of Volume One and which I will now briefly outline.
I want to understand plot in Capital as the solving of specific problems, the resolution of specific dilemmas. But as capitalism involves many problems and paradoxes, these resolutions will involve a variety of tentative explorations, and they will take the form of overlapping waves. A problem — paradox, aporia, contradiction — will declare itself; then, gradually, its solution will become apparent, but not without raising another problem in its wake. So by the time one wave has subsided, by the time one momentum has run its course, a new wave is beginning, and a new momentum established: a new problem has raised its head, demanding a fresh set of inquiries and chapters and a whole new movement forward. So this reading of Capital will seek to identify the point at which a new conundrum arises and to indicate how it is resolved and at the same time gives way to a new one. There are five or six waves which basically structure Capital Volume I, or in other words, organize that suspense — now how is this question to be answered? — which constitutes the plot of the work. (I hope it will not complicate this view of the text to add that from a dialectical point of view many of these problems turn out to be the same problem, and to involve the same answer — but in a different register, in different terms, from a different perspective.)

You can find the full text to the article here

RE: "The Information Essay"

2011-05-28T12:44:00.000-07:00

Here's an excerpt of an interesting essay on the proliferation of information sources and issues of power. You can find the full text here.

The Information Essay

Print
This piece appears in Issue 11. Buy the issue.
Just as this is an age of great wealth inequality, it is also an age of great inequality of knowledge or, more exactly, factual information. For all its democratic potential, the fact-filled internet has only heightened the pre-Google asymmetry between those, on one side, loyal to Baconian methods of patient, inductive gathering of facts — the ways of the card catalog and the archive, of the analysis and evaluation of empirical data — and those, on the other side, who didn’t need to read Foucault or the Frankfurt School to nurture a suspicion that positivist orders of knowledge mask a hierarchy of power in which they are meant to occupy the lowest rungs.
It’s the Republican Party’s deliberate disinformation strategy, more than any properties inherent in so-called information technologies, that has created these two parallel Americas. In one of them, weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, climate change is a patent hoax, and the Laffer curve is the most basic truth of economics. As for the inhabitants of the other universe — “the reality-based community” of old-fashioned skeptics and empiricists, frequenters of public and university libraries, readers of the New York Times and of Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker, avid perusers of Harper’s Index and WikiLeaks — we possess ever vaster quantities of mostly accurate facts, and not much sense of what to do with them. Data data everywhere, and not a thought to think! Outside of a hedge fund or the CIA, there aren’t too many places where knowledge is power. Much of the time, intellectually and politically, knowledge is powerlessness.
The division between empiricists and fantasists is clearest in politics. But it’s beginning to enter literature. Dickens in Hard Times made fun of Gradgrind — “Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these girls and boys nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life” — and there is a way in which, until recently, information and what used to be called “imaginative literature” were usually understood to be addressing themselves to the right and left hemispheres of the brain instead of the political spectrum. Lately, however, there has also come to be a literary expression or embodiment of liberal empiricism, an emergent literary Gradgrindism that deserves analysis.

You can find the full text here.

RE: "The (Zen) Buddhist Heart of I ♥ Huckabees", By Edwin Ng

2011-05-27T17:26:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting read on a movie I thought was too showy and superficial with its existentialist "battles". You can read the full text here.

The (Zen) Buddhist Heart of I ♥ Huckabees
By Edwin Ng
Abstract
This paper offers a Buddhist reading of I ♥ Huckabees (2004). I begin with an overview of director David O. Russell's Zen influence to reveal how he weaves the Buddhist metaphor of Indra's net (a metaphor for the doctrine of pratitya-samutpada) and the principles of meditation into the narrative. The main objective, however, is to demonstrate that Russell doesn't merely re-present Buddhist ideals but also attempts to "practice" Buddhism by using the visual vernacular of contemporary media culture to rework film as meditation and meditation as film. In weaving Buddhist ideals into his satire on contemporary culture, I argue that Russell is engaging us in religious and ethico-political reflection.

"Bring the Troops Noam"

2011-05-27T11:17:00.000-07:00

Thanks to truthdig for this cartoon.

Posted on May 26, 2011

By Mr. Fish

Slavoj žižek on True Love

2011-05-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how prolific this guy is.

On another note, I remember him saying in a past talk that love was a waste of time for him, personally.

Melvins Performing "Star Spangled Banner" Live

2011-05-27T10:41:00.000-07:00

Listen to it here.

They've released a split album, and they're coming out with a new live album soon.

"Black Betty" Split 7"Melvins - "Black Betty"

1. Nude With Boots 3:59
2. Dog Island 5:55
3. Dies Iraea 3:19
4. Civilized Worm 5:39
5. The Kicking Machine 2:32
6. Eye Flys 9:13
7. Tipping The Lion 3:44
8. Rat Faced Granny 2:48
9. The Hawk 2:24
10. You've Never Been Right 2:46
11. A History Of Bad Men 5:39
12. Star Spangled Banner 1:47
13. Boris

---

Sleep Announce Summer 2011 Tour Dates!

2011-04-27T12:53:00.000-07:00

The seminal stoner doom band are at it again. (I wonder if a new album is in the works.)

Thanks to metalodyssey for the post.

SLEEP 2011 Tour Dates:
6/22/2011 Terminal 5 – New York, NY
6/24/2011 Sled Island Festival – Calgary, AB, Canada
6/26/2011 The Wiltern - Los Angeles, CA

About SLEEP:
SLEEP split in 1997 after two hugely influential albums. Members went on to form OM and High On Fire. Original members Al Cisneros and Matt Pike were joined by drummer Jason Roeder of Neurosis last Fall for a short stint of reunion dates that floored their earliest fans and converted new ones.
The band debuted with 1991′s Volume One album, recorded for San Francisco label Tupelo. Earache Records received the band’s next recordings in the mail as a demo. The label — impressed by SLEEP‘s single-mindedness and unique vision — immediately signed the band and released the tape exactly as it was received. Record stores worldwide have stocked SLEEP’s Holy Mountain from November 1992 to this day.
The band then signed to London Records. Their debut album for the major took the form of one mammoth 63-minute leviathan of a track entitled “Jerusalem.” They resisted the label’s attempts at radio edits and bringing in their own engineer to remix the album in view of “marketability.” London balked at the prospect of promoting what probably still is the most extreme music ever recorded for a major label, consequentially shelving the record and dropping the band.
In addition, SLEEP‘s music has been featured in films by Harmony Korine and Jim Jarmusch.
(Source: Earsplit PR)
* For more info on SLEEP, click the links below:
SLEEP – facebook
WEEDIAN.com

Chomsky on Socialist Libertarianism and Capitalism

2011-04-11T16:02:00.000-07:00

I don't know that I can side with any political party, but I do find the ideologies of some compelling and others revolting. Certainly, the thing I appreciate the most is a critical, unbiased assessment and discussion of politics with the understanding that rhetoric and fact do not often coincide.

Noam Chomsky delivers a rousing talk on the promulgations of libertarianism and it's varying definitions and how capitalism fits in.

Lars von Trier's New Movie: Melancholia

2011-04-11T10:09:00.000-07:00

Mr. von Trier may just amaze me again with his new effort, Melancholia, a sci-fi-ish movie about the end of the world that features Charlotte Gainsborough and an at-times nude Kirsten Dunst.

Melancholia from Zentropa on Vimeo.

Video: "Does Politics Need More Philosophy?"

2011-03-25T08:52:00.000-07:00

I love the RSA site and output.

Anyway, here's a discussion by British scholars that answers the question of whether (UK) politics needs more philosophy, which I lifted from the Virtual Philosopher blog.

RE: "Uncritical Exuberance?" by Judith Butler Wednesday Nov 5th, 2008 7:19 PM

2011-03-03T10:27:00.000-08:00

It's quite refreshing when academics cut through the hype and make educated assessments on current events. Here, gender and literary theorist, Judith Butler, discusses how exuberance affects our views of politics.

Uncritical Exuberance?
by Judith Butler
Wednesday Nov 5th, 2008 7:19 PM

This became most salient in the emergence of the counter Bradley-effect, when voters could and did explicitly own up to their own racism, but said they would vote for Obama anyway. Anecdotes from the field include claims like the following: "I know that Obama is a Muslim and a Terrorist, but I will vote for him anyway; he is probably better for the economy." Such voters got to keep their racism and vote for Obama, sheltering their split beliefs without having to resolve them.

Very few of us are immune to the exhilaration of this time. My friends on the left write to me that they feel something akin to "redemption" or that "the country has been returned to us" or that "we finally have one of us in the White House." Of course, like them, I discover myself feeling overwhelmed with disbelief and excitement throughout the day, since the thought of having the regime of George W. Bush over and gone is an enormous relief. And the thought of Obama, a thoughtful and progressive black candidate, shifts the historical ground, and we feel that cataclysm as it produces a new terrain. But let us try to think carefully about the shifted terrain, although we cannot fully know its contours at this time. The election of Barack Obama is historically significant in ways that are yet to be gauged, but it is not, and cannot be, a redemption, and if we subscribe to the heightened modes of identification that he proposes ("we are all united") or that we propose ("he is one of us"), we risk believing that this political moment can overcome the antagonisms that are constitutive of political life, especially political life in these times. There have always been good reasons not to embrace "national unity" as an ideal, and to nurse suspicions toward absolute and seamless identification with any political leader. After all, fascism relied in part on that seamless identification with the leader, and Republicans engage this same effort to organize political affect when, for instance, Elizabeth Dole looks out on her audience and says, "I love each and every one of you."

It becomes all the more important to think about the politics of exuberant identification with the election of Obama when we consider that support for Obama has coincided with support for conservative causes. In a way, this accounts for his "cross-over" success. In California, he won by 60% of the vote, and yet some significant portion of those who voted for him also voted against the legalization of gay marriage (52%). How do we understand this apparent disjunction? First, let us remember that Obama has not explicitly supported gay marriage rights. Further, as Wendy Brown has argued, the Republicans have found that the electorate is not as galvanized by "moral" issues as they were in recent elections; the reasons given for why people voted for Obama seem to be predominantly economic, and their reasoning seems more fully structured by neo-liberal rationality than by religious concerns. This is clearly one reason why Palin's assigned public function to galvanize the majority of the electorate on moral issues finally failed. But if "moral" issues such as gun control, abortion rights and gay rights were not as determinative as they once were, perhaps that is because they are thriving in a separate compartment of the political mind. In other words, we are faced with new configurations of political belief that make it possible to hold apparently discrepant views at the same time: someone can, for instance, disagree with Obama on certain issues, but still have voted for him. This became most salient in the emergence of the counter Bradley-effect, when voters could and did explicitly own up to their own racism, but said they would vote for Obama anyway. Anecdotes from the field include claims like the following: "I know that Obama is a Muslim and a Terrorist, but I will vote for him anyway; he is probably better for the economy." Such voters got to keep their racism and vote for Obama, sheltering their split beliefs without having to resolve them.

Along with strong economic motivations, less empirically discernible factors have come into play in these election results. We cannot underestimate the force of dis-identification in this election, a sense of revulsion that George W. has "represented" the United States to the rest of the world, a sense of shame about our practices of torture and illegal detention, a sense of disgust that we have waged war on false grounds and propagated racist views of Islam, a sense of alarm and horror that the extremes of economic deregulation have led to a global economic crisis. Is it despite his race, or because of his race, that Obama finally emerged as a preferred representative of the nation? Fulfilling that representative-function, he is at once black and not-black (some say "not black enough" and others say "too black"), and, as a result, he can appeal to voters who not only have no way of resolving their ambivalence on this issue, but do not want one. The public figure who allows the populace to sustain and mask its ambivalence nevertheless appears as a figure of "unity": this is surely an ideological function. Such moments are intensely imaginary, but not for that reason without their political force.

As the election approached, there has been an increased focus on the person of Obama: his gravity, his deliberateness, his ability not to lose his temper, his way of modeling a certain evenness in the face of hurtful attacks and vile political rhetoric, his promise to reinstate a version of the nation that will overcome its current shame. Of course, the promise is alluring, but what if the embrace of Obama leads to the belief that we might overcome all dissonance, that unity is actually possible? What is the chance that we may end up suffering a certain inevitable disappointment when this charismatic leader displays his fallibility, his willingness to compromise, even to sell out minorities? He has, in fact, already done this in certain ways, but many of us "set aside" our concerns in order to enjoy the extreme un-ambivalence of this moment, risking an uncritical exuberance even when we know better. Obama is, after all, hardly a leftist, regardless of the attributions of "socialism" proffered by his conservative opponents. In what ways will his actions be constrained by party politics, economic interests, and state power; in what ways have they been compromised already? If we seek through this presidency to overcome a sense of dissonance, then we will have jettisoned critical politics in favor of an exuberance whose phantasmatic dimensions will prove consequential. Maybe we cannot avoid this phantasmatic moment, but let us be mindful about how temporary it is. If there are avowed racists who have said, "I know that he is a Muslim and a terrorist, but I will vote for him anyway," there are surely also people on the left who say, "I know that he has sold out gay rights and Palestine, but he is still our redemption." I know very well, but still: this is the classic formulation of disavowal. Through what means do we sustain and mask conflicting beliefs of this sort? And at what political cost?

There is no doubt that Obama's success will have significant effects on the economic course of the nation, and it seems reasonable to assume that we will see a new rationale for economic regulation and for an approach to economics that resembles social democratic forms in Europe; in foreign affairs, we will doubtless see a renewal of multi-lateral relations, the reversal of a fatal trend of destroying multilateral accords that the Bush administration has undertaken. And there will doubtless also be a more generally liberal trend on social issues, though it is important to remember that Obama has not supported universal health care, and has failed to explicitly support gay marriage rights. And there is not yet much reason to hope that he will formulate a just policy for the United States in the Middle East, even though it is a relief, to be sure, that he knows Rashid Khalidi.

The indisputable significance of his election has everything to do with overcoming the limits implicitly imposed on African-American achievement; it has and will inspire and overwhelm young African-Americans; it will, at the same time, precipitate a change in the self-definition of the United States. If the election of Obama signals a willingness on the part of the majority of voters to be "represented" by this man, then it follows that who "we" are is constituted anew: we are a nation of many races, of mixed races; and he offers us the occasion to recognize who we have become and what we have yet to be, and in this way a certain split between the representative function of the presidency and the populace represented appears to be overcome. That is an exhilarating moment, to be sure. But can it last, and should it?

To what consequences will this nearly messianic expectation invested in this man lead? In order for this presidency to be successful, it will have to lead to some disappointment, and to survive disappointment: the man will become human, will prove less powerful than we might wish, and politics will cease to be a celebration without ambivalence and caution; indeed, politics will prove to be less of a messianic experience than a venue for robust debate, public criticism, and necessary antagonism. The election of Obama means that the terrain for debate and struggle has shifted, and it is a better terrain, to be sure. But it is not the end of struggle, and we would be very unwise to regard it that way, even provisionally. We will doubtless agree and disagree with various actions he takes and fails to take. But if the initial expectation is that he is and will be "redemption" itself, then we will punish him mercilessly when he fails us (or we will find ways to deny or suppress that disappointment in order to keep alive the experience of unity and unambivalent love).

If a consequential and dramatic disappointment is to be averted, he will have to act quickly and well. Perhaps the only way to avert a "crash" – a disappointment of serious proportions that would turn political will against him – will be to take decisive actions within the first two months of his presidency. The first would be to close Guantanamo and find ways to transfer the cases of detainees to legitimate courts; the second would be to forge a plan for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and to begin to implement that plan. The third would be to retract his bellicose remarks about escalating war in Afghanistan and pursue diplomatic, multilateral solutions in that arena. If he fails to take these steps, his support on the left will clearly deteriorate, and we will see the reconfiguration of the split between liberal hawks and the anti-war left. If he appoints the likes of Lawrence Summers to key cabinet positions, or continues the failed economic polices of Clinton and Bush, then at some point the messiah will be scorned as a false prophet. In the place of an impossible promise, we need a series of concrete actions that can begin to reverse the terrible abrogation of justice committed by the Bush regime; anything less will lead to a dramatic and consequential disillusionment. The question is what measure of dis-illusion is necessary in order to retrieve a critical politics, and what more dramatic form of dis-illusionment will return us to the intense political cynicism of the last years. Some relief from illusion is necessary, so that we might remember that politics is less about the person and the impossible and beautiful promise he represents than it is about the concrete changes in policy that might begin, over time, and with difficulty, bring about conditions of greater justice.

"Black Swan" and Sexist Clichés as Usual in the Oscar Realm

2011-02-25T17:45:00.000-08:00

I'm not a cynical, killjoy moviegoer, I promise, so bear with me.

The resonating scene that sticks with you from Aronofsky's "Black Swan", which has been nominated for several Oscars, is the scene when the protagonist Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) dances through her opening night, performing as both the black and white swan in Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake." As Nina dances in the spotlight, the music rises and black feathers surrealistically begin to grow from Nina's skin, lending to the visage of Nina about to take flight. This is a moment in which Nina realizes her dream, in-part, of being in the spotlight and rousing the crowd, the pinnacle of what many artists hope for. But her triumph is short lived. Interestingly, before she ends the ballet by falling off the "cliff" to her theatrical death she takes her own life to fully embody the dual roles she plays. As these elements come together at the film's climax, something quite interesting occurs. The crowd goes wild as she lays on the dingy old mattress, her cohorts congratulate her, cajoling her to get up and take a bow, but then the group notices that she's bleeding. Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassell), the ballet company's artistic director says accusingly, "What did you do?" This telling yet cruel denouement resonates heavily when combined with Portman's convincingly painful performance, and the movie's cloyingly archaic gender clichés. We are convinced of the situation in which Nina finds herself, but there's something about that situation that leaves us skeptical.

Aronofsky uses the fairly old film tropes that rehash themes of aspiration and artistic perfection, and create an air of fear. Among many, the ballerina movie "The Red Shoes" also tells a tail of a ballerina aspiring to performance and creative perfection who goes mad in the process. Additionally, "The Turning Point" laments on the lives of two ballerinas unsure of where their lives and careers are headed. Aronovsky also uses horror film conventions: the Lovecraftian notion of a person turning into a monster, the grotesque aspects of Nina's rash, the classic abject mother who stiflingly over-protects her daughter, Nina's doppelgänger, and even the psychological breakdown Nina experiences. However, all of these conventions lose out from the beginning of the film because the audience knows that Nina is simply losing what little of her sanity she has. (The audience must realize that her grasp at the movie's start is even tenuous.) Because the audience knows that much of what assails Nina is all in her head, the horror theme evaporates into triviality. Consequently, one of the most powerful tropes in horror--the ability of horror movie characters to subvert gender rolls and power--is completely lost, which brings me to the biggest issue I find in the movie.

The film inadvertently--I would argue--makes statements on and reinforces stereotypical gender norms, which was the most off-putting part for me. Among many tropes Aronofsky uses is that of troubled mother-daughter relationship as well as the idea that women, with their assumed congenital animosity towards each other, choose to be competitive and unscrupulous enemies rather than supportive friends, or compatriots. He also appeals to a "broader", non-ballet loving audience by introducing and showcasing Nina's lesbian fantasy illusion. I have heard people mention and I've read various references to the opinion that the life of the ballerina is a stressful one, but what is Aronovsky hoping to achieve by using the stressful lives of ballerina's as a hyperbolic metaphor for delusional perfectionism, and suicide?

There's more to the film's plot, though. What is the audience to make of Beth? She might serve as a cautionary figure for Nina, a catalyst for her insanity, or even both; however, Beth's character embodies a cautionary view on what Nina faces in terms of the pressures placed on the "prima ballerina." Nina does not learn anything from Beth and her turmoils, however. Nina creates her hell all by herself: the sounds are all in her head, the obsessive attention to perfection and success, her paranoia for the other dancers in the troupe, and even her own death are all a result of her perceptions, crazy or not. (Ironically, the theme of mirrors and what they reflect and refract is prevalent through the movie; the opening scene shows Nina darkly reflected in the window of the subway car, providing ominous foreshadowing, and the movie ends with her literally internalizing her self made [evil] image, her fear, in the form of a shard of mirror.)

The film vigorously pushes the notion that women are not equipped for success. Aronovsky propels this idea by inserting a believable element--the tough, competitive ballet environment--and provides female characters who are neurotic, show conniving tendencies, coddle to a suffocating fault, and seduce to get what they want. Aronovsky then uses the perfect male patsy figure, Thomas, to be the leader, the commanding King, who proclaims who will and won't be in the ballet, and, who, at the film's end, asks, dumbfounded, why Nina has killed herself. This maddening and--at the same time--silly scenario infuriated my viewing experience. Such a scenario, with its rote assessment of human character, perfectly samples the shallow world in which the characters live.

I understand that Aronofsky likes to ruminate on people's obsessive behavior to explore how this behavior affects their success, happiness, and vitality. For example, in his previous film, "The Wrestler," Aronovsky creates a heavily machismo character to show the man's sad but ultimately tragic tale, a tale that centers around the lengths, albeit the obviously wrong ones, this man will go to to attempt to achieve success, acceptance, love, forgiveness, and kinship. I see the same inevitable themes in "Black Swan," but the gender stereotypes are more pervasive. But what really gets me about the film is that Aronovsky peppers in enough realism to give the drama credibility, which draws in the audience and suspends their disbelief, but then he damns his characters by annihilating any artistic expression they might have by forcing them into neat little clichéd boxes.

Is Aronovsky really reflecting life here, or is he celebrating the inner demons of a reality propagated by solipsistic and old-fashioned society? It might be too happy a movie if Nina overcame her stereotypical psychotic behavior and silences her fears to achieve greater artistic success, and it might be dull if her mom rejoiced in Nina's success that she herself had missed, or the movie might have been too feel-good if Thomas had incited a strong and edgy performance from Nina as the black swan without submitting her to his banal sexual advances. However, as it stands, the oppressive gender stereotypes prompt me to laugh more than find artistic epiphany. I quite liked the Oscar-worthy performances in this movie, but to say it pushes any artistic bounds already laid down would be a fanciful statement.

RSA Animate – Language as a Window into Human Nature

2011-02-21T13:44:00.001-08:00

These RSA videos are great. Easy to watch and understand, they seem to placate to aural and visual learning predilections.

Edgar Allan Poe - "Alone" Reading

2011-02-14T08:44:00.000-08:00

I'd never read this poem before last week.

Alone, by Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood's hour I have not been

As others were; I have not seen

As others saw; I could not bring

My passions from a common spring.

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow; I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone;

And all I loved, I loved alone.

Then- in my childhood, in the dawn

Of a most stormy life- was drawn

From every depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still:

From the torrent, or the fountain,

From the red cliff of the mountain,

From the sun that round me rolled

In its autumn tint of gold,

From the lightning in the sky

As it passed me flying by,

From the thunder and the storm,

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view.

What I Listened to the Most this Week: 2/7--2/11

2011-02-11T15:54:00.000-08:00

It's week 5 in the quarter and we're on a roll!

Austere - To Lay Like Old Ashes

Eibon - Entering Darkness

Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die

Bobby Hutcherson - Components

Jackie McLean - Destination Out

"Kahlil The Prophet"

What I Listened to the Most This Week: January 31- February 4

2011-02-04T08:04:00.000-08:00

It was a quick week, but the tunes were a-plentiful.

Del Rey - Immemorial

This is some good, straight forward, guitar driven post rock. Every song builds to a fine crescendo, and keeps me interested throughout the LP.

Jakob - S/T ep

This is an oldy but a super goodie. Gattaca is a song that you have to listen to on a good stereo with plenty of bass to really get the full effect.

Dukatalon - Saved by Fear

Here's some heavy, heavy sludge metal from Israel. They've got quite a sound.

Eric Dolphy - Last Date

Basically classic jazz.

What I Listened to the Most This Week: January 24-28

2011-01-28T08:01:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know, the "what i listened to the most this week" posts have basically dropped off since last October. Well, without excuse, I am announcing they are back. I hope you enjoy.

Black Pistol Fire - S/T

They're another garage rock, white stripes/black keys emulator, but hey, I like that stuff.

Iron & Wine - Kiss Each Other Clean

Sam Beam gambles with an aesthetic departure, taking stylistic leaps and bounds from "Woman King," "The Creek Drank the Cradle," and "Our Endless Numbered Days," while continuing where "The Shepherds Dog" left off. Many people may not like this, but, regardless, the songwriting is as compelling as ever.

Chicago Underground Trio - Boca Negra

Modern avant-garde at it's best. I didn't know jazz musicians were still making this stuff. There are a few missteps when they get a little too electronic, but otherwise, this is a supremely enjoyable album to soak up.

Planks - The Darkest of Grays

Here's a wonderful slab of sometimes fast, sometimes slow, ultra heavy sludge. They don't overdo it with the vocals. They're not monotonous and know how to strike a balance that keeps the LP interesting throughout.

Year of No Light - Ausserwelt

Here's a fabulously produced and arranged piece of heavy, heavy post-rock-esque instrumental sludge metal music. I come back to this one over and over, and despite not having any vocals, it always elicits an emotional response in me. Beware, the songs are between 9:37 and 13:17 minutes long.

The Love Language - Libraries

This band initially reminded me of some 60's British rock send-off, but as I listened to them more, I got them more. Enjoy

Activist Art According to Badiou

2011-01-02T17:16:00.000-08:00

I've been technical editing and helping to prepare the next Reconstruction journal issue on activism, and in the process randomly came across these discussions by Alain Badiou on the topic of whether activist art still has meaning. I found his discussion interesting.

Alain Badiou Lecture: Keynote (Part 1 of 3) from Miguel Abreu on Vimeo.

Alain Badiou Lecture: Keynote (Part 2 of 3) from Miguel Abreu on Vimeo.

Alain Badiou Lecture: Keynote (Part 3 of 3) from Miguel Abreu on Vimeo.

Best Music of 2010

2010-12-30T17:28:00.000-08:00

I've never compiled a "best of" list, but in the back of my mind I've always had the yearning to. (And I've finally recovered from the school quarter, work, and the holidays, so now's the best time to sit down and do it, eh?)

Below you'll find a list of "regular" music (indie, blues, techno, pop, etc) that I have listened to the most and rated the highest over this wonderful year 2010. And below that list you'll see my top metal picks for the year. Yes, you'll notice my disgruntled attitude here and there regarding metal output; in the humble opinion of this listener, 2010 offered little in terms of innovation or originality on the metal front.

There is no rhyme or reason to the listed priority.

Indie/Pop/Techno

Mumford and Sons - Sigh No More

This debut has good folk songwriting, a good sound, and wonderful lyrical content. I listen to at least one song of this album once a week.

The Black Keys - Brothers

Their style keeps changing, which I find refreshing in a sea of retreads and maudlin creativity. This is one of my faves for the year.

The National - High Violet

These dudes just keep getting better and better. This album is perfect for a cold rainy night when you find that you just don't have the answers. It's moody, reflective and poetic. One of my faves for the year.

The Tallest Man on Earth - Sometimes the Blues is Just a Passing Bird [ep]

Sure, Kristian Matsson's other full length release of the year, The Wild Hunt, was good, but his EP has something magical in it. He gives more musical range, and embeds more emotional punch in this one.

Spoon - Transference

As with most of my experiences with Spoon releases, this one took me a while to fully wrap my brain around, but once I did, this album stuck with me.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Beat the Devil's Tattoo

BRMC begs you to pay attention (or not) to get something out of their music, at least that was the case I had experienced with their past releases, but not so on Beat the Devil's Tattoo. It rocks.

Menomena - Mines

I enjoyed 2007's Friend or Foe, but something about Mines blew me away: it's honesty, moodiness and beautiful arrangements.

And So I Watch You From Afar - Letters [ep]

Their full length debut was a shit show of awesomeness, and on Letters, the band points to greater things to come without providing a stop gap. This is truly blisteringly tip-of-the-spear post-rock music.

The Main Street Gospel - Love Will Have Her Revenge

When asked the question of how they got their name, the band replied that "main street" connotes an egalitarian, cross populace image for listeners; everyone gets a mental picture when they hear the word main street. However, they never fully explained what the gospel part means. I don't know that I can summon a concrete meaning either.

The Bright Light Social Hour - S/T

I discovered this group by accident, and don't really remember the circumstances, but they are a gem. Fun, happy, boisterous, party music is what they make and embody. This album is great from front to back.

Ray LaMontagne - God Willin' & the Creek Don't Rise

I'm a sucker, I know, but hey, it's good.

Toundra - Toundra [II]

Here's another spectacular post-rock offering. I'd never heard of this group, but their lack of notoriety does not belie musical inabilities: they have the compositional skills of Pink Floyd and balls out rocking abilities of Isis, all without vocals.

Vampire Weekend - Contra

It's candy, saccharine sweet, but it does beg multiple listens.

Beach House - Teen Dream

I just discovered this group, and when I first listened to their music, I didn't know what to make of the soft, understated songs, but upon further, closer listens, I realized the group intertwines odd melodies and lyrics to haunting effect. One of my favorites for the year.

Chief - Modern Rituals

These guys strum an understated, fad-free type of California rock. I came back to this album over and over again.

Gayngs - Relayted

Just amazing, amazing.

J. Tillman - Singing Ax

Again, Mr. Tillman crafts a subdued record rife with imagery, both religious and mythic. One might quickly skip over this "dull" album, but with some listening, it rewards.

Tame Impala - Innerspeaker

Reminiscent of 60's psychedelic rock, Tame Impala explore a genre without aping it.

Caribou - Swim

I guess they call it psych pop or something. I don't know, but this album is chill and dance-able.

Grails - Black Tar Prophecies

Yes, I want a new drug, as they say. Here's Grails doing what they do best.

Holy Fuck - Latin

Another psych pop album I played excessively this year, but I'm not quite sure why.

Kings of Leon - Come Around Sundown

I don't care what the naysayers are pouting about. This album is good.

Nedry - Condors

I have seen some interesting resurgent attempts at trip-hop , or psych-hop, or whatever you want to call it. Here's a more than enjoyable example.

Sumner Brothers - S/T

Discovered these guys by accident, but I'm glad I did. They play a folksy, country type of music, but don't let these genres fool you. They are all heart. I believe every song.

Black Diamond Heavies - Alive as Fuck: Masonic Lodge, Covington, KY

The Black Diamond Heavies are probably one of those bands that once seen live, can never fully be appreciated on disc. Here's an attempt.

Paul Cary - Ghost of a Man

Paul Cary plays old school blues rock with an acoustic guitar, and he does it quite well.

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy and the Cairo Gang - The Wonder Show of the World

I just don't know how this guy can be so prolific and maintain such a high value in his work.

DeadHorse - We Can Create Our Own World

Post-rock can be an (over) over done thing, and although these guys use all the normal conventions, they craft a new an interesting album. I enjoyed it on repeated listens.

The Radio Dept. - Clinging to a Scheme

Delicate, melodic, and gentle at times, but this album still simmers under it all.

Trentemøller - Into the Great Wide Yonder

This is a different album altogether than Last Resort, but it's amazingly good nonetheless.

The Walkmen - Lisbon

A return to form; I enjoyed.

Wolf People - Steeple

If someone just handed you this LP and asked what year you thought it was recorded, you'd probably say 1967, but you'd be wrong.

The Sleep Design - All That is Not Music is Silence

Very slow and mellow at times. I liked the reverb.

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

I never thought that I would really get into this band. I had listened to them a number of times in the past, but nothing really stuck with me. I got The Suburbs on a whim, listened to "We Used to Wait," and was blow away, not just by the music, but by those words.

Broken Bells - S/T

I don't know. It just sounds good in my ear holes.

Johnny Cash - American VI: Ain't No Grave

It's just great.

Pet Slimmers of the Year - ...And the Sky Fell [ep]

It's short, sweet and surly. These guys know how to play a metal version of post-rock quite well.

LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening

It's all about those drunk girls.

The Redneck Manifesto - Friendship

Here's some math/post-rock that doesn't get overly noodley. In fact, it's a pleasure to hear.

Metal

And now for my favorite genre.

Agalloch - Marrow of the Spirit

Yep, they finally came out with another LP, and although it goes more in the direction of the Swedish black metal tradition, it does not disappoint.

Harvey Milk - A Small Turn of Human Kindness

A friend of mine walked in while I was listening to this album, and he asked, "what the hell are you listening to?" Yes, Harvey Milk are not your most accessible band. Most people in the metal "world" don't even accept them as one of their own kin, but who cares. The band has released tongue-in-cheek records in the past, but this one is something different.

High on Fire - Snakes for the Divine

If High on Fire put out an album a year until the day I died I would be a happy man. I don't think that will happen, but everything they've put out thus far has more than satisfied me.

The Wounded Kings - The Shadow Over Atlantis

This is slow, slow heavy doom. These guys listened to Black Sabbath's eponymous song for what sounds like twenty years straight, then decided to make their own music. You can easily tell that the song Black Sabbath is burnished into their musical psyches.

Age of Taurus - In the Days of the Taurean Empire... [ep]

Here's one that snuck up on me. I randomly found it, didn't have much in the way of expectations, but I realized quickly that these doomsters know what they are doing. They've got a great guitar tone, an accomplished eye for good metal songs, and vocals that sound like Albert Witchfinder from Reverend Bizarre.

Ghost - Opus Eponymous

Amazingly gruesome. I have to see these guys when they play in the US.

Melvins - The Bride Screamed Murder

Yeah, it's good, especially live.

Grand Magus - Hammer of the North

The sound changes slightly with each new record, but I think that's a good thing. They get it right on their newest.

Early Man - Death Potion

They just get better and better.

Thou - Summit

I hadn't heard of this band before reading a review somewhere, and true, they deliver an abrasive form of sludge, but they do so with a purpose. They relay a dystopic vision of the earth, one not so far from what we live in now. This album sends chills up my spine.

Horror Movie Trailers

2010-10-31T10:15:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of Halloween and all things falling into the inevitable decay of this world, I wanted to post some (re-appropriated) horror movie trailers.

The Shining

The Ring

Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Friday the 13th

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Halloween

What I Listened to the Most This Week (October 18 - October 22)

2010-10-22T11:16:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's been a few weeks since I've posted my music predilictions to the world wide interweb. School's been busy, but I have finally gotten a hold on everything, and, consequently, I am back in action.

Vicki Anderson - Mother Popcorn Anthology

I just discovered Vicki Anderson and her anthology "Mother Popcorn." It's good, consistent soul as she mirrors James Brown's stage presence and charisma.

The Chemical Brothers - Further

After a few years of releasing schlocky LPs that caused many to question the Chemical Brother's artistic prowess in their "waning" years, but with the release of "Further," fans quite likely will feel reminiscent for the break-beat goodness of"Exit Planet Dust," and "Dig Your Own Hole."

Bridesmaid - S/T ep

Yes, they've got a weird name that doesn't add much to their introduction. Also, the album is all over the place, genre-wise, tempo-wise, and instrumentation-wise, but the EP is slightly new i that it provides an interesting experimentation with Doom aesthetics. I especially like this all-bass jam. It's deep in the heavy, low-end sort of way.

Dawnbringer - Nucleus

Amazing, is all I can say about this band. Just about every song on their new album is absolutely blistering heavy metal. The vocals are tasteful and not overdone, and most importantly, the guitar work is AMAZING! Just wait till the 2:13 minute mark in the song below. Righteous.

Kings of Leon - Come Around Sundown

Okay, so this band has become a nexus for contention. The original fans say that they have sold out. People who have never heard them say what's the big deal. Then there's the issue of those tasteless listeners who have discovered them on top 40 radio. So be it. I don't care. I've been listening to these southern rockers since 2004's "Aha Shake Heartbreak," which I thoroughly enjoyed. I've seen the change they've undergone, and I can't say I dislike it. A band--unless it's churning out 30 minute death metal albums--must evolve for the sake of artistic development.

From the RSA "Them and Us: Why We Need a Fair Society"

2010-10-22T10:13:00.000-07:00

Here's another great RSA offering, and this one ruminates on how our current form of capitalism is compassion-less. Will Hutton argues for a complete revision of the capitalist system.

Blood Meridian - Lectures

2010-09-29T09:43:00.000-07:00

Seems like Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian has been in the news and the blogosphere a lot lately.

To keep it going I've navigated over to the Open Yale course series, and specifically to Prof Amy Hungerford’s course The American Novel Since 1945.

In the first of two lectures, Professor Hungerford explains the novel's primary sources and influences to show how McCarthy nods to literary tradition and American history and ruminates on notions of originality itself. McCarthy feeds from the Bible, Moby-Dick, Paradise Lost, the poetry of William Wordsworth, and the historical narrative of Sam Chamberlain to style and theme a novel that continues to be a relevant meditation on history, exploring limits of storytelling and human tenacity.

The second lecture builds on the first as Prof Hungerford constructs a broad argument about how the novel presents good and evil, using the Bible the illiterate protagonist carries with him to show us how the traditional hero can be subverted. Hungerford argues that McCarthy truly succeeds in invoking his sources--biblical, literary, and historical--by overturning their moral content. As Hungerford notes, "Much as the kid holds the Bible an object and not a spiritual guide, McCarthy seizes the material of language–its sound, its cadences–for ambiguous, if ambitious, ends."

Amon Tobin's "Esther's"

2010-09-10T11:02:00.000-07:00

I remember when Foley Room came out in 2007 when I first heard "Esther's," with it's organically buzzing and rippling intro and eventual pounding crescendos, which caused me genuine amazement. Amon Tobin's approach on Foley Room showed his radical progression within an already eclectic and innovative catalog. Enjoy.

Food, Epistemology, and Metaphor

2010-09-10T10:36:00.000-07:00

I just found this amusing collection of food idiom epistemologies. Some I've heard, some I haven't.

What I Listened to the Most This Week (August 30 - September 3)

2010-09-03T15:08:00.000-07:00

Due to school starting soon, and the academic preparation it has caused me, tt seems that I have neglected this blog in the way of commentary et al. So be it. I've got a couple reviews and articles planned soon. Until then, my music listening history may have to suffice.

Cobalt - War Metal

This is an oldie (2005), but this LP displays some of the band's fastest, most brutal riffing and drumming yet.

Chief - Modern Rituals

I don't know how to categorize these guys calling them mellow indie rockers that are equal parts infectious and poetic. I recommend them, completely.

Trentemøller - Into the Great Wide Yonder

This disc is vastly different than Trentemøller's phenomenal "The Last Resort, so it's taking a little while for it grow on me. This song is out there.

Poem: Identification, by Wislawa Szymborska

2010-09-02T09:15:00.000-07:00

I just found this gem on the poetry foundation website--gut wrenching as it is succinct.

Identification
BY WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA
It’s good you came—she says.
You heard a plane crashed on Thursday?
Well so they came to see me
about it.
The story is he was on the passenger list.
So what, he might have changed his mind.
They gave me some pills so I wouldn’t fall apart.
Then they showed me I don’t know who.
All black, burned except one hand.
A scrap of shirt, a watch, a wedding ring.
I got furious, that can’t be him.
He wouldn’t do that to me, look like that.
The stores are bursting with those shirts.
The watch is just a regular old watch.
And our names on that ring,
they’re only the most ordinary names.
It’s good you came. Sit here beside me.
He really was supposed to get back Thursday.
But we’ve got so many Thursdays left this year.
I’ll put the kettle on for tea.
I’ll wash my hair, then what,
try to wake up from all this.
It’s good you came, since it was cold there,
and him just in some rubber sleeping bag,
him, I mean, you know, that unlucky man.
I’ll put the Thursday on, wash the tea,
since our names are completely ordinary—

TRANSLATED FROM THE POLISH BY CLARE CAVANAGH AND STANISLAW BARANCZAK

Ray LaMontagne - Shelter +

2010-08-30T10:27:00.000-07:00

In lieu of not posting a best of on Friday, I've posted Shelter, a cut off of Ray LaMontagne's 2008 "Gossip in the Grain."

This guy's got some talent, basically...

What I Listened to the Most This Week (August 16 - August 20)

2010-08-20T13:35:00.000-07:00

Here's the list.

Samsara Blues Experiment - Long Distance Trip

These Germans know a thing or two about the jam sesh. You can find a lot of tasty nuggets throughout this LP.

Lantlôs - .neon

The genre of black metal continues to push its own boundaries, from the "traditional" sounds of Emperor and Burzum, to the Americanized versions of Wolves in the Throne Room and Cobalt. The "atmospheric" vein seems to be the most prolific these days, though, and Lantlôs figures in quite high in the pack of many.

Grand Funk Railroad - Grand Funk

I know, it's an oldey, but man does this song absolutely rock!

What I Listened to the Most This Week (August 9 - August 13)

2010-08-13T16:13:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so I missed a week. Forgetaboutit. Anyway, here's my list.

Dead Moon - Echoes of the Past

Basically awesome.

The Black Angels - Passover

My neighbor introduced me to these guys. You gotta have a dynamic stereo to fully appreciate the hypnotic low-end psychedelics going on on this LP, but either way, they are quite enjoyable.

The Abject Spiraling Grotesque: A Primer on Bakhtin's Unmeaning

2010-08-03T11:43:00.000-07:00

I have been obsessed with David Attenborough lately. I know, weird, but hear me out; this will all come full circle. During moments when he's recounting past expeditions, he'll summarize events that transpire using mundane, scientific terms, which seems fairly appropriate to me. However, in the episode "The Lost Gods of Easter Island" he reads the diary of one of the explorers on Captain Cook's boat after they leave Easter island. The man, Johan something, notes that they escaped under the danger of life and limb, or something to that effect; however, the native Fijian with them who had just successfully bartered for a number of wooden figurines debarks with no such impediment. (I know I'm not getting the quote right, but the BBC website doesn't offer transcripts, so I can't claim exactitude, and I've already returned the DVD.)

My point in bringing this up is to highlight the hyperbolic statement by Cook's journalist and the contrasting facts as exemplified by Cook's Fijian crew member's successful bartering. Why would the journalist sensationalize an event that posed no more danger than the rest of the expedition's trans-world

journey? Using this logic, wouldn't the phrase "escaped under life and limb" be littered all over the man's journals considering the whole expedition was a daily gamble of life and death? And now I finally get to my bigger and overarching reason for using this scene. The hyperbolic phrasing, I would argue, arises from the explorer's view of the impoverished islander's pitiable condition. The Europeans see them as crazed and starving isolationists on an island two-thousand miles from any other island or civilization. Therefore, to the Europeans, escape at all costs becomes a matter of "life and limb," especially considering the island provides them with no supplies or potential wealth, and they fear that the islanders themselves may do something rash as a result of their "eminent" starvation and consequential insanity. The Europeans see the islanders and their "situation" as what Bakhtin labels as grotesque, and it is this notion that biases the journalist's description.

I know that was a long illustration to get at my greater goal of describing the grotesque, but I felt I needed to provide a "real" world, non-literary example before delving into the theoretical

explanations. But the effect of how Cook's journalist characterizes their escape from the island and islanders is humor. It's absurdly funny. Within normal social settings people maintain the notion of choosing words they mean so as to communicate effectively, for if they slip from our grasp, words no longer are under our control; they mean something other than what we intended.

The effect, then, in some circumstances, is humor. Yet, the etymology of the word humor predates it's presumed primary definition: comedy. Instead, in the the 14th century humor was used to describe the cardinal humors of the body: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. And so, using the method of showing correlations, related and un-, as many jokes do, the etymological origin of the word humor itself has grotesque origins. More powerfully though, Bakhtin makes the connection between humor's natural inclination to examine and be critical of mores, people, and behavior.

Enter art. Art can use humor to link together the high and the low of our world, whatever they may be within a given context to show the malleability of such stratifications, all the while inducing the audience to laugh.

The grotesque, similar to humor--and having similar results--, is a means to analyse ourselves and our world. However, the grotesque becomes the most beneficial to its audience, not when it comforts the audience, but when it disconcerts. To picture this scenario, recall the scenario I introduce at the beginning. We find the grotesque in the explorer's lie; the islanders posed no harm to Cook's party and were trading with them at the moment the escape "for life and limb" transpired. The journalist paints a picture of savagery, but the history books confirm that the islanders didn't have the means to attempt to kill the Europeans.

The grotesque can apply to more than just the heterogeneous qualities of purported social interactions. It can manifest within a closed system as well. Life and death can be viewed as binaries within which the grotesque operates. People live, grow old, then die, showing a negation, a binary opposition, yet essential opposition to the life-cycle. In Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin notes "The essence of the grotesque is precisely to present a contradictory and double-faced fullness of life. Negation and destruction (death of the old) are included as an essential phase, inseparable from affirmation, from the birth of something new and better... This principle is victorious for the final result is always abundance, increase" (62). Just as these last words seem contradictory, that the ending of life breeds abundance, so does the grotesque point at, then implode contradictions, resulting in the creation of new meaning.

Bakhtin, as he stresses about other elements in his body of work, argues that the grotesque is an unfinalizable body. It constantly unfolds. He states that, "the grotesque body...is a body in the act of becoming. It is never finished, never completed; it is continually built, created, and builds and creates another body. Moreover, the body swallows the world and is itself swallowed by the world" (317). What does this mean? To Cook's men, saying that they escaped with their lives might have been a true statement for them, but it certainly was not for their Tahitian shipmate, and for modern audiences the notion seems even more ridiculous. For viewers in the future, such a statement may have a different effect; the grotesque may rear its head not in the statement, but in some other aspect of the exchange.

How we identify depends on many social factors. Language itself becomes a courier for the ever changing grotesque. Looking at the Oxford English Dictionary we notice that the adjective describing the grotesque, "becoming" first entered the English language in 1565. However, the word's definition describing the grotesque ("a coming to be, a passing into state") didn't exist until 1853. Language itself might be seen as a grotesque aspect of our lives as it is constantly being created and swallowed by the world, paraphrasing Bakhtin.

Many argue that language mediates how we perceive the world (and vice-versus), and knowing that language constantly changes puts us in a "reality" that is becoming and unbecoming--a grotesque reality.

The relation to all this "rampant" grotesque-ness is the abject. Abjection, as Julia Kristeva writes in Powers of Horror, "is radically excluded and," as Kristeva explains, "draws me toward the place where meaning collapses." Residing in liminal, boundary-less spaces, the abject poses as the threat of unmeaning that we as cyphers for the grotesque cannot manage to reorder. The result, for example, is an inadequate description of Easter islanders. The break down, our inability to re-make meaning causes us to place the grotesque into the position of known, and so we label it as abject. " Describing their departure as "fleeing for their" lives, therefore, was the journalist's method of responding to a scene of horror, a grotesque scene of starving men and women trading their valuables away to Europeans for trinkets, a scene that confuses and scares the journalist to incomprehension.

What I Listened to the Most This Week (July 26-July 30)

2010-07-30T16:06:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy, busy past two weeks, and I am finally back to share a little music. Hopefully I'll get a post with some substance in it written and posted here soon--I've got a Bakhtin one in progress now.

Vinyl Williams - Naked Century [ep]

I'm not sure how to best describe this band. The music's kinda shoegazy, kinda psychedelic, and mostly interesting to listen to. I like to throw it on at night while I'm reading. Check out this guy's site for free albums and crazy cool artwork.

Conan - Horseback Battle Hammar [ep]

Conan play a heavy and slow brand of doom akin to YOB. You really have to have a good speaker system to fully appreciate these guys' range.

Menomena - Mines

I enjoyed their last album Friend and Foe, but Mines is absolutely excellent.

Goatsnake - 1

Yes, I know this is a bit of an oldie, but for some reason I wanted to get some sludgy doom up in my blood.

Rambo The Musical

2010-07-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy few weeks, so this is all I've got, but it's a good one.

What I listened to the Most This Week (July 5 - July 9))

2010-07-09T09:49:00.000-07:00

Well, July's my favorite month, and with it comes a certain level of jubilation for me; I think this jubilation reflects in my music choices so far this month.

Radio Moscow - S/T

I finally got my hands on their original self-tittled LP. It's not quite as well produced as their newest disc, but it certainly doesn't skimp on the blues guitar explosions.

Great Lake Swimmers - Bodies and Minds

At times I am on the fence regarding how much I like these guys, but usually they endear themselves to me when I actually sit down and listen to them, which requires a certain mood or situation. Well it happened.

Gayngs - Relayted

This album packs the slow jazz sounds of Kenny G into a forward thinking psychadelic pop record. I know. It doesn't sound like these elements should fit together, yet Gayngs does it to wonderful effect.

Primordial - Spirit the Earth Aflame

And finally, it's time for the metal. I say this over and over again, but I haven't been finding much in the way of ear piquing new metal, so I have been moving backwards in my favorite artists catalog's for more extreme goodness. Here's a great example from the Celtic black-metalers.

Crisis of Capitalism: David Harvey's Explanation

2010-07-06T08:50:00.000-07:00

Oil is still leaking into the gulf, people's homes are still being foreclosed, and the economy (god bless it), is still pretty crappy. Who still has faith in the beloved thing we call American capitalism? Here's a nifty video of a David Harvey lecture ( found at www.TheRSA.org), which provides a lucid explanation of the past and current pratfalls of capitalism.

What I listened to the Most This Week (June 28- July 2)

2010-07-02T09:34:00.000-07:00

It was a rough week, time-wise, but here's the list.

Tame Impala - Innerspeaker

This is pretty good, chillout music that's got Beatles-esqu vocals and cool psychedelic passages. It gets a little repetitive in a few spots, but enjoyable on the whole. They were cool when I saw them with MGMT.

Iggy Pop - The Idiot

Yes, an oldy, but hey, it was one of those weeks. This one is always on my ipod.

Black Revel Motorcycle Club - Beat the Devil's Tattoo

This new LP grows on me every time I listen to it. Lyrically, the range is quite wide, going from metaphorical uses of the mark of the devil to ruminating on losing "that feeling." And the music makes me go YEAH! Listen to it with the volume cranked.

Ufomammut - Eve

Ahhh. Summer doom. Ufomammut are one of my favorites; however, this album took me a solid four listens before I could really settle on it. I knew it was heavy from the first listen, but I didn't realize that they had built on the psychedelic heaviness of Idolum. Be patient with this one; it's worth it.

What I listened to the Most This Week (June 21- June 25)

2010-06-25T16:16:00.000-07:00

Music, music, music...

Pajo - Scream with Me

The concept behind this album sounds cheesey (covering Misfits songs in a lo-fi, folkey manner), but it turns out suprisingly well; I would even say that the album is compelling, but not enough to get me juiced up on Danzig's newest.

Trentemøller - Into the Great Wide Yonder

I'm still marinating in this new LP, deciding whether it's going to eclipse 2006's "Last Resort." In the least "The Mash and the Fury" does some interesting, funky things.

Nedry - Condors

I've probably posted on this before--I just can't remember. Nedry's "Squid Cat Battle" gets me every time!

Bad Religion Acoustic Set

2010-06-25T11:12:00.001-07:00

It's Friday, and for some odd reason I had a yearning for Bad Religion, only as acoustic rendition. You see, I just got my hands on Pajo's "Scream with Me," an all acoustic record of Misfits covers. Anyway, this video of Bad Religion doing "Infected," "New Dark Ages" and "Dearly Beloved." on KROQ from 2008 will have to tide me over till I find an official BR acoustic album.

Then of course there's the amazing "Sorrow."

Album Review: Harvey Milk's "A Small Turn of Human Kindness"

2010-06-22T23:18:00.000-07:00

Oddly enough, one might not find a listing of Harvey Milk on most metal websites. Apparently they don't fit the genre. But if the neophyte listened to them, nasty metal would be the first words out of his or her mouth. But regardless of what genre they fall within, Harvey Milk have accrued a cult following over their almost twenty year career, apparently anyways. The true wonder about this underground group is that they are more popular now than they were back in the 90's. Leave that to the power of the internet I guess. In a March interview, band members mostly recount their past failures, er albums, showing their humility and broad range. So why's this album so great when considering their back catalog? They have pulled everything good about their past albums together to create a heart-wrenching LP that is both slow, but not too slow as to bore the listener; and complex, but not to complex to confuse or distract him or her; yes, as Goldilocks would say, it's just right.

Their self-deprecation makes them all the more likable. The band frequently denigrates what they do ("We have reached the point of complete and total creative bankruptcy, but at least we made it shorter than the last record, so you can get through listening to it and return it to the store for a refund faster."), and they are either dead serious, knowing that this music does not appeal to the majority of people listening to music these days, or their level sarcasm eclipses the number of time, key, and movement changes in their songs.

But let's take back a step before I get into the meat of this new record. I first became acquainted with Harvey Milk when I picked up their 2008 release "Life...The Best Game in Town." I'd never heard of them or listened to them, so I couldn't quite appreciate (until collecting more of their back catalog) that they had pulled together the many disparate parts of their musical styles, including concrete-embankment-filled droning feedback, fast, punk-like runs, punctuated and prefaced by Creston Spier's delightful wails and screams. Yet, fittingly "A Small Turn" is named after the first track on their debut album "My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment of What My Love Could Be," an album filled with slow, slow, (slow) sludge passages. Unlike "My Love is Higher," "A Small Turn" is shorter, more compact, and stands as a statement meant to be heard in one go, yet it still does not have a definitive linear structure. Right, it's not pop music by any means, but there's something about this album that flows unlike any of their previous attempts.

The instrumental opener provides an easy ramp towards what the album will deliver as it slowly connects three different guitar motifs repeatedly book-ended by a few notes from the low end and sparse, yet slowly building symbol crashes, into what sounds like a precursor to Buddhist meditation music. The band uses the same, or similar, bass line from the first track in "I Just Want To Go Home," only now the guitar lead really blossoms with acid-like feedback dancing slowly around the thumping of the bass line and drums.

"I Am Sick of This All Too," may test the casual listener's patience as it presents a series of ascents towards what may seem like climaxes (I have always been a sucker for such dynamics: songs that build slowly towards the inevitable crescendo--something that makes for visceral and memorable music listening; however, the band members seem to realize the telegraphing effect that this structure presents.). Instead, however, of allowing the song to explode, the band arranges the song so that it starts over and over. Spiers slowly bellows in Steinian fashion "why," "sick," and "love" over and over again so much that the words become no more than noises of discontent.

The song quickly segues into "I Know This Is No Place For You," the album's closest example of a complete song. Yet, for me, the song simply marks the album's halfway point and nothing more. I find it to be the weakest on an album overflowing with brilliant anguish and melancholy. "I Alone Got Up And Left" slowly makes its presence known with a slow and off kilter drum intro followed by a cold molasses sludge riff that makes you want to swallow hard, twice. But the real gem on the album, and my favorite track is "I Know This Is All My Fault." It starts with the subtle glassy background synth lines and a convulsively repetitive guitar riff that slowly meanders around the parent scale. It's one of those songs that catches your ear if you're not really paying attention to the music, and once it catches your ear, you realize that there's something deeply emotional about the song as Spiers admits that he's sorry and accepts fault for something that I don't quite catch. The album ends with "I Did Not Call Out," which is a wonderful capstone for the LP. It's composed of spiraling guitar riffs and multiple key changes as it seems to pay tribute to classic rock (of some sort).

I've read reviews comparing Harvey Milk to Black Sabbath, or that the band has strong lyrical connections with Leonard Cohen (apparently, they themselves site him as a source of inspiration), and Sunn O))), but I don't see any of these bands in Harvey Milk. The band creates off-kilter, melancholic songs which keep this listener interested through the entirety of "A Small Turn of Human Kindness." They pepper in just enough musical "pop" to guide the listener through a triumphantly successful musical journey, but probably the most salient thing that I take away from this album, is that they achieve success while not situating their work with bands they could easily emulate, copy, or consort with. They're too odd to fit with inteli-sludgers Isis and Neurosis; and they're too funny to fall within the avant-gard camp of Sunn O))) or Boris. Spiers and company have created an album both modest and monolithic, that, while begging repeated listens, still offers an immediate emotional draw for the listener.

What I listened to the Most This Week (June 14- June 18)

2010-06-18T13:29:00.000-07:00

Ahhh...it was a crazy week, so my music listening was a bit curtailed. Here's where I'm seeing patterns:

Black Cobra - Chronomega

I wasn't very impressed with their first two albums, but this one makes me want to jump up in the air and scream. I love it.

Four Tet - Rounds

Had an urge to check out Four Tet's back catalog, which is basically wonderful.

Josh Ritter - So Runs the World Away

I just picked up this album and have only listened to it all the way through once. I'm not so convinced about it, but "the Curse" certainly is compelling.

What I listened to the Most This Week (June 7- June 11)

2010-06-11T13:09:00.000-07:00

Seems it was a slow music week for me.

Beach House - Teen Dream

I didn't think I'd like this LP after reading some of the reviews and seeing that it was "indie pop," but it's great, mesmerizing even.

Boris - Variations

I'm an unwavering early-Boris fan, so when I heard that they had released a collection of live recordings called "Variations," I had to pick it up. I'm not into the Pink era songs, but the collaborations with Michio Kurihara are unbelievable.

Sleepy Sun - Fever

Their new album is growing on me, and the fact that they are local to San Francisco stokes me out too.

Album Releasing...Grand Magus - Hammer of the North

2010-06-07T10:47:00.000-07:00

It's coming...June 23.