What to make of this?

Giorgio Agamben in Potentialities:

"In modern culture, Nietzsche marks the apex of this polar tension toward the effacement of gestures and transfiguration into destiny. For the eternal return is intelligible only as a gesture (and hence solely as theater) in which potentiality and actuality, authenticity and mannerism, contingency and necessity have become indistinguishable. Thus Spake Zarathustra is the ballet of a humanity that has lost its gestures. And when the age becomes aware of its loss (too late!) it began its hasty attempt to recuperate its lost gestures in extremus. Isadora and Diaghilev's ballets, Proust's novel, Rilke and Pascoli's great Judendstil poetry, and, finally, in the most exemplary fashion, silent film - all these trace the magical circle in which humanity tried to evoke for the last time what it was soon to lose irretrievably. And in the same years, Aby Warburg began his research, which truly had gesture at its center (and which only the myopia of psychologizing art history could define as a "science of the image"), gesture as the crystal of historical memory and gesture in its petrification as destiny, which artists streneously (and, according to Warburg, almost madly) attempted to grasp through dynamic polaritities".

Hatred of Democracy

Space and Culture published my review of The Hatred of Democracy on its blog. Many thanks to Ondine Park and Rob Shields for all the assistance and feedback (but responsibility for the review is all my own...).

Fee free to post comments/ suggestions/ corrections/ etc...

Are ducks 'more individual than indivdual'?: towards a duckpolitik

My talk on the weekend pointed in the direction of moving beyond what Laclau and Butler call 'contingent universality', in which a particular movement or identity can occupy the empty space of the universal under certain contingent circumstances. This perspective has explanatory power, and so I wonder, do we need to move beyond a concern with contingency?

I used the example of ducks in the toxic ponds near the Alberta tar sands project to discuss the contingency of any social movement - how is it that human life doesn't usually matter to the media or the government (at Fort Chipewyan for example) but somehow it was the poor little ducks that were actually raised to the level of a universal concern, if only for a moment? What is in a duck that is more than a duck?

Even the NBC had a story via the Associated Press, a story that lets the government off the hook and suggests the premier was "visibly angry". Of course, this isn't true in a precise sense - he denied the importance of the ducks to stand for anything larger, and claimed that we need to keep these things in perspective. However, Stelmach's sense of perspective is very different than the universal signification provided by the ducks.

The truth is that Premier Stelmach's amazing ability to dazzle (or babble, perhaps?) the media didn't work this time. He even made Stephen Harper seem like a nice guy (something rarely seen today) who was widely reported to say that the death of the 500 ducks was a "terrible tragedy". This is more likely the reason why the premier was "visibly angry" - he actually had to respond with something more than "I've got a plan for [insert issue here]" as he did masterfully during the election (much to the NDP's chagrin, no doubt, who lost half of their seats because of poor policy and talking points, repeatedly claiming that Stelmach doesn't have a plan for the boom).

However, this premier, in a very different gesture from Ralph Klein, has many plans. I'm sure he has plans each morning for the order in which to eat breakfast: first, apple, second, eggs, and then some coffee. Yum, that's just right! In the case of the ducks, for example, his plan is to install more beacons to repel the duck with efficiently and with accountability. But, that said, he certainly does not have a plan to deal with the fact that we are all 'down stream' in one way or another. The tar sands are killing the planet. Perhaps he should do some increased planning around that perspective.

If only for a moment, the ducks stood for something much beyond themselves. Incidentally, contingent universality cannot be wholly identified with 'Kantianism', as Žižek tries to suggest early on in the Contingency, Hegemony and Universality text, but, on the contrary, reveals Žižek's own debt to the Kantian project - a debt that he spells out early in Tarrying with the Negative and later in the Parallax View clearly. My most basic claim on the weekend was to argue for a turn to something we might call 'determined universality', which would be a concern with the subject and a psychoanalytic account of the Real of politics. But how does this helps us to think about a gestural politics? Does a turn towards the theory of subject leave the issues of the day unexamined? And, perhaps more importantly, how long can the ducks remain in the empty space of universal?

Jameson on Lebensphilosophie

Might I share with you today a passage borrowed from a wonderful article by Jameson on Benjamin, Simmel and Lebensphilosophie? I would recommend reading the whole passage and article:

"I take it that the passage of time has allowed such ideas [regarding the constant tension between form and content] to congeal into what they visibly were all along, namely, so many ideologies. Vitalism itself is, of course, the strong form of the doxa of the period, less a philosophy in its own right, perhaps, than the aesthetic solution to intractable philosophical contradictions, and this whether it takes the form of psychology or expressivism, evolutionism or spiritualism or primitivism. Thus one of the interesting stories of this turn of the last century is the way in which modern thinkers like Lukacs and Benjamin - in their very different ways - managed to extricate themselves from a vitalism that they could not but breathe in everywhere during their formative years. Vitalism produced magnificent aesthetic expressions in its day, nor did it preclude the subtlest philosophical reflections of a Bergson. I think it is no longer a current temptation (save perhaps in Deleuze and in the Bergsonian revivals inspired by him); contemporary ecology, for instance, does not seem to need to appeal to the rich orchestral resonance and excitement of the vitalistic for its effects.

But it is not only vitalism as such that I have in mind at this point in the analysis; rather, I want to imply that contemporary antiessentialisms and antifoundationalisms - with which one must have all kinds of sympathy and which my diagnosis of Simmel clearly leans on here - all miss the mark insofar as they are themselves framed in the form of so many philosophical essentialisms and foundationalisms. What is more satisfactory philosophically, I want to suggest, is a repudiation of all forms of ontology and all hypotheses about human nature and human psychology, let alone about metaphysics, in the name of a conception of philosophical language as such. For it suffices to grasp all philosophical propositions (particular ones, I hasten to add, fully as much as universal ones) as ideologies for the analytic perspective to be utterly modified. It is clear enough to me that the repudiation of the term and concept of ideology was not only itself ideological but also premature, for, as we shall see in this reading of Simmel, we will not be able to identify and characterize what is truly original and energizing in his theoretical production without first being in a position to isolate its ideological elements, whose immobilities and static or ontological natures or essences it is precisely the mission of this discourse to set in motion and to redynamize. (Jameson, 1999, Critical Inquiry 25:2).

Jameson then continues on to conduct a reading of Simmel and Benjamin in relation to one another, under the key assumption that Benjamin's early thought was in many respects influenced by Simmel's particular sociology (Jameson reminds his readers that Benjamin did attend Simmel's seminar in 1911) which was not wholly free from forms of what we would call today "essentialism" and philosophical assumptions about the relationship between the particular and the universal.

Žižek on Right and Left

Taken from footnote 22 of chapter 3 "Hegelian Llanguage" in For They Know Not What They Do:

"There is much talk today about the absolescence of the difference between Right and Left; in order not to be deceived it is useful to remember the asymmetry of these notions: a leftist is somebody who can say: "I am a left-winger" - that is, recognize the split, the Left/ Right distinction; whereas a right-winger can invariably be recognized by the way he positions himself in the centre and condemns all "extremism" as "old fashioned". In other words, the Right/ Left distinction is perceived as such (in Hegelese: posited) only from a Left perspective, whereas the Right perceives itself as being in the "centre"; it speaks in the name of the "Whole;" it rejects the split. The articulation of the political space is thus a paradox well exemplified by the deadlocks of sexuation: it is not simply the articulation of two poles of the Whole, but one pole (the Left) represents the split as such; the other (the Right) denies it, so that the political split Left/ Right necessarily assumes the form of the opposition between "Left" and "centre", with the place of the Right remaining empty - the Right is defined by the fact that its adherents can never say of themselves in the first person "I am a right-winger"; they appear as such only from a Left perspective".

Although I agree with the basic thrust of this passage, and realize that it is no easy task to sustain a precise distinction between Right and Left, my fear is that Žižek in fact neutralizes the leftist position in this passage (especially towards the end, and in the last sentence). Read in relation to the section of this chapter in which the footnote appears, Žižek claims that the Left reveals that the statement "there is nothing that is not political" to be fraudulent because it pretends to speak from a neutral place of enunciation, somehow outside of the realm of political struggle and difference. He introduces the idea that "class struggle is none other than the name for this unfathomable limit, split, which cannot be objectivized [or seen from a neutral place of enunciation]". For Žižek it is "precisely" the statement "'there is nothing that is not political' which prevents Society from being conceived as a Whole". Class struggle, then, represents an irredeemable split in society upon which all politics are based.

a conference heads-up

Hello everyone,

This year's conference is here. We begin at 5: 30 pm on Friday, May 9, 2008 with opening remarks by the Chair of Sociology, Dr. Harvey Krahn followed by a keynote delivered by Dr. Gord Laxer, Director of Parkland Institute and Professor in our department. Reception follows immediately. The venue for all Friday events is HM Tory 3-36 (see map).

Paper presentation begins on Saturday, May 10 at 8: 45 am. Dr. Wendy Austin of the Faculty of Nursing, University of Alberta and Canada Research Chair in Relational Ethics in Health Care will deliver her keynote at 12: 30 pm. The venue is Humanities Centre L-3.

Please, see conference program for details. See you on Friday.
--

'Tope Oriola & Lane Mandlis

SGSA 2008 conference Co-chairs.

Is quantity a pedagogical strategy? No thanks!

Jodi published a post on her blog called "how much is too much?" in which she asks whether Zizek is somehow pathological, as many claim, in his ability and willingness to publish lengthy texts frequently. I think this is a very important question in 'Zizek studies' (if there is such a thing) considering that anyone who takes the man seriously must also come to terms with the fact that he puts out a book every six months or so, and articles seemingly daily. There are very few debates that Zizek shies away from.

I'm currently preparing an article on Zizek and Laclau on the topic of populism, and I have really struggled trying to essentialize the former's position. Things are much better than when I began working with Zizek in my undergraduate studies, but the basic problem still remains: What is his main point? How does one summarize Zizek's work in a few paragraphs, if need be? How does one anticipate whether he will be coming out with a new article that might represent a turning point in his work? I think that the release of the Parallax View (his self-proclaimed 'Magnum Opus') helps with this task slightly, but it still takes an enormous amount of 'mapping' to remember and record where Zizek commented on what. (It is a further problem that the Parallax View does not contain an index and the table of contents at the front of the book is less than fully helpful - like most of the tables of contents in Zizek's books).

I think that this all begs the question regarding Zizek's precise pedagogical strategy. Several readers commented after Jodi's post that Zizek basically publishes for the fame of it all and that he is simply trying to conceal (via volume) the fact that he can't 'go to the end', that is, that his work always falls short of the mark of really making a difference. I think that this is completely wrong on a whole series of levels. I think most readers would admit that a good majority of his articles are amazingly original and do follow a strong argument with a multitude of examples spanning everywhere from film studies to political theory and events. I think most readers would also agree that he avoids high levels of abstraction (except when talking about Hegel and Lacan (but can you blame him for that?)).

I don't think that Zizek writes to amass quantities of text, but, rather, to express his deep care and involvement about and in current events. He is like the social studies teacher who actually cares about what he is talking about and wishes to make an intervention (Zizek is not a journalist!). You can think of him as one of the last standing old New Left marxists, and a serious critic of ideology, but one can hardly make the argument that he publishes for the sake of vanity. Put simply, Zizek thinks that books and articles matter and do have an effect in the world. Zizek's books teach us about the sheer power of thought and free expression. Although it is a topic that he has struggled to take account of throughout his entire career, he teaches us about the abyss of freedom!

Secret Transgressions Final Program

For your reading leisure, the final conference program can be downloaded here. (It should be updated on the conference website soon). I must say without hesitation that the papers look very promising. (However, as my students have taught me this term, it might just be that I am biased...)

The time left

Due to a tragic family illness I went to Saskatoon on the weekend for a visit. The province is polluted with all the commotion of oil traffic - Saskatchewan is now like its big brother Alberta: 'booming' without any sense of direction. Big ugly trucks and a landscape dominated by the useless search for 'easy' money. This includes a deep manipulation of the land.

But my mind was on one person - my aunt - who has tried to find a good balance in her life so far between the needs of her own body and the "external" world - a world, to be honest, that she has never liked much. She was the first person to introduce me to 'organic' food ideology (because I grew-up on a farm equipped with a large vegetable garden each year, this was not an easy concept for me to grasp) - that is, clean living, hardwood floors, and a conscious war against 'toxins' (a term she would mention so often while we lived together). She never drank (although she told me yesterday that she occasionally loves Martguerita's with Tequila - and that she would like to have one soon). She doesn't smoke or disrespect nature, or the world in which she lives. I bet she has never pissed on a tree after a late night at the bar (God knows, I wish I could say the same). But my poor, dear aunt is suffering from what amounts to terminal cancer. I took several photos on the weekend (posted above), many of which, now published on the Yolk, allow me to constantly keep her in my thoughts as she struggles for life in an old hospital, with and against doctors for whom the glass is always half empty (if that). I have never seen anyone fight quite like my aunt Jacquie.

Thomas Kemple - SAVING GRACE: A CONTRAPUNTAL READING OF WEBER ON CHARISMA

SAVING GRACE: A CONTRAPUNTAL READING OF WEBER ON CHARISMA

THOMAS KEMPLE
Associate Professor
Dept. of Sociology
University of British Columbia

FRIDAY, May 2
3-4.30pm
Tory Building 10-4
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada

Abstract
To understand what is discursively distinctive as well as aesthetically appealing in the design and use of the texts of classical sociology,' this talk offers a 'contrapuntal reading' of Max Weber's most celebrated and popular concept, namely, 'charisma'.
Like the use of counterpoint in the rationalization of early modern music which Weber studied in the last decade of his career, this interpretive approach requires careful attention to the 'polyphonic' dissonance and synchronic combination of themes and figures. Weber's sociological reformulation of the concept of charisma, for which St.Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians strikes a keynote, reaches its apotheosis in his notes on the 'charisma of scientific reason' in the Enlightenment, the modernist aesthetics of heroic and erotic subjectivity, and the contemporary political principle of plebiscitary leadership. His conception of the mystical grounds of sovereign power and legitimate authority in particular is shown to anticipate 'post-Weberian' political philosophies of historical rupture and cultural ideals of the personal 'gift of grace.'

Thomas Kemple teaches classical and contemporary social theory and humanities at the University of British Columbia. He recently co-translated and introduced a selection of Georg Simmel's essays on metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics for the December 2007 Theory, Culture & Society Annual Review, and is currently completing a study of Max Weber's sociology of the cultural vocations of modernist aesthteics, capitalist techno-science, and bureaucratic politics.

Please direct inquiries to the group's co-convener: Magdalena Zolkos, zolkoska@ualberta.ca, 492-0322

Bertolt Brecht "The God of War"

"I saw the old god of war stand in a bog between chasm and rockface.
He smelled of free beer and carbolic and showed his testicles to adolescents, for he had been rejuvenated by several professors. In a horse worldfish voice he declared his love for everything young. Nearby stood a pregnant woman, trembling.
And without shame he talked on and presented himself as a great one for order. And he described how everywhere he put barns in order, by emptying them.
And as one throws crumbs to sparrows, he fed poor people with crusts of bread which he had taken way from poor people.
His voice was now loud, now soft, but alway hoarse.
In a loud voice he spoke of great times to come, and in a soft voice he taught the women how to cook crows and seagulls. Meanwhile his back was unquiet, and he kept looking round, as though afraid of being stabbed.
And every five minutes he assured his public that he would take up very little of their time."

Positively positive: 100 days to go

So here is the picture from Associated Free Press (AFP) featured on today's Olympic story in the English version of Al Jazeera. A story oozing with good vibes about how people are so proud to have the Olympics and, it goes almost without saying, a record number of sponsors eager to appeal to a market of 1b. The article reported how people were shocked at Western criticism of human rights abuses, and say that they have come a long way, it used to be much worse. So, I guess that makes it okay, on with the mascot parade.

Despite the sickening one-sidedness of the Al Jazeera report kissing Olympic sized ass, a careful look at the photo will make one think twice.
Let's take a look at the English words on the poster, second line, does it say "Serving with heats, mind and spirit". You got it, we are missing a piece of heart, maybe it got removed during an organ deal. But that's not all. The jarring contradiction between the "Safe Olympics, Harmonious Beijing", the man with the bike and the military salute in triplicate really makes one wonder. Is there a message about HOW the Olympics will be made safe? What about harmony, doesn't that consist of different parts? Not uniform, but contrasting? Yet after the word 'harmonious', we see uniform, uniform, uniform. Looking at this image doesn't make me think the Olympics will be a heck of a lot of fun, more like, constant surveillance, lots of work, and toeing the line, oh and lest we forget buying lots of memorabilia of what a great experience that was.

move over Mel...

Do you know what Attractions Canada recently named Alberta's biggest attraction? not the Stampede, or Edmonton fringe, or the Royal Tyrell museum, but the Canadian Badlands Passion of the Christ. This is a re-enactment 3 hr theatrical performance of the life of Jesus Christ set in a panoramic outdoor theater in the badlands, with a cast of hundreds and an audience of thousands.

This summer the Passion runs from July 4-13.

http://www.travelwithachallenge.com/Canadian-Badlands-Passion-Play.htm

Is coffee a need or a want? I'm ambivalent.