Reading Adorno: The Individual and the Collective

There are many ways to cut across the understanding of culture. One such theme which takes a sociogenic perspective is the way towards how a cultural object expresses a sentiment which is either individual, or a mark of a collective. To pose these terms as a dichotomy is unhelpful, nor what one would suggest, but rather as part of a spectrum.

In this post I shall continue analysis of Adorno’s essay on “Culture and Administration”, as well as on “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda” through a unifying theme: the individual and the collective as a social cultural theme. Adorno points out in the latterly parts of Culture and Administration, that cultural forms eventually become appropriated by mass culture, perhaps the contemporary parlance of this would be if something were to ‘go mainstream’.

I remember a book review I did “Sells like Teen Spirit” where the author compared Adorno to an archetypal hipster. I found this likeness highly troubling. The archetypal hipster (do they really exist by the way?) supposedly claims that their intentions and interests in bands or films or other cultural objects are more authentic than others, exactly because they were fans “before it was cool”. Indeed Adorno makes a point that cultural originality, or the ideological force of a cultural object is diminish once it becomes appropriated into a mass machine, and this industrial process of propagation undermines its message. The joke of the hipster, is that their percieved originality is taking place through a culturally mediated narrative (namely that of the hipster cultural phenotype), or more bluntly put, Adorno did it first.

Culture has to take place within administration once it has been established. In this way, the original sense of its social challenge or ideological message becomes watered down. I remember once going to a Rammstein gig at a large venue a couple of years back, and finding there was a mosh pit right in front of the stage, and further back of the stage were a large collection of stadium seats, filled by grey haired 50 year olds wearing wooly jumpers who periodically went to get hot dogs in between ‘Du Hast’ and ‘Sonne’, they also complained about the fire. As I think of it now when writing an essay on Adorno, it tells me a few things: Heavy Metal is sonic experience turned into socially acceptable sound, and if the genre of working class opposition had any biting teeth of social criticism, it now has dentures.

Appropriation seems inevitable however. Adorno seems to acknowledge this, and I am of mixed opinion on how to interpret this as optimistic or pessimistic. Adorno’s view of culture is that many things eventually have a tendency to become appropriated into the culture machine, in our context this may include gig circuit tours, having an agent, press releases or a social media presence. Adorno’s view is that incorporating culture into a rationalising process that is administration may also make it anodyne. This reminds me of an article in the NME where the band Nickelback is simultaneously called ‘The Biggest Rock Band in the world right now”, as well as heralders of the “death of rock n’roll’. The point being made that stadium rock and larger audiences eventually creates a conformist environment, both aesthetically (Nickelback is highly formulaic, and also very catchy for the same reason) and ideologically stagnant. A Nickelback song couldn’t talk about really divisive issues, exactly because they are unified by such a wide audience.

Over Christmas, I was listening to the Comedian Stewart Lee talk about the role of physical space in comedy performances. Lee pointed out that the number of an audience distinctly affects the kind of performance and material addressed. Edgier performances and smaller interest groups tend to favour the fewer numbers of audience, or physically confined audience spaces. I remember when I went to see comedian Marc Maron last year in a small London venue, a joke was made by looking in the eyes of a young man in the front to the effect of implying that he is looking for a mentor figure in an older man, Maron then says to this man staring at him intensely in the eyes, as if to impersonate him: “Will you be my dad?”. This was highly uncomfortable, very personal comic performance, and there may be more factors to the limited audience than Adorno may have considered as to the success of edgy and uncomfortable art.

Adorno may allow for a sense of social critique and ingenuity within the cultural machine. Adorno’s point is not that such ingenuity and critique is impossible, but that such an oppurtunity has everything against it. I was thinking about the individual and the collective as a way of framing Adorno’s essay on Freud and Fascism. Adorno asserts that it is the power of using an eloquent speaker and a charismatic individual who appeals direclty to an audience that allows for the growth of influence of the Fascist speaker.

Adorno makes the claim that Freud’s thought on the effectiveness of hypnosis on the subject is essentially the same as why Hitler was an influential leader to encouraging Fascism. I feel disturbed as to the use of psychoanalysis in Adorno’s analysis as it seems while nuanced, uncritical of Freud in the way that a contemporary such as Popper had become. However, Adorno sets a lot of observations and conditions about the role of influence that are empirically feasible questions of research and observation. In other words, my ‘Adorno-lite’ interpretation can allow for a Freudian consideration if re-tooled to include empirical questions of mass psychology.

Adorno makes the point that a successful way to create a Fascist influence in the masses is to create collective sentiments. By establishing an identity as a group, where differences are immaterial, except the differences that the group defines itself against (through some ‘other’), a sense of unity is established. I was directly reminded of a time a few years back when I was a few selected passages from Mussolini’s ‘The Doctrine of Fascism’, where he direclty makes the point that individualism and the concern of the individual and self is demolished when compared to the priorities of the state. In facism, there is no individual, there is only definition through the state.

To speak of cultural identity or works of art in this context is to speak of none at all. It is a sign of such totalitarian regimes that culture is controlled in the way that food or housing is distributed. The absolutism of the collectivist ideology allows for no alternative thought. In this extreme way, we find some solace, as culture and difference is anathema and corrosive to absolute rule. We find the real importance of culture by looking at the despicable moral and intellectual conditions in the lack of it.

Hitchens writes in many parts that the true insight of George Orwell is that he identified the communist social states as simply another form of totalitarianism, rather than its alternative, exactly because of their lack of difference when it came to culture and opinion. Hitchens himself talks of his experience of going into Cuba and embarrassingly admitting that he is a liberal, even though a socialist, as if the former is subversive and the latter is acceptable. Through the distinction of the individual and collective, we find a distinction of ideology.

But what of culture? I have been thinking lately about Black Metal. Often it is said that Black Metal is the extreme of individualism, black metal concerns the critique of comfortable European Christendom. The early Norwegian bands speak often of the stuffiness of Norway’s conservatism and their difference is expressed powerfully by the transformative imagery of corpse paint and other such paraphernalia. Often it is said that the notion of genre in music is a way of putting things into acceptable categories against ‘otherness’, while maintaining a sense of individuality. I also recall when new styles are created, they attempt to defy or resist genre, but simultaneously create or revise genre categories. I think for instance of the recent band Alcest, which I quite like, which has been described as ‘Black Metal Shoegaze’ or the even more nebulous ‘Post-Black metal’.

Within Black Metal, there is of course an extreme of anti-individualism. There is the critique of others by the way of establishing a sense of national pride and unity. Many of the so-called NSBM (nationalist socialist black metal) bands seem to exhibit the fascistic tendencies and imageries Adorno describes. The phenomenon of the Straightedge Punk movement in the 1980s has been described as a form of ultraconformism where the avoidance of drugs and alcohol is the stable in which self-identifying members internally are judged or excluded. There is an odd mix, it seems, of concentric circles of conformist collectivism within individualism.

As an open question, I ask this: how can we judge reality television within the individual and collective spectrum of culture? Reality television is successful in attracting large audiences exactly because it is multi-media, social media, internet and television are ways of promoting television shows and in being so broad as a medium, it also must be conservative in terms of the ideology or the types of messages it tries to put across. Is it possible for instance, to be an activist and have a twitter account?

With the enhancement of social media on the culture industry, everyone has become the media. This looks like both a curse and a hope for the Adornian vision, and that of course, is not a new insight.

Michael

A free pass at ignorance

A few weeks ago there was released an interview with Brian Leiter, the philosopher behind the surprisingly influential philosophy blog, Leiter Reports. Leiter has been known for various things, one of which is his reluctance or annoyance to acknowledge an ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ distinction in philosophy. The comment that comes to mind is the following:

There are real dividing lines in the history of philosophy, but the one between the “analytic” and the “Continental” isn’t one of them, though it’s interesting today from a sociological point of view, since it allows graduate programs in philosophy to define spheres of permissible ignorance for their students.(Leiter, 3AM magazine)

I was thinking about this cultural phenomenon of how philosophy has been taught, and the phrase ‘permissible ignorance’ seems much more relevant to a wider range of fields than I thought. So often we hear of self-proclaimed experts in various professions, or in the media, but many of which are hardly master practicioners or theoreticians of the art in which they are addressing.

A good electrician is one who knows what they are doing when it comes to aspects of their craft. Likewise, a notable expert would be one with a background in their art or at least knowledgable enough to be pioneering, innovative or at least the most able person in the room in a great many situations.

Permissible ignornace seems to take place in a variety of ways. When people handwave about scientific studies for instance. Another interesting one is when academics in research are unfamiliar with the methodological problems of their research. In particular, a lack of awareness of cognitive bias or social biases is so prevalent in industrial and scientific research that it is shameful.

Some fields have become so autonomous and specialised that not all aspects of its specialism need to be known. A good electrician doesn’t need to know the equations concerning alternating current and direct current. Likewise, I suspect that most software engineers wouldn’t really need to know much mathematical logic.

Wilful ignorance is something that perplexes me. Many times I’ve been in job interviews when I realise some of the professionals haven’t done a literature review. Other times i realise that many so-called experts that I come across are full of shit. I’m reminded of something that Machiavelli says in The Prince, which is also repeated in Grayling’s book of ‘Lawgiver’ in ‘The Good Book’ (which probably is an allusion to Machaivelli). The notion is that a leader should be seen in solidarity with their subjects, and to gain credibility is not only willing to do the things that they themselves ask of their people, but to be exceptional at it.

In recent weeks, I have been weight training with a couple of friends of mine, including Sinistre. I recall saying something to them before I was showing them my routine. I said to them in an almost disingenuous prophet like fashion: I will not ask of you that I cannot do myself. My point was that I can’t claim to be any expert unless I can show what I’m doing to them at least as well as they could do it.

In a few proficiencies, there is no possibility of having a wilful ignorance. Presenting to a crowd of philosophers for instance, who have a background in logic and can comb through inconsistencies and logical tensions, if not any outright contradictions. Likewise the art of live performance, especially when recorded, emphasises every inferiority a performer has, some may be endearing for the performing legends, but for anybody else they are judged in the most harsh way possible.

The fear of judgment is something which keeps a practicioner such as a philosopher, a musician or even a bodybuilder to account. Being accountable to a higher set of standards, competing with people who may be above one’s ability and where one’s flaws or gaps in knowledge and performance are emphasised by the presentation of self to peers really determines what it means to ‘keep a person honest’. This kind of accountability and competition is one way to force away the disingenuous false idols.

By contrast, the dynamics of nepotism and peer enforcement, social advancement and social clades is antithetical to intellectual openness. The virtue of magnanimity is suffocated by the other side of peer review, when one’s peers have a pre-determined vision of their success or a notion of expertise.This is hardly an appeal to higher standards but an exercise in conformity. Wilful ignorance would occur when practicioners operate in social clades. I thought it interesting that Leiter’s sociological point about analytic and continental philosophy is potentially wider. It makes me imagine that social clades as a form of enforcing a status quo of temperament is a means of control by a Nietzschean last man.

Michael

A Year in Review: Dissent

(Ed: Apologies that this is late)

 

If there is one thing that characterises the year that has recently passed, it is the unifying theme of instability. Whether one is working in the so-called public or private sectors, instability is now a constant that is presumed. A generational gap between the Baby Boomers and those after them is emphasised by a differing pension scheme or position on the housing market. The societal myth of social mobility is more in question now than it has ever been (bar the early 20thC). Jobs and public positions are not stable. Even those in governance and the media are not safe from instability. This lesson has been learned by two differing but related aetiologies.

The first aetiology is that of the larger economic forces coming into play. While the nuances of the financial system are beyond my understanding, I can appreciate that economies and various aspects of financial industries and wider industries have implications on wider society and economy. Government debt in most Western/Northern countries is at a fairly ridiculous rate, and much of the popular media emphasises the short term effects and outcomes of the present day. My point about instability is that government debt has cultivated a political penchant for austerity which in turn has affected wider social features.

Another aetiology comes from the influence of public opinion. Public opinion has shown great force in recent months. From the Arab spring, a movement of individuals from Arab nations continue to display signs of dissent relating to their governance. While these events still unfold, many are curious what the long term implications of these forms of dissent will entail. In the US, and to some extent the UK, dissent has reached a new audience of people through a plethora of causes to express disquiet about the status quo. On the year that Gil Scott Heron died, how fitting is the phrase he is most known for: The Revolution will Not be Televised’. Dissent has been facilitated by social media, from the blatant violation of the injunctions on public figures (addressed in a previous post this year), to organised chaos in the English Riots during the summer. It is certainly an interesting year historically, while many of these momentous events go on around the world, we at Noumenal Realm on a day to day basis are actually living boring lives despite it all, perhaps that is the most disappointing feature of our year in review.  My year has been pretty boring as far as life goes, uneventful, and to some extent that is due to the instability of many things going on.

Sinistre (theme of dissent comes from discussions with Destre)

A Year in Review: Changing Perspectives

Since it is the time of year where it is customary to review events and happenings of the past twelvemonth, it is both seemingly customary and obligatory to write a review of the year. I have invited Sinistre, Destre and Antisophie to give a piece about reviewing the year, and Antisophie rejected this on the basis that it was an arbitrary idea for a blog post. If there is one thing I have tried to do in my resolutions of 2011 it has been to keep a sense of consistency with the things that I have resolved. In addition, one other thing that I think might be worth talking about is not just a change in my activities, which is usually characteristic of New Years resolutions, but what usually characterises the failure of said resolutions: mindset.

Previous New Years resolutions have met with some success. In 2009 I ventured to keep more records of music, so I used Last.fm religiously (p.s. feel free to add me!). My resolution for 2011 was to improve my fitness, and read more. I’ve been training for the past few days with Sinistre, and I think with some fairness I can say that I’ve upheld the former resolution but there is more to do in the world of keeping fit. Regarding my reading target, I set a task of reading 100 books, which I have kept a log on another social networking site, Goodreads (again, feel free to add me!). I not only met the target of 100 books but exceeded it. I hope that the developers of the site keep that widget for 2012.

A related, but non resolution task that I set for myself over 2011 was to read more about Feminism. I did this through the help of the ‘A Year of Feminist Classics‘ blog, which I must admit that I couldn’t find many of the books towards the later months. Reading the (excuse the gendered word) ‘seminal’ works of feminism did help to widen my perspective, and the agenda of feminism will continue to be something of interest to me. I suppose I have been apprehensive about feminism in the respect that people often say things like ‘I’m not a feminist but…’, or ‘I agree with feminism to a point’, in reference to the fact that many people seem to think that the literature in the 1970s to 1980s which typified feminist discussion in relation to more radical themes discussed in Margeter Walters’ VSI monograph on feminism. Another feature that may annoy many people is the perception of contemporary feminists as 20-30 something women who predominantly speak from a caucasian, middle-class university educated perspective. If politics has the problem of these male equivalents (give or take a decade older) dominating political discourse, contemporary representations of feminism would also have this as a difficulty as well.

As an aside, I recall an interesting allegation that I was perpetuating a white bourgeois view of culture in a talk that I gave on Utopias earlier on in the year, and I thought to myself: I am the last person to be accused of being white or bourgeois! My point is that the population or over-reputation of any discourse (such as the overrrepresentation of men in politics or academic fields) is not a reason to dismiss the discourse tout court, even if it undermines what we may call its ‘ecological validity’.

So, having read Mill’s ‘Subjection of Women’, Wollstonecraft’s ‘Vindication’ and Perkins-Gilman’s ‘Herland’, can I call myself a feminist if I see a good amount of reasoning about the historical and current status of women being diminished by virtue of their urinary organs. I find this difficult to answer. One because feminism isn’t really my ‘battle’ to fight, firstly as a man and secondly since I have so many other battle grounds to engage with (Adorno on Culture, for instance). There is a certain kind of flaw about campaigning on too many issues which undermines a campaigner (let’s call this the P. Tatchell factor), so in that regard I am more an observer of feminism than a participant.

I think the real thing that blew my mind in relation to gender is that I am much more aware of the gendered nature of culture. I have a nephew and a niece for example, and I can see how toys and products are marketed differently, and perhaps the obvious form of this is the colour coding and gender assigning of products. Girls like pink and boys like blue. Girls toys relate to domesticity and male toys relate often to activity. Another thing that interests me is that feminism was introduced to blow open a quagmire of intellectual discourses, politically the acknowledgement of women shook up the establishments of the early 20thC and still continue to do so in various respects, consider for instance the recent BBC story that women are not included in the Sports Personality of the Year award (to which the F-Word blog put forward a series on contemporary women in sports today, many of whom are Olympic hopefuls).

In the history of feminism, intersectionality is essential to the movement, to talk about women is to demystify an ‘other’ character. Increasingly we can demystify the ‘other’ by addressing issues of ethnicity and sexuality. Black and lesbian feminisms were interesting critiques which split feminism into a plural movement of feminisms, which would attack each other for their lack of representation and the solidarity with the female disaspora. One thing that I learned from new personal friends is the experience of the transsexual woman. Blowing open our sense of social awareness even further, there is still much more work and social awareness for the cause of transgendered persons. Cisgendered establishes currency as a term in relation to the transgender, and the acknowledgment of transgendered people poses another set of issues for feminist discussion.

Being a philosophically inclined person, I couldn’t help but ask if feminism was relevant to philosophy. This merits a whole article on it self, but let’s just say that it does have much of a contribution to systematic areas of philosophy. Empirical studies on gender and gender bias show that data on gender perceptions affects issues that are relevant to theorising in epistemology, morality and even the construction of science. I have wondered personally whether ‘feminist epistemology’ is basically the same thing as ‘social epistemology’ , in that they acknoweldge the social construction of knowledge and question what things are not included under the aegis of episteme (that’s just one example). I’ve had a related thought which is whether it is possible for feminist philosophy to be a systematic philosophy. This I need to think harder about. It is one thing for feminism to be relevant to philosophy systematically, it is vastly another thing for feminism to be systematic. Perhaps it is unique about an intellectual movement to be involved so intimately with campaigning and action that it resists systematising.

2011 has been the year of the SlutWalk, superinjunctions which mostly related to men having affairs with women and for British readers, changes in government funding which negatively affects everyone, but women will be especially affected in relation to activities such as childcare and employment, where the gendered roles affect their social and public roles. The frame of gender has been useful to me in my general outlook, and it also has enabled me to be painfully aware of my own gendered existence. I spend hours playing skyrim, working out at the gym. I have macho interests like airsofting and tasteless action films. I realise that some of my interests I probably find compatible with being male. I am self conscious about the gendered language among my friends, and even some of the things I say which normally is accompanied by an ‘oh shit did I really say that 2 years ago?!’ moment. Gender is a very interesting frame to look at contemporary issues, and I think it will continue to do so. So if there is anything that can characterise my year I would say that it is reflexivity.

Michael

On balance: regarding critical perspectives on Christopher Hitchens’ life

While most of the other male Noumenons are quite fans of Christopher Hitchens, and to some extent, I quite like his ‘God is not Great’. There is, however, a number of pieces going against the grain orbituary pieces which place the man in a more critical light. I’ve just sent them to the other Noumenons and it has enlivened a midnight discussion at present. We have found the articles through Leiter Reports, and it certainly provides food for thought. The critical allegations which I find really challenging to the legacy of Hitchen’s reputation and writings are the following:

 

1. Hitchens’ position on Iraq, specifically, the allegation that he said that he did not ‘change his position’ about supporting the war, but shifted from an initial WMD line of justification (following Blair/Bush), but the justifications that I recall him often saying (when we came across him ff 2006) were on the basis that Saddam Hussein was a dictator and any dicator should be removed with a democratic order. These are clearly different reasons and it is bad faith, and disingenuous to say the justification is the same, it is difficult to say it is not changing a position of support, when the platform of support is vastly different.
2. Hitchens’ talk of Islam or ‘Islamofascism’ was one of those thematic soundbites that he had (along with the very notable: ‘we are created sick [by God], and commanded to be well’). 
3. There is one specific allegation pertaining to his reference to the Dixie Chicks (who in my view are a bit of a cultural obscurity) as ‘fucking fat slags’ (sic). There are many different ways to cut across or try to prosthyletise sexist language (e.g. ‘its a generational thing’/'journalism is full of men’), but it’s just poor rhetoric at best, or crass chauvinism at worst.
4. The personal character of Hitchens is one who drinks often, Hitchens himself acknowledges this in various interviews. I recall a saying of his in an interview where he quipped that if one couldn’t be without a drink to be a creative writer, then they are a failure. According to personal testimonies, Hitchen’s character when drunk was highly uncomfortable and a bullying character. Michael is currently writing a book review on A.C. Grayling’s ‘The Good Book’, where he earlier made a pertinent comment to me that the problem with Grayling’s address of the character of Solon in Humanist “Book of Acts” is that he’s too positive and not critical. Michael’s point is that it does an injustice to Solon’s deserved reputation as a great man not to acknowledge that he was not perfect, and that his reforms (such as the measure to end slavery debts) did cause problems as well as solving others. So, when I asked Michael earlier if these critical appraisals still affected his admiration of the departed Christopher Hitchens he simply replied: Is Solon a great reformer?

Antisophie

 

Reading Adorno: Culture, Administration and ‘institutionalised culture’

As I further read Adorno, I find many of the cultural references he establishes interesting, they are interesting in that they show a man’s familiarity with what he essentially finds repulsive and corrosive. I myself make a purposeful effort to listen to music that I wouldn’t normally like, or I might say it in a different way: if I listened only to the things that I liked, I would be incredibly dull and unchallenged aesthetically speaking, even if my music interests are typically subversive ideologically. Adorno was well aware that subversive cultural objects can be sanitsed and appropriated by the culture industry to become an anodyne machination to enforce the cultural status quo.

I am reading an essay ‘Culture and Administration’, where he addresses a certain kind of putative dichotomy between these two notions. Administration may be typified as the Weberian concept of rationality. According to Adorno’s reading of Weber, institutions which become increasingly organised and efficient seek as a norm, to become even more efficient and organised, I wonder what both sociologists would have thought of Machine Learning! Culture by contrast, is fuzzy, culture is ideological but also without a system of order and can manifest organically and in its various infestations, manifest in its own unique way. I take Adorno to appropriate this dichotomy as a late 19thC or Romantic notion (I must admit that I’ve not quite finished the essay yet). However, for the context of Adorno’s broader cultural industry notion, it seems interesting to invoke this contrast.

Perhaps there is a normative role for culture, a still existent rational possibility for the emergence of Culture in the way he has construed. Emergent forms of art representing ideologies may simply come from various historical and cultural contexts and remain fresh and relevant. When I read about Adorno’s distinction, I immediately thought about the state of the arts in the UK. Many artists and projects are maintained institutionally. A lot of Classical Music in the UK through the BBC is essentially tax payer funded (or whoever pays a TV license). This is an instance where ‘culture’ directly has an administrative character. There are manifold other instances of this, the British Government has a ‘ministry for culture’, which does sound quite Orwellian (as in 1984) to me.

If I were to take an Adornian perspective to the current affairs of ‘institutionalised culture’ we might see the institutionalisation of culture, that is to say, by paying and supporting artists, funding bodies take an areopagite role of determining the agenda of future successess, at least as far as financially supported artists may go. Of course, as we have learned from the bohemians, financial support goes a long way to recognition among the public, and as we have also learned from history, it is not always the ones who are popular who are remembered.

When I think of Adorno’s contrast between culture and administration there is the air of the old ‘creativity versus rationality’ dichotomy, and I am also reminded of Kant’s notion of the genius, which I am sure Adorno had in the back of his mind. The Genius is a creative potential to redefine the rules of a given art, genuine innovation comes not from following the rules of an artistic norm, but working from one’s inner creativity to establish an internal logic and order. Perhaps simply said, the truely eminent don’t follow rules and principles of their art but create their own. I think by this contrast of culture and administration, Adorno allows for the possibility of the Genius, and I’m pretty sure that he thought Alban Berg/Arnold Schoenberg were exemplars [and he's not wrong!].

As I close this piece I realise that there is an amphiboly here. I used three senses of the term culture. Culture qua culture industry, which involves the oppressive machination of late capitalism to use media such as radio and television to have an impact upon the social consciousness. Culture versus administration, which allows for a positive notion of art, perhaps through the Kantian genius, or the emergence of underground movements. Lastly, I considered an undefined and perhaps putative use of the word in my address of ‘culture’ institutionalised. The state of funded cultural projects today shows both the administrative and autonomous aspects of various cultural practices (such as say, Grayson Perry’s British Museum exhibit). Perhaps this infrastructure is a more rationalised form of the patron. Institutionalised culture does not challenge the terminology of Adorno, rather, it emphasises that terms need to be pulled apart.

Destre

Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

As with many other important things, I found out on a regular visit to the BBC’s news website that Christopher Hitchens had died. Many of his regular readers, or fans, if you will, were expecting this news ever since his cancer was discovered. It is normally the custom in honouring the dead, to start with a platitude about life, living or death. I feel that this would be a tired cliche, and could be found in orbituaries and other such memoriam posts around the internet and print media.

If there’s one thing I can say about Hitchens is that he wrote broadly. Hitchens was well read and the ‘texts’ which he imbibed in varied from political philosophy, new atheism, English Literature to the more lowbrow nuances of popular culture. Hitchens covered a wide range of bases which captured the zeitgeist of the past three or four decades, and from my limited life experience, he captured the 2000s pretty well, for an author of a elder age where youth was emphasised in the public sphere, he showed a razor sharp understanding of the times and even when his interpretations and analyses were often disputed vehemently, he provoked a discussion on topics which one would not normally consider.

Hitchens in various parts of his ‘Arguably’ anthology, alludes to figures whom he has been compared to, such as Gore Vidal and George Orwell. The former in his social views and public profile, and perhaps the latter, in that both were journalists with a conscientious socialist bent. Hitchens proved that the journalist could be an intellectual, and in an ever changing world, the agenda and focii of the intellectual should also broaden.My own influence from Hitchens would be that he showed the possibility and desirability of combining elements from disperate subject matters, traditions and merging of a ‘high’ cultural corpus with a ‘low’ cultural focus to create focussed articles which were more readable than the literary and intellectual figures which he would reference. The passing of his life also represents to me a changing mindset and environment going on around the world. In the way that people would talk about historical moments such as the 1968 student movement, or the fall of the Berlin Wall. I suspect that 2011 would be the year of dissent and global disquiet about the status quo.

Sinistre

On Social Media (or The panopticlon of judgmental peers)

I’ve noticed lately how Facebook is telling me about the behaviours of friends, whether they are in a certain restaurant (via Foursquare); whether Michael is playing too much Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and lately there is a ‘Guardian’ and ‘Telegraph’ application which tells me (as if I want to know) what articles they are reading from these UK newspapers. At this point I felt something was deeply wrong. The Guardian is putatively seen as a centre-left, liberal publication (or at least, their readers are described as such), and maybe 5 years ago people would have complained about the way in which technologies are are means of constant surveillance, leaving a trail of one’s activities. There was something menacing about being observed or having our data kept by unknown forces: who, for instance, really looks at our Nectar card points balance when I shop at Amazon or Homebase?

In a way this Foucauldian worry about the surveillance society and a menacing panopticlon is a lost concern. To some extent most citizens of the city-state accept surveillance in tacit ways to many degrees. During the UK riots this year, many surveillance technologies successfully worked to catch many of those involved, the public would surely approve of such an application, and we can at least see a non-menacing rationale of such surveillance in that extent. What I really find worrying, however, is the constant ‘performance’ of social life. This has been emphasised and turned up to such a level which I find insufferable. Twitter friends think that it’s somehow amusing to tell me about a late train in Croydon, or the “woes of waiting for a bus, and then two come at the same time #buskake”; Charlie Brooker, a great cynic of our time, has turned his writing which has insightful pieces on television and his Guardian column, has turned his talent from gold into bowel movements.

I think the thing that is worrying me is that social media can be seen as a means to changing perceptions and challenging orthodoxies to give people a voice. But when individuals are aware of others, they become self conscious and attempt to project some idealised conception of themselves, projecting themselves as they think others expect or wish to see of them. I’m guilty of this myself, Michael and Destre have told me in previous discussions that they are slowly self conscious about this issue and find that social media management is similar to personality management in social interractions. In this way, social media has a fundamentally conservative force, instead of changing perceptions, it enforces the notion of ‘business as usual’, or that the status quo (or some hyperbolised version,  where all some individuals do are say proverbs and upload pictures of babies/cats/their six pack/drunken partying). The govenance of social media is under more nefarious hands than governments and shifty mega corporations, its governed by the expectations others have of us. It is true that social media can be used to subvert traditional forms of authority, and unify forms of resistance and can signify ideological and symbolic forms of difference. Social media however can be a conservative force that expresses in a most naked form, our need for approval from others, by emphasising what we think others will like or expect of us as social persons.This mindset preserves the status quo, and also our ways of perceiving change, both within ourselves and without.

It’s also inescapable. I could cynically add: ‘Like us on facebook’ and ‘join us on Twitter’. Words are cheap, if all we have to say are things people expect of us, that’s not freedom, it’s self enforced slavery.

 

Antisophie

Taxonomies and ‘the Reichenbach rule’

This post is more for informational purposes and not so much making my mind up about something. Lately I’ve come across differing notions in the taxonomical organisation of life forms in contemporamous biology, as opposed to the Early Modern Period which I normally make reference to. The role of taxonomy is an issue which relates to an aspect of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of science which I see having a big importance. I will consider a specific case of dispute in biology, brought to my attention by Samir Okasha (2002).

While virtually all biologists maintain the veritude of a system of ordering life forms. I say life forms as the most general taxon term to include as robust a set from viruses to bananas. What some quibble over, however, is the ordering system of these life forms. In a contemporary context, there are differing notions of classifying species. One concerns addressing ancestry, and so a life form is ordered in a taxonomical structure in relation to its ancestral species. Cladistics is the approach which looks at organisms by organisation of their ancestors and descendants, and nothing more. This may allow for a family or ‘clade’ of species to emerge from any given ancestor. Cladistics can be distinguished from earlier ‘Linnaean’ approaches which emphasis specific classification schemes like ‘phylum’ and ‘genus’, in order to reflect the complexity of genealogy. It is said that Cladistics is a more parsimonious approach to the traditional Linnaeus taxonomical scheme, because taxa are used sparingly in the former approach by its appeal to ancestry.

By contrast there is another notion of taxonomy: Evolutionary systematics. Systematics is an approach which varies from Cladistics in that it identifies and organises organisms not by ancestry, but by accounting for evolutionary heritage (let’s call this vertical ordering), as well as preserving a form of ‘horizonal’ classes of species akin to the traditional Linnaean approach. This approach varies in its emphasis on trying to merge the 18thC Linnaean scheme, with the 19thC notion of natural selection. Instead of looking at individual organisms, the focus for systematics are the emergence of groups of species, such as dinosaurs, and their descendants. In some respects the approach of systematics allows for more flexibility in the organisational scheme, and is less rigorous.

These two approaches of systematics and cladistics vary in the way that they cut across organisms to create taxonomies, to invoke a philosophical phrase, they quibble on how they ‘carve nature at its joints’. It gets philosophical when we consider the role of the notion of a ‘common ancestor’. A taxonomical scheme can be said to be monophyletic if there is a common ancestor to a group. The two approaches construe the notion of of common ancestry in different ways. Systematics approaches hold that a grouping has a similar ancestor, while Cladistics holds that the whole ancestral group is a common ancestor of a given group.

Why is this important for someone thinking about Kant?

This is potentially an example of how systematicity, a dictum about the nature of science, actually works in practice. The one thing that is not disputed in any way, is that there needs to be a taxonomical system. New evidence, and differing approaches allow for the system to be refined, expanded and even significantly re-ordered. Yet, the idea of Kant’s system is distinctly a priori. The potential area that needs more work in my view, if the claim that biological taxonomy is an actual example of Kantian Systematicity, is the role of the monophyletic, or the common ancestor. in Kant’s view, the ‘higher genus’ concept required that in principle there is a single highest taxon or entity to give rise to its ‘lower’ concepts. I used to think that this meant an a priori claim that there was a potential single taxon at the highest level, even if it is not discovered.

The case of Reichenbach’s critique of Kant’s metaphysics of space and time come relevant here. Kant was criticised severely on the basis that his rational geometry was fundamentally Euclidean, which was the basis of his metaphysics and epistemology of time and space. Spacetime, as the physicists have come to know it, is a much more complicated affair than Kant had come to know it the 18thC. If a philosophical theory makes a claim that is subject to empirical review, then the evidence of whether the claim stands up to empirical scrutiny makes the theory stand or fall, on the basis of the evidence. I shall call this the Reichenbach rule. To what extent is there an issue of Kant violating ‘the Reichenbach rule’ in Kant’s theory of systematicity in relation to the issue of taxonomy. I think that it relies heavily on what the taxonomical approaches hold in relation to the notion of the common ancestor, and how it is possible to interpret biological taxonomy in terms of systematicity.There are other issues as well as the Reichenbach rule, which also weighs of importance to compare, namely: whether a theory can change its components and structuring, while maintaining some aspect of truth to it, or the a priori ‘necessity’ of structure and also whether the fact ‘that there is a system’ is preserved through the differing contemporary theoretical perspectives to taxonomy.

Michael

Book Review: Arguably, by Christopher Hitchens

I have a penchant for big books. At the present moment, I’m trying to prepare for a very hard job assessment interview by reading a whole textbook on social research methods, at the same time I am reading a book by Anthony (‘AC’) Grayling which is also a large book, but according to the cover of the book (and the title), its not just a big book, it’s “The Good Book”, talk about self-publicity. Because I surround myself purposely with difficult things: big books; books on scientific method; books written by Adorno; black metal, or trying to learn badminton with a motor skills disability, I make an effort to lighten up my life from time to time. I enjoy a good laugh, I enjoy children’s literature, I act like a child. This is usually a way of making myself seem more accessible to people, if they really knew that I was thinking about the importance of despair, or whether Hermann Cohen and Ernst Cassirer uphold Kantian tradition, I don’t think people can really peer inside.

Why have I just written a paragraph about myself in what is titled a book review for Christopher Hitchens? It is my ode to the man. A good essay should start with a preamble, an academic essay should start with ‘In this essay I shall do x,y,z which relates to systematic concerns a,b,c’. Hitchens writes in the former style, for a man who reads things of the former. Hitchens is a man of diverse personality and immensely wide interests. Hitchens consistently writes in a personable manner and shows humour that is unexpected and pathos in things we so easily wish to forget.

Hitchens’ series of Essays in this publication, released earlier this year (perhaps the most ‘newest’ book I’ve read that’s worth blogging about), are on a variety of subjects, most are from various publications such as Vanity Fair, Slate Magazine and The Nation, and most are within the past decade. Many of the topics are contemporary, such as the use of words such as ‘like’ or ‘y’know’ which are filler words taking place in sentences. When I find Guardian Journalists such as Jess Cartner-Morley and politicians even as eminent as the Prime Minister using such filler sentences, I know that a cultural epidemic is taking place. A great essay is one which makes one so self conscious they look over their back, or in the mirror, to become more self aware. I personally am, like, y’know, trying to sort of, kinda get rid of, y’know, the filler words that I over use, really.

Hitchens should not be typified as one of the ‘Four Horsemen’, or the archetype of ‘New Atheists’. This would undermine the breadth of his work. Perhaps notably, few of his essays address the typical subjects he embraces in his public talks on the evils of religion or from his book ‘God is Not Great’. This is a good thing, it’s terrible to repeat your ideas (note to self, keep this one in mind). Hitchens reveals a more nuanced appreciation of the Arab world in this anthology, as he addresses many of his experiences in countries such as Tunisia, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. There is a level of liberalism and sophistication in many of these countries which is ignored by the mainstream media. Hitchens addresses the side effects of war through his book reviews on figures such as Rebecca West, events during the inter-war years, and a very powerful essay on the consequences of ‘Agent Orange’ in Vietnam. Hitchens addresses subjects of great gravitas, many of which are often ignored.

Some subjects couldn’t be more contemporary, One essay on the Eurozone crisis (written in 2010) may well have been written a fortnight ago. Hitchens addresses issues relating to EU diplomacy and tensions in this political communion. I tend to read the author as more British than American, but Hitchens is very apt at speaking from a US point of view as well. I forget (perhaps too easily) that Hitchens predominantly writes for a North American audience. Hitchens displays familiarity with many of the literary greats of the 20th Century, from his visit to see author V.S Naipaul, to a review on J.G. Ballard, as wll as his numerous allusions to Gore Vidal (a man who is often compared with Hitchens) and Martin Amis. Hitchens is a man with many famous friends. This is evidenced by an evend held this month at the London Southbank, which celebrated the life and work of Christopher Hitchens (Hitchens was set to attend but became suddenly unwell prior to the event).

One forgets too easily that Hitchens, before he became the fanboy object of many a ‘New Atheist’, was a journalist for his bread and butter, who observed on many foreign affairs. One theme prevalent in this anthology is the cultural role of a ‘hack’ in the modern world. Hitchens addresses the numerous views on how ‘inferior’ the journalist is in comparison to the historian, or the poet. Hitchens rightly points out how the public intellectual at least in perception, varies significantly from the journalist, yet despite the criticism to what is his bread-and-butter profession, Hitchens shows by example that one can be a journalist as well as an intellectual. I think that one day, Librivox will release an edition of Hitchens’ ‘Arguably’ and future people will see it in the same way I would see a collection of essays by George Orwell, another journalist of merit. It will be a work of historical importance, successfully capturing the zeitgeist of what was the Noughties generation; a baby-boomer and gen x, y generation; what life was like during the early internet age. Hitchens made art out of the internet newspaper, it may be true that online ‘publications’ are mostly full of things that will easily be forgotten over the decades, but buried in all that shit are a few gems of authorship. Gems such as the work of Christopher Hitchens.

The anthology was written, if I am to believe the introduction, at the urgency of keeping active. As many readers may know, Christopher Hitchens is enduring oesophageal cancer. Hitchens addresses his condition briefly and in his candour, admits that his writing and public engagements are the one thing that keep him going. Knowing that his death is immanent, it is as if he writes now (or perhaps better said, he reads now) as if her is already a dead man.

As a closing remark, I recommend anyone whether reading the book or not, who is not squeamish about matters sexual, to read the insightful, humourous and profoundly unusual essay ‘As American as Apple Pie’. To put it crudely, it’s about blowjobs.I can’t imagine George Orwell or Gore Vidal writing about such a subject!

Michael