"The reader is warned," writes Francis Jacques without a jot of irony, "that he or she will not find ideas or analyses that can be isolated and used in other contexts; the meanings of such ideas would suffer if they were detached from the book's overall trajectory, which covers questions taken in part from the rapidly developing field of the linguistic of utterance and in part from literary criticism, but also from psychoanalysis and theology" (Difference and Subjectivity, p. xxiii).
There's evidently a duality within the philosopher's image of himself as a speaker of philosophy. He decontextualizes and at the same moment, in the manner of a Heraclitus I guess, he doesn't decontextualize.
Will this work for me in the context of a blog post? Let's see. Jacques imagines that philosophy "remains rooted in the resources of everyday language, which is the universal metalanguage. The aim of philosphers is to articulate an interpretation of their experience as a whole. They attempt to bring about a process of semantic extension within various domains of ordinary discourse. Their own difficultiy is how to put forward a coherent and overdetermined interpretation of experience using a set of interdependent metaconcepts" (pp.xxiii-xxiv, my bold).
Do I just blithely skip over the part where philosophers are radical empiricists—would that it were true—in order to talk about (metaconceptual) gatekeeping? The reader is warned. . . . The reader is suddenly aware of culture of reading that allows for such things as warnings from the author along the way. Or charities. It could be otherwise, it occurs to me. Now, as thinkers, then, if we're really alive to our whole experience as readers of texts, then shouldn't we have acquired some basis for charitable writing, that is, writing that doesn't bar the way? Should lucidity of a certain kind—lucidity of love?— be a part of one's enculturation into the whole world thing of the philosophical text?
And now I'll put the shoe on the other foot. I assume that we know, you and I, gentle reader, that a more charitable reading of Jacques than the one suggested above is called for. Indeed any text given to us in some way as a work of philosophy (like a work of music, with that same ontic ambivalence, an existence in "performance" or "utterance" broadly conceived and at the same time not localizable within that in), any such philosophical text cautions charity. Or precautions? Have we begun to read when we have read the preface? At what point is the entire trajectory of the book apparent to us? When can we begin to read in good conscience?
Virginia Woolf wrote, "In books as in people, graces and charms are delightful for the moment but become insipid unless they are felt to be part of some general energy or quality of character." Should we be led to imagine that some general energy of corroborees (or quieter colloquies) doesn't endure? Surely on the one hand we're free to take Woolf's point and still attend to qualities of characters, to an emergent sense of a juxtaposition, temporal conjunction or an interpersonal exchange. On the other hand, there is a risk of becoming distracted. We have so few opportunities in life to really get to know another person.
I was emailed an article about how the internet changes the way we read and think. The author, Nicholas Carr, credits Maryanne Wolf with the idea that deep reading is indistinguishable from deep thinking. I yahooed Wolf and found that she took part in an interesting radio discussion which I'm listening to now. Hmm. I am optimistic about thinking with the net.
Bradypsyche is one of Bachelard's neologisms, meaning of course a slowness of thinking or of mind. The antonym, I presume, would be tachypsyche. Now that these words have arrived in our language they have become indispensable, for the tempo of our thinking governs its rhythm, and rhythm generates meaning more deeply perhaps than the content of expression—oh, my feet are tangled up in forms and formlessness. If I could drop a question in the midst of thinking—formal thinking, informal thinking, the question must be dropped—I would do so rhythmically, that is, I would dance the question, reel the question completely around forms, without regard to whether such a dance passed through forms or threw them away like yesterday's pop.
I recall that Corradi Fiumara quotes Wittgenstein thusly: "Sometimes a sentence can be understood only if it is read at the right tempo. My sentences are all supposed to be read slowly" (in The Other Side of Language, p. 134, Corradi Fiumara's emphasis). She goes on to discuss the uses of style by Wittgenstein in order to regulate the pace of thinking, and to recommend a slowness of thinking.
If you will forgive me a moment of jollity (or unabashed vanity) I'd like to say a word about my own phraseology and, in particular, my use of commas. I have recently grown fond of the Oxford comma, though my fondness hasn't quite led me to be consistent in my usage. I like the Oxford comma because it imparts clarity, but chiefly because it allows one to take a breath, and sometimes one wants to take a breath for the sake of getting a thought just right. The precise meaning that should be given to the comma in my blogging is "pause," though you may imagine me saying something like "Please, pause for a moment. Take a small breath if you need to. There's no rush." I'm evolving a commatic style because I imagine that breathing is not intercalated into thinking as something extraneous or accidental, but is thoroughly and essentially raddled with thought. Thought and breathing are intertwined, as they say.
I should pause for a moment to reflect on tachypsyche, because it seems omnipresent in daily intellectual life, as if a fast pace of mind has become more vital to thinking than actual thinking, and, speaking for myself, because it is all too easy to blog off the reel. I don't want to live in a world of monotonous tempo, fast or slow, speeding or slowing. Ideally one should be surprised now and then by the tempo of one's thought. Even a slow thought may surprise, even a thought on the reel. Bradypsyche would mean little if it did not carry this potential to surprise.
The value I have placed on surprise serves to tell us that the encomia of the comma are unfinished until the griot addresses the beginnings of thought, and thereby the question of new beginnings. Allow me. Allow me to set it aside for another day.
Mikhail points to a lecture by Giorgio Agamben in which he speaks of a phenomenon of acclamation or glory.
Schmitt claims that in modern democracies this original phenomenon survives in the form of public opinion. That is to say that public opinion is the modern form of acclamation. . . . So if this be true, then the sphere of glory does not disappear in modern democracy, but, rather, it is simply displaced in another and wider sphere. And if the media are so important in modern democracy– technically, juridically important–this is not simply because they allow to control and govern by public opinion, but also because in this way they distribute and bestow glory. We could even say that modern society is a glorious society, the most glorious society ever in . . . history, in which the function of glory frees itself from its traditional link with liturgy and spreads over every aspect of social life. Liturgies and ceremonies in the ancien régime were limited to a certain moment, but now the media spread the glory in every moment of social life. And from this point of view what Guy Debord calls société du spectacle, spectacular society. . . is a society in which glory becomes indiscernable from economy and governance. The identification of economy and glory in the acclamatory form of media and consensus is in this sense the salient feature of contemporary democracy. . . .
Through this theological pattern of economy, I tried to cast some light on the modern figure of power, that is to say governance. But, in the end, this figure showed itself to be inseperable from glory, and even to be essentially the same as glory. The relationship between economy and glory is in this sense the very core of the Western governmental machine. The ultimate figure of power is therefore not government and action, but rather, inoperativity and inaction. And what glory has to cover with its splendor, what power can neither think nor accept, is the end of government, is divine inaction or leisure. Or, to put it differently, the aim of glory is perhaps to capture and control this inactivity and to transform it into the secret and precious nourishment of power.
The function of a blogger is to dish out glory and inglory. (How do internet acclamations differ from old media acclamations? Are they even more diffuse, more covering?) Is the function of the blogger also to dish out criticism? To begin to criticize, I believe that the phenomena of acclamation under discussion differ greatly. The similarity Agamben sees between "modern" totalitarian states and "modern" democracies can partially be explained by "modern" technologies, which have had political import, but may not have been the decisive forces Agamben thinks they are. The juridical similarities seem superficial. In any event, the "modern" technologies of mass media are going the way of the dodo bird, and perhaps along with them public opinion–but I want to tread gingerly around the idea of mass communications because in many ways to speak of the masses is to hold them in contempt. I see a country of dead televisions on the horizon, and in the far distance, the dissolution of nation states. For all that I can't deny there are historical continuities, or that Agamben hasn't identified a salient feature of contemporary democracies, even as they enter into the new millenium and the distributions of glory become more decentralized.
"I power Blogger." Is there anything secret about this nourishment of power? There may be something exaggerated about it. Blogging for me is like washing the dishes; I do it every day despite the fact it's not economically valued. Some bloggers receive economic rewards for their blogging, and dishing out glory and inglory can influence elections and what is called public opinion, though possibly there are signs of growing fragmentation. For Ambagen, however, dishing out criticism (or inglory) isn't part of the picture. My complaint against media in relation to politics would be that they have too often reveled in glory and inglory instead of providing proper criticism, so I halfway appreciate Agamben's argument. However, I struggle with the meaning of proper criticism. It means deflating glory and inglory as well, I reckon, but beyond that I struggle with its meaning.
Even though my leisure may seem different from Agamben's divine inactivity, it's good to think about it and the kinds of nourishment I should or should not want it to provide. The question of inoperativity, however, gives me pause. Is that also what Agamben means by leisure, or is inoperativity part of the cover up of leisure? What should I do about inoperativity?
If I may be picky for a moment, it seems to me that the move Levinas makes in founding the uniqueness of the interlocutor in the showing of his face is rather illogical. After all, the face of the other is, by definition, unique and therefore it does not matter if the one who shows his face engages in interlocution or not. In interlocution it is instead precisely the voice that transcends the plane of speech and manifests the uniqueness of the other.
(For More than One Voice, p. 27).
Cavarero is wrong here, though it doesn't follow that Levinas is necessarily right. People can engage in conversation without use of the voice. In American Sign Language the verb "to say" refers either to a vocal utterance or to a gestural signing. So the possibility of saying without the voice is not merely fanciful. Naturally, the blind can engage in conversation without visual awareness of the face of the other. Therefore, the uniqueness of the other in interlocution is not founded in any single sensory modality.
Despite these objections, both Levinas and Cavarero following him are on the right track with regard to the privileging of the saying over the said. The proximity of those who speak does carry a meaning that goes beyond the verbal. In Cavarero's words, "As a radical sign of communicability, the significance announced by the who of saying precedes, generates and exceeds verbal communication" (pp. 29-30).
Levinas' pneumatism, the proximity of the other in breathing, doesn't require that one have a voice, but merely that interlocutors share the same immediate atmosphere. Cavarero sees in this idea a "risk of the human regression toward the animal" (p. 36). It does represent, I think, a regression away from technology. Were it possible for me to blog in the flesh, so to speak, I don't know that I'd prefer it. Is my preference a symptom of anxiety about direct confrontation with the uniqueness of others? An evasion of responsibility? Perhaps. I see plenty of uniqueness in the blogosphere and that calls for a certain responsibility. Most of the time I would rather say nothing than comment irresponsibly. I use the distance that blogging allows instrumentally to craft a persona that is more attuned to what I feel the uniqueness of others demands. On the other hand, this distance allows me to forget more easily the reality of the other person behind the keyboard. Bloggers as a class are not known for their sensitivity to others. So as I wonder about whether bloggers actually deserve a reputation for being insensitive, I also wonder about whether the discovery of face-to-face communication isn't a bit nostalgic.
Senator Barack Obama offers some thoughts on Tone, Truth, and the Democratic Party. In this statement, characteristically diplomatic, Obama is replying to criticisms made by Armando at the Daily Kos, but he is also addressing the left side of the blogosphere, and perhaps he also has a message for the wider community of bloggers.
Bloggers ask, "What's the place of blogs in the grand scheme of things?" Blogs are evidently mediating in our national discourse. Can that be done without a place in the grand scheme? Is being on the fly a place? Isn't it counterintuitive to demand that mediators be given permanent seats at the table?
More and more I see blogs setting the tone of national debates. Does this reflect a fascination on the part of Old News, the fact that reporters spend hours poring over the blogs, or is a genuine integration of old and new media underway? A little of both, perhaps.
How exactly does one take responsibility for an attitude? Journalistic standards have provided a sorry model. And on Capitol Hill, according to Obama's impressions, things ain't quite what they used to be. It's relatively easy to correct a false statement. It's much more difficult to correct a bad attitude.
Is it easy to lie? For a serious person, it's much easier to be wrong than it is to lie. (Not counting "little white lies"--and what kind of misrepresentation is it to consider lying apart from telling little white lies?) It seems like it ought to be relatively easy to have a bad attitude, but then why do some people work so hard at it? And why is a bad attitude so difficult to correct? Do we see an attitude as a true expression of a person's character? A greater truth than any knowledge they share with us? Would that be because we are closely attached to our own attitudes, or are we closely attached to our attitudes because that's how others judge us?
Has the internet engendered a profusion of others? Has there been a concomitant shift in the paradigm of the attitude, a closer identification with attitude on the part of netizens?
