Precis for Abolition of Man

C.S. Lewis’ piece, The Abolition of Man, opens with the line, “Man’s conquest of Nature is an expression often used to describe the progress of science.” This conquest (or perceived conquest), according to Lewis, has led to the destruction, or abolition, of man.

Lewis begins his piece by discussing three advances in human technology which he feels are exemplary of what we call Man’s power over nature: The aeroplane, the wireless, and the contraceptive. However, these powers that Man holds, according to Lewis, are powers that are wielded by a small number of men, and these men decide whether or not other men should or can profit from them. In other words, man’s power of nature is merely “a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.”

Contraceptives, Lewis argues, allow current generations of men to control future generations, much in the same way that different technology allows some men to exert control over other men. However, the control in the former is much greater because it allows men to decide who will and will not exist! The power of current generations over future generations does not end there for Lewis. He argues that current generations pre-ordain how future generations will live because of the traditions and values they will pass on to them. Lewis gives these men the title of “Conditioners,” and states that they will condition other men according to their own values and judgments. He goes further and states that even though every generation will pass on useful and innovative technology to the next generation and they will undoubtedly improve on that technology, the prior generation exerts its power over the future generation because it pre-ordains the manner in which that technology will be utilized.

According to Lewis, men’s actions were derived from the “Tao,” which he describes as a natural force that leads men to inartificial values and judgments. Lewis argues that the men that have assumed control over all other men have taken to creating an artificial Tao, and instilling their own values in men. The types of values these men choose to teach other men is driven by their impulses according to Lewis. Which impulse these men choose to follow is left to chance, which according to Lewis, is synonymous with ‘nature.’ So, in essence, the men who have conquered Nature and dictate the manner in which other men live their lives are subject to their own irrational random impulses that are no different than Nature. Therefore, even though it may seem as though Men and the Conditioners have completely conquered Nature, this, according to Lewis, is not the case. Because the Conditioners of men are subject to their own natural irrational impulses, they are then subject to nature. So, according to Lewis, “Man’s conquest of Nature turns out to be Nature’s Conquest of Man.”  

A Precis on Carol Adams

Carol Adams invites her readers to engage in a wider understanding of feminism which is sensitive to politics of domination arising out of patriarchy that is not limited to oppression of women, but rather includes other forms of exploitation resulting from such politics of domination such as racism and nonhuman animal killing and slavery. She sees these others forms of exploitations originating from the very patriarchal system and what brings them all together is the exploitations of bodies, whether the bodies are those of human animals or nonhuman animals. This larger understanding of feminism acknowledges discrimination of race, sex and species through beastializing discourse. She notes that traditionally feminism responded being positioned less than man, somewhere between man and other animals in the hierarchy of beings, with the assertion “we are not animals, we are humans.” Adams's claims constitute a challenge to orthodox feminism that takes human/animal dualism for granted by questioning this dualism, stating “animals exist categorically as that which is not human” hence, something that can be exploited without an ethical obligation. This understanding is deeply naturalized, and constantly justified in false ways.
She presents four points that her arguments are based on: the reality of oppression, gender, race and species are constructs that have been naturalized, social domination of bodies, the business of feminism is not merely man-woman relation, but through feminism we understand “social construction of reality.” Through these, she suggests an “antiracist feminist theory that includes animals” that emphasizes on interlocking systems of domination, that is, instead of seeing identity as additive, as “either/or,” she focuses on the politics of domination, and its different effects; for instance, patriarchy is not simply a social structure through which women are oppressed, there are other kinds of oppressions, other kinds of exploitations that is practiced through it.
She responds to several oppositions: when it is said that she has a “hang-up” with food, she asks, “Whose bodies matter?” When she is told that her philosophy turns scientific “fact” into contradiction, she asks, “Whose science?” When they claim that religion teaches us that there is nothing wrong with eating animals, she asks, “Whose God?” By asking these, she gets the reader to see from different perspectives, rather than being limited to one's own, through identification with “the Other.”
Western ethical discourse traditionally excluded nonhuman animals, accepting no moral obligation to them, paving the way for endless exploitations. In this sense, nonhuman animals' exclusion from the “human” category constitutes a special case which is not that of racism or sexism; it is true that the “human” category is restricted to “white man” in many instances, excluding people of color, and women, as well as nonhuman animals, but nonhuman animals are already not human. Human's special status within ethics naturally excluded nonhuman animals; the category is to be expanded to embody humans other than the white man, but how can the human category be expanded to include that which is not human? The very label this category attached on itself makes it seem impossible to do so, rendering exclusion of nonhuman animals from moral obligation fundamental, natural. She presents Cartesian dualism of mind/body to demonstrate how human/animal dualism is naturalized through the notion of consciousness; and through this human consciousness, human asserts a special status: that which is hierarchically higher, a status whose holders can exploit those who do not hold that status.
Those who are seen as less than the white man are positioned somewhere close to animals in the hierarchy, through beastializing discourse. Adams present synonyms for “beast:” “brute, animal, brutish, brutal, beastly, bestial.” She suggests that animals are not beasts, but are beastialized; just as those left out of the category of “human” are beastialized. Therefore a feminist response to being positioned less than man should not be to declare “we are not animals, we are humans;” but rather, to assert “we are neither man nor beast.” One is not to declare their humanity through separation from animality; for humans are animals, and suffering of nonhuman animals does matter.
Fulden Ibrahimhakkioglu

Precis on Latour

Sorry for the late post; technology loves me not.   

Latour exclaims that the objective of social science and the very definition of what is social has come under scrutiny and transformed because of the apocalyptic ecological crisis. He is vehement that the discipline should focus on associations rather than specific and (Latour implies) insignificant topics that miss the more important understanding of the whole. The lecture was given to and for the annual meeting of British sociologists but the appeal of his argument is broadened to include all ‘earthlings’; the ecological crisis is the daunting and imminent peril that faces all humankind. Though he mainly addresses the sociologists because they are the physical audience present before him, he implores every being to realize that uncovering and understanding the entire chaining of our world is absolutely necessary for the potential discovery of a solution to the universal ecological problem.

    Latour presents the potential counter arguments in the form of a question. “What has this to do”, you could object, “with the topic of the social sciences? No matter how you define what humans do, sociologists can still study their shifting ‘identities’, their moving ‘technologies’, their newly formed ‘relationships’. ‘Social connections’ will always be ‘social connections’.”It is necessary for Latour to make these acknowledgements because he makes radical assertions and uproots the definition of social and the fundamentals of an entire discipline. He uses his refutation to delineate between the incorrect view of sociology that the opposition holds (emancipation and modernization) and introduces the proper perspective of sociology as explicitation and attachments. Latour is dedicated to clarity in his argumentation and is explicit in his thesis, “This is why, many years ago, I proposed that we shift the definition of sociology from the study of “social” connections to the study of “associations”- keeping the same Latin etymology but refusing to limit the inquiries to one domain only, as if, side by side, we had “social”, “psychological”, “legal”, “biological” and “economic connections, each with its own science and protocols.

    The main warrant for his argument is that the current usage of first empiricism, which ignores meaningful aspects of observation such as human sensory experience, fails to incorporate the associations that allow this form of science to make meaningful contributions to society. Latour does not use figurative language extensively but metaphorizes non-social modes of connections with lego building on the seventh page. Though it does give the audience a visualization the metaphor was clumsy (which Latour admits immediately in the next paragraph) and did not add any explanatory or argumentative force to his point about heterogeneous connections.
   
    Though Latour promises in the beginning not to add another “gloomy prognosis”, he leaves us with Lovelock’s theory that we have about forty three years to change radically and shift the foundations of things we as individuals have taken for granted and ascribed to if we are to have hopes of preserving ourselves and the achievements of our race. Not gloomy indeed.

Precis: Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto"

Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto”, written in 1986 and expanded for publication in 1991, addresses the radical feminist movement that gained popularity in the 70’s and 80’s in the US and Europe. As a component of “second wave” activism, radical feminism attempted to analyze the roots of gender oppression and the impulses that propelled it. As a philosopher of science, Haraway takes issue with the idea that socially constructed problems like patriarchy could be challenged with extensive research and interrogation. Throughout the piece, she concerns herself with rejecting masculinist histories, and embarks upon writing a “political myth” for today’s times that is faithful both to feminism and materialism in a blasphemic and ironic manner.

Haraway begins her manifesto by introducing and defining her main metaphor, the cyborg. She mentions that part of the reason she is attracted to the metaphor of the cyborg lies with its ability to help her reconceptualize socialist feminism in a “postmodernist, non-naturalist” mode. She claims that cyborgs are “outside gender” because they do not depend on reproduction for existence, and can be represented via: the blurring of animal and human, human and machine, and the physical and non-physical.

Much of Haraway’s piece deals specifically with the issue of feminist political organizing in light of cyborg politics. She counsels against identity politics, noting “there is nothing about being ‘female’ that naturally binds women”, and feminists might better be served by considering “woman” to be a socially constructed category along the same lines of “homosexuals” and “youth”. Haraway vocalizes her contempt against the notion that feminist politics, like cyborg ontology, works as a series of partialities rather than a totalizing whole.

Haraway argues, feminist science fiction’s reconceptualization of the cyborg shows readers that “the machine is not an ‘it’ to be animated, worshipped, and dominated”. Rather, the machine represents our processes and aspects of our embodiment. We can be responsible for machines, and they do not dominate or threaten us. Haraway finishes her manifesto by restating three crucial arguments of the essay:

1. “The production of universal, totalizing theory is a major mistake that misses most of reality, probably always, but certainly now.”
2. “Taking responsibility for the social relations of science and technology means refusing an anti-science metaphysics, a demonology of technology." Haraway adds that taking responsibility also means "embracing the skilful task of reconstructing the boundaries of daily life, in partial connection with others, in communication with all of our parts."
3. Cyborg imagery suggests "a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves."

Obviously, the scope of this piece is directed toward women, and I saw this most vividly demonstrated in Haraway’s description of the “New Industrial Revolution” and its world-wide working class. She argues that women produce the majority of its labor, which is feminized in the context of the new economy. Nevertheless, the fact that cyborg science fiction blurs the boundaries between the status of men, women, and humans in general makes for a better understanding of the piece as a reconstitution of a utopian world without gender.

Precis: Naomi Klein - No Logo

Look at me, waiting until almost the absolute last minute to post this. Ain't procrastination great?

The excerpt from Naomi Klein's No Logo argues that the concept of promoting the brand rather than the product, an idea born in the 1980s and successfully employed in the 1990s, has completely revolutionized the fundamental ideas of marketing and advertising in the United States. While advertisers had previously focused on promoting the supposed benefits of the product they were selling, this new strategy focused on promoting a lifestyle built around brand names – and buying products associated with those brand names to stay up-to-date on the lifestyles. It shifted the focus of the companies from producing to marketing, and, in doing so, they found they could increase profits while cutting costs – essentially, every CEO's dream come true.

Klein places the purchase of Kraft by Philip Morris as the pivotal moment when advertising the brand itself became the key feature. From that point forward, the companies who survived best focused most on their brand's philosophy, not on their competition's prices or their product's benefits. She demonstrates this with both descriptions of modern franchises and interviews with their company heads and advertising directors. The one with the head of Nike is most telling; he straightforwardly says that the companies focus has shifted away from both production and design and towards creating the most effective marketing strategy. It doesn't matter how good the product is as long as you can sell it.

The excerpt, like the rest of the book, is pitched to naive American consumers, people who think they know – but really don't know – the abuses inherent in the system. By describing the models of modern marketing campaigns, it challenges the reader to look at his or her own purchases. How much is he or she buying into brand loyalty instead product quality? Certainly, there are legions of Apple and Starbucks fans who see that brand as a way of life. Although Klein talks briefly about the rise of discount supermarkets such as Wal-Mart and the small-name brands associated with cheaper costs, the piece makes the overall case that the continuing staying power of many brands and rise of new ones prove that the industry was not severely harmed by the discounters, but was instead just as dominant as before, evolving to stay at the top. When a group of weeds is being attacked by Round Up Ready, the theory of natural selection says that the ones with a genetic mutation allowing them to survive will quickly become dominant. A very similar thing happened with the large corporations: when faced with an attack by the discounters, some companies died, but others with better strategies rose to take their place. Klein is hinting that in a capitalist system, companies will continue to find new and improved ways to make a profit. If that means outsourcing production and focusing on corporate image, than so be it. It's business.

Precis: Arendt's The Conquest of Space and the Stature of Man

I decided to take a somewhat different approach to the précis, in light of the fact that others have already posted very good overviews of the text. I decided that I would make my précis the “departure point” and bring up what I think are some glaring problems of the text. I picked my 5 least favorite uses of quotes and also the attack on science as a whole through the attack on physics in specific.

Early on Arendt establishes a dichotomy. There are scientists and there are the laymen. The laymen she associates with humanism and the scientists with, not a misanthropy, but definitely a lack of caring for humanity. But, there is an issue with who Arendt is calling “scientist.” Originally she uses the word physicist, but quickly supplants physicist with scientist. In this way she equates science and physics. She argues against all of science, particularly the questions science seeks to answer, but her criticisms are specific to physics and to quantum mechanics and atomic physics. Her criticisms are based upon the words of the physicists in those fields – very prominent physicists (Schrödinger, Einstein, Heisenberg, etc.). However, she often takes their words out of context, or applies meaning to their quotes that they don’t necessarily imply. A few of those quotes are as follows:

1. “The data with which modern physical research is concerned turn up like “mysterious messenger[s] from the real world.”[3] They are not phenomena, appearances, strictly speaking, for we meet them nowhere, neither in our everyday world nor in the laboratory; we know of their presence only because they affect our measuring instruments in certain ways.”

This implication that the data is possibly not confirmable is an attack on the world that corresponds to this data, a world she views as different from the world we obtain through our senses.

However, what Arendt doesn’t seem to understand is that the processes by which these “machines” detect are based on the same processes that our senses work with. Although this quote is a reference to observing things beyond the scope of our senses, or indirect observations (observing a change by an effect it has elsewhere) the results are still obtained by the same process by which our senses are confirmed, namely waves, but in a scale that gives more information about the world. To attack the scientific world in this way is very much to attack one’s own senses and does not offer any reason as to why one of these worlds ought to be preferable to the other.

2. “Max Planck was right, and the miracle of modern science is indeed that this science could be purged “of all anthropomorphic elements” because the purging was done by men. Man has left behind his humanity.”

I contrast this to the idea of the unexamined life. When a life is examined must it not also be devoid of assumptions, and multi-perspective? Can anything be examined only from a single perspective? Is science being criticized for its alternative perspective? And humanism being argued for based on its uniperspective? Not too sure if she answers this.

3. “In the words of Erwin Schrödinger, the new universe that we try to “conquer” is not only “practically inaccessible, but not even thinkable,” for “however we think it, it is wrong; not perhaps quite as meaningless as a ‘triangular circle,’ but much more so than a ‘winged lion.’”

The “universe” Schodinger is likely referring to is the “universe” of quantum mechanics. Not the universe in the ultimate sense, but in the sense of encompassing a field of study. These are not claims about the universe we live in, nor a rejection of what we observe in our life, the connection between the quantum universe and our own are only now being discovered. Though Arendt argues that these claims effect our life even when they aren’t understood, the only real example that she produces is that of the atomic bomb. She does not show how quantum mechanics, the field she is referencing here, has effected our lives. Quantum mechanics is still too far removed from our world to be practical yet, and it describes the world at a level that it recognizes is not relevant to the “universe” that we live in. Quantization is easily simplified into continuity and described classically at our level. The level at which quantization is important is smaller than we are in relation to the entirety of the universe and as such we are unable to comprehend the scale. However, she also uses this claim as well as the next claim to discuss how science is self-defeating.

4. “the most significant indication that it might be self-defeating consists in Heisenberg’s discovery of the uncertainty principle. Heisenberg showed conclusively that there is a definite and final limit to the accuracy of all measurements obtainable by man-devised instruments for those “mysterious messengers from the real world.” The uncertainty principle “asserts that there are certain pairs of quantities, like the position and velocity of a particle, that are related in such a way that determining one of them with increased precision necessarily entails determining the other one with reduced precision.”[23] Heisenberg concludes from this fact that “we decide, by our selection of the type of observation employed, which aspects of nature are to be determined and which are to be blurred.”

Arendt completely misunderstands this concept, and because she does her conclusion is unfounded. Uncertainty is not a phenomenon related only to measurement, and by that a limitation of what we are capable of knowing about nature; it is a description of how much nature can know about its self. It is in fact a discovery that doesn’t show how man can never reach the limit of science (and space) but that space and nature have their own limits. Uncertainty is why the atom does not collapse on itself, it is why life is capable of existing. The very fact that an electron does not simply fly towards the proton (as we all know unlike charges attract one another), and reduce all matter to a neutron soup, is necessary for matter to exist in various forms. How uncertainty governs this phenomenon is that if an electron constrained its position to an exact spot its momentum (and consequently, energy) becomes too great. This is why there is no zero energy ground state, why absolute zero cannot be reached, and ultimately why the electron is not able to attach to the proton even though they are electrically attracted. The claim that this simply shows that science is doomed to be limited is boldly wrong. It is proof that science reaches the natural boundaries.

I know that Arendt's argument is not wholly linked to the usage of these quotes, but these quotes illustrate that Arendt doesn't know what she is talking about when it comes to the science she is criticizing. Rather than argue that science ought to end, why not argue that everyone should become fluent in the language it uses? Or that everyone empower themselves (if scientists have so much power) and bridge the gap to science themselves.

5. objectivity of the natural world, so that man in his hunt for “objective reality” suddenly discovered that he always “confronts himself alone.”

Again, another quotation used without any context. Can we possibly see who this quote could be viewed differently than Arendt views it? What if it is a description about how man confronts his own mental limitations, not his self. He is not injecting his self into the results, thought that is a possibility, but he is trying to overcome himself. These scientists wrote extensively about how quantum mechanics is completely non-intuitive, and when one studies this field ones insistence on intuition regularly gets on one’s way. To read this as an insistence that man injects his self into his science is, I think, Arendt’s misunderstanding of the field itself.

Precis on Latour's Plea for Earthly Sciences

In a text that literally begins with “ladies and gentleman,” it’s impossible for us to ignore the “Plea for Earthly Sciences” that Latour goes on to make. It’s refreshing that the thing he begins with is a she, even if it’s the accusation that we all of us are killing her and we none of us are doing it with reason. “Humans, as a whole,” wage war “without any explicit declaration,” and surely without any possibilities of winning, “against Gaia,” the goddess who has managed to “maintain life on Earth inside some fluctuating albeit restricted limits” (read: the atmosphere/biosphere/“magneto-sphere”—Dale’s word, not mine). For a lecture that’s given to an audience of sociologists, the politics he’s identifying with, at this point, and which he’ll circle back to at the end, sound undeniably green. Much like the British (those bloody semi-colonical British) at the beaches of Dunkirk, he spends the rest of the text retreating from the facts of truly “global disasters” to the crises that unite us in what must be a collective turning to face the facts.

Latour takes up Sloterdijk (ha, right?) when he says that the moment we took a breath of gas and not air is the moment we came to understand “the world” as “the environment.” This was the inaugural moment for modernity then, and it is from within that space that he defines the domain of the social. The world was transformed into the environment, then, in much the same way that the ecological crisis was transformed into a response, now, for the annual meeting which he is presently addressing. The meeting is titled, and I quote him, “quot[ing]: social connections: identities, technologies, and relationships.”

After a meditation on why we shouldn’t be proud to endorse the use of the word Anthropocene to describe “this new geological era,” (and why not? Aren’t we capable of war crimes of such a proportion that we should get to name our own extinction after us?)—Latour taks a jab at “the future.”

But something strange happens to our identities as Earthlings when the definition of the future changes. It’s not that we’re “free at last!” It’s that we’re sent “back to the design table” that I imagine looks a lot like the table in Haraway’s INFORMATICS. To the extent that that’s the occasion for this speech, Latour proposes (for “a second time,” because apparently the first was many years ago when nobody was listening) that “we shift the definition of sociology from the study of the social connections to the study of associations.” The shifting ensures that the social stays true to its etymology in a way that allows it also to explicate all other types of connections—the non-social: the natural, the material, the economic, the biological, the psychological.

Social is defined, in order of ascending importance, as social n1 or as social n2.

Social n1 is unsustainable, and no one is more acutely aware of that than Latour himself. It is defined as a domain that is not “non-social.” Not only does this fail to explain anything—including itself—it has to be explained. It solicits an explanation that can perhaps be best understood as the disappearance of “nature and society.” What Latour means by this is no small thing: it is a sea change (like the sea change that Gore endlessly cites in an Inconvenient Truth) in which matters of fact have become matters of concern and in which objects have become things.

Of what can the world possibly consist when it is made neither of “nature or society or any combination thereof”?

If we look to actor-network-theory (ANT), we have the example that my signature on a contract is a thing that is binding, but that it is binding legally and not socially. If we look to STS, we have the example of a container within which a space for definition of the “global” was opened up. It is the same thing to say that the spread of the container depends on “legal litigation” (among accounting procedures, labor relations among workers unions, and so on) as it is to say that a technology is an assemblage of “complex heterogenous threads.” The examples of law and technology tell us that the durability, solidarity, force and intelligibility of the associations is entirely due to the ways by which laws and techniques connect.

The problem—as made obvious at the level of examples themselves—is that these connections are radically contingent. When Latour says that a theory cannot claim that every mode of connection is specific, we are relieved and ready to hear the next of his theses: that “the social sciences have a true object which is not the social per se, but the shifting attachments offered by various non-social modes of connections.” When we realize this obfuscates more than illuminates his argument, we realize that it all makes sense if we just think of it as “Legos.” (What could possibly be more grounding than a toy pile?) It’s important that legos are used to build things—they’re literally building blocks. Legos—blocks that metaphorically represent things like the law, religion, politics, technology, avant-garde art—come in different colors and shapes and are differently pegged. They are particular, socialized, historicized. When a kind of collective is then built out of this heterogeneity, then all of a sudden things like “bricks coming together through legal ties” start happening. Even though the bricks come from “all over the place,” the thing that happens when they come together is that they are stronger in their solidarity regardless of the mode of connection of religion or politics or science.” And then when it is big enough, we, like children, smile and point at it and say of it “look, this is the social.”

When we look to define things like “science,” the closest thing to a definition we can come to is to nudge up against heuristics like it is literally the sum of its parts. If the way that a lego, a particular social domain, finds its way to solidarity is vis a vis the connections it makes in its continuity with other legos, the non-social domains, then we must look at the connections which are necessarily inexhaustible (“legally, scientifically, religiously, artistically, politically, technically,” and so on).

At a place in the text where our attention should “shift to the modes of connections,” it is appropriate that Latour would end by connecting his project back up to the place from which he began. When he acknowledges that the problem of the social sciences is that “they are not empirical enough,” the thing he does is jettison empiricism itself. Just at the time in history when it is most crucial that we redesign the whole sphere of existence “from top to bottom,” the thing he does instead is say—with trepidation, nonetheless—that we have to give up on what we hitherto have always depended on. We must give up breathing the air that has figured the world because when we treat palpably finite resources as though they were infinite we solicit a kind of murderous fantasy that only ever can be met with mustard gas.

Thanks, Rhet Twenty Summer 2010!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4nSxArk9g8

Précis on The Abolition of Man

In The Abolition of Man, author C.S. Lewis writes about “Man’s conquest of Nature,” a phrase typically used to describe the progress of applied science. Lewis argues that “each new power won by man is a power over man as well.” He exemplifies this idea with three objects: the aeroplane, the wireless, and the contraceptive. In regards to aeroplanes and the wireless, we can throw bombs from these but also bomb ourselves; by contraception, possible generations are denied existence; this simply implies selective breeding. They are what one generation may prefer. Hence, from this perspective, what we see as “Man's power over Nature” actually turns out to be “a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.” As men seek to conquer Nature, humans are not only “the general who triumphs” but are also “the prisoners who follows the triumphal car.”

The final stage is when humanity gains full control of itself. C.S. Lewis writes, “Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man.” He suggests that the ruling minority will be the “Conditioners” or people “who really can cut out posterity in what shape they please.” Human conscience will thus work in a way the Conditioners want it to work. Human concepts about morality (good and evil) are among the many things for them to decide upon.

The human race’s motives have essentially become manipulated by these Conditioners, and since their power is effective, human beings will be subjected to such forces of nature as happen to have acted upon the Conditioners. Thus, Man’s conquest of Nature will render Nature’s conquest of Man--the Abolition of Man. Since the existence of modern science, Man’s conquest of Nature has paradoxically caused Man to surrender to Nature because what is conquered by Man ultimately belongs to the realm of Nature. This surrender may require some “repression of elements in what would otherwise be our total reaction” to what we are conquering.

A “magician’s bargain” is an analogy for the final stage; we are sacrificing our souls in return for power. This also serves as a reminder of the common impulse where both science and magic had begun to merge in early modern times. Although magic had failed and science had succeeded, both were engaged in the same purpose and that was “to extend Man’s power to the performance of all things possible.”

He continues, “But you cannot go on `explaining away' forever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away.” By this, Lewis says that we cannot go on “seeing through things” forever because “seeing through all things” will render everything invisible and thus cause us to see nothing.

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Side note: Sorry Prof. Carrico and everybody else for making you guys read another précis of The Abolition of Man for the nth time :(


Maria Chow

Precis - The Abolition of Man

Lewis argues that mankind will be the source of his own destruction. Of course putting it in those terms is an over simplification. It seems that man has become obsessed with conquering nature. Lewis argues that we are only able to see the larger, more grand, biologic process and in doing so we lose our position of power in the world. We stop doing things that make sense for us and our immediate futures and make sacrifices to benefit a future that we will never see. Lewis illustrates this idea with the man dying of tuberculosis who considers himself a casualty. The man in the story did not mind his own death because he could rationalize that it was serving the greater purpose, would allow us to win, but is he really a winner if he’s dead? We continue to look at the bigger picture, a picture which does not include humanistic concerns, and that puts mankind in great jeopardy.

Because the argument makes an appeal to basic humanistic concerns it seems clear that the audience is the basic human. What do we mean b the basic human? Well, mostly anyone but the scientist. I see myself in that group because I don’t call into question my human impulses, like scratching an itch. I just respond accordingly. Because I see myself as an average person it makes me more susceptible to the argument. I agree that our conquest of nature becomes futile. However, I can see this argument as having several objections. Like many texts, its not enough to simply expose a problem, you must offer a solution. Lewis’ solution of creating and maintaining a Tao is not clear to me. I think an unanswered objection is that anything could be a sort of Tao including believing in science.

It seems to me that Lewis has a more specific idea of what a Tao should be and not so much what it could be. For him I think the stakes where human decency and common sense. Science can be cold and heartless, but Lewis believes we must subscribe to a value system where there is good and bad. Without a Tao good and bad are just words which can be applied to anything. I think Lewis is most definitely attempting to alter conduct. He wants people to exist in their present condition and behave accordingly.

I find two sentences which clearly state what I believe to be Lewis’ thesis. The first reads thusly “Man’s conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature’s conquest of Man.” I chose this sentence because it highlights the irony of the entire situation. The more we do the more vulnerable we become. We are lucky enough to be able to control ourselves and behave in a manner that supports our own well being, but if we become subject to our natural wants and instincts then we leap into the unknown, into chance, which ultimately destroys us. The other sentence I find exemplary of Lewis’ thesis reads “to see through all things is the same as not to see.” This again highlights the seeming futility of the scientific project at hand, but also makes us realize that we cannot understand everything. We cannot attempt to explain everything because we explain away explanation itself. We lose our capacity to understand the new things we explain. He writes that the goal of seeing through something must be to see whatever it is on the other side.

There are three particularly interesting pieces of evidence that Lewis uses to illustrate his point; the aeroplane, the wireless, and the contraceptive. Each item is an innovation of science which would seem to empower mankind, but it actually strips him of t. First you have the airplane or aeroplane as he knew it. Sure, now we have the ability to travel further distances faster, but my physical self has not become any stronger. I now rely on someone else to get me from point A to B and one man can withhold that privilege from me. I become subject to someone else and lose some of my own power. The contraceptive is an extremely interesting and poignant example because it is a blatant example of destruction of humans. If we naturally produce offspring through reproduction why should we manufacture things to reverse and halt that process? For Lewis it not only doesn’t make sense, but contributes to the destruction of our species. It’s here where Lewis may go a little too far. He believes that each generation is subject to the next. We have the power to decide whether a possible life come into existence, however Lewis believes that one dominant sets the tone for the billions of people to come afterwards. It seems to me that every era equally impacts the prior one. Although the influence of the Romans may seem more apparent, I think the discoveries and mindsets of societies before and after have played just as crucial role, especially since Rome was influenced b the time period before it.

Despite Lewis’ extreme argument, it seems completely plausible that man could serve as its own destroyer. We continually analyze away things that should be most pertinent to us and what we’ll be left with may not be something we want. Lewis states that the last thing to be conquered will be human nature which makes sense. We can’t explain why we art h way we are, because if we did then we wouldn’t be that way. We would be subject to what nature tells us to want, devoid of the human capacity to make our own decisions. Our posterity would suffer because they would be subject to chance. It makes sense that the abolition of man would come from man. Let us hope that this is not the case.

-Isaac Jackson

Last one

The pesty semicolon

Skylar, if you want my 2 cents, here it is:

You wrote:
"In John Carpenter’s 1988 action thriller “They Live”, greed has lead to a complete inversion of what is considered human transforming those who are biologically human into a low class group of sub-humans... I'm usually good with this, but I can't figure it out this time. Thanks"

My suggestion:

A semicolon is used between two closely related sentences. The operative phrase is "closely related sentences." I would use a comma after "human" because the latter phrase beginning with "transforming" is not a sentence. The more technical explanation escapes me. Sorry!

Further suggestions:

1. Check MLA (or some other format) regarding the comma outside of quotations: "They Live," is my preference; I seem to be in a growing minority on that one. (I still use two spaces after punctuation, although the latest edition of MLA suggests that one space is sufficient; two spaces is okay, unless prohibited by a professor or editor.)

2. Did you intend to write "led" rather than "lead"? (I've slipped on that one a time or two myself!)

I hope these friendly colleague-to-colleague suggestions help.

Precis: Judith Butler - Precarious Life

In the fifth chapter of her book, Precarious Life, Judith Butler, in response to a story she heard claiming that the humanities had lost their moral authority, argues for a more intimate analysis of the relationship between the modes of address and the moral demand or expectations prompted by those addresses. She uses a Jewish ethic of non-violence and an interpretation of Emmanuel Levinas’s notion of the “face” to explain how it is that the address by others results in binding and unwanted or unprecedented moral demands. Through this analysis, she is ultimately making an argument in support of an existing value of the humanities.

According to Butler, the face, which Levinas makes clear, “is not exclusively a human face”—as it can be represented by an expressive human back that seems to demonstrate, in a personified manner, human agony—is the humanizing notion that produces an ethical struggle (133). The face is a mode of address and responding to the face signifies an understanding of its precariousness, an understanding of the relation between your own precariousness and that of the Other. Understanding and legitimizing the existence of the face is to legitimize an ethical relationship between yourself and the moral authority of the Other. This ethical relationship, however, is a dichotomized one, with both sides fighting each other. According to Butler, although the face clearly says “Thou shalt not kill,” it simultaneously produces, among those it addresses, a temptation to kill. As Butler describes, “There is fear for one’s own survival, and there is anxiety about hurting the Other, and these two impulses are at war with each other…But they are at war with each other to not be at war…the nonviolence that Levinas seems to promote does not come from a peaceful place, but…from a constant tension between the fear of undergoing violence and the fear of inflicting violence” (137). And although this “war” could be theoretically ended by justifying the killing of someone who could possibly make you undergo violence, Levinas argues that self-preservation is not justification for murder.

Furthermore in her argument, Butler is trying to explain the relationship between discourse and moral authority. The face is tied to discourse because it speaks—because it “says” “Thou shalt not kill.” The relationship between language and the Other is another part of the ethical relationship between the face and moral authority. Butler argues that we don’t and can’t speak and legitimate language without first being addressed by the Other. Therefore, she says, once the Other no longer exists, neither can language. This can be tied back to the quote she previously uses by Levinas: “My ethical relation of love for the other stems from the fact that the self cannot survive by itself alone, cannot find meaning within its own being-in-the-world…” –the Other, who is legitimized by the notion of the “face,” is a crucial facet of society, of the human need for sociality and ethical boundaries (132). “Language,” she says, “communicates the precariousness of life that establishes the ongoing tension of a non-violent ethics” (139). The Other legitimizes language, thus establishing a relationship between discourse and moral authority because language allows for this tension between the two divided reactions to the “face.” But although language allows for this non-violence, it is also innately embedded with a certain violence. This is because, according to Levinas, the situation of discourse is one in which we are held hostage. We do not ask to be addressed, but must conform to the framework of the address we receive.

Addittionally, Butler argues for an ethic of Jewish non-violence, by explaining Levina’s account of the relationship between violence and ethics. Butler further explains Levina’s notion of the “face” by tackling the issue of humanization and dehumanization. She addresses Levina’s paradox that although the “face” is not exclusively a human face, it is the source of humanization. She argues that there is a difference between the “inhumane but humanizing face”—that is to say, a face that through personification is humanized (i.e. the back that “screams”)—and the “dehumanization that can also take place through the face”—meaning, to use this notion of the face to reduce the Other to less than human (141). For example, Saddam Hussein’s face is dehumanized in American media to represent tyranny. Butler also uses the example of the women on the front page of the New York Times with their burkas taken off. Butler describes how this has dehumanized their real and figurative faces to a symbolic nature—the “symbol of successfully exported American cultural progress” (142). Here, the face acts as a rationale to the violence imposed on others by the War on Terror. Here, the violence imposed on the other is justified by the threat of violence upon us. The war between the two previously mentioned dichotomies ends (for now at least), with one side taking control. The face is not humanized in this situation, as Levina argued. Rather, the characteristics that would humanize it (the pain and agony of wartime) is hidden. Butler explains that this situation is confounding. Although the image of those women or Saddam Hussein, or Osama Bin Laden gives a face to the war, it is dehumanizing in some instances.

Through this essay, Butler is addressing both critics and supporters of humanities. She argues that the critical approach possible through the field of humanities is essential to the issue of dehumanization in American media. This dehumanization prohibits us from mourning the horrors of war because it prohibits us from giving those horrors a legitimizing face, as was done during the Vietnam War. Rather, the media uses the face both to give purpose to war and to demonstrate its successes. The figurative and literal face is not allowed to serve its ironic yet essential purpose of inciting us into an ethical fight that prohibits the killing of the Other. This, she says, is an “ethical outrage” (150). Therefore, she calls upon her audience to reignite their intellectual critiques and constant questioning that is characteristic of humanities, as it is necessary to create oppositional and ethical voices. To lessen the fear of voicing opposing views and thus bring into question questionable ethics is, according to Butler, the existing value of humanities.

Katia Barron

Precis: No Logo

In the excerpt from No Logo, Naomi Klein describes the transformation of the world of marketing, advertising, and production in general. She contends that the primary focus of brands is no longer the quality of their products, but rather the perception of their entire brand. Once one believes the brand represents some sort of lifestyle or image that they identify with, or would like to identify with, the shortcomings of the product are no longer relevant. Her discussion of brands such as Nike, Apple, and Starbucks help further explain her points on the image of a company.

What does the slogan “Just do it” have to do with athletic gear? Why do people believe they perform better with Nike products that are made out of the same material and manufactured in the same country by the same workers? Why is the image that Starbucks puts on every one of their products a mermaid? Why do some people prefer to get the same exact cup of plain coffee from Starbucks instead of Dunkin’ Donuts? Why do people wait in lines for hours to throw money at Apple for an iPhone when they have obvious flaws?

The obvious reply is that associating oneself with an idealized image is what drives people to these extremes. The comfort gained from that positive association justifies paying double and sometimes triple the price. What people are missing here is that this whole brand image process and emphasis is what ends up hurting them in the long run. The consumer becomes blind to the downfalls and shortcomings of their own preferred brand and emphasizes the negatives of competitors.

The primary audience of this piece can be described as just about any consumer in today’s market. These brand discusses are known worldwide. They are household names. Marlboro for instance may be the single most recognizable brand of cigarettes on the market today; the same goes for Nike, Apple, and Starbucks in their respective fields.

I believe the aim of this piece to call into question assumptions about brand loyalty. Why do I personally refuse to wear or buy any brand of undergarment other than Hanes? If I were to compare the brand with Fruit of the Loom, for instance, I would see that Hanes charges you more for less. I would not say that the stupid Michael Jordan “Bacon Neck” commercials work on me, or that Charlie Sheen crashing his car to get to talk to a “Hanes man” appears to be a predicament I would want to be in, however there is something about those four red letter that stick out to me. Through calling assumptions into question, Klein may be trying to change convictions and give the consumer back their purchasing power that this turn towards brand image has stripped them of.

Klein bases most of her argument around “Marlboro Friday”, the Friday that Marlboro, in an effort to compete with bargain brands, slashed their prices. The slashing of prices was a sign of weakness by the most established and incessant advertising campaign of the last 40 years and showed, to some, that the brand was dead. While most overreacted to this event, brand such as Apple, Nike, and Starbucks were mapping out the blueprint to take the world by storm. So, according to Klein, Marlboro Friday marked the day where two things were created, the bargain store (Walmart is her example) and the price resistant brands (Nike, Apple, Starbucks). The fall or death of the “Marlboro Man” paints a vivid picture that almost anyone can visualize. Marlboro had become the king that was dethroned, or the champion that was upset; once the ruler of the field, now the price slashing competitor.

“Advertising” changed over time. Throughout the piece Klein slowly moves advertising from the marketing of a single product as the extension of the brand to not marketing the product at all. New strategies were required of marketing and advertising agencies because of how the landscape changed. Consumers were no longer concerned with the individual product, but what the brand as a whole represented. Corporations no longer needed a marketing firm to inform the public that a new product was being unveiled or released, they needed the firm to convince the consumer that it was their duty, to maintain their association with the brand, to find out on their own.

In my eyes, Marlboro was the first brand to have “fanboys”. The marketing of the brand versus the actual cigarette, which is almost impossible to market, created a wave of people flocking to the actual image of the “Marlboro Man”. Why else would Nike pay Kobe Bryant and Lebron James tens of millions of dollars a year, EACH?! Not only does Nike generate fanboys of their own, but they inevitably inherit Kobe and Lebron’s fanboys by selling their shoes and shirts. Apple has people marking days on their calendar for the release of new information about products, not even the release of the products themselves. They have people paying for admission to conventions and lining up for days to buy their products. They have created a brand for fans to cling to and fetishize, as opposed to creating products that have limited shelf life and can have limited functionality. Products can become irrelevant, but if the brand stays relevant, the products produced by that brand always maintain a level of desirability.

Dale this is for you! (and whomever else this may inspire)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niexAyXx860&feature=player_embedded

Last Class Potluck Spreadsheet

Hey Everyone,

As you all know Dale is going to be giving his last lecture at Cal on Thursday. To celebrate his accomplishments, as well as the turning in of our papers :), there will be a potluck. I have created an online spreadsheet so that everyone that wants to contribute to the festivities can make sure that we have all the necessary supplies as well as having a diversity of treats! Things that are needed include, but are not limited to:

• Napkins
• Cups
• Drinks
• Plates
• Snacks

Happy writing folks!

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AtYhsSKWdXXPdGFIS21Rekszcl9XVHNNU09mT25Fbnc&hl=en&authkey=COW4la4F

Best,

Parth

To semicolon or not to semicolon, that is the question.

Hey guys, I was wondering if there should be a semicolon between human and transforming in this sentence:

In John Carpenter’s 1988 action thriller “They Live”, greed has lead to a complete inversion of what is considered human transforming those who are biologically human into a low class group of sub-humans... I'm usually good with this, but I can't figure it out this time. Thanks

Precis: A Plea for Earthly Sciences

This public oration was and still is addressing the current mode of our scientific/technological stage of modernism. More specifically, Latour speaks to a general audience (scientists, engineers, lawyers, professors, philosophists, laymens, or any citizen) and the modern sociologists. I separate out sociologists because Latour entreats the current sociologists to gain a new perspective to what sociology should be addressing in the new era of technological progressivism.
The introduction of his speech is carried by a reference to the book The Revenge of Gaia and the Retreat of Dunkirk. This science fiction narrative enlightens and alerts Latour of “another war, the one that humans, as a whole, wage, without any explicit declaration, against Gaia” (Gaia being Earth). And through this novel Latour speaks of his greater concern that humans currently living in this urgent predicament, or rather Earthlings, need to reevaluate the definition of “social connections.”

Latour argues that today’s idea of the social science is linked to the moment in history of “modernization and emancipation.” He takes the polemical stance that as much as humans have been concerned about progression (modernizing or emancipating), we have become blinded to our distancing from the very source that lets us live—Earth. And through our hastiness, we have unveiled, rather made “explicit,” the contingent and cumbersome ties we blindly ignored. Eventually he begins to define what social science is and has been, then argues for what social scientists should focus on in the rapidly changing era.

He defines the current “social” as, “a domain among others non-social ones,” and poses the social in which, “establishes connections, associations, collections, whatever the name, between all sort of heterogeneous domains, none of them being “social” in the first meaning of the word.” Then he bluntly states that duty as a sociologist is not only to limit themselves to the first definition (which he derides), but also include the associations that bind all non-social ties together. He argues that sociologists have become content with the first definition because they have shirked off responsibilities to understand and bring forth the causal connections from one scientific discovery to “non-social” ties. In effect, “by failing to give a social explanation of science and technology, we got rid of social connections altogether.”

After laboriously elaborating his definition of “durable associations,” Latour suggests that the new objective for the modern-day sociologist is to pay attention to the, “shifting attachments offered by various non-social modes of connections.” Essentially his argument for the redefining of sociology lies in the adverb. He stresses that, “that there are no independent domains,” rather everything is relational and should be carried out in a relational manner; legally, scientifically, religiously, technically, etc. Basically, any field should not only stress itself without relating to another.

Latour further exhorts the social sciences to free themselves from the jaded idea of empiricism and adopt the empiricism that also includes the undeniable part of pure experience—sensory inputs that creates relations in the human mind. Latour denotes that, “For reasons that are due to the Modernist settlement, the social sciences, as a rule, accepted to limit experience to the incredibly narrow confines of objects without relations.”

Latour finishes his piece by connecting the desperate and urgent need for sociologist to encumber themselves with a new task. Sociologists must become critics of this age and notify other Earthlings of the, “strange modernist utterly archaic globe.”
While this oration is specifically catered to the community of sociologists, this speech is oriented to all individuals who live in this technologically advancing world. It’s true that Latour realizes the sociologist’s dichotomy: to have a field of its own and transfer the burden of giving the social explanation of science and technology to scientists. Hence, the speech in which he has clear exhortations for sociologists to have a more critical, intensive, and new perspective of the importance of sociology. However, when Latour solicits his audience for the 2nd definition of social, “connections, associations, collections, whatever the name, between all sort of heterogeneous domains, none of them being “social” in the first meaning of the word,” he is ultimately soliciting every individual to have a more wholistic and relational approach to whatever they are studying; hence the “associativeness” he endlessly argues for in any domain of study.

In conclusion, Latour has highlighted that while science and its hope in empiricism has shed considerable light onto human lives, it has put into shadows and obscurity relations that every advancement has on every non-human object. Although science has had a grip on society as the “truth-teller,” it has also nurtured many individuals who solely believe in narrow empiricism as the guide for social explanations. However, through my own experience, I have reconciled the necessity for the individual to evaluate technological advancements in relation to any other field or domain. Because without this type of critical individual, the narrative of Gaia’s wrath is bound to happen sooner than we can say, “it was just a metaphor.”


Samuel Oh

Precis on Michel Foucault's What is an Author?

In What is an Author?, Foucault seeks to identify the significance of the author and how an author exists through his or her writings. He begins his essay by explaining how the concept of the “author” has evolved throughout history, and proceeds by citing Beckett. After some explanation, Foucault concludes that an author must assume the role of the dead man in the game of writing. Although he acknowledges that philosophers and critics have taken note of the disappearance or “death” of the author, Foucault brazenly asserts that the topic at hand hasn't been adequately addressed.

He first examines the difficulty in universality of the term 'work' by questioning the extent to which a text can be considered a work. Then he moves on to explain the “notion of writing” and its contribution to the author's disappearance. “Writing seems to transpose the empirical characteristics of the author into a transcendental anonymity”(Foucault, 208).

Furthermore, Foucault addresses the complexity of the author's proper name in relation to the works created and concludes that “an author's name is not simply an element in a discourse...it performs a certain role with regard to narrative discourse, assuring a classificatory function”(Foucault, 210). Foucault then goes on to explain the concept of the “author function” with four main characteristics: 1) it is linked to the legal system and arises as a result of the need to punish those responsible for transgressive statements 2) it doesn't affect all texts in the same way 3) it is more complex than it appears to be 4) the term “author” doesn't only refer to a real individual. Following his analysis, Foucault highlights the fact that society uses the same methods to determine the author of an unknown work as the manner that was originally derived from Christian tradition.

Nearing the conclusion of the essay, Foucault asserts that the author is part of a large system of beliefs that serve to limit and restrict meaning, and ultimately concludes that the “author function” may soon disappear.

This text, I believe, is intended for a scholarly audience that is well versed in academic works such as those of Marx and Derrida. From the onset of this work, Foucault's intellectual diction is very evident. I personally had a dictionary nearby to look up words such such as 'scansion' and 'transcendental.' In addition to high level diction, the citations of works such as Bacon's Organon and Aristotle's Analytics are evidence of works being cited to allure to a particular scholastic audience. Foucault anticipates and addresses possible rebuttals and criticisms to his claims in his text and acknowledges that his argument is intended to address a narrow and specific scope of the definition of 'author'. He writes, “No doubt, analysis could discover still more characteristic traits of the author function. I will limit myself to these four, however, because they seem both the most visible and the most important” (Foucault, 216)

I thought that Foucault's writing on the concept of what defines a 'work' was quite interesting and intriguing. Where do we draw the line between what constitutes a work versus just a scribble? Are only certain people that are considered “authors” eligible to create works? If so, are all their thoughts and writings considered works? Before reading this text, I didn't even consider the difficulty in trying to define something as simple, or so I thought, as a “work”. As Foucault writes, “The word work and the unity that it designates are probably as problematic as the status of the author's individuality.” (Foucault , 208)

However, I disagree with Foucault's conclusion that Saint Jerome's four criteria of authenticity define the four modalities according to which modern criticism brings the author function into play. More specifically, I disagree with the following criteria that Saint Jerome makes:

“...; (2) the same should be done [withdrawn from the list of the author's works] if certain texts contradict the doctrine expounded in the author's other works (the author is thus defined as a field of conceptual or theoretical coherence)...”

When I read this, the first thing that came to my mind was Plato. His viewpoints seem to evolve, and in some instances, contradict his earlier works. Based on Saint Jerome's paradigm, Plato cannot be the author of both works.

Ultimately, Foucault's work provided some new insight on the significance of the “author” in a literary context. Although I don't agree with all of the points made in this essay, this is undoubtedly a well-written and well thought out analysis.

By: Parth Bhatt

Emergency Office Hours T/W

Hi everybody,

I'm planning on holding office hours this week in case anyone wants to discuss the final essay. I'll be available in front of Dwinelle Hall at 2pm on Tuesday and Wednesday. Also, if anyone wants to talk after class about their papers, feel free to detain me on Tuesday before I head home.

Um. . .this might be of interest?

Office Hours

Hello to all!

Online Office Hours

I'm arriving here a bit early this time -- last time around I was late by nearly an hour, it seems only fair. Say hello as you arrive...

Precis for C.S. Lewis' "The Abolition of Man"

In C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man, the key argument revolves around the claim that Man’s conquest of Nature, which is the power of some men over others, to be the progress of applied science. “Man’s power is a power possessed by some men, which they may or may not allow other men to profit by.” This piece seems to be pitched for future generation audiences warning them about the hazardous effects of technological advancements. The more power we develop through the use of applied science, the more some men will misuse the power against other men. And this has an ultimate outcome: the downfall of Man.

The political nature of the argument is seen in the discussion of Conditioners. These small groups of men have the power to make other men do what they please. “By eugenics, pre-natal conditioning, and an education [scientific] and propaganda based on perfect applied psychology, man will obtain full control over himself.” Conditioners are said to be creatures motivated by their own pleasures, who subject the entire human race to their every whim.

“Man’s conquest of Nature means the rule of hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men,” with future generation being subordinate to the power of earlier generations. The argument seems to advocate people revoking their support for so much technological advancement through science because the more progress and development that is achieved, the more Man’s downfall seems to come at hand. Advancements seem to work against Man as well as work for the convenience of Man.

The moral and ethical nature of the pieces is clear with the discussion of the Tao. The Tao, which is also known as Natural Law, Traditional Morality, First Principles of Practical Reason, or First Platitudes, is used as a main system of values that “provides a common human law of action which can over-arch rulers and those being ruled.” Any new or existing system of values consists of fragments of the Tao; and his use of figurative language helps to convey this universal system everyone can embrace, such as the metaphor explaining our intrinsic separation from the values of the Tao comparing to the branch trying to separate itself from the tree.

Men who follow the Tao have power over themselves (self-control), but men who stray from the teaching of the Tao become subject to Conditioners. Interestingly, however, Conditioners are able to create the type of Tao system the human race will have to follow, so there is no real escape from their desire to fulfill their own selfish pleasures. And Man’s conquest over himself will be due to the rule of these conditioners over their subjects.

Repudiation vs. Remaking: Gilroy on the Postcolonial Racism Discourse

"Articulating anti-racist hope in anything other than its negative moment: that is, as a creative conjuring with the possibility of better worlds rather than embattled critcism of this comprehensively disenchanted one"
The central point of contention for Gilroy as he reflects on post-colonial manifestations of race is how we confront in the present day the extraordinary bias of history that has led to the racial dichotomy of colored/white. Gilroy sees two approaches available: simply refute the idea of the negative image of oneself that is termed the Other and the sort of c0-dependent racism it hinges upon, or, to embark upon a project of the "unmaking of racialized bodies". Both of these methods, however, rely on the sort of racial absolutism that Gilroy rejects and utilize it in a clinical and subordinating fashion in which an unknown de-racializing force (the people? but if so what segments of the people have access to the institutions that allow them a greater voice?) deconstructs the dichotomy of race perceptions.

"The work Fanon described as 'dis-alienation', by which he meant the unmaking of racialized bodies and their restoration to properly human modes of being in the world."
This passage encapsulates the danger of Gilroy's project, in which it can be characterized not as a de-racializing mission but as a sort of gentrification of the Other. The "unmaking" connotes a forceful contact and resetting of the racialized bodies, while the project of "restoring" them to "properly human modes of being" assumes a meta-Creator vantage over these bodies, and the criteria for what is a proper mode of being such as to confer humanness relies entirely upon a Hegelian system that delineates moral and social superiority along a developmental trajectory that inevitably leads to the glorification of western European sensibilities. Viewed in these terms, Gilroy has taken Fanon's work of dis-alienation and used it as a new ground for racial imperialism.

"The character of racial and ethnic groups is seen to be at stake in attempts to overthrow [the political order of race]"
The central dilemma of repudiation vs. remaking hinges in this quote upon the meaning of character: whether it is taken to stand for tradition, heritage, cultural disposition, etc or whether it implies a sort of anti-matter or negative character, in which the defining character of all racial and ethnic groups is precisely their lack of a singular ethnic character leading all of their members to be directly ushered into the "global humanity", but albeit as rootless individuals left to stand alone against the crush of global capitalism.

"He calls this object 'The World.'"
Although I struggle to place this quote firmly into a spot in the argument, it remains for me the single most important line of the text. It has a rather impacting brevity, and even though it is a citation of W.E.B. Dubois in a section that is summarizing one of Dubois' books I feel as if Gilroy is attempting to lead the reader to a broader application of the Dubois text to his thesis beyond what is provided in Gilroy's explicit analysis. For context: the above quote follows a section in which Gilroy writes that Dubois did not address The Souls of Black Folks exclusively to an American audience (and its form of racism) but that it had a greater intention of "worldliness" and was "also aimed beyond those authorities to another constituency". It is this object, the greater constituency, that Dubois then terms "The World". Dubois' intention of the usage of "The World" seems rather obvious under these terms, but as I continued to read the article this single line kept appearing as the conclusive subtext and it gradually assumed Gilroy's authorial voice for me, and so I shall treat it as such. Even though I still don't know what Gilroy would wish it to mean. The terms that are open to ambiguity are the nature of the "He" and "this object". The "He" seems to reference either the racial dichotomy-repudiating individual, the remade individual, or the individual whose time and place have not progressed in the least from the colonial paradigm. The "object" for each of these entities then becomes respectively either a)the new terms of a humanity that is defined by intersectionality rather than duality, b) oneself, as an individual bled of all racial categories but nonetheless still fabricated by a humanist intellectual project, or c) the same overtly and intractably racist colonial world in which the colored individual is defined access to the World and at this imposed distance from it names it as an object rather than a lived reality. Additionally, it seems that for the repudiating and remade individual, one must at a certain point transition from viewing "The World" as an object and instead transpose onself as a subject (complete with the whole humanness as prescribed by "The World") into this World. And, for a parting tangent, there's some nice Derrida-esque interpolation in the calling of the object and "The World"'s resumed response to this naming. Does this mean that the various forms of "The World", with its particular institutions and moral discourses and conceptions of what humanness and an emancipated self contains, itself a subject of the imagination?

Katrina Sabatier
(absent 8/4 when Gilroy was discussed)

Decided I felt like reviewing Osamu Tekuza's Metropolis while reading 'cyborgs', and actually ended up stumbling on this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NmvqkQX03A&feature=related

(@approx. 03:20-09:30)

Where a character, made in Donna Haraway's likeness, propounds on issues in anthropomorphization and beyond..

beastializing discourse/signs

at a counter-protest to prop 8:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/05/anti-gay-protesters-getti_n_671342.html#s123002

Precis for Althusser's "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses"

by Michael Bench

Althusser is a structuralist Marxist. The State, for Althusser, is the kind of governmental formation that arises with capitalism; a state is determined by the capitalist mode of production and formed to protect its interests. It is historically true that the idea of nations as discrete units is coterminous with capitalism. It is also possible that democracy, as an ideology and/or a governmental form is also coterminous with capitalism, as democracy gives the "illusion" that all people are equal, and have equal power.

Althusser mentions two major mechanisms for insuring that people within a State behave according to the rules of that State, even when it's not in their best interests (in regards to their class positions) to do so. The first is what Althusser calls the RSA, or Repressive State Apparatuses, that can enforce behavior directly, such as the police, and the criminal justice and prison system. Through these "apparatuses" the state has the power to force you physically to behave. More importantly for literary studies, however, are the second mechanism Althusser investigates, which he calls ISAs, or Ideological State Apparatuses. These are institutions which generate ideologies which we as individuals (and groups) then internalize, and act in accordance with. Ideology is a structure, its contents will vary, you can fill it up with anything, but its form, like the structure of the unconscious, is always the same. And ideology works "unconsciously."

Althusser's first premise or thesis is that "Ideology is a 'representation' of the Imaginary Relationship of Individuals to their Real conditions of existence." He begins his explanation of this pronouncement by looking at why people need this imaginary relation to real conditions of existence. Why not just understand the real.

The first answer to this question, Althusser says, comes from the 18th century, and the idea that ideology comes from priests and despots. This is basically a conspiracy theory, which says that a handful of powerful men fooled the populace into believing these (falsified) representations/ideas about the world.

The second (and, from the Marxist perspective, the right) answer is that the material alienation of real conditions predisposes people to form representations which distance them from these real conditions. In other words, the material relations of capitalist production are themselves alienating, but people can't quite deal with the harsh reality of this, so they make up stories about how the relations of production aren't so bad; these stories, or representations, then alienate them further from the real (alienating) conditions. The double distancing involved here, or the alienation of alienation, works like an analgesic, a pill, to keep us from feeling pain of alienation.

These ideas about representation and reality assume that what is reflected in the imaginary representation of the world found in ideology is the "real world," or real conditions of existence. Althusser says that ideology doesn't represent the real world per se, but human beings' relation to that real world, to their perceptions of the real conditions of existence. In fact, we probably can't know the real world directly; what we know are always representations of that world, or representations of our relation to that world. Ideology then is the imaginary version, the represented version, the stories we tell ourselves about our relation to the real world.

In more Marxist terms, what ideology does is present people with representations of their relations to relations of production, rather than with representations of the relations of production themselves.

Althusser says that ideology, as material practice, depends on the notion of the subject. Hence the two theses: "there is no practice except by and in an ideology" and "there is no ideology except by the subject and for subjects". There are no belief systems, and no practices determined by those belief systems, unless there is someone believing in them and acting on those beliefs.

The final part of Althusser's argument: How is it that individual subjects are constituted in ideological structures? Or, in other words, how does ideology create a notion of self or subject?

All ideology has the function of constituting concrete individuals as subjects--of enlisting them in any belief system, according to Althusser. That's the main thing ideology as structure and ideologies as specific belief systems do -- get people (subjects) to believe in them. There are two main points that Althusser makes about this process of becoming subjects in ideology.

1. We are born into subject-hood (if only because we're named before we're born; hence we're always-already subjects).

2. We are always-already subjects in ideology, in specific ideologies, which we inhabit, and which we recognize only as truth or obviousness.

Live feather plucking: Barbarism in the Modern Ago.活拔羽毛:現代人野蠻行徑100618,2-2

News Item

Be sure to have read both of tomorrow's pieces -- be prepared to say just what you think the thesis of each essay is before lecture begins. Lewis' piece is called the "Abolition of Man" but the topic is Man's Conquest of Nature -- Arendt's piece is called the "Conquest of Space" but the figure on which the piece turns is the precarity of the man in space. Think about these things.

Precis, They Live

In the movie They Live, Carpenter asserts that the modern age of consumerism is exploiting humanity. Therein, Carpenter specifically aims to targets the basic American audience of the Reagan era in order to mobilize a critical consciousness; his argument, however, is generalized toward the common American consumer, and the deployment of the “action movie” schema as the mode further widens his audience. Therefore, Carpenter employs a Marxist critique founded in mass media in order to prove that consumer exploitation leads to deindividualization.
In order to accomplish this end, Carpenter employs dramatic irony. His film functions as an “agitprop:” it is a form of propaganda within the mainstream mass media as a modern material action movie archetype. However, this mainstream, consumer-aimed mass media tactic is exactly what Carpenter aims to argue against through his film. He critiques this propaganda through his representation of billboards, magazine advertisements, and store signs as truly saying such simple orders such as, “Obey,” “consume,” “conform,” “buy,” “submit,” “no independent thought.” Therein, by emphasizing the irony of employing the very mode he criticizes, Carpenter makes the audience aware of the efficiency and danger of the mode of mass media.
Furthermore, Carpenter utilizes allegory to prove the danger of consumerism. Within the post-coda scene of the woman having sex with an alien that she though was a man, Carpenter satirically emphasizes how the modern mass media, the agency of modern consumerism, is literally “screwing” the public. Therein, he makes a definitive argument against a society driven by consumption.
Finally, Carpenter’s employment of the metaphor of the sunglasses functions to assert that mass media creates a drone-like public where the collective, non-original thought deindividualizes the world. The image of the true consumerist world as a black and white place denounces consumerism to an evacuation of the unique aspects of life such as color and complexity. Therein, he asserts that mass media and consumerism create an indistinguishable public within a boring, anti-individual world.
Overall, Carpenter employs imagery functioning as irony, allegory, and metaphor of modern consumer culture in order to inspire a critical consciousness within the public against believing without questioning that which mass media puts forth, and further to criticize the modern consumer culture which deemphasizes individuality.