A Hierarchy of Contempt

[arendt]

To those few who read my infrequent essays, I would appreciate
some feedback. Do Hannah's words work today? Or is her complex
German grammar and her detailed referencing of twentieth century
history beyond the average info-tainment besotted moron?

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

A Hierarchy of Contempt
by arendt

For a devotee of Hannah Arendt, the last three years has been
one long Groundhog Day. As a protagonist in the repetitious nightmare
that is the Bush regime, I futilely try to assemble the right sequence of
actions that will catalyze social self-preservation and thereby release me
from my Sisyphean bondage. So far I have not found the formula.

In my anguish, I return again and again to Arendt's words, searching
for how to translate them for moron-Americans, the current incarnation
of the totalitarian masses. At this point, I think the shock of how well
her exact words speak directly to our current context is worth trying.
The palpable correctness of her political analysis and psychological
insight can stand on their own, without the need of any feeble support
I might give by paraphrasing her arguments.

What follows are a series of present-day topics, with responses given
by quotes from the "The Totalitarian Movement" chapter of Ms.
Arendt's "Origins of Totalitarianism".

----

1. On contra-factual propaganda (like the whitewash of GWB's
desertion, DUIs, and crooked business dealings) before taking power:

.."Before they seize power and establish a world according to
..their doctrines, totalitarian movements conjure up a lying world
..of consistency which is more adequate to the need of the human
..mind than reality itself; in which, through sheer imagination,
..uprooted masses can feel at home and are spared the never-
..ending shocks which real life and real experiences deal to
..human beings and their expectations." p353


2. On blatant lies (like "Saddam has WMDs") after taking power:

.."It takes power, not propaganda skill, to circulate a revised history
..of the Russian Revolution in which no man by the name of Trotsky
..was ever commander-in-chief of the Red Army." p353


3. On the takeover of the (American counter-) revolutionary GOP by
an {Enterprise/Secret Team/ex-CIA} Neocon Cabal:

.."Secret societies in general, and the conspiracy apparatus of
..revolutionary parties in particular, have always been characterized
..by an absence of factions, suppression of dissident opinion, and
..absolute centralization of command...The conspiracy sector of
..a revolutionary party can, as long as the party itself is still intact,
..be likened to the role of the army within an intact political body:
..although its own rules of conduct differ radically from those of
..the civilian body, it serves, remains subject to, and is controlled by it.
..Just as the danger of military dictatorship arises when the army no
..longer serves but wants to dominate the body politic, so the danger
..of totalitarianism arises when the conspiracy sector of a revolutionary
..party emancipates itself from the control of the party and aspires
..to leadership." p379


4. On GOP Party Discipline:

.."The seizure of the Communist parties by their conspiracy sectors,
..however, was only the first step in their transformation into totalitarian
..movements...The parties themselves had to be transformed if the
..rule of the secret police was to remain stable. Liquidation of factions
..and inner-party democracy, consequently, was accompanied in
..Russia by the admission of large, politically uneducated and "neutral"
..masses to membership..." p 379


5. On fictitious enemies (like the "worldwide terrorist conspiracy"):

.."...the history of the Bolshevik party offers an...illustration of the
..essentially fictitious character of totalitarianism, precisely because
..the fictitious global conspiracies against and according to which
..the Bolshevik conspiracy is supposedly organized have not been
..ideologically fixed. They have changed - from the Trotskyites to
..the 300 families, then to various "imperialisms" and recently to
.."rootless cosmopolitanism" - and were adjusted to passing needs;
..yet at no moment a under none of the most various circumstances
..has it been possible for Bolshevism to do without some such fiction."
....pp378-9


6. On lying our way into war in Iraq:

.."The whole hierarchical structure of totalitarian movements...could
..be described in terms of a curiously varying mixture of gullibility and
..cynicism with which each member, depending on his rank and
..standing in the movement, is expected to react to the changing
..lying statements of the leaders and the central unchanging ideological
..fiction of the movement.

.."In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached
..the point where they would, at the same time believe everything and
..nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true...
..Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times
..to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly
..object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie
..anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the
..correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could
..make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust
..that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood,
..would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who
..had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that
..the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior
..tactical cleverness." p382


7. On the neocon elite, the GOP membership, and the "angry white guy"
sympathizers:

.."The only group supposed to believe loyally and textually in the Leader's
..words are the sympathizers whose confidence surrounds the movement
..with an atmosphere of honesty and simple-mindedness(LOL!!)...Only
..Nazi sympathizers believed Hitler when he swore his famous legality oath
..(to) the Weimar Republic; members of the movement knew very well
..that he lied...When in later years HItler repeated the performance for
..the whole world, when he swore to his good intentions and at the same
..time most openly prepared his crimes, the admiration of the Nazi
..membership naturally was boundless...

.."Without the organizational division of the movement into elite formations,
..membership, and sympathizers, the lies of the Leader would not work.
..The graduation of cynicism expressed in A HIERARCHY OF CONTEMPT
..is at least as necessary in the face of constant refutation as plain
..gullibility. The point is that the sympathizers in their front organizations
..despise their fellow-citizens complete lack of initiation, the party members
..despise the fellow-travelers gullibility and lack of radicalism, the elite
..formations despise for similar reasons the party membership...The result
..of this system is that the gullibility of sympathizers makes lies credible
..to the oustide world, while at the same time the graduated cynicism
..of membership and elite formations eliminates the danger that the Leader
..will ever be forced by the weight of his own propaganda to make good his
..own statements and feigned respectability...The totalitarian system('s)...
..ingeniousness rests precisely on the elimination of that reality which
..either unmasks the liar or forces him to live up to his pretense...


8. On alliances of convenience with Pakistan, Kuwait, and other Moslem states:

.."To (the elite) ideological cliches are mere devices to organize the masses,
..and they feel no compunction about changing them according to the needs
..of the circumstances if only the organizing principle remains intact...(The
..Bolsheviks) are quite capable of interrupting every existing class struggle
..with a sudden alliance with capitalism without undermining the reliability
..of their cadres or committing treason against their belief in class struggle...

.."It is this freedom from the content of their own ideologies which characterizes
..the highest rank of the totalitarian hierarchy. These men consider everything
..and everybody in terms of organization... pp 385-7


9. On resistance in Iraq and in America:

.."Confident that power of organization can destroy power of substance, as
..the violence of a well-organized gang might rob a rich man of ill-guarded
..wealth, they constantly underestimate the substantial power of stable
..communities and overestimate the driving force of a movement. Since,
..moreover, they do not actually believe in the existence of a world conspiracy
..against them, but use it only as an organizational device, they fail to
..understand that their own conspiracy may eventually provoke the whole
..world into uniting against them." p387

----

I will stop here, with Ms. Arendt successfully predicting that W. will be a uniter
(of the world against America, and America against Bush), not a divider.

Recently, I became aware of the fact that Ms. Arendt briefly dated
Leo Strauss, the ur-neocon. She quickly discovered she liked neither
Mr. Strauss nor his ideology, and she spent many years trashing Strauss
in the academic literature. Score one more for the prescient Ms.
Arendt.


arendt

[liberalhistorian]

1. Wow!

She really hits the nail on the head as far as the Bushistas are concerned, doesn't she? I've always admired her, but I haven't read her in anywhere near the detail that you have read her. I especially like the way that you've broken down each subject, then showed her writings pertaining to that subject.

A suggestion for making it more palatable and readable to the great moronic American public would be to break it down even further, and provide specific modern examples of each paragraph of her writing that you intend to use in your essay. That would make an even greater impact, and people would be able to understand her better.

[arendt]

2. She's hard to reverse engineer

Her prose is so dense that its hard to pull out a pithy quote
without pulling out an entire paragraph. For that matter,
some of her sentences are paragraph length.

So, in selecting these quotes, I walked through about ten
pages of her book, and whenever I found something relevant
to today's situation, I made that a point. I kept the points in
the order of her writing so that her back-references to what
she had said earlier made sense standing alone.

I don't see how to do this from the opposite direction - i.e.,
write down today's situation and find a pithy quote of hers
that fits it.

So, in the end, my advice to people is just to read her stuff,
especially Part 3 of Origins of Totalitarianism (the part about
the 20th century).

I hope your reaction will get you to read Ms. Arendt. She is
a difficult read, but today's circumstances make it a most
rewarding read.

arendt

[Mairead]

25. Dr Arendt has always been one of my faves, too, but reading her

is like reading Thomas Mann. :)

Her insight about so much of evil being merely banal and bureaucratic in its motivation, an absence of goodness rather than any positive intent to be wicked --I'm completely certain that insight will live on in history forever.

[dweller]

3. beyond the average info-tainment besotted moron

my vote as if this were a poll.

''The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the
..correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could
..make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust
..that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood,
..would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who
..had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that
..the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior
..tactical cleverness."


all the while trusting that one must have and nurture the ingrained trust, that even if irrefutable evidence of the inevitable collapse of all systems of belief is inherent in our time,
tomorrow is still a new day.

dp

[arendt]

4. "tomorrow is still a new day" - Not if you're no longer alive.

At the rate these assholes are going, only the cockroaches are
going to survive. And I mean the little six-legged ones, not the
maggots running our country.

I don't mind if all the "systems of belief" collapse. I mind if the
nutcases with the nukes decide to use them. You can't hide from
nuclear winter or from some hideous plague.

At one point, Gandhi remarked that his tactics in India would
never have worked against the Nazis. They simply would have
killed him. The same applies to believers in democracy versus
the neocons and their mentors in the Zionist movement.

I fail to see how trusting without acting is going to get us out
of this jam. Are you a quietist?

arendt

[dweller]

7. do not grok quietist

trusting self though is action at home, local, then expand to the universal, with reverance as a guide.
Gandhi's beliefs are still held worldwide by many as viable, nazis are a failed movement and reviled by most that have attained consciousness above the cockroach. not to belittle the cockroach all the same.
and if belief systems fail, they simply build up again from a single point.
but that would be the crux, the single point. A fine example to follow from would be Nature, just to choose a one from many.
We are, as humans, just a minute bit of Nature even if we believe ourselves to be the epitome of the vast web.
Nutcases with nuclear suitcases vastly overestimate their value in the scheme, and have nothing to contribute to viable panorama, and only reap the karmic repercussions of their own action.

okay, i just checked the dictionary for quietest, and found quietism instead, implying mystic passivism. Mine is more an activism.

i start from 'i am that'. Am constantly in awe.

dp

[arendt]

11. Think globally, act locally is where I'm at too.

I wish I shared your confidence that these apocalyptic
whackos are not going to blow up the planet.

arendt

[mitchum]

5. nice work from both of you

[not systems]

6. fascinating

Would you recomend "The Origins of Totalitarianism"
or some other work as the best first read.

[arendt]

9. OOT is the most relevant...

But, you can save yourself some time by skipping
Part 1. Part 2 covers Imperialism, and introduces
the idea of "superfluous" masses, which are the
root of totalitarianism.

There is much more here than mere history. There
is a theory (and its not just the one that is usually
ascribed to her - "the banality of evil"). Her theory
is that by technology, we have disenfranchised the
great mass of people. The political reaction of these
outcasts has shattered the notions of mass democracy.

arendt

[tom_paine]

8. I've always said the Busheviks were much like Bolsheviks

I mean, aside from the varying ideologies they use(d) to justify their tyrannies.

Left and Right kind of merge (as Hitler and Stalin were similar on their ultra-extreme ends of the spectrum) as tey each shade into totalitarianism.

[arendt]

10. Actually, the neocons are literally former Trotskyites

I don't have the history at my fingertips, but James Burnham -
the fouder of the modern conservative movement in the 1950s -
was formerly a Trotskite. The lineage is there.

Ms. Arendt completely agrees that totalitarianism is neither
left nor right, merely appalling.

arendt

[sweetheart]

14. you know hanna...

My reading of trotsky shows no parallel's with neocon'ism, rather leninism is more their ilk. Trotsky was a wise fellow, like Ms. Arendt.... which is why he was erased.

Can you put a link to this book you're quoting?

We mustn't give these a'holes too much credit, as they are but surface dross on the spirit of life, and like the frozen skin of molten lava flowing, the neocon scumbags can appear to make the lava black with their ugliness, all the while concealing a profound depth of un-spoken lifeforce.

There are no quotes in silence. Were i to quote my favorite author, it is a 1 hour passage of ""... no assertion. The tyranny of mind is its own trap.

[arendt]

15. HA on why Trotsky was eliminated...

"Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents,
regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools
whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee
of their loyalty." p339

As usual, she says it in a most abstract and convoluted way. BTW,
does this passage cause you to think immediately of John Ashcroft?

> My reading of trotsky shows no parallel's with neocon'ism,
> rather leninism is more their ilk.

I'll have to dig up my source, can't quite place it - one of those
reviews of Leo Strauss's "philosophy". Paraphrasing, they said
that Trotsky invented the tactic of hijacking the leadership of
an existing revolutionary party. But, Leninist, Trotskyite, who is
going to quibble about what flavor of totalitarian is running
America today?

> Can you put a link to this book you're quoting?

Well, its still in print. Here is an Amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0156701537/104-1616134-2026316?v=glance

plus, a review thread on Amazon:

http://www.historyofmilitary.com/The_Origins_of_Totalitarianism_0156701537.html

These other links came from a Google on "Origins of Totalitarianism" & arendt

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/arendthtml/essayb1.html

http://pages.prodigy.net/mschnall/arendt.html

http://www.socres.org/vol69/issue692.htm

[rman]

30. many of the neocons were in the far-left camp once

that doesn't mean far-rw/'neoconism' is a natural progression from left-wing, nor that it is left-wing in nature.

afaik Trotsky always was left-wing, never moved over to the right.

maybe i misunderstand but it seems as though you'r trying to implicate Trotsky is somehow to blame for the current neocon movement.

[arendt]

12. Sunday afternoon kick - n/t

n/t

[Armstead]

13. She sounds very prescient

It's a bit of a slog language-wise, but much of it does seem to predict very accurately our present mess,er,situation.

[gottaB]

16. Arendt's arguments work, but you have to work too

I don't know, but when you talk about reaching the morons, it's like you're setting yourself up for disappointment. Arendt philosophizes, and her primary audience is intellectuals. Intellectuals do have a responsiblity to engage in political life and to do so responsibly, and on that front Arendt remains relevant and insightful. Political thinking in this instance, however, entails more than just applying an insight--that's a start, mind you I see it that way too--but to effectively communicate to the more general audiences that you need to reach in order to be genuinely political, you have to do some unpacking and repacking and shifting around and basically make the presentation of your ideas resonate with the pressing concerns of the day, and also I think the ideological currents and weltanschauungen of the day, of which you should be rightly critical, and yet also mindful of the real power they wield and their functions with repsect to the integrity of the person--really that's vital, it's something I believe Arendt does address, and it's a lot of work.

Where to begin? The idea of the masses looks to me like it is presenting some difficulty. Is it passe? Is there some more sophisticated understanding of the masses that Arendt works with which might be rephrased? Like, when she talks about the decieving the masses, it's not like she's saying the masses of people are morons. It seems to me she's really talking about a phenomenon of mass communication and a condition of duplicity and engrained disbelief. Because, this is the crux of my argument to you, what does one make of intellectuals, of generally bright people who refuse to engage politically because they say, it's all just lies anyway, and one set of lies doesn't seem any more pernicious in the big picture than another set? Already you know these people don't tend to regard themselves or their intellectual labors as belonging to the masses. And if cognitive ability or acumen is what sets one above the masses in your definition, then it will be difficult to convince intellectuals that their ideas really do belong to the masses, and that what they do as intellectuals has political consequences they need to be responsible for.

Thus, a paradox. To reach outside the narrow field of specialists in continental philosophy, latterday existential phenomenologists, people who dissertate on the Frankfurt school and what not, to reach outside of that crowd, you might think of turning to more recent critical ideas about message construction and dissemination, and I mean specifically postmodernist ideas but also poststructuralism and whatever seems to apply. The trick is to find descriptions of the way media and ideology operate that click with more modern understandings, and that don't immediately undermine intellectuals' presentations of self. Oh, that's the goal, alright, to undermine intellectual privilege. Why shouldn't intellectuals be insecure? And of course there are many who thrive on undermining themselves. But direct confrontation is likely to leave you spinning your wheels, because in the final analysis intellectuals are persons too, and want to be treated with some dignity. The paradox then is that in order to reach a wide audience. you need to engage in elaborations narrowly focused on an elite class. and even specific enclaves within that class.

Oh, you could take the message directly to the people. But you're liable to run into similar problems, I'm afraid. If, on the other hand, you can appeal to intellectuals working with current vocabularies and ideas about their cultural horizons, there is some realistic promise of getting your ideas out of the academy and into the culture at large. If for example, you can use The Matrix to make some of the arguments you might have made using The Origins of Totalitarianism, you have a better chance of success. Of course, that's not to say one shouldn't read and study and share Arendt's work, or have higher standards for presenting ideas than the Waschowski Brothers. But there is a value in being current, as you can see in the example of Cornell West, for instance. It does enable one to better address diverse audiences and own up to one's responsibilities as an intellectual.

[Karenina]

17. Excellent!

.

[arendt]

18. I'm deliberately ignorant of postmodernists, can you give some pointers?

I'm interested in what you say, but I have deliberately avoided that
area of philosophy as too full of charlatans. Its like modern art; some
of it is real art, but a lot of it is bunk for a buck - more hucksterism and
attitude than content.

Can you point me at a specific philosopher and a specific book that
gets across how postmodernism allows me to

> turn to more recent critical ideas about message construction and
> dissemination, and I mean specifically postmodernist ideas but also
> poststructuralism and whatever seems to apply. The trick is to find
> descriptions of the way media and ideology operate that click with more
> modern understandings, and that don't immediately undermine intellectuals'
> presentations of self.

Making stupidity the norm is a classic reactionary tactic, exemplified
by fundies who believe that thinking is an occasion of sin. It is really
a slap in the face to the people who keep this civilization going that
their very competence is seen as a point against listening to them.
I must admit that if this is the result of the application of postmodernist
philosophical tactics, then those tactics are quite powerful.

> The idea of the masses looks to me like it is presenting some difficulty. Is it
> passe? Is there some more sophisticated understanding of the masses that
> Arendt works with which might be rephrased? Like, when she talks about
> the decieving the masses, it's not like she's saying the masses of people are
> morons. It seems to me she's really talking about a phenomenon of mass
> communication and a condition of duplicity and engrained disbelief.

This confuses me. Arendt does not say the masses are stupid. Rather,
she says they are desperate for any shred of dignity and are willing
to bow down to dictators if it affords them shelter from their superfluousness.

Susan Falludi's "Stiffed" attempts to reach the angry white guy by showing
that men are now just as trapped by their sexual role playing as women
have been for a hundred years. Falludi's point is that industrial society
has wrecked traditional family roles. The fundies answer to this is to
destroy that society and regress to several hundred years ago in order
that traditional "man on top" roles can be re-instated. Is Falludi an example
of postmodernist communication? (Seriously, not being sarcastic.)

Got to go to work. But, I am most interested in your answer, and in further
communication.

arendt

P.S. The Matrix was brilliant, but it is five years old and it has become
a cliche. The second movie was self-indulgent crap - one long kung-fu
fight. And, in spite of loving the original, I never read Baudillard (spell?)
Simulation and Simulacra (or whatever). I just have been avoiding
postmodernism.

[gottaB]

20. Wow, where to begin

Can I point you at a specific philosopher and a specific book? Well that's tough because as you say you have been avoiding postmodernism.

Jean Baudrillard's Simulations may not be a bad place to start. NB there's an essay entitled "Simulacra and Simulations" which is an abridged version of "The Precision of Simularca," part one of Simulations, but you'll want the second part of the book too and I can't remember if the volume Simulation and Simulacra, which is a collection of essays, contains both parts, so if you're getting a title, I know Simulations is coherent and would recommend it as an introduction.

Where is Baudrillard coming from? For background I'd suggest some semiotics, anybody doing Saussure after Levi-Strauss and applying it to culture, higher orders of meaning; probably a good introduction would be Roland Barthes' Mythologies, his classic, but I'm sure there are equally elegant statements of his ideas. Baudrillard also relies on Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," as do many postmodernists. But I think you could jump right in if you wanted.

Bahktin's Rabelais and his World is not philosophy, but it is about the construction of meaning, rather sophisticated, and a pleasure to read actually. You could jump right in.

I enjoy Kristeva and would cautiously recommend her Revolution in Poetic Language. There are definite parallels bewteen her distintion between the symbolic and the semiotic and Gramsci's distinction between ideology and hegemony. Kristeva's discussion is abstract, philosophical and linguistic. The sociological dimensions of her ideas are neither foregrounded nor strongly developed.

Bourdieu is of course the sociological thinker, though not typically regarded as postmodern, he nevertheless he works in the same poststructuralist milieu, and in reaction against some of the same limitations of structuralist and traditional marxist thinking. His classic is Outline of a Theory of Practice. He has written extensively on language, and some of the essays collected in Language and Symbolic Power are likely up your alley. However, the book I would recommend to you is The Political Ontology of Martin Heiddeger, because it's addressing some of these same issues we're seeing with Arendt's Origin of Totalitarianism, albeit in pinpoint focus. (And you've got to have dealt with the Heidegger question on some level if you're reading Arendt, right?)

For an anwer to the question What is Postmodernism? I have always been partial to Lyotard. His The Postmodern Condition is extremely lucid and succinct--quite a contrast to Jameson. Although I don't have them handy, I truly enjoyed The Libidinal Economy and The Inhuman, but the former esepecially is not a good introductory text.

Have you looked into Levinas? Because in a lot of ways I think of him as paralleling Arendt, but of course he does a lot more work with communication, intersubjectivity and such. When you come across postmodern critiuques of humanism such as Lyotard's, Levinas is often the reference.

Felix Guattari just tickles me, but I can imagine that you might be skeptical. Better start with Baudrillard. And Spivak I haven't gotten into, but definitely want to.

Have you read Habermass much? I tried a long time ago and got bored, but lately I've run accross some titles that seem worth checking out. Is German a language you read btw? That would cinch it. We should both read Habermass. In English the title that looks good is Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, but there's also the Theory of Communicative Action.

Bottom line: Go ahead and read Simulations and make it through to the section "The Tactile and the Digital."

If you want to read online, try this site, lot's of good essays there, and great links.

Oh, and Falludi, I hadn't thought of her as postmodern, but she definitely has that sense of irony in her presentation of Stiffed. Interesting. I'll have to take a look at her again.

[arendt]

22. Ouch. That's a lot of reading.

I will try to find out something about the long list of
people you name. In the meantime...

Let me rephrase. Other than "deconstruction" or
"irony", what is the core idea of these new philosophers?
I was hoping you could give me some brief overview of
why this stuff is worth studying, and what concepts to
bring to the study. Reading books is easier if you
understand what your looking for.

I do understand that semiotics is the visual equivalent
of nuance and tone in writing. Any media-literate person
gets semiotics. And, of course, semiotics can be ironic -
just look at Roman Polanski's cinematography.

Is Bruno Latour in this group? Or is that the "Social
Construction of Science" crowd, not the postmodernists?

I have read a lot of Morris Berman, especially "coming
to our senses". He makes it clear that 20th century
western philosophy was really groping for Buddhism.
Myself, I think Kant got it right; and the Cognitive
Science people have been proving so for the past twenty
years.

Essentially, "logical positivism" fell of its own internal
contradictions; and the rise of computer science allowed
the testing of much "philosophical" speculation about
intelligence (e.g., hard AI). The result was that almost
all of current philosophy that did not become cognitive science
was completely discredited. Metaphysics vanished into
the Wittgensteinian "that which cannot be spoken of".
See Pat Churchland's "Neurophilosophy" for a good one-
chapter summary of the death of positivism.

It seems to me that philosophy is dead, and the postmodernists
are merely dancing on its grave.

Is postmodernism about allowing psychological insights
to be added to "analytic" philosophy? That is, are we
now allowed to question the *motives* of other philosphers
directly (as opposed to, in the past, only being allowed
to criticize their arguments)?

Is Rorty's "edifying vs structural philosophy" distinction relevant?

Where does deconstruction "bottom out"? Its always seemed
like the dark shadow of "I think, therefore I am." Descartes
makes certainty out of nothing. D-Cism makes uncertainty out
of everything. My question has always been: if anything can be
deconstructed, why can't deconstructionism be deconstructed?

And, finally, could you please unpack what postmodernism
has to do with the current political situation? I get the
impression that you are arguing that the Republicans are
master deconstructionists; but since I don't know what that
means, other than trashing anything the other guy stands for,
I can't appreciate if we could apply similar techniques to
oppose them.

I have not read Habermas directly, but there is a guy
at Berkeley, Douglas Kellner, who quotes Habermas extensively
as part of his Marxian deconstruction of media.

----

Well, that was my coffee break. I'll check back in the evening.

arendt

[gottaB]

29. Why postmodernism?

Yes well it has to do with relevance and providing compelling descriptions of our intellectual milieux. I don't think the Republicans are master deconstructionists, but they sure are adept at manipulating the media, and thus the critique of the right and especially the cabal calls for sophisticated arguments. The notion that the American moron represents the current incarnation of the totalitarian masses does not strike me as adroit. However, Arendt's work does strike a chord, and your observations are insightful. I'll return to that after fielding some of your particular questions.

1. You obviously have a passing familiarity with semiotics, but I would now strongly recommend reading Roland Barthes' Mythologies. The ideas are clearly presented, the examples are both illuminating and humorous, and the prose is enjoyable, even in translation. If you were to draw one idea from it, iirc, you'd probably be struck by the argument about how contextualization confers meaning. To put it crudely, for example, when you want to understand what a particular example of photojournalism is saying, you don't merely look at what's in the photo: you look at what the photo is in. That's too crude, but you get the picture.

2. Bruno Latuour, the nonmodernist. Very interesting, especially from the point of view of the theory of science. Thanks for pointing him out. I have never understood the fascination with Michel Serres. Perhaps in time.

3. Neo-Kantians and the field of cognitive science. Okay, I have some familiarity with the work of Mark Johnson who worked with Lakoff. I think that's valuable work, especially with regards to the science of language, but I don't see it as a validation of Kant, and viewed in the context of other ideas about language, it's not the be all and end all for me. Your primary concern is epistemology and scientific theory? I can see how you would prefer Kant to say Foucault. Well, there have been accomplishments in cognitive science but the essential claims seem overreaching and unconvincing to me--viewed within the whole of linguistics and philosophy etc.

4. Psychological insights. Well, among other things, I guess so, yes. Speaking of the lives of thinkers, you might be interested in Kristeva's Hannah Arendt: Life is a Narrative. Or if you're going to deal with the Heidegger question, also The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger by Bourdieu. These things are related, and postmodernism encompasses some of that kind of critique, but there are important distinctions to be drawn. The question of Heidegger's political life wouldn't deserve much consideration if it weren't for the fact that he was an existential phenomenologist, and not just any existentialist, but a leading proponent and an institutionally well-positioned and influential mentor. So there are deeply philosophical grounds for investigating the personal lives and politics of the existentialists, and you see that beginning with Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, and of course Arendt, who imo is the person who wrestled most with this conflict and offered the most profound resolutions.

There is another angle on the personal exposed by the postmodernists proper, which has to do with the rejection of master narratives and decentering the locus of ideation and hence shifting the focus of inquiry away from the cogito, and in some manifestations of that approach you see like Guattari's notion of schizo:

A long time ago I renounced the Conscious-Unconscious dualism of the Freudian topoi and all the Manichean oppositions correlative to Oedipal triangulation and to the castration complex. I opted for an Unconscious superposing multiple strata of subjectivication, heterogeneous strata of variable extension and consistency. Thus a more "schizo" Unconscious, liberated from familial shackles, turned more towards actual praxis than fixations on, and regressions to, the past. An Unconscious of Flux and abstract machines rather than an Unconscious of structure and language. I don't, however, consider my "schizoanalytic cartographies" to be scientific theories. Just as an artist borrows from his precursors and contemporaries the traits which suit him, I invite those who read me to take or reject my concepts freely. The important thing is not the final result but the fact that the multicomponential cartographic method can co-exist with the process of subjectification, and that a reappropriation, an autopoeisis, of the means of production of subjectivity can be made possible.

(From Chaosmosis, "On the Production of Subjectivity," pp. 12-13.)

I don't expect that you'll be too receptive at this point, but I think you can see the seductiveness of the approach here, and maybe see why it resonates with the experience of intellectual life for many of us, especially those of us outside the strictures of established disciplines.

5. Philosophy is dead? On the contrary, postmodernism ("") has given us a wealth of new thinking and provided some of the best minds of our time the opportunity to flourish. In my book, Derrida, Lyotard and Kristeva are genuine philosophers doing genuine work with genuine talent.

6. Rorty is indeed eddifying--when he's not floundering around unsure of where to apply his thinking. There is a deep connection with Arendt's politics of pluralism, but of course stylistically they are not close. Hopefully recent events will push Rorty to a stronger examination of his pluralism and the pragmatic. (I know he's been critical of Bushco, and also certain intellectual (non)responses, but I'm waiting for something more in depth.) And I think the distiction you are making between eddifying and structural I have read for instance in one of his defences of Derrida. It is worth looking at.

7. Back to Baudrillard. I'm reading over Simulations now. First, an explanation of what is meant by the age of Simulation:

In this passage to a space whose curvature is no longer that of the real, nor of truth, the age of simulation thus begins with a liquidation of all referentials--worse: by their artificial resurrection in systems of signs, a more ductile material than meaning, in that it lends itself to all systems of equivalence, all binary oppositions and all combinatory algebra. It is no longer a question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody. It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself, that is, an opperation to deter every real process by its opperational double, a metastable, programmatic, perfect descriptive machine which provides all the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes. Never again will the real have to be produced--this is the vital function of the model in a system of death, or rather of anticipated resurrection which no longer leaves any chance even in the event of death. A hyperreal henceforth sheltered from the imaginary, and from any distinction between the real and the imaginary, leaving room only for the orbital recurrence of models and the simulated generation of difference. (pp.3-4)

On a theoretical level, the allusion is to Levi-Strauss, and what you have is a turning of structuralism on its head with Benjamin as the fulcrum. Well, as I said, Barthes offers the kindest introduction here, and Baudrillard's use of Benjamin is transparent enough.

Ah, but the application. Can you see the potential? There are some decent examples presented by Buadrillard, for instance in the latter half of the book he discusses opinion polling. He presents a thesis like opinions are no longer formed or produced, but instead are subject to an endless reproduction, a kind of political hyperreality.

The polls manipulate that which cannot be decided. Do they really effect the vote? True, false? Do they give an exact picture of reality, or simple tendencies, or the refraction of this reality in a hyperspace of simulation whose curve even is unkown? True, false, undecidable. Their most sophisticated analyses leave room always for the reversibility of the hypotheses. Statistics is only casuistry. This undecidable quality is proper to any process of simulation (see above, the crisis of indecision). The internal logic of these procedures (statistics, probability, operational cybernetics) is certainly rigorous and "scientific"; somehow though it does not stick, it is a fabulous fiction whose index of refraction in any reality (true or false) is nil. This is even what gives these models their forcefulness. But it also is this which only leaves them, as truth, the paranoid projection tests of a case, or of a group which dreams of a miraculous correspondance of the real to their models, and therefore of an absolute manipulation.

What is true of the statistics scenario is also true of the regulated partition of the political sphere: the alternation of the forces in power, majority/minority, substitutive, etc. On this limit of pure representation, "that" no longer represents anything. Politics die of the too-well-regulated game of distinctive oppositions. The political sphere (and that of power in general) becomes empty. This is somehow the payment for the accomplishing of the political class' desire: that of a perfect manipulation of social representation. Surreptitiously and silently, all social substance has left this machine in the very moment of its perfect reproduction.

The same thing holds true for the polls. The only ones who believe in them finally are the members of the political class, just as the only ones who really believe in advertising and market studies are the marketeers and advertisers. This is not because they are particularily stupid (though we can't exclude that either) but because the polls are homogeneous with the current functioning of politics. They take on a "real" tactical value, they come into play as a factor in the regulation of the political class according to its own rules of the game. It therefore has reason to believe in them, and it believes. But who else does, really? It is the political class' burlesque spectacle, hyperrepresentative of nothing at all, that people taste by the way of the polls and media. There is a jubilation proper to spectacular nullity, and the last form it takes is that of statistical contemplation. This is accompanied always, we know, by a profound disappointment--the kind of disillusion that the polls provoke in absorbing so utterly the public's voice, in short-circuiting all process of expression. The fascination they exercise is in accordance with this neutralization by emptiness, whith this trance they create by anticipation of the image over all possible reality. (pp. 126-129, the Semiotext(e) edition btw, and do read further, it's interesting.)

Whew.

Okay. To sum up where I'm coming from. No doubt Arendt is a superior thinker with some insights on the origins of totalitarianism, and as you have pointed out, she remains very much relevant. What I'm saying is not that you should drop Arendt in favor of Baudrillard. Far from it. But I do think Braudillard's description of mass representations rings true in many ways. If your task is avowedly political, then I don't see any reason why you shouldn't consider other versions of the story of wholesale duplicity and bring them to bear on your critique of PNAC propoganda. After all, you're not necessarily aiming to construct a foundational system for explaining political discourse. Take a cue from Rorty. If it's eddifying, go for it.

[arendt]

27. Found the Lyotard article - its short enough and readable. Thanks n/t

n/t

[arendt]

19. Just a kick for gottaB to see this n/t

n/t

[IrateCitizen]

21. The language is a bit dense, but the points are very valid.

As I read through this (BTW, thanks for kicking it so I got to see it, I always love what you contribute here) I was compelled to think of another modern-day philosopher who has taught me similar lessons. That philosopher would be Noam Chomsky.

Now, before anyone starts to quibble with my point here, allow me to elaborate. I fully realize that, throughout his works, Chomsky can reach some questionable conclusions. I don't necessarily agree with all of them. But there is one area in which his work on political discourse has proved invaluable, and that is the study of power relationships.

There is an important distinction to make with regards to the comparison between the Bolsheviks and "Busheviks". The Bolsheviks seized power literally through revolution. They then set out to solidify that power in a short period of time in order to control the masses through propaganda distributed from a position of power. The neoconservatives, OTOH, have capitalized on many failings of American government and society in general in order to impose their agenda.

This, I believe, is where Chomsky may perhaps be a little more relevant -- but then again, I'm not overly familiar with Arendt's work.

American society has been controlled by elites ever since its founding. Every "mainstream" structure -- media, schools, etc. -- has been instrumental in supporting this control. Continuously, almost from the moment we are born, we are inundated with false perceptions of reality that are created for the sole purpose of maintaining the status quo. For the vast majority of citizens, this false perception of reality IS their reality.

Some of us, for whatever reason, are able to break down these mirrors that obscure a more accurate view of the world around us. But for most people, they have been lied to for so long and so repeatedly, that anything even remotely resembling the truth will be so far from what they have been conditioned to believe as the truth that it will not only be rejected, but will be cast away with great force.

It's evident even from a great number of posters here, let alone the average person on the street. If any historical evidence or theory is produced that directly challenges the notion that the United States stands for democracy, human rights and self-determination; that evidence is immediately and forcefully rejected. Why? Is it because there is unrefutable evidence that the US does stand unerringly for those things? No. It is because people have simply been conditioned, from the time of childhood, to believe that as a basic truth. In challenging that belief, you are challenging a basic paradigm under which they live, something that is guaranteed to cause some kind of reaction.

I just look at my own political development as a case in point. It took me a good 7-8 years of being exposed to different viewpoints of American history to finally realize that there might be some TRUTH to this "other" view that shows the US in a less-than-flattering light, and that the view of the US as the "beacon of freedom to the world" might just be the one that is a little askew.

So what do we do about it? I wish I had answers. I really do. But I think it ultimately comes down to living our lives in a way that just tries to affirm what we believe to be true, and planting seeds in the consciousness of those around us in hopes it bears fruit. The only possible solution to dispelling this long-standing abuse of power relationships is one that will take generations to complete, and I'm not so certain that the human race has that much time left in which to complete it.

[bobbieinok]

23. didn't she also have a relationship with Heidegger??

an interesting discussion

[arendt]

24. Yes. But I have no details

I know almost nothing about Ms. Arendt's
personal life; only her writing.

Heidigger dallied with the Nazis, and was
discredited.

Arendt, I'm not even sure how she survived the
war. Was she already out of Germany when the
Nazis took over? If so, how did she take up
with Heidigger? If not, how did she avoid
the Konzentrationlager?

arendt

[bobbieinok]

26. Was Heidegger her dissertation advisor in Marburg?

In the last 4-5 years there have been several book reviews/discussions about Arendt's life in the New York Review of Books.

I think she left Germany in 33.

Heidegger apparently did a lot more than dally with the Nazis, but I don't think it's quite accurate to say he was/has been discredited.

From what I remember from grad school, Heidegger has been a major influence on 20th century continental philosophy.

Much of the really appalling info about his Nazi ties became only widely known in the 80s ... at the same time that Paul de Man's (the father of deconstructionism?) anti-aemitic/Nazi writings in WWII were published.

So the foundations of 2 major, extremely influential 20th century philosophies were revealed to be very shaky.

[leftofthedial]

28. great! thanks.

but definitely beyond the average info-tainment besotted moron.