the new school of assessment

I personally, have been out of school for what is beginning to be a decade so I'm no authority on the state of being a student or teacher - now. I have been noticing though a lot of posts around the 'sphere' about the state of higher education and the frustrations of those faculty aiming for a higher standard - not simply with students but with the institutions themselves. Many universities unfortunately have taken the corporate model - rather Enron model- of promoting and rewarding the singular academic star while creating a large and discontent army of grunts - the adjuncts. These adjuncts are increasingly carrying the burden of an entire university at slave wages and without the customary benefits of an institutional hiring. The results seem obvious for anyone able to look but seeing that universities are largely bottom down institutions that care more about shareholders than education, the growing threat is invisible to them.

Here's a small sampling of what I've read recently:
1. Long Sunday speaking of the "degree mill"
2. Daily Kos and the growing "assessment culture" of higher ed.
3. Christopher Jagers on "tired faculty" and the culture of compensation.

it takes 80 times more energy to feed four times more people

Alternet has a fascinating (and yes disturbing) interview with Thomas Homer Dixon regarding our unsustainable use of energy and various tectonic movements developing underneath our societies. The discussion looks at energy production beyond the barrel of oil template with some practical advice on how we need to be honest with ourselves about the coming disruptions.

THD: In fact there's a whole way of approaching economics that uses thermodynamics. Herman Daly in particular has pioneered this. Energy is a currency that is fundamental and physical, and it gets you away from prices, which are often distractions. The price of something -- a barrel of oil, a bushel of grain -- includes so many other factors that may not have anything to do with underlying abundance or scarcity of these things.


THD: There will be times of frustration and fear and anger on the part of many people when fundamental verities and patterns of life are suddenly challenged. They'll be scared. And in those moments, extremists can take advantage of the situation and push our societies in directions that are very bad. Those of us who are nonextremists need to be prepared to push in other directions and create something that's good.

* Thomas Homer-Dixon is director of the Trudeau Centre for the Study of Peace and Conflict at the University of Toronto. He is the author of "The Ingenuity Gap" and his newest book "The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization."

vote FEAR for '08

I guess I was inspired by John Howard's idiocy and hypocrisy down under - oh wait he's not even American!

image: Germany WWI via Jesus' General

Does the US Budget Reflect the Best Investments for Our Future?

When Congress debates how much to spend on programs such as "education" and the "environment," lawmakers are really deciding how to carve up America's discretionary budget pie, depicted above, as proposed by President Bush on Monday. The Pentagon would receive $481 billion, and that's not including funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As you can see, more than half of the money Congress votes to spend this year would go to the Pentagon, leaving budget scraps for everything else.
....more at truthout.org,

essay on network culture: Kazys Varnelis

Fredric Jameson's classic description of Postmodernism as the cultural logic of late capitalism is now well over twenty years old. Jameson's analysis is crucial for understanding late twentieth century thinking. But where are we now? Kazys Varnelis has recently posted his text for the Networked Publics book. It is well worth the read and I'll perhaps go into detail with a follow up post. For now I'm kinda lovin' this "handy" chart at left (click for full size).

Funny, I don't see apocalypse anywhere :) but Hegel shows up...

Peter Doig sells for $10million

Bloomberg reports the $10 million sale of a Peter Doig owned by Saatchi. I'm too speechless to be snide. Here are some 'factoids' on the rising auction atmosphere (nice commissions):

London's contemporary-art sales, which auctioneers said may be aided by bonus-rich bankers and wealthy young Russians, were valued at as much as 132 million pounds.

Phillips de Pury & Co. yesterday sold 5.3 million pounds of Western and Chinese art in a Bloomsbury ballroom, just beating its top estimate after adding commissions.

Contemporary-art prices have quadrupled since 1996, according to Art Market Research's index of the top 25 percent of works by Richard Prince, Hirst, Doig, Michelangelo Pistoletto and other artists.

Sotheby's said its contemporary-art evening sale may fetch between 28.5 million pounds and 39.4 million pounds, 64 percent more than its top presale estimate for last winter's sale. Christie's auction tomorrow is estimated at 39.7 million pounds to 54.4 million pounds.

Sotheby's and Christie's just raised their commissions and now charge buyers 20 percent on the first 250,000 pounds of the hammer price and 12 percent on the rest. Estimates are before commission and records are calculated after adding buyers' fees.


painting: Peter Doig

the haggard county cure

couldn't resist this brilliant illustration over at Evangelical Right on the Ted Haggard 'recovery'.

Alain Badiou lecture at Art Center -Feb.6

"Our century, aroused by the passion for the real, has in all sorts of ways-and not just in politics-been the century of destruction. Yet we must immediately distinguish two orientations. There exists a passion for the real that is obsessed with identity: To grasp the real identity, to unmask its copies, to discredit its fakes. This passion can only be fulfilled as destruction. Herein lies its strength-after all, many things deserve to be destroyed. But there is another passion for the real, a differential and differentiating passion devoted to the construction of a minimal difference. Malevich's White on White is a proposition in thought that opposes minimal difference to maximal destruction. Destruction or subtraction? This is one of the century's central debates. And art provides the first guiding thread for our attempt to think this couple."

The Principles of Contemporary Art: Between Destruction and Subtraction, lecture by Alain Badiou Tuesday, February 6 @ 7:30pm @ "Los Angeles Times Theater" on Art Center's Hillside Campus :: 1700 Lida Street (Pasadena) Free and open to the public but seating is limited. More information, email Jason Smith

With the cold weather L.A. is certainly on my mind! This looks great and makes me sorry to be in NYC and missing it.


-Alain Badiou, The Century Image: poster created by MFA student Christopher Michlig - tip artblogging LA

Dangerous Curve(s)- Deborah Fisher

Here's my friendly plug for fellow Greenpoint artist and blogger Deborah Fisher. If you are in LA be sure and make the opening tomorrow at Dangerous Curve.[Feb.3]

apocalyptic sublimity V

1. apocalyptic sublimity I
2. apocalyptic sublimity II
3. apocalyptic sublimity III
4. apocalyptic sublimity IV
   

This conversation largely began for me with the film Children of Men and the book, The Road by Cormac McCarthy. These pop cultural sources seemed to be resonating with many others as evidenced in previous installments linked above or as Rough Theory has dubbed them - the cliff notes for the apocalypse! See also the Blogocalypse at Mostly Harmless (now that has to be a candidate for new word of the year!)

This conversation is starting to come full circle with K-Punk's excellent analysis of Children of Men. What is of special merit from that post for me are the following points regarding why the film feels so contemporary.

Firstly, the film is dominated by the sense that the damage has been done. The catastrophe is neither waiting down the road, nor has it already happened. Rather, it is being lived through. There is no punctual moment of disaster; the world doesn't end with a bang, it winks out, unravels, gradually falls apart. What caused the catastrophe to occur, who knows; its cause lies long in the past.

Secondly, Children of Men is a dystopia that is specific to late capitalism. If, as Wendy Brown has so persuasively argued, neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism can be made compatible only at the level of dreamwork, then Children of Men renders this oneiric suturing as a nightmare. In Children of Men, public space is abandoned, given over to uncollected garbage and to stalking animals. But, contrary to neo-liberal fantasy, there is no withering away of the State, only a stripping back of the State to its core military and police functions. In this world, as in ours, ultra-authoritarianism and Capital are by no means incompatible: internment camps and franchise coffee bars co-exist.

The third reason that Children of Men works is because of its take on cultural crisis. It's evident that the theme of sterility must be read metaphorically, as the displacement of another kind of anxiety. (If the sterility were to be taken literally, the film would be no more than a requiem for what Lee Edelman calls 'reproductive futurism', entirely in line with mainstream culture's pathos of fertility.) For me, this anxiety cries out to be read in cultural terms, and the question the film poses is: how long can a culture persist without the new? What happens if the young are no longer capable of producing surprises?

Children of Men connects with the suspicion that the end has already come, the thought that it could well be the case that the future harbours only reiteration and repermutation. Could it be, that is to say, that there are no breaks, no 'shocks of the new' to come? Such anxieties tend to result in a bi-polar oscillation: the 'weak messianic' hope that there must be something new on the way lapses into the morose conviction that nothing new can ever happen. The focus shifts from the Next Big Thing to the last big thing - how long ago did it happen and just how big was it?

Rough Theory also has linked to Joseph Kugelmass which has two posts adding to the subject:

The Poem and the Apocalypse, Part One: Destructive Fantasies
which revisits the cross-blog discussion, offers its own analysis of types of apocalyptic fantasy, and draws particular attention to the phenomenon Joe calls “thin slicing” - the instrumental and selective mobilisation of symbolically charged evidence directed to ideological ends, and predicated on the assumption that social connection necessarily requires agreement and sameness; and

The Poem and the Apocalypse, Part Two: Children of Men and Frank O'Hara's Personism.
which moves from an analysis of Cuaron’s Children of Men to an analysis of O’Hara’s Personism, in order to unfold a series of reflections on the potential for a vision of social connection that transcends instrumentalist “thin slicing”.

(*I want to read more on "thin-slicing")

Larval Subjects has returned from the Vegas lecture and posted Apocalypse Now Redux - Back from Las Vegas. Sinthome suggests that the emphasis on religious apocalyptic narratives (though timely) suffers from these tendencies:

1. In focusing on religious apocalyptic narratives, other pervasive forms of apocalyptic narrative are ignored, leaving unasked the question of just why these fantasies are so pervasive. It is remarkable that there are a wide variety of secular apocalyptic narratives, which suggests, from a psychoanalytic perspective, that apocalyptic narratives are something of a social symptom.

2. In focusing on religious apocalyptic narratives as a threat against which liberal democracy must defend, we foreclose questions of how apocalyptic narratives might function as a fantasy and a symptom responding to some fundamental conflict or antagonism characterizing contemporary social existence.

3. The focus on the political impact of apocalyptic narratives tends to cover over questions of why these narratives have become so pervasive at this particular juncture of history.

Sinthome admits that some of "these narratives could possibly be true in the non-analytic sense, but we must nonetheless account for how they have come to so pervasively occupy the contemporary mind."

Recalling the Lacanian theory of fantasy in mind, Sinthome hypothesizes that apocalyptic fantasies are a symptomatic response to the fact that “society does not exist.” Echoing Zizek, the point here is that the social field is constant with antagonisms and internal conflict and therefore can never be represented as harmonious in function - Lacan's "impossible-real".

continues:

In this regard, apocalyptic fantasies can be seen as theories of both why society is failed and fantasies as to how this failure, this antagonism, might be surmounted once and for all. They represent clothed or disguised utopian longings for a different order of social relations, such that this alternative order would only become possible were all of society to collapse. These visions simultaneously allow us to satisfy our aggressive animosity towards existing social relations, while imagining an alternative, while also not directly acknowledging our discontent with the conditions of capital (Jameson - it is almost always some outside that destroys the system, not direct militant engagement).

What is perhaps most interesting here is that these fantasies are organized precisely so as to preclude any engagement with directly transforming dissatisfying social conditions. Apocalypse always comes about through some sort of foreign, divine-like agency and instigates the collapse of the social field calling for people to rise up and heroically respond to these new social conditions and transform their social relations so as to produce a new people. The transformation of the social field is not to be undertaken by social subjects themselves.

Apocalypse could then be seen as the fantasy of revolution without revolution, of a foreign element that disrupts social life and creates ripe conditions for a reconfiguration of the social world, while allowing us to keep our hands clean of a violent revolutionary upheaval of society.

I will argue here - though I agree completely with Sinthome - that there is a new wrinkle to the political nature of apocalyptic desire. Traditionally apocalyptic desire/dread was situated with marginal groups whether they be religious or political in nature. Small bands - generally ostracized by the larger social apparatus and often fighting for physical/spiritual survival. What I think is a unique contemporary mutation is that the apocalyptic is now an orchestrated political pursuit/strategy. The transformation of the social field will still happen via the "deity" but it is the political, militaristic and commercial obligation of the "faithful" to act as agent for the divine reconfiguration. This being said the following technique is true too:

... by perpetually holding open the possibility that apocalypse might occur, that it is right around the corner, while also rendering social transformation the result of an aleatory event sans intentional human engagement, that might never occur. It thus renders social life bearable by holding out the ever present possibility of another social organization, while perpetually deferring the disappointment that might come from fulfilling that desire.

Two primary variants are cited: (paraphrased)

Rightwing - protecting the harmony of tradition. That there was a tradition which was noble but has been eroded by the foreign and the traitorous enemy within.

The Leftwing apocalyptic fantasies inevitably represent the antagonism that disrupts society as being self-reflexive, which is to say, as a result of the actions of that society itself. A drive to exceed limits, absolute profit/materiality, egoism.

I would add here that currently, the rightwing positions itself as victim and protector simultaneously. It is a paradox not easily understood but seems to work well in galvanizing populist support.

Sinthome:

What if this antagonism is constitutive of the social itself? If society does not exist then this is because it is subject to the logic of the boundary or limit, thereby perpetually encountering its own undoing and inner antagonism. Rightwing and leftwing apocalyptic fantasies are two ways of trying to heal this constitutive wound, or antagonism at the heart of the identical: The first by striving to destroy the other that would destroy itself (as the boundary would thus be erased), the second by seeing a fundamental disequilibrium inside the heart of the social itself and trying to surmount this antagonism which would, again, lead to its demise by leaving it without an identity to distinguish itself. Yet, as Hegel shows in demonstrating how this dialectic culminates in “bad infinity” or the endless repetition of an operation without reaching completion, this antagonism never resolves itself.

Apocalyptic fantasies in both their secular and religious, leftwing and rightwing forms, indicate, in a profound way, that the space of the present has withdrawn where social action is concerned, such that the space of the living present is no longer seen as a space where action and change are possible.

The question suggested by apocalyptic fantasies is that of how we might shift from being subjects of desire to subjects of drive, giving up on fantasies of total social transformation where antagonism might be eradicated once and for all, such that an actionable space of the present (to use a word drawn from the Administration) might be redeemed.

This is an excellent conclusion/question.The apocalyptic fantasy - though it makes its participants feel chosen at the expense of others - invariably acts to demobilize the "chosen" and dehumanize the "unchosen". It justifies the disasters surrounding one as prophesy/fate and therefore outside of the human ability to act in response to the unfolding disasters. In essence, the chosen are expected to wait for the "signal" and then be exited from the real horrors about to be enacted on their behalf. That is their reward for waiting and staying passively vigilant. The "signal" is the spectacle of revelation , that may never come but requires one to be at the ready - in essence, always at unease and awaiting the worst. The toll on the collective psyche is enormous.

The unique problem we face now with regard to the apocalyptic is that technology, religion as capitalism, and climate change have all converged at a time when daily life is truly unpredictable and volatile for the average citizen. Administrative law is a shamble and fails to protect the following features of a society: Civic, Economic, Safety, and Health. Basically every household below the $100,000 threshold is one accident away from personal catastrophe as are most urban and rural communities. There are no protectors at a government or private level. The gulf-coast illustrates this in dramatic fashion but it is also observable through the lens of tort law since 1980. This awareness of a lack of traditional safety nets leaves many of the weakest very open to narratives of apocalypse which readily provide victim status and revenge to an individual besieged by many micro-apocalypses of daily life. To simply look around is "proof" of a coming doom.

Assuming that the actionable space of the present has largely been voided by such accumulating forces as deregulation, global capital, - rather the practice of starving a govt. to purposefully fail - there also seems that we have a new politics of apocalypse. This is a politics of denial, an activism of obstinacy through ignorance and neglect. It denies the interiority and value of the "unchosen". This is a maximal politic - reserved for winners at the expense of losers, including the natural world.

Perhaps we need to reconsider the way we understand revolution as a key to why we increasingly rely on apocalyptic narratives to give us value through imaginary "other worlds".

THE END ;)


image: The "Doomsday Clock" which is currently set to 5 min. to midnight

Molly Ivins

One of the voices for common sense has passed.

apocalyptic sublimity [IV]

1. apocalyptic sublimity [I]
2. apocalyptic sublimity [II]
3. apocalyptic sublimity [III]

[C]ould not the omnipresence of apocalyptic fantasies in American culture be read as an indication that somehow we have "given way on our desire" or betrayed our desire at a fundamental social level? That is, these visions simultaneously allow us to satisfy our aggressive animosity towards existing social relations, while imagining an alternative (inevitably we always triumph in these scenerios, even if reduced to fundamentally primative living conditions... a fantasy in itself), while also not directly acknowledging our discontent with the conditions of capital (it is almost always some outside that destroys the system, not direct militant engagement). - Frederic Jameson

Yes, I am bringing you another installment! I think this quote by Fred Jameson really gets at something that is current. It's something that Chris Hedges has tapped into - the "Weimarization of the working class"

There has been, along with the creation of an American oligarchy, a steady Weimarization of the American working class. The top one percent of American households have more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. This figure alone should terrify all who care about our democracy. As Plutarch reminded us "an imbalance between the rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics."

Hedges also has yet another interview - at Salon.

In the beginning of the book, you write briefly about covering wars in Latin America, the Middle East and the Balkans. How did that shape the way you understand these social forces in America? What similarities do you see?

When I covered the war in the Balkans, there was always the canard that this was a war about ancient ethnic hatreds that was taken from Robert Kaplan's "Balkan Ghosts." That was not a war about ancient ethnic hatreds. It was a war that was fueled primarily by the economic collapse of Yugoslavia. Milosevic and Tudman, and to a lesser extent Izetbegovic, would not have been possible in a stable Yugoslavia.

When I first covered Hamas in 1988, it was a very marginal organization with very little power or reach. I watched Hamas grow. Although I came later to the Balkans, I had a good understanding of how Milosevic built his Serbian nationalist movement. These radical movements share a lot of ideological traits with the Christian right, including that cult of masculinity, that cult of power, rampant nationalism fused with religious chauvinism. I find a lot of parallels.

People have a very hard time believing the status quo of their existence, or the world around them, can ever change. There's a kind of psychological inability to accept how fragile open societies are. When I was in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, at the start of the war, I would meet with incredibly well-educated, multilingual Kosovar Albanian friends in the cafes. I would tell them that in the countryside there were armed groups of the Kosovo Liberation Army, who I'd met, and they would insist that the Kosovo Liberation Army didn't exist, that it was just a creation of the Serb police to justify repression.

You saw the same thing in the cafe society in Sarajevo on the eve of the war in Bosnia. Radovan Karadzic or even Milosevic were buffoonish figures to most Yugoslavs, and were therefore, especially among the educated elite, never taken seriously. There was a kind of blindness caused by their intellectual snobbery, their inability to understand what was happening. I think we have the same experience here. Those of us in New York, Boston, San Francisco or some of these urban pockets don't understand how radically changed our country is, don't understand the appeal of these buffoonish figures to tens of millions of Americans.

It adds to the discourse follwoing these main points that I think are prescient from the previous posts and bloggers.

1. Can we even imagine a world post - global capitalism?
2. Is our pre-occupation with the 'end' truly rooted in our "understood" failure as a society?
3. Have we passed a threshold without even realizing it on political and social levels?
4. Is there a conscious drive to destroy ourselves fueled in part by our obsession plot?
5. Is the way forward fighting for the trace hopes of aspirations past? (Zizek)

I think we have to really consider Zizek's parallax on the impossibility of the social itself. Rather "that the social is not one or the other (communitarian organic bonds versus collections of autonomous and self-determining individuals), but rather the very tension between these two conceptions of the social." I think Jameson's point from the qoute above also supports this notion of inbetween tensions - of a deep sense of failure and rage:
"[C]ould not the omnipresence of apocalyptic fantasies in American culture be read as an indication that somehow we have "given way on our desire" or betrayed our desire at a fundamental social level"

We all know that Apocalyptic mythology has always been around in virtually all cultures and all human traditions. In modern times, it plays a distinct role within politics (fascist) and taints most propaganda and discourse in various ways depending on the era. It was faithfully employed by the Nazis as an obvious example but even crops up in left-leaning concerns like climate change - although I think we can all concede that in the case of gloabl warming we are likely to be treated to some maximal consequences quite soon. Increasingly (it seems) apocalyptic thinking is an important part of much modern conflict, as a mechanism for galvanizing populist support. The examples are endless, ranging from Hamas, Christian Zionists or the messianic settler movement in Israel.

A recent commentor at I Cite brought a forward a great example of the political ramifications of apocalypticism. He notes the infamous Italian zealot Savonarola (not to mention English and American revolutionary periods) via PGA Pocock. "Pocock makes some interesting comments on how the apocalyptic changes one's relationship to time and how one sees time. For Pocock, what happened in Savonarolan Florence, for example, was that the apocalyptic message brought time down to earth--so to speak--giving the believers the idea that they had a direct role in the outcome of history. This opposed the Augustinian conception of time and the two kingdoms, since in that framework the two worlds did not intersect except at the end of time, which God was in control of and which humans had no role to play."

This active role is what played so well to the masses surviving the Weimar years and what I suspect is fueling the rise in Pentecostalism among the American Middle and Working classes (as one example). The Penetcostal church was begun at the turn of the 20th century in Topeka and/or Los Angeles. One unique feature was its integration of white and black followers - unheard of in 1906 - which defintely helped keep the faith on the margins until the 1950's.
Today it is growing rapidly and influencing other evangelical groups as more and more people are receiving the special gift of the holy spirit. The most recent being the Toronto Blessing. My point in going into detail here is that this particular brand of fundamentalism has growing appeal partly because of its focus on passion, special spritual gifts, and the ecstasy not only of God but community -erasing pain, class and race. In short average people have given up on modernism, science, and capital/caste. There is a parallel with the rise of the broader (social/political) evangelical movement and the shift of the American economy from manufacturing to a service based economy which has decimated the middle class through outsourcing and wage depression while simultaneously undermining the American Labor Union. The union provided a voice and communitty function that is largely missing from suburban life. As the power and influence of evangelicalism has risen, largely because its success at framing much of the social and political discourse through logocide, the quality of life for the average worker has plummeted. Only 8% of the working population has acces to a union. The lowest since the inception of labor. This imbalance is critical to quality of life issues and opens the door for alternative narratives for success. Consider that there are 70-100 million evangelicals in America alone- 200,000 churches. 84% of Americans except Jesus as God's Son, the same number believe they will face God at Judgement Day and 1/3 are expecting the Rapture any day now.

Larval Subjects has this to add recenty:

The central feature of apocalyptic narratives seems to be that they present the time of action as deferred, as if we are powerless in the present, unable to do anything now to transform our social conditions as the forces of capital are too strong to be resisted and fought against. The time of the now, of the present, has disappeared. Or, put otherwise, the present no longer appears as an actable space. Fundamentalist apocalyptic narratives become powerfully attractive under such conditions, as they promise the possibility of a post-apocalyptic world where these antagonisms are resolved and the disruption at the heart of the social is finally pacified. The problem, of course, is that in being seduced by these narratives, the followers are led to endorse a number of other downright frightening things at the level of policy... Policies that are often directly against their own self-interests...
missing from these discussions is the role played by the contemporary hegemony of the "discourse of the victim". One of the uncanny points of identity between both left and right is the primacy of victim discourses as the only authentic position from which to formulate an ethics and politics. Thus we have victimhood as minority status on the left, and the perceived persecution of Christians and white heterosexual males as the dominant trope on the right. One question worth asking is why politics must today take the form of a discourse of the victim. I haven't come up with any answers to this question, yet it does seem that "being-a-victim" confers one a minimal ontologically substantiality or identity in a world where identity has progressively been virtualized and rendered precarious by the collapse of the big Other.

Sinthome really hits it on target - the why, or rather central theme here is a victim narrative, which is used steadfastly in maintaining or renegotiating our apocalyptic dread/ectstasy fantasies. Consider this from scholar Robert O. Paxton (via Chris Hedges):

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

i'll close with that for tonight


painting: Frederic Church

the minimum wage

What is the price that the workers have to pay to get an increase? What is it about working men and women that you find so offensive?"

Umberto Eco: 14 ways of looking at a Blackshirt

Eternal Fascism:
Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt

By Umberto Eco

In spite of some fuzziness regarding the difference between various historical forms of fascism, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.

* * *

1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition.

Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism. Not only was it typical of counterrevolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution, but is was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism. In the Mediterranean basin, people of different religions (most of the faiths indulgently accepted by the Roman pantheon) started dreaming of a revelation received at the dawn of human history. This revelation, according to the traditionalist mystique, had remained for a long time concealed under the veil of forgotten languages -- in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the Celtic runes, in the scrolls of the little-known religions of Asia.

This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, "the combination of different forms of belief or practice;" such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and although they seem to say different or incompatible things, they all are nevertheless alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth.

As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth already has been spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.

If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine, who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge -- that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.

2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism.

Both Fascists and Nazis worshipped technology, while traditionalist thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an ideology based upon blood and earth (Blut und Boden). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life. The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.

3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake.

Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Hermann Goering's fondness for a phrase from a Hanns Johst play ("When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun") to the frequent use of such expressions as "degenerate intellectuals," "eggheads," "effete snobs," and "universities are nests of reds." The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.

4. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism.

In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.

5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity.

Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.

6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration.

That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old "proletarians" are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.

7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country.

This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the United States, a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson's The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others.

8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies.

When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.

9. For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.

Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such "final solutions" implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament.

10. Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak.

Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people in the world, the members or the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. In fact, the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler.

11. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero.

In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Spanish Falangists was Viva la Muerte ("Long Live Death!"). In nonfascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.

12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters.

This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons -- doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.

13. Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say.

In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view -- one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.

Because of its qualitative populism, Ur-Fascism must be against "rotten" parliamentary governments. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism.

14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.

Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, as the official language of what he called Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning. But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show.

* * *

Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier for us if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, "I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Blackshirts to parade again in the Italian squares." Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances — every day, in every part of the world. Franklin Roosevelt's words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: "If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land." Freedom and liberation are an unending task.

Umberto Eco (c) 1995


via themodernword

Sam Harris vs. Andrew Sullivan

If you don't know Sam Harris - you should. Get a copy of The End of Faith and see if you aren't altered in some substantial ways. It is a fascinating and impeccably argued book about the nature of faith. If you are a believer - you may get rattled by it. That cage rattling is exactly what is happening in a discussion, rather smackdown between Harris and Andrew Sullivan over at beliefnet. When it comes to critique - Harris is a force. Here's a sample:

Contrary to your allegation, I do not "disdain" religious moderates. I do, however, disdain bad ideas and bad arguments--which, I'm afraid, you have begun to manufacture in earnest. I'd like to point out that you have not rebutted any of the substantial challenges I made in my last post. Rather, you have gone on to make other points, most of which I find unsurprising and irrelevant to the case I have made against religious faith. For instance, you claim that many fundamentalists are tolerant of dissent and capable of friendship with you despite their dogmatic views about sex. You also remind me that many devoutly religious people do good things on the basis of their religious beliefs. I do not doubt either of these propositions. You could catalogue such facts until the end of time, and they would not begin to suggest that God actually exists, or that the Bible is his Word, or that his Son came to earth in the person of Jesus to redeem our sins. I have no doubt that there are millions of nice Mormons who are likewise tolerant of dissent and perfectly cordial toward homosexuals. Does this, in your view, even slightly increase the probability that the Book of Mormon was delivered on golden plates to Joseph Smith Jr. (that very randy and unscrupulous dowser) by the angel Moroni? Do all the good Muslims in the world lend credence to the claim that Muhammad flew to heaven on a winged horse? Do all the good pagans throughout history suggest that Mt. Olympus was ever teeming with invisible gods? As I have argued elsewhere, the alleged usefulness of religion--the fact that it sometimes gets people to do very good things indeed--is not an argument for its truth. And, needless to say, the usefulness of religion can be disputed, as I have done in both my books. As you may know, I've argued that religion gets people to do good things for bad reasons, when good reasons are actually available; I have also argued that it rather often gets people to do very bad things that they would not otherwise do. On the subject of doing good, I ask you, which is more moral, helping people purely out of concern for their suffering, or helping them because you think God wants you to do it? Personally, I'd much prefer that my children acquire the former sensibility. On the subject of doing bad: there are, at this very moment, perfectly ordinary Shia and Sunni Muslims drilling holes into each other's brains with power tools in the suburbs of Baghdad. What are the chances they would be doing this without the "benefit" of their incompatible religious identities?

Ouch! do take the time to read the whole thing

via Larval Subjects

Alexey Titarenko

lens culture has a conversation with Russian photographer -Alexey Titarenko. I'm new to the artist and these are really stunning images. Like a contemporary Etienne Jules Marey mired in the masses of a changing Russia. - more pics at artnet.

great tip by wood s lot

artist beach digs

Affordable housing for artists ... near the beach! Saw this over at Lisa Hunter's site:

Patchogue, Long Island, is being considered for an affordable housing project for artists, to be developed by Artspace. But first, Artspace needs to conduct a survey of regional artists, so the village administrators are asking artists from NYC, Long Island, and Connecticut to participate. If you're interested, please send your contact information to:

Marian H. Russo, Esq.
Executive Director, CDA
Incorporated Village of Patchogue
www.patchoguevillage.org
mrusso@patchoguevillage.org


very intriguing.....

State of the Union - the Words

Here's a very cool chart on the word choice within the State of the Union Address over the last few years. Over 34,000 words uttered by the decider. See here at the NY Times.

caught up in the spirit

"I have a soft spot in my heart for literalists because I used to be one," he said in the film. "There's nothing wrong with a fifth-grade understanding of God [or the Bible], as long as you're in the fifth grade." - Rev. Laurence Keene

The past weeks have seen more attention (so it seems) and substantial dialogue on the religious right. Much is do in part to the new Chris Hedges book and also the interview with Jim Wallis.

Maud Newton has a heartfelt and darkly humorous "testimonial" on Jesus Camp -the embattled evangelical summer camp for kids which has been accused of brainwashing.

Jodi Dean speaks on the film Hell House which follows a local church's efforts to gain converts using "alternative" theater during Halloween. She describes the believers as loving and earnest - something that shouldn't be lost upon observers. This human diminsion is real and we have to come to terms as to why people are turning increasingly to carismatic faiths and cultist fantasies of escape, Utopia and of course revenge. The world is evil and the believers are the beleagured weathering the constant venom of that world. All zealousy is based on some form of this. Even Scientology places itself in opposition to modernity through the filter of psychiatry.

Seemingly right on cue there is another piece with Chris Hedges, this time at alternet.

The Radical Christian Right Is Built on Suburban Despair.

The engine that drives the radical Christian Right in the United States, the most dangerous mass movement in American history, is not religiosity, but despair. It is a movement built on the growing personal and economic despair of tens of millions of Americans, who watched helplessly as their communities were plunged into poverty by the flight of manufacturing jobs, their families and neighborhoods torn apart by neglect and indifference, and who eventually lost hope that America was a place where they had a future.
This despair crosses economic boundaries, of course, enveloping many in the middle class who live trapped in huge, soulless exurbs where, lacking any form of community rituals or centers, they also feel deeply isolated, vulnerable and lonely. Those in despair are the most easily manipulated by demagogues, who promise a fantastic utopia, whether it is a worker's paradise, fraternite-egalite-liberte, or the second coming of Jesus Christ. Those in despair search desperately for a solution, the warm embrace of a community to replace the one they lost, a sense of purpose and meaning in life, the assurance they are protected, loved and worthwhile.

There has been, along with the creation of an American oligarchy, a steady Weimarization of the American working class. The top one percent of American households have more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. This figure alone should terrify all who care about our democracy. As Plutarch reminded us "an imbalance between the rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics."

Believers, of course, clinging to this magical belief, which is a bizarre form of spiritual Darwinism, will be raptured upwards while the rest of us will be tormented with horrors by a warrior Christ and finally extinguished. This obsession with apocalyptic violence is an obsession with revenge. It is what the world, and we who still believe it is worth saving, deserve.

Now consider that millions are believing that position in some form or another - not in refugee camps but at the local strip mall.


* Also I'm sort of surprised I'm only coming to this website now but the Evangelical Right is a great place to catch up on all things theocratic.


image: HLIB

American Tabloid: Obama Smear gains force

We all knew this was coming. It started innocently enough a couple of weeks back. Now the full court press is on. It's as if the KKK itself is distributing 'litrature' about the new manchurian candidate Barack Hussein Obama! The infiltrator seeking to undermine a Christian nation with his evil moslem ambitions. James Elroy couldn't have scripted it better - it's right out of American Tabloid! The similarities to the 2000 South Carolina whisper campaign against John McCain are startlingly. You remember that right? Karl Rove and Ralph Reed depicting McCain as a brainwashed agent of the Viet-Cong, with his illegitimate children, drug addled wife and plans for a 'queer' army? It would be laughable if it wasn't true and if it hadn't actually SWAYED voters.

Well we have a new whisper campaign being spread by Glenn Beck, NY Post, and generated by Debbie Schlussel. It appears the roots of this are with Insight Magazine which is part of the Washington Times 'empire' owned and operated by the $billion dollar donor to the GOP - the grand master himself, your favorite Messiah - Rev. Sun Myung Moon!

Wake the Hell up America.

image: Fox News via Seventh Sense