Serendipity (or, Marx on Westlife)
“Capital as such,� says Marx in the Grundrisse, “creates a specific surplus value because it cannot create an infinite one all at once; but it is the constant movement to create more of the same.� As if by magic, what should come on the radio as I read this but Westlife’s new song, a transparent reworking of ‘Back for good’. What better proof do we need of the continuing validity of Marx’s writings than his ability to predict the charts 147 years in advance?
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Silly answers
Brian Weatherson has an interesting post taking off from Kendal Walton’s analysis of fiction. Walton’s theory of ‘mimesis as make believe’ suggests that we should understand works of representative art as making various truth claims, which happen to be about a fictional world rather than the real world. Weatherson raises a problem to do with situations where the work seems to be making a claim which isn’t supposed to be true of the fictional world (for example, Othello is written in blank verse, but Othello does not speak in blank verse, or indeed in English). Weatherson’s solution is to propose that the blank verse is not, in fact, supposed to make any claim about the fictional world of Othello, but instead to be understood as a convention of the representation chosen by Shakespeare.
I’m sure Weatherson’s solution is right. Indeed, it was precisely these kinds of cases, and the (to me) obviousness of this kind of solution, that made me less than impressed with Walton’s book when I first read it. If you’re going to appeal to a theory of conventional representations to explain artworks, what work is the theory of fictions actually doing? The more work our theory of representations is doing, the less determinate our fictional world is going to be (what is true of the fictional world of Macbeth given all the diverse performances; how does this change depending on whether or not we consider Throne of blood as an adaptation or not?). The interesting thing about mimesis, it seems to me, is the specific way the representation is accomplished, not what is being represented. I seem to recall Derek Matravers having written something about this – the internet suggests that it might be ‘Truth in Fiction: A Reply to New’ in The journal of aesthetics and art criticism, vol. 55.
This general popularity of Walton’s theory among analytic aestheticians always struck me as a symptomatic of a problem in that field, in that most of it’s practitioners seem to have little or no interest in actual art or art criticism (another example would be Noel Carroll’s curious misreadings of contemporary films – his piece on the immorality of Pulp Fiction is a case in point). There are honourable exceptions of course, including the aforementioned Derek Matravers, Arthur Danto, or Roger Scruton. However, the current state of analytic aesthetics reminds me a lot of the technically excellent, highly abstract, and ultimately largely irrelevant philosophy of science done before Kuhn.
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The fucking Second International all over again
So, I was going to write something about how being part of the pro-war left leads to endorsing strange and repugnant right-wing positions. But I’m too enraged to actually make an argument, and anyway, I think it’s a case of, if you have to ask, you’ll never know. Anyone who can link approvingly to this interview with Christopher Hitchens just Doesn’t Fucking Get It. I’m with Vyshinsky here – let’s shoot the pro-war left like the mad dogs they are (Ken MacLeod is as enraged as I am, but more coherent with it).
I’ve just seen that Norman Geras has linked to this post. Curses; I’d been hoping he wouldn’t notice it, ever since Chris Brooke pointed out what what I’d actually written meant (as opposed to what I had intended). There is, somewhere, a genuine point in the above, and I think it’s this: that certain arguments adduced in favour of the Iraq war by supporters on the left represent such a massive missunderstanding of the contemporary political landscape that attempting to argue with them would involve as large a mutual translation of ideologies as arguing with groups who are radically opposed to the left, something which is different from (and, I suspect, generally less fruitful than) a fraternal discussion amongst those who share significant premises.
But there is a larger question of tone here, as well. Norman Geras assumes too quickly, I think, that a blog post is a straightforward ‘serious’ use of language (to use Austin’s term); that because I post saying that I am enraged, I mean to communicate that I am, in fact, enraged. Now, he uses his blog in precisely such a way, and his posts are, as a rule, extended, clearly carefully worked out statements of or enquiries into some position or other. And he’s very good at it; however, that’s not how I use this site. Rather, posts here generally attempt to crystalise a particular element of what I happen to be thinking at any particular time (I don’t think this is unusual – at least half of the blogs in my list of links do the same).
So Norman Geras is wrong to interpret this post as having advocated that the pro-war left should be shot like mad dogs, and also wrong to interpret either this post, or my comment at the Virtual Stoa, as containing arguments that might establish the correctness of such a course of action. What struck me (and still strikes me) as interesting enough to have been worth noting in this post is the emotional response I have, on one level, to certain debates among the left. I’m surprised by the element of fierceness in my reaction, and I wonder if it suggests that there were, largely unrealised until the Iraq war, different understandings within the left so severe as to make speaking of ‘the left’ essentially meaningless. A serious and interesting question, but not one my post was supposed to be an answer to, but merely to raise. I think this could be understood from reading the rest of this site; but I suppose it is a little much to ask people to engage in careful contextual considerations while apparently threatening to shoot them like mad dogs.
While we discuss issues of seriousness, I’m not sure if Norman is serious about his suggestion of discussing such things over a beer, but I rather hope he is, and that the opportunity arises one day, as I would like to talk to him about Marxism and morality (when I’ve finished the Grundrisse and re-read his book on the subject); I suspect the divisions on the left reside, somehere, within questions of ethics. At that level of abstraction, too, we might be able to find enough common ground to figure out a left wing that supporters and opponents of the war in Iraq can comfortably (or not too uncomfortably) be on. And I promise to make no attempt to shoot him like a mad dog.
Having mulled this over some more, I’m feeling rather bemused and a tiny bit belligerent (my favourite combination of emotions). I’m really not at all sure what the point of Norman’s post was. He quotes this post and makes some remarks based on (incorrectly, but not unreasonably) interpreting my linking to a post on his blog as a claim on my part that he endorses a particular position and should therefore be shot like a mad dog. He then goes on to paraphrase a comment of mine to a post at The Virtual Stoa, while ignoring the most germane point (my explanation that I had not intended my link to be interpreted in the way Chris Brooke had interpreted it, and in which Norman now interprets it) and looking in the comment for further argument vis-a-vis shooting him like a mad dog, which, I would have thought, it’s farily obvious the comment wasn’t intended to supply (the comment being a clarification of the connections between the different elements of my post, not an amplification of the position I was toying with). So, beyond the fact that Norman objects to people advocating that he be shot, I’m not clear as to what anyone it supposed to learn from the exchange.
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Situational and/or romantic
Regarding a question raised by Norman Geras, I think I would indeed advocate that Henry Kissinger be pushed out of a helicopter ironically.
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Today is Grey Tuesday
Find out why this site is gray, download one of the tracks from me, or download all of them from elsewhere.
Not Gray Tuesday, so not gray anymore. But you can still download the tracks – Jäy-Z vs. The Beatles is worth having even non-political reasons, too.
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Lesbians and Lenin, together at last
As you are no doubt aware, tATu have been taking part in a Russian reality TV show. And some generous Russian tATu fans have been transcribing and translating episodes. Now, what should happen while Lena Katina is choosing clothes for a photoshoot?
Lena: No, we want something very simple, the simpler the better.
Girl next to her: Yes…
Guy: It’s a very simple thing.
Lena: You know it’s like: “the worse, the better�.
Furthermore, a Russian news organisation describes relations between tATu and their manager as “neither peace, nor war.�
Is this a general feature of Russian discourse? Have Bolshevik slogans entered the language? I do hope so.
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The Tweenies, Nietzsche, whining, etc.
I was watching the Tweenies the other day (for reasons to be explained in a later post), and I Had Me A Revelation (to quote Elvis). My favourite Tweenie is (of course) Milo, and I can explain why by mentioning the episode where Milo eats too many sweets and gets sick. The key point is that Milo doesn’t learn his lesson – he’s quite happy to eat too many sweets and make himself ill, because he likes eating sweets.
This was not The Revelation. It occoured to me that I like Tracy Barlow off of Coronation Street for exactly the same reason – she regularly does crazy shit that fucks up her life, but she carries on metaphorically eating too many sweets, because she likes the metaphorical sweets.
That, needless to say, was not the revelation either. The revelation, such as it was, was that Milo is completely happy, and Tracy is desparately unhappy, and that this is almost entirely irrelevant. As Nietzsche says, “man does not want to be happy; only the Englishman does.� The important thing is not the happiness or the unhappiness but the attitude to it. To bring in more Nietzsche, Tracy epitomises precisely the pessimism of strength, “an intellectual inclination for what in existence is hard, dreadful, angry, and problematic, emerging from what is healthy, from overflowing well being, from living existence to the full.� Tracy is unhappy, and her unhappiness is so endearing, because she has “a way of suffering from the very fullness of life.� Milo, of course, like Zarathustra, represents the optimism of strength, the noble self-confidence which is entirely sure of its pleasures and happy to undergo suffering while willing an eternal recurrence of the same (in Milo’s case, more sweets).
On the flipside, of course, there is an optimism of weakness, exemplified by Socrates and, in our own day, by Panglossian marxists (the certainty of revolution to come which is, of course, just a disguised form of despair) and a pessimism of weakness, perhaps examplified by a friend of my parents, currently living in Thetford (which, if it weren’t in the middle of a very nice forest, might be the most unpleasent place in the country), who appears to have no way of engaging with the world but by complaining, particularly, taking the pessimism of weakness to its highest form, complaining about other people complaining. A completely impotent and, frankly, depressing state for anyone to be in, but it does, perhaps have the shadow of a positive side, as it makes me wonder: is there a bitchiness of strength?
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“You non-dialectical FUCKS!�
Redlibertad, from the tremendous (but possibly defunct) road-journal-cum-blog Communist As Fuck, and the ongoing, if not quite as tremendous, Red Anarchist Action Network has a great post on the US elections. Probably the only thing you need to read on the subject, although I, like everyone else, will follow it to its car-crash like conclusion.
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I like this meme
Start up your MP3 player, set it on random, and write down the first fifteen songs it plays:
- Kelis – ‘Young, fresh ’n’ new’.
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Backyard Dog – ‘Baddest ruffest’. (I’d completely forgotten I had this. It is, obviously, great)
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The Darkness – ‘I believe in a thing called love’. (Ouch)
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NWA – ‘Fuck the police’.
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Kylie Minogue – ‘Can’t get you out of my head (Soulwax remix)’.
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The Diff’rent Strokes – ‘Hotel Yorba’.(Recorded off John Peel)
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tATu – ‘Nas ne dogoniat’. (Not the best Russian tATu track, it must be said. ‘Robot’ is much better)
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Ms Dynamite – ‘Dynamite’.
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Mary J. Blige – ‘Family affair’.
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Dr Dre – ‘Bad intentions’.
- Mel and Kim – ‘Respectable’.
- SWV – ‘Right here’. (The best bit of ‘Human nature’ without the fat)
- Lucille Bogan – ‘Shave ’em dry’. (AudioGalaxy used to run occassional features to encourage you to pirate more stuff. This was from a piece about unexpectedly filthy old records, along with a song called ‘The rotten cocksucker’s ball’. “I’ve got something between my legs that’d make a dead man come,� indeed)
- BBC Radio – ‘The Lord of the rings’. (I was hoping one of the various left-wing intellectual radio shows I’d downloaded would show up – Slavoj Žižek, Michael Hardt, or at least Naomi Klein. But no such luck)
- Beyoncé – ‘Crazy in love’. (Crushingly obvious, but great, and probably a fitting end to the list)
Not as exciting a list as I’d hoped, although probably fair enough as a sample of my musical taste. I think I’ll leave my MP3 player on random, as it’s unearthing stuff I’d completely forgotten about (Artful Dodger featuring Mel Blatt, anyone?).
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