Squid and sprout stir-fry
My sister sent me a recipe:
Large handful of sprouts, sliced very small
Small handful of prawns (defrosted frozen ones are fine)
1 small red onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed (I know, I know, it doesn’t sound enough)
2 x 1 inch chunks of preserved ginger in syrup, chopped fairly small (or you could use a bit less fresh ginger and a spoon of honey, I suppose, but the preserved stuff is really good)
Juice of half a lime
Sesame oil and soy sauce
Fry sprouts and onion in normal veg oil until nearly done. Add prawns, ginger, garlic, sesame oil and soy sauce and fry for another few mins. Then add lime juice for last min or so.
I made it last night, and very nice it was too. Except, the fresh shrimp at the fish counter looked a little pricey, particular when compared to the squid at $2 a lb. However, it may have been a false economy, as I hadn’t realized just how much of a squid is taken up with horrible squishy innards that you have to remove. 5 squids or something, just for one portion. Before and after:
The short answer is, almost nothing
Leila asks in the comments below what I know about objet petit a, and I thought I’d reply in a post in the hope that someone reading this with some significant Lacan knowledge will see it and give us the full run-down on objet petit a. I’ve never read any Lacan, so all I know is what I’ve stuck together from bits of Žižek, which is to say, the basics (and possibly a garbled version of those).
Anyway, I think objet petit a stands for the structural role of that which is “really” desired when you get what you think you want and realize that it wasn’t what you really wanted. I say “structural role”, because Lacan argues that this isn’t just a contingent mistake that people sometimes make, but a general feature of desire. So, whenever we desire any particular, there is always that sense of something missing in what we think we desire; we might try and fill that lack by saying we desire some other particular thing, but that new object will itself be lacking; objet petit a is the name for this generalized lack.
I think this is connected with Lacan’s account of how the subject is formed. Before we can use language, we just desire in general. As soon as we start using language, we are able to articulate specific desires, but this means that we are always worried that our desire is too specific, and doesn’t capture the original complete satisfaction involved in our pre-linguistic desire. Objet petit a is a symbol for this desired thing that can’t be put into words. As I understand it, this then becomes important because how one deals with this unattainable object of desire is what distinguishes the different discourses (the master, the university, the pervert, and there’s one other I can’t remember); but I don’t really know how that actually works out.
Don’t know how much that helps; hopefully, as I say, somebody reading this can explain more (there’s also an awesomely unhelpful wikipedia page).
But
At some point, I think we need a rigorous exploration of Žižekian logic, with it’s central connective “but,” that is, arguments of the form “P, but is it not in fact the case that not P.” An example that occoured to me today was, “It is generally claimed that America is excessively religious, but is it not in fact the case that America is not religious enough.” Look at creationism: the problem is not the religiousity of belief in creation, but the scientism of thinking that Genesis is literally, scientifically, true. This is a problem with evangelical Christianity more generally: the reduction of a narrative tradition that posits a complex relation between speech and reality (analogy, metaphor, metonymy) to truth-functional assertions. It’s bad theology. Far from being excessively religious, fundamentalist Christians do not even know what religion is. There are few things to like about the Catholic church or the current Pope, but the fact that he, like his predecessors, has a training in philosophy reminds us that historically the church has taken reasoned argument seriously (compare Pat Robertson, who says that his time at university “centered around lovely young ladies who attended the nearby girls schools”). Catholicism, being commited to the compatability of scripture and reason, is aware that evolutionary theory is not simply incompatible with religion.
This is analogous to a point I’ve made before about conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories which posit a driving force behind the supposed seats of power are a narrative form of making a point which is entirely correct (this driving force being capitalism as a system). The problem comes when this narrative is read not as a metaphor which reveals a structure present in capitalism, but as a descriptive account which is directly, factually true; conspiracy theorists becomeobsessed with finding evidence, no matter how spurious and unconvincing. See, for instance, this wild empiricism disguised as science (as Badiou said in a different context), which is completely typical of 9/11 conspiracy theories. A barrage of facts, unconnected or sometimes mutually contradictory, are not patiently assembled into a theory which could challenge the official account of 9/11. Instead, unexplained facts are haphazardly amassed in the hope that the sheer weight will force a resolution in terms of “conspiracy.” The argument from ignorance here is the same one that supports Intelligent Design.
Where are the reds?
I think I’ve mentioned before that I like Will & Grace for its charmingly archaic notion of the bohemian: gay men, Jews, and rich junkies. But of course there’s something missing from this otherwise pleasingly 1930s picture: where are the communists? I wonder what form of political action would best put pressure on NBC to ensure the introduction of a humorously and inoffensively stereotypical commie in the next season?
In other news, I have a song on my computer by Fefe Dobson, who appears to be the black, goth Avril, and as good as that sounds. I haven’t really interrogated why I’m so well-disposed to this recent trend in pop-soft-rock. I mean, objectively, Fefe Dobson sounds a great deal like the fucking Red Hot Chilli Peppers, but somehow recontextualizing that within a pop context sounds great. I wonder where I got the MP3 from? I suspect Dirrrty Pop should take the credit. It’s a great blog, anyway, recently combining Girls Aloud and the Spice Girls with questionable readings of Nietzsche.
Science teachers against science
This may be misleading quotation by the Australian, but this seems like a remarkably dumb way to defend science:
Perth-based senior science teacher Marko Vojkovic said the foundations of science were not being properly laid in many secondary schools.
“Last time I checked, Newton’s theories of motion hadn’t changed, the periodic table hasn’t changed, the basic atomic theory hasn’t changed and I don’t think it’s going to either,” he said.
A “senior science teacher” whose knowledge of science appears to stop slightly short of the science that is taught in schools. His three unchanging truths were questioned by the very basic relativity, inorganic chemistry and quantum mechanics, respectively, that I learned at school.
Beyond political satire
Tom Lehrer did say that “the awarding of the [Nobel peace] prize to Kissinger made political satire obsolete”. We had to wait for the beginning of the 21st century to see a better show.
It seems that while I was away from my terminal, George Galloway, leader of the Respect Coalition, figurehead of the international anti-war movement, and MP for Bethnal Green & Bow, is taking part in the latest Celebrity Big Brother show. While he is being demolished outside, by the mainstream press, by pariementary attendance and cost revelations, but also (and most amusingly) radical circles, in the show he pretended to be a cat and drank milk out of Countess Rula’s hand (video here — god bless google).
At this point I would love to provide some political critique, or even crack a clever joke. But this situation is such a parody of itself that it has left me speechless.
“Some revolution is gonna happen today”: Reflections on Billie and Agamben
I forgot to mention another thing I like about “Because We Want To,” which is the notion, in the line I quoted, of “some revolution.” There are two, possibly related, things to like about the phrase. One is its grammatical structure, implying as it does that revolution is a bulk noun, omnipresent like water or available by the yard like cloth, rather than being compressed into one time or space. The other is the connection to Agamben’s idea of the quodlibet (translated “whatever”), “some revolution” in the sense of revolution with no predetermined content, revolution as inexhaustible potential. On which, see this article on Agamben; I suspect correcting well-meaning misreadings of Agamben will soon become a full-time job, and this article will be a great help in doing that.
“Bearmen and soundboys: Race, monstrosity and gender in grime”
Osama bin Logan’s New Year mix is pretty incredible, essential listening. Features, among other things, Bearman’s marvelous track based around “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic.” There are dissertations to be written on the line: “Brown fur, brown skin, I’m a big man.”
Love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal
I’m not entirely sure I get Richard Rorty’s article on academic freedom (via). What he seems to be saying is, it’s vitally important that liberal humanist intellectuals be free to stir up the presuppositions of their students, on the condition that this has absolutely no effect beyond the classroom.
And, of course, Žižek should have the last word:
Richard Rorty, otherwise my good friend, if there ever was an honest liberal I think it’s Richard Rorty. Of course I disagree with him, of course when we take power he will go to gulag, but I will provide for him a nice cell with a double ration of meat every day, and so on.
“Some revolution is gonna happen today”: Reflections on Billie and Benjamin
The apparently lovely Billie Piper managed to survive appearing on the repulsive Friday Night Project, in part because, as an actor, she was able to play the part of a celebrity guest, preferable, in the circumstances, to actually being one. Her music made only the briefest of appearances; unfortunate, but not surprising.
“Because We Want To” [MP3], though, is mildly amazing. A pop song from not really all that long ago, but how completely incomprehensible it sounds. Perhaps it is just old enough to have become defamiliarized, giving what is still recognizibly and obviously (banally) a pop song the faint air of the uncanny. Two steps backward in pop history, before Xenomania and Richard X’s modernism, just prior to the Swedish hegemony heralded by “Baby One More Time.” What is uncanny, then, is how unfamiliar the landscape is when we take these two short steps: we get pre-Timbaland R&B modulated by post-acid house production.
As an aside, the complete dependence of British pop since the late ’80s on acid house/hardcore seems to have gone largely unremarked; the best example, of course, are Girls Aloud, whose latest album possibly marks pop’s complete emancipation from rock and roll. Hence the confusion of so many over the structure of GA’s songs; “there’s no chorus”: well, these aren’t verse-chorus-verse rock songs, they’re dance tracks with builds and breaks and repeats (the other complaint about the new tracks is that they fade out in arbitrary places; but of course one of the significant features of dance records is that they are plateaus, they don’t come to a climax or conclusion, there’s never any reason for them to stop). I’d like to try and make an argument that this carries over into GA’s lyrical and affective content, which rejects the interiority characteristic of rock music (Girls Aloud don’t do love songs).
Interesting that this understanding of the present arises out of discussing the past, and perhaps that’s the (Benjaminian) point. The experience of the strangeness of the past can lead us to historicism, to the view that everything has its right time in the unfolding of history (the past is incomprehensible except inasmuch as it explains the present). But when we experience precisely the same strangeness in the present, or what we had taken to be the present, we come closer to Benjamin’s understanding of historical materialism, of the present as radically contingent, not a result of history, but the moment in which history is produced. Or, as Sartre puts it:
Thus the day of magicians and fetishes will end; you will have to fight, or rot in concentration camps. This is the end of the dialectic; you condemn this war but do not yet dare to declare yourselves to be on the side of the Algerian fighters; never fear, you can count on the settlers and the hired soldiers; they’ll make you take the plunge. Then, perhaps, when your back is to the wall, you will let loose at last that new violence which is raised up in you by old, oft-repeated crimes. But, as they say, that’s another story: the history of mankind. The time is drawing near, I am sure, when we will join the ranks of those who make it.
