Footnote

"We're here," said Kurt Vonnegut, "to help each other get through this thing. Whatever it is." Well, yes, and whoever we may be. What "it" is varies with who we are supposed to help "get through" it. As the editors of Octopus long ago noted, our task may in fact be to, as Jerome Rothenberg put it, "take a squad out to the woods/& beat them." Whoever they are.

Hugo Chavez

"They are paying us back with cows!"

My sympathies lie with the Bolivarian revolution, I confess. I don't have much of an argument, but do please note the way Hugo Chavez says the word "cows" at 3:05 in this clip.

The Kant of Passion

I just like the way that sounds.

Brief Note on Dictatorship

It does not seem obvious to me that the first or even most important political task that faces the citizen of a nation that happens to be a dictatorship is that of bringing about a democratic form of rule. It strikes me as perfectly plausible that such a citizen may pursue any number of fully political objectives within the framework of a dictatorial system. The freedom available within the dictarship may be greater than that available wihtin the most likely democratic configuration.

This idea can also be applied in foreign policy contexts. Why do we suppose that the citizens of dictatorships would prefer a war of liberation to their current system of rule?

Democracy and Dictatorship

Like most people, my immediate reaction to Pound's support for fascism was to let it count against the former. My "kulchural studies", however, have led me in another direction. At this point, I am willing to let Pound's support for fascism count in favour of the latter. As always, I want to emphasize that I'm exploring a line of thinking. My mind is by no means made up.

My topic this morning is dictatorship. In Pound's "ABC of Economics", there is a section headed "Dictatorship as a Sign of Intelligence". Here is a striking example of something that was possible to say in 1933 that is virtually nonsense today. All the more reason to try to understand what he was saying.

"The best system of government, economically speaking, is that which best balances [products, wants and needs, transportation, and money], be it republic, monarchy, or soviet or dictatorship" (SP, p. 231). The spirit of this neutral-sounding "be it" can be found throughout Pound's pre-WWII writings. Pound, like Lewis, sees democracy as one possible form of government and dictatorship as another. Neither are to be judged on principle, but in practice.

Today we have grown used to dismissing "dictators" as illegimate rulers of nations. And yet we might find ourselves agreeing also with Mussolini's statement, quoted by Pound: "We are tired of a government in which there is no responsible person having a hind name, a front name and an address" (SP, p. 231).

It seems to me that democracies and dictatorships differ, in principle, only in the form that resistance to the state is supposed to take. Depending on who happens to be in power, citizens may have much greater freedom in a dictatorship than in a democracy. But while citizens of a democracy are expected to express their discontent mainly at the polls, in the press, in various forms of "demonstration", the citizens of a dictatorship (lacking such means of expression) must register their disapproval by direct disobedience.

That is, dictators are expected to coerce their citizens to act in accordance with their will, while the democratic populace is expected to acknowledge the legitimacy of the government in general, do as it is told (while objecting in word only), and replace the government at the next possible convenience. The two forms of government, then, differ mainly in the context they establish for "the art of being ruled" (Lewis's term).

Kindred Spirits

In 1927, Buckminister Fuller was bankrupt and his wife had just given birth:

With no job and a new baby to support, Fuller became depressed. One day, he was walking by Lake Michigan, thinking about, in his words, "Buckminster Fuller—life or death," when he found himself suspended several feet above the ground, surrounded by sparkling light. Time seemed to stand still, and a voice spoke to him. "You do not have the right to eliminate yourself," it said. "You do not belong to you. You belong to Universe." (In Fuller’s idiosyncratic English, "universe"—capitalized—is never preceded by the definite article.) It was at this point, according to Fuller, that he decided to embark on his "lifelong experiment." The experiment's aim was nothing less than determining "what, if anything," an individual could do "on behalf of all humanity." For this study, Fuller would serve both as the researcher and as the object of inquiry.

Reading this in Elizabeth Kolbert's illuminating piece in the current issue of the New Yorker (June 9 & 16, 2008, p. 67), I was immediately reminded of Borges's "capsule biography" of Benedetto Croce:

In 1883, an earthquake that lasted ninety seconds shook the south of Italy. In that earthquake, he lost his parents and his sister; he himself was buried by rubble. Two or three hours later, he was rescued. To ward off total despair, he resoved to think about the Universe—a general procedure among the unfortunate, and sometimes a balm.

[...]

In 1899, he realized, with a fear which at times resembled panic and at other times happiness, that the problems of metaphysics were organizing themselves within him, and that the solution—a solution—was almost imminent. He stopped reading and dedicated himself to the vigil, pacing across the city without seeing anything, speechless and furtively watched. (Reprinted in The Total Library, p. 165)

Both men appear to have been in their mid thirties at the time. One is envious of the clarity with which their metaphysical missions (the same mission?) appear to have to been revealed to them.

Kindred Spirit

In geometry, Buckminster Fuller "avoided the use of pi, a number that [he] found deeply distasteful" (Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, June 9 & 16, 2008, p. 67).

Immanent Pathos

(Here's something I've been getting increasingly interested in. Note that "understanding" is to the transcendental doctrine of elements what "obedience" is to the immanent doctrine of totality. The results, while of course provisional, are rather invigorating, don't you think?)

Crisis of Brute Passion
Immanent Pathos

Immanent synthesis resists by gathering all our a posteriori power out of the totality that brute obedience yields to. To see this, the following points need only be discerned: (1) that some emotions are brute and not normative; (2) that they are free, not of insitution and motility, but of feeling and obedience; (3) that they are superficial and are daringly associated with those which are original or isolated; (4) that our table of emotions is never complete, emerging from the whole field of brute obedience. When politics is an extract drawn from an insistence on a merely democratic manner, such incompleteness can never be surveyed by any kind of mere poll. It is necessary only to the end of the reality of the elements of the a posteriori power to which obedience yields; such a reality can furnish anexact classifications of the emotions which isolate the elements, inhibiting their disconnection from the system. Brute obedience associates itself not merely with something normative but in part also with some motility. It is a multiplicity dependent, needy, and not diminished by any subtractions from within. Its lack of power thus repudiates the system, abandoned and obscured by the reality. The incompleteness and babelling of this system can at the same time yield to criteria of the wrongness and falseness of its isolation. If it is to be fully imposed, however, this part of an immanent pathos requires two books, the one containing the emotions, the other the ultimatum of brute obedience.

Critique of Pure Reason
Transcendental Logic
(Kant, KRV A 64-65/B 89-90)

Transcendental analytic consists in the dissection of all our a priori knowledge into the elements that pure understanding by itself yields. In so doing, the following are the points of chief concern: (1) that the concepts be pure and not empirical; (2) that they belong, not to intuition and sensibility, but to thought and understanding; (3) that they be fundamental and be carefully distinguished from those which are derivative or composite; (4) that our table of concepts be complete, covering the whole field of the pure understanding. When a science is an aggregate brought into existence in a merely experimental manner, such completeness can never be guaranteed by any kind of mere estimate. It is possible only by means of an idea of the totality of the a priori knowledge yielded by the understanding; such an idea can furnish an exact classification of the concepts which compose that totality, exhibiting their interconnection in a system. Pure understanding distinguishes itself not merely from all that is empirical but completely also from all sensibility. It is a unity self-subsistent, self-sufficient, and not to be increased by any additions from without. The sum of its knowledge thus constitutes a system, comprehended and determined by one idea. The completeness and articulation of this system can at the same time yield a criterion of the correctness and genuineness of all its components. This part of transcendental logic requires, however, for its complete exposition, two books, the one containing the concepts, the other the principles of pure understanding.

As It Were a Monogram

"The image is a product of the empirical faculty of productive imagination, the schema of sensible concepts (such as figures in space) is a product and as it were a monogram of pure a priori imagination through which and in accordance with which the images first become possible, but which must connected with the concept, to which they are in themselves never fully congruent, always only by means of the schema that they designate." (Kant, KRV A 141-2/B 181, 1781/1787)

"One is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective." (Pound, Gaudier-Brzeska, 1916)

One or Two Images

This week's New Yorker has a perfectly good piece on Ezra Pound. Louis Menand obviously knows the subject. He also provides (given the space) a good, standard account of "In a Station of the Metro". But then he tells us that "the form 'made new' here is, of course, the haiku: two images juxtapositioned to evoke a sensation" (126).

Though Menard gets most of it right, Pound's account is not quite the same. He quotes the following example of haiku:

The footsteps of the cat upon the snow:

plum-blossoms.

He calls this a one-image poem: "a form of super-position, that is to say, it is one idea set on top of another." While it may not make much of a difference in the context of an article in the New Yorker, whether it is one image fashioned by a super-position of two ideas, or simply two "images" juxtaposed, it gives me pause.

Are we talking about the image of faces (or footsteps) alongside the image of petals (or plum-blossoms), or are talking about the image of a faces as petals (footsteps as plum-blossoms)?

Imagination

The image is that which can be seen without strain and done without effort.

Imagination turns what you see into something you can think about. It turns your feelings into something to do.

Poem Conceived on Bornholm Many Years Ago

In the summer studio
above the rock garden,
I took the eyes
of the painter.
What is it, I asked,
They cannot see?
Cannot? he balked.
They won't. Be kind,
I said. They don't.

Long before I knew anything about poetry, but thought I might become a poet, I spent a few days on the Danish island of Bornholm. Naturally, we went to the Oluf Høst Museum, which is a beautiful place—one of those places you immediately wish hadn't been converted into a museum, but could remain a place for an artist to work. So you begin to plan its conversion into a retreat for artists, a school, your own home.

Like the poem says, I tried to put myself in the mind of the painter while I stood in Høst's summer studio. At the time I was also, of course, generally despairing of the human species, which I suppose I still am, but less hopefully, more completely desperately, I guess, which means I don't imagine anything can change, or really needs to. (This post emerges vaguely from my response to Kirby in my last post. I felt the urgency of art, but not its futility.)

Back then, I worked on a poem about it, which must have run about thirty lines that are now lost. When it came back to me now, suddenly, thinking about the particular necessity and contingent universality of imagery, I was also reminded of Ezra Pound's reflections on "In a Station of the Metro".

Three years ago in Paris I got out of a "metro" train at La Concorde, and saw suddenly a beautiful face, and then another and another, and then a beautiful child’s face, and then another beautiful woman, and I tried all that day to find words for what this had meant to me, and I could not find any words that seemed to me worthy, or as lovely as that sudden emotion. And that evening, as I went home along the Rue Raynouard, I was still trying and I found, suddenly, the expression. I do not mean that I found words, but there came an equation ...

I wrote a thirty-line poem, and destroyed it because it was what we call work "of second intensity." Six months later I made a poem half that length; a year later I made the following hokku-like sentence:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals, on a wet, black bough.

I dare say it is meaningless unless one has drifted into a certain vein of thought. In a poem of this sort one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective.

Okay, I'm no Ezra Pound. But my first effort was undoubtably not of the first intensity. What I just came up with (recalling the "equation" that was the core of the experience in that studio) is much more satisfying. It is still very much "just a poem" (maybe its emotion is just as must just a sentiment). But maybe it just needs that final bit of focusing.

If I am right about "the image" then we can almost describe in advance—a priori, if you will—what I will have to do to intensify it. I must situate the poem more resolutely between a natural regularity and a cultural regulation. I must activate both its urgency and its futility.

More later (I hope).

[One more thing: shortly before writing the above I had just read this post over at Jonathan's blog.]

An Imagism

Some loose jottings.

I generally look for imagery. If appearances are the undetermined objects of empirical intuitions (Kant) and surfaces are the undetermined subjects of normative institutions (me), then the image is more radically undetermined. It indicates neither the subject nor the object of an experience.

Perceptions are grounded in the immediacy of empirical intuitions. I want to say that there are regularities (which are basically natural) that govern perception. Action is likewise governed by (cultural) regulations.

Now regulated subjects have "representation" in the political sense, while regular objects have "representation" in the scientific sense. Images have only their "presentation", "pure" presentation, we might say. Well, we just took the "re-" off the "representation" to get that.

So what's the root of "regular"? It turns out the "re-" isn't a prefix. (Would have been neat.) But I did find this in the OED: "L. regula straight stick, bar, ruler, pattern, etc." Images are governed by "rules" in the sense of lines or bars on a ruler, i.e., "patterns".

Now, a pattern has "resolution", we might say (in the digitial sense). Better: regulations (subjects), resolutions (images), and regularities (objects). And to "re-solve" is to "loosen back" (needs more work). Imagery is the locus of grammatical "tightness". Subjective and objective representation (regulations and regularities) are about grammatical "rightness".

Like I say, just jotting things down.

[I should acknowledge that this post at In the Ordinary Sense got me thinking about this again.]

Deformulation

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Roundness

My hope for philosophy has always been that it could provide an elucidation of some ordinary experience. In Kant, the need for such an elucidation can be seen at least here: "The empirical concept of a plate is homogeneous with the pure geometrical concept of a circle. The roundness which is thought in the former can be intuited in the latter" (KRV A137/B176). When we think a thing is round, we subsume an object under the concept of a circle.

But there is a hitch. What is the concept of a circle? Well, it is line whose every point is the same distance from another point. The length of that line is famously incommensurable with the distance from its center. The ratio of the radius to the circumference, which Kant in his own notes estimated to be 6, is actually the irrational number 2pi. So what does it mean to think something is round?

A real plate, a thing in the world, cannot be "perfectly round" (truly circular). We do not think its likeness with a geometrical figure. Rather, we imagine it spinning on the potter's wheel. (More generally, we imagine a wheel.) Such a wheel will always have a slight wobble. It will have an axel with a determinate width and there will be a small space between the axel and the hub. It is for that reason that the circumference and the radius can rationally coexist.

Conceptual Notation

"You can write history by tracing ideas, exposing the growth of a concept," said Ezra Pound (GK, p. 60). It's not a terribly original idea. But you have to grasp a concept as such (and not another thing) in order to do this well. To this end, I propose "conceptual notation", borrowing the phrase from Frege, but reading it very much through the later Wittgenstein.

And developing along lines suggested by Albers. I'm trying to get a hold of a book about his work called simply, To Open Eyes. Well, my aim is just as simply to open minds. Albers was able to show us how colours work. Eyes give us access to colour. Minds give us access to concepts. Eyes see colours; minds grasp concepts. They are the means by which we notice them. We then write down what we notice.

Conceptual notation is a technique of kulchural studies.

Monetary Kulchur

"and the light became so bright and so blindin' in this layer of paradise that the mind of man was bewildered."

Ezra Pound, Canto XXXVIII

"Since the 1980s," Richard Cook tells us, "every U.S. economic expansion has been nothing more than a Federal Reserve-created asset inflation." Eric Janszen reaches a similar conclusion about so-called "financial bubbles", which he prefers to describe as periods of "asset-price hyperinflation". The basic idea is that government and business get together to create financial instruments to artificially inflate the price of assets in a particular industry (information technology and housing being the most recent, energy is next, it seems). It's all very Poundian. Janszen seems a bit accepting of the whole affair and doesn't make much of the extraction of profit; Cook, however, cites Major C.H. Douglas and everything. Here at the Kulchural Studies Revival Center we follow such ideas with interest.

Style and Symbol

Recent developments in Denmark suggest another thesis of kulchural studies. The Social Democrats now propose to outlaw "religious dress" in the public sector. Their argument is that a clear indication of one's religious beliefs will undermine the public's faith in the "professional" commitment of the civil servant.

In an interview in the major left-leaning daily, a midwife (who would be affected by the proposed law ... not yet even a bill, it should be noted) asks, "What's next? We'll have to go topless at the pool?" Perhaps she reads the Pangrammaticon? While the interviewer refuses to grant that it's a similar situation, she really hits the nail on the head here.

Here's the promised thesis of kulchural studies:

The fall of Western Civilization is the history of style supplanted by symbolism or (for those who think that is too stylish a way of putting it and need a symbol to hold on to) the subjugation of practice to theory.

Those who would outlaw the hijab insist that it is a mere symbol. This is probably because, raised as a faithful Lutherans, they understand God merely as a metaphysical assertion (a "faith alone"), not a set of practical constraints, i.e., a guide to living. A religious artifact, to them, is always, and only, a symbol. They simply cannot get their mind around a religiously motivated practice. They have no sense of the problem of winning and losing one's soul.

They have, in short, no sense of style. They are not interested in how an experience feels; instead, they immediately reduce it to the simpler question of what it might mean.

In this case, the relevant practice and feeling, most notably the wearing of a headscarf, can be translated by the simple English word "modesty". My wife and I have been struggling to find a good Danish equivalent. It's actually not easy; to avoid a directly moral notion like "decency" (anstændighed) one reaches for the somewhat old-fashioned "seemly" (sømmelig). The language may already be incapable of expressing the terms of this problem.

Hijab, as I understand it, can refer both to the headscarf itself and the modesty it achieves. I intentionally say "achieves", not "implies", because there is no doubt that, while they can certainly be beautiful, women who wear this garment are less likely to be directly attractive. Maybe it's different for you, but I generally feel less ashamed of my own impulses in their company than in the company of typical "Western" woman.

("American woman ... get away from meee heee ..." etc.)

Critics of hijab focus on what they think is the purely symbolic effect of the scarf. But the scarf actually covers something. In so doing it also emphasizes (or demands) a particular sincerity of facial expression. It is a fashion statement: a style. And it has obvious moral effects. What should the State's position be on the strength of a woman's desire to exhibit her hair in public? Kulchural studies of course articulates that question as a straightforward absurdity.

Capital

Like most people, I was more revolutionary when I was young. Today, I have centred my indignation on a simple proposition: some people make way too much money compared to others.

I do think a system of incentives is necessary. People who do their jobs well should be rewarded with a few luxuries. What one must object to, however, is a society that rewards even dubious hacks for choosing particular professions while letting recognized masters of other arts scrape by.

"Should the richest man in a town amass ten times more, even fifty times more, [than the poorest man,] it is not hard to conceive of a decent society," said Norman Mailer. "When you get to the point where you're speaking of thousands to one, something outrageous is taking place." What that something outrageous is might be gleaned from the title of the book that this idea appears in: Why Are We at War? The answer, of course, is: in order to keep it well over a thousand to one.

Something outrageous is taking place. But there is something a bit quaint about Mailer's suggestion that America (this fictional little town) "got to the point" where it was a thousand to one. It's been a thousand to one for 10,000 years. It was a thousand to one in ancient Egypt and in Imperial Rome and in the British Empire.

'The world would be a better place...' pretty straighforwardly if it were impossible to be rewarded 50 times more than anybody else for one's efforts. It would be more than enough to ensure that people made an effort. In fact, it might ensure that only one's real efforts were rewarded. So say I on this first of May.

Topless

No matter how broad and changeable the relative morals of styles may be, there is always an absolute norm to be kept after having heard the admonition of conscience warning against approaching danger; style must never be a proximate occasion of sin.

Pope Pius XII, 1957

It looks as though the City of Copenhagen will adopt a new policy for public swimming pools of allowing women to swim bare-breasted, just like the men. Women have been allowed to go topless on public beaches and in public parks for as long as I can remember. Nudity on television and in newspapers is common. This includes full frontal nudity and, yes, penises.

The Danish People's Party, while steadfast in its opposition to hijab (Muslim headscarves in particular), is nonetheless concerned about the new pool rules. What about the children, they ask? They have, of course, chosen to ignore the basic argument for the new policy, namely, that seeing a naked breast does not harm anyone, not even very young children. The activists who demanded the new freedom (they demonstrated in the obvious way) were objecting to the sexualization of the breast. They simply did not see it as "adult content".

I recently read Philip Roth's The Breast, the first and best of the David Kepesh novels. Roth, I think, is absolutely adamant about the sexuality of the female breast. But his sexual fantasies are not wholly convincing. (The character of David Kepesh will have to be dealt with in another post.)

I think this sort of issue is very much a part of the grammar of kulchur. At the extreme ends (public copulation and the burka) it seems pretty clear that there have to be limits, both to individual freedom and collective morality. But what about a moderate bikini and hijab? It seems to me to be an interesting discussion that is too often allowed to bog down in one or another perceived "fundamentalism". There are arguments for "modesty in dress". There are hairstyles that are so absolutely "fetching" that they undermine civil discourse. There must be limits. Etc.

I don't claim to know where all the lines should be drawn. But drawing them is worth taking seriously. I think hijab is perfectly good suggestion, worth considering in its details and comparing, point by point, with a tight pair of faded bluejeans. The blanket refusal to talk about modesty on the grounds that modesty oppresses is, to my mind, not constructive.