more interview fallout

Not to pile on Chris Anderson, who was barely even a name to me before the other day, but the following link was just sent to me, and I’m still offended by the way in which that interview played out. If an interviewer goes after you aggressively and you want to fight back, fine, that’s a calculated practical decision on your part. But to start an interview by belittling every word-choice the person makes, and to include the phrase “this is going to be an annoying interview” in your very first line is obviously appalling behavior.

But the reason I post this link is due to a stunning fact: Anderson was speaking to Der Spiegel in the first place only to promote his new book, so the public relations move here is every bit as sparkling as the manners.

http://adage.com/adages/post?article_id=138176

Someone also gave me the link to Anderson’s Twitter account (tweets are public unless blocked, and even show up on Google). He not only claimed that he was quoted out of context (possible, but hard to see how that would have made a difference given the flagrant rudeness of his responses), he also blamed “Twitterati” for making a big deal out of nothing– and remember, he said this on his Twitter account!

the new U.S. passports

I got my new one quickly and easily this morning, waiting only about 40 minutes for my number to be called, as opposed to the usual lengthier period of limbo with no metallic time-killing devices. It’s already at the Egyptian Ministry of Immigration getting the new residence visa put in, which should take another 10 days or so. Then, if all goes well, I’m clear on this front for the next 10 years.

But I don’t like the new U.S. passport design. For two reasons:

1. There aren’t very many pages in it, so it won’t be long before I have to go through the “please put extra pages in it” routine. Not such a big deal, except that I’d rather not set foot in the Embassy for another 10 years if possible. It raises my blood pressure to be inside that minor, temporary prison, cut off from the outside world until business is done.

2. The photo is no longer on the backside of the cover. It’s now on the backside of the first piece of paper. The only reason that bothers me is because not all passport control people around the world are used to that new design yet. My emergency passport had the same feature, and in Istanbul in particular it caused serious suspicion and prolonged questioning from an official. But I suppose this will go away quickly once the design becomes more familiar around the world.

a link to very many lectures

Just got this from a tweet by “zizekspeaks” (I can never decide whether Zizek himself is doing these tweets or not; many people tell me “no way,” but if it’s not, then you certainly could have fooled me).

In any case, IT IS A LINK TO MANY LECTURES, both audio and video. Including: Kristeva, Badiou, Zizek, Derrida, Virilio, Stiegler, DeLanda, etc. etc.

Herzberg’s final theory

Again browsing near the close of Herzberg’s The Psychology of Philosophers (from the 1920’s), where he lists what he concludes are the key personality traits of the philosopher. I’ve only mentioned a few of these before:

*strong impulses

*intense inhibitions [ADDENDUM: he thinks this comes from “hypersensitivity to feelings of displeasure”]

*high capacity for sublimation (otherwise, the person becomes a neurotic)

*critical intelligence and love of system (otherwise, the person might become an artist instead, since for Herzberg the paranoiac system-loving of the philosopher differs from the “projective mechanism” of the artist, which projects inner psychological processes into the outer world; Herzberg finds this projective mechanism to be weak even in the cases of Plato and Nietzsche, the two greatest literary artists in the history of philosophy)

*rejection of authority (otherwise, the person becomes a religious figure)

*unusual/original structure of the emotional personality (otherwise, the person becomes a scholar)

If Herzberg distinguishes between the philosopher personality and the scientist personality, I must have missed the passage somehow. [ADDENDUM: My mistake, he does address this issue a little later, though he admits he doesn’t have a very good theory about it, just that the scientific personality tends to be more focused on a specific region of entities, such as plants, rocks, or moving physical bodies.]

He seems to be generally Freudian in orientation, though he doesn’t seem to overdo it.

Trakl flashback

Written by the Trakl simulator, not TRAKL HIMSELF:

***

The mother with the burning gong
seeks the poppy or the wolf.

The burning temple
wastes a smoky guitar
or a candle.

***

Uproar.
The child bears a bloom.

O man!

***

The mouldering heart.
The mother trembles.

The nocturnal whore poisons the sick whore.
A child beckons the smoky sister.
The pond signals whenever
the gong crosses the sea.

***

Friend,
the seething monk-girl signals.

The raging laughter destines the
moldy monk-girl. And worse,
a waxing wolf humbles a child.

The ruinous sister embitters the brooding angel.
The broken river petrifies the blue sister.

The gentle mask.
Cower, you trembling poppy.

A rotten whore or a raging wolf
violates the darkling snow.

***

Weep, you evil poppy.
The pure silence violates a child.
The harp.

***

The seething poppy moulders.
A falling wood drinks the monk.
A lonely storm petrifies a moon.
The trembling guitar hisses.

Signal, you whispering moon.

A brooding rain cowers.
O man!

***

The gate:
a barren poppy dwells.

Wake, you weeping lover:
the moon.

***

Dwell, oh smoky gong.
The lover seeks a shepherd.

The crimson race wounds the smoky angel.

The gate:
the naked monk glistens whenever
the island rustles.

The golden voice mourns the trembling child.

***

Friend:
the evil guitar with
the weeping gong.
Beautiful.

The corrupt poppy or
a drinking wood dies.
Beautiful.

***

A wind.
The solemn pond or the guitar
mourns the darkening woman
or the fiery mother.

***

A waxing child signals. And worse,
a golden wood violates the pond.

The flaming lover breaks through
the guitar or the chestnut.
O man!

The boat awaits the glistening storm.
A ruinous city cowers.

A wolf devours a golden rain.

A flaming bloom arises after
the smoky star sings.

another quick note to Camels With Hammers

Camel has already responded to my response. I’ve been trying to avoid ongoing back-and-forth exchanges on one conversation, but will make two quick points here:

After the last post I thought Camels was urging a democratic free-for-all of debate to replace the current licensing and hierarchizing arrangements of academia. But in the current post Camels seems in favor of the opposite extreme:

“I have long speculated that what would be most ideal would be a philosophy-worldwide, academic messageboard, readable by all but accepting posts only from philosophy professors and philosophy PhDs. Only philosophy departments could grant and maintain access for professors and their unemployed PhDs. Maybe provisions would be made for graduate students under sponsorship of departments.”

I wouldn’t be in favor of this, since I don’t think the dominance of Philosophy Ph.D.’s in philosophy has been a good thing for philosophy. For my generation there still wasn’t a very good practical alternative, except for studying a neighboring discipline and writing philosophical books from out of that discipline– Latour would be a good example (or Nietzsche, further back). But for the coming generations, I think there’s a real chance that having a Ph.D. in philosophy, and perhaps in anything else, will sink to near-irrelevance in determining who is or is not treated as a philosopher. This feeling is based on the suspicion that universities, largely for financial reasons, are about to enter a long, cold winter with many fatalities. But perhaps I’m underestimating the ability of universities to reinvent themselves on the fly. Professionalizing disciplines does increase organization and filter out the real kooks, but it doesn’t always increase the overall quality of a discipline. Sometimes it stifles or crushes those with the most independent minds, and creates legitimized careerists. It all depends on the extent to which it’s done.

In response to my worry that it might be a bad thing to lose specific, articulated, finished projects to a ceaseless flux of real-time intellectual discussion, Camels says this:

“One of the things that I have started to wrestle with is the illusion of the great thinker or the settled position. I wonder if our present view of writing and publishing encourages us too much to harden positions.”

I’m not in favor of hardened positions. I’m in favor of discrete projects that are finished and then left behind, to be replaced by new projects that are outgrowths of the later ones. There is plenty of room for ad libbing discussion and back-and-forth discussion on topics that arise from the flow of the conversation. But at a certain point it’s important to back away from such interaction and say: “OK, here is the complete version of what I currently think.” That’s not a hardened position, because you can always change it over time, and in fact it should evolve over time if you’re doing honest work.

All right, calling it a night. Morning at the Embassy looms.

and one other

If I’m not careful I’ll end up quoting the whole thing, which is not allowed, but maybe one more passage will convince you to look up the whole interview:

“Lingis: There are imperatives in things. To see things is to see how we have to stand and to approach them, and to see what they require to subsist. It is to see how they have to be preserved, protected, repaired, or restored. Even to make a meal is to see how foodstuffs have to be preserved, prepared, and cooked. Even to move on the earth and in the light is to see how we have to move. The objectives of our real actions are not simply posited by a fiat of our free will or by our arbitrary imagination. The layout about us may offer a number of possible objectives, which we may or may not pursue. And of course we may long for and imagine other layouts where other objectives would be possible.”

“I Am A Dancer”

Here’s a classic passage from a Lingis interview by John Armitage, “Towards An Ontology of Fetishes.” In Cultural Politics. Volume 5, Issue 1 (2009), pp. 98-117.

In academic terminology, the “I” for Lingis is a realist “I,” not a “performative” one. We are not just what we do and not just what we say.

“Lingis: I came back from a summer trip and the first person I came upon on campus was a student I had known for three years. Her parents were poor, and she had been working as a waitress to pay her way through the university. She loved to dance, was in the university dance company, but her parents wanted to be sure she could survive and urged her to take courses in something where she could get a job. She had majored in special education, a generous profession, and one where she could always find work. I asked her what her semester looked like. She said she had dropped her major and was taking five courses of dance. I vividly remember the shining, giddy eyes with which she told me she had realized she was made for dance, that it was on the dance floor that she belonged, that her body knew it belonged. Exultant, she turned a dance step in the sunlight, embracing the future that summoned her. A future of risk, where physical injuries could terminate her dancing existence, where she may prove to not have what it takes to really dance, dance her own dance, and where of course moments of realization are short-lived and ill-paid.

I found myself thinking again and again of this ‘I’ – ‘I am a dancer’ – both a discovery and a commitment. She is to be sure not yet a dancer, but without saying, first, in the secrecy of her own heart, ‘I am a dancer,’ she will never become a dancer. I soon realized that this ‘I’ -a power and an exultation -is absent from the contemporary philosophical discourse on subjectivity. This ‘I’ – ‘I am a dancer’ – is the first word of thought, the thought that set out to understand dance, the needs of the body, the necessity of great teachers, a whole cross-section of urban society. It also generates a fantasy space, which is not simply filled with reflections of the passing scene and media images. It begins a story of one’s own, though it seemed to me that subjectivity is not constituted by narration, since much of our lives are untold even to ourselves, and indeed the most momentous moments may be harbored in
silence.

I set out to contrast the power and exultation that sets forth this ‘I’ from the categories and obligations with which others recognize us. This ‘I’ is set forth with sometimes simple words, sometimes the most commonplace words of language – ‘I am a mother,’ ‘I am an outdoorsperson,’ ‘I am a wanderer’- and sometimes only with words put on one’s own heart. They are only very secondarily words of a language game played with others.”

Composition of Philosophy. July 29.

While supervising the work of the painters (who did an excellent job, though it took much longer than expected) I was thinking about section 4D. And I’m still thinking about it, so today was a light revision day. All I revised was the brief introduction to Chapter 5. That’s only 1 page, and took a total of 20 minutes from zero to final draft.

That means that it’s taken 19 hours and 56 46 minutes to get to page 53 of the final draft.

Another statistic: each minute of writing has yielded 13.5 words on average, which isn’t bad. That means that each sentence of the book is taking about 1 minute to create ex nihilo.

What now remains to be revised are the following sections: 4D, 5A, 5B, 5C, and 5D.

Tomorrow I again need to be at the Embassy at 8 AM to pick up (I hope) the new passport and walk it over to the old AUC campus to start processing the new Egyptian residence visa for it. This means that I can’t make it a late night tonight, so all I plan to do before sleeping is make a very thorough list of all the things that need to be fixed in the Chapter 5 rough draft, which will greatly speed up the process of finalizing that whole chapter.

4D is the hardest section of the whole first half of the book, so it may be the one that is revised last, out of order.

quick response to a response

CAMELS WITH HAMMERS has an appreciative post up in response to my previous post, though I want to raise a couple of quick points of concern.

Camels sees many virtues in moving away from the glacial pace of academic publishing to a more feisty, rapid bloggish sort of intellectual dialogue. And there are certainly some obvious virtues: it’s possible to make lots of progress on issues very quickly in the blogosphere, with a speed that is foreign to academic life.

However, most of you are familiar with some of my disappointments with the medium as well. It’s not always good to be subjected to immediate feedback. This holds for positive and neutral feedback as much as for negative feedback. During the original incarnation of this blog, I was foolishly committing myself to answering every question that came in. Simply put, no one has enough time to do that, at least not with the number of questions I was getting. One virtue of the slower pace of traditional intellectual life is the time to reflect, to pick one’s moments to respond, to choose an appropriate pace for dialogue. And that’s why I have given no serious reconsideration to re-opening comments on this blog.

Second, there was my quick realization after just a few weeks in this space that much critical dialogue is not at all open, free interchange. Much of it is just rubbish– procrastinators lurking around the fringes of conversations listening for gaffes or for chances to barge in and make a rude remark, often concealed behind a false identity, that sort of thing.

More concretely, Camels With Hammers sees much good in the notion of books circulating along with critical commentary on them by readers, whereas now we get no such comments with the book at all. But I don’t see why it’s an all-or-nothing choice. The classic example usually given of an author willing to publish criticisms of books along with the books themselves is Descartes, who included and answered critical objections to the Meditations along with the book. Admirable, and quite interesting for the reader.

However, I strongly doubt that Descartes would have included an open blog comment thread along with the Meditations. The objections he printed were from a fairly elite crew of worthy critics. Personally, I’d be happy to publish objections to one of my books along with the book, but only if the critic were staking as much as I were on the exchange, and was actually taking a stand rather than just playing clever devil’s advocate games.

And no way would I allow a bunch of snot-nosed trolls to spray graffiti on my house at no risk to themselves. Authors will want and need some control over which comments to allow to be attached to their works. In case anyone fears that authors will merely choose the softball criticisms for responses, well, there’s a social control on that already– no one wants to gain a reputation for dodging hard critique. But ignoring jerks is not the same thing as dodging hard critique. If someone were rude to you in a pub, you wouldn’t keep drinking with them, and the same standard applies here. The fact that a jerkish comment might contain a couple of intellectual points does not absolve the comment from scrutiny.

One other good feature of the current publishing system, a system I otherwise generally condemn, is that the slow pace and high hurdles of the process forced people to articulate their intellectual life into significant chunks: “OK, I guess this book is Badiou’s statement of his position as of mid-decade. How has it changed from 4 years ago?” But if everything dissolves instead into a flow of real-time internet discussion, then the difference between one’s significant pieces of intellectual work and one’s fleeting remarks on the topic of the moment starts to get a bit lost.

I’ve often wondered that when posting blog entries here… Am I held to my words here as much as I am when putting them in print? Probably most of us would say no, this is a more informal medium. If you put something in print and then feel the need to retract it later, it’s an arduous mental process and may even feel embarrassing. But we all say things casually in conversation, or on blogs, that we probably feel are more modifiable than words set down in cold print on paper.

In any case, I don’t think this needs to be consciously engineered. A new ethos of intellectual exchange will start to condense from the mists once we’ve all started to figure out what the new publishing landscape means for thinking.