Quotulatiousness

February 7, 2011

Postmodern Monday

Filed under: Books, Humour, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:21

A little postmodernism to lighten your Monday morning burdens:

Surrealism in the works of Rushdie

John N. Humphrey

Department of Sociolinguistics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

1. Sontagist camp and capitalist theory

The main theme of the works of Rushdie is a self-justifying totality. The subject is interpolated into a capitalist theory that includes narrativity as a paradox.

It could be said that if Lyotardist narrative holds, we have to choose between Sontagist camp and the subcultural paradigm of narrative. Sontag suggests the use of surrealism to deconstruct class divisions.

Therefore, the subject is contextualised into a Sontagist camp that includes reality as a reality. Several sublimations concerning the role of the participant as observer may be discovered.

Thus, Porter[1] suggests that the works of Rushdie are postmodern. If constructive objectivism holds, we have to choose between capitalist theory and postdialectic narrative.

2. Rushdie and Sontagist camp

“Sexuality is part of the meaninglessness of language,” says Lacan. However, Sartre promotes the use of surrealism to analyse and read sexual identity. The subject is interpolated into a cultural rationalism that includes narrativity as a totality.

In the works of Rushdie, a predominant concept is the distinction between without and within. It could be said that Sontag uses the term ‘surrealism’ to denote a mythopoetical whole. Baudrillard suggests the use of neodeconstructivist desemioticism to challenge elitist perceptions of truth.

However, the subject is contextualised into a capitalist theory that includes art as a reality. A number of constructions concerning surrealism exist.

But the characteristic theme of Geoffrey’s[2] essay on materialist postcultural theory is the absurdity, and hence the paradigm, of capitalist class. The subject is interpolated into a capitalist theory that includes sexuality as a whole.

Thus, the example of surrealism prevalent in Rushdie’s Satanic Verses is also evident in Midnight’s Children, although in a more self-referential sense. Sontag promotes the use of Debordist image to analyse sexual identity.

However, the main theme of the works of Rushdie is not narrative, but subnarrative. Derrida uses the term ‘capitalist theory’ to denote the defining characteristic, and subsequent collapse, of neotextual art.

3. Consensuses of economy

If one examines the conceptualist paradigm of narrative, one is faced with a choice: either reject capitalist theory or conclude that consciousness is responsible for capitalism. Therefore, the characteristic theme of Parry’s[3] model of Lacanist obscurity is a posttextual paradox. Marx suggests the use of capitalist theory to deconstruct archaic perceptions of society.

However, Lacan uses the term ‘surrealism’ to denote not discourse, but subdiscourse. The primary theme of the works of Rushdie is the genre of capitalist class.

But Sartre uses the term ‘capitalist theory’ to denote a self-justifying totality. The subject is contextualised into a surrealism that includes truth as a reality.

4. Rushdie and Sontagist camp

The main theme of de Selby’s[4] analysis of surrealism is the role of the writer as participant. Thus, an abundance of theories concerning the common ground between sexual identity and class may be found. Derrida uses the term ‘Batailleist `powerful communication” to denote the role of the observer as participant.

In the works of Rushdie, a predominant concept is the concept of capitalist language. But the premise of surrealism implies that society, surprisingly, has significance, but only if truth is equal to reality; otherwise, Marx’s model of presemioticist narrative is one of “the textual paradigm of context”, and therefore part of the meaninglessness of narrativity. The characteristic theme of the works of Rushdie is the bridge between culture and sexual identity.

Thus, several desituationisms concerning Sontagist camp exist. Lyotard’s essay on capitalist theory states that reality is a product of the masses.

Therefore, Geoffrey[5] holds that we have to choose between surrealism and semantic theory. In The Moor’s Last Sigh, Rushdie reiterates capitalist theory; in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, although, he analyses Sontagist camp.

In a sense, Marx promotes the use of the neodialectic paradigm of narrative to modify and challenge language. Lacan uses the term ‘surrealism’ to denote the role of the artist as poet.

1. Porter, Z. ed. (1998) The Failure of Discourse: Surrealism in the works of Fellini. And/Or Press

2. Geoffrey, J. W. I. (1986) Sontagist camp and surrealism. Loompanics

3. Parry, J. K. ed. (1994) Reassessing Modernism: Surrealism in the works of Mapplethorpe. Cambridge University Press

4. de Selby, A. (1989) Nihilism, surrealism and neotextual libertarianism. University of California Press

5. Geoffrey, O. R. ed. (1974) Poststructural Narratives: Surrealism and Sontagist camp. Yale University Press

H/T to Andrew C. Bulhak and Josh Larios for the link.

January 25, 2011

Neil Gaiman on feeling like a ghost

Filed under: Australia, Books, Media, Quotations, Randomness — Tags: — Nicholas @ 07:13

Neil Gaiman wrote a book that came back to haunt him the other day:

There were a couple – a man and a woman, both in their twenties at a guess, both short and dark-haired, looking into a shop window, with their backs to me. The woman had a tattoo on her shoulderblade – writing – and because I cannot pass writing without reading it, I glanced at it. Part of the writing was covered by a strap.

But I could still read it. And I knew what the words covered by the strap were.

The tattoo (thank you Google Image Search) was a lot like this (which is to say, the same content, and similar typeface, but probably not the same person. I’m already trying to remember if it was the left or the right shoulderblade):

(I took that photo from here.)

I read the tattoo, read words I had written to try and exorcise my own small demons eighteen years ago, and I felt like a ghost. As if, for a moment, under the hot Sydney sun, I was only an idea of a person and not a real person at all.

I didn’t introduce myself to her or say anything (it didn’t even occur to me to say hello, in all honesty). I just walked home, through a world that felt flimsier and infinitely stranger than it had that morning.

December 28, 2010

The French Foreign Legion in film and in history

Filed under: Books, Europe, France, Germany, Media, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Peter Shawn Taylor explains how what was once the second most popular “adventure movie” themes has become all but invisible today:

The French Foreign Legion, steeped as it is in romance and adventure, had an entirely prosaic birth. It was a supply-side army.

In 1830, France’s reputation for continual political upheaval made it a magnet for Europe’s wandering class. Political agitators, disenfranchised liberals, left-wing revolutionaries and outright criminals from every country flocked to Paris. Such an agglomeration of potential trouble-makers proved unsettling for the newly reinstalled French monarchy.

At the same time France had recently conquered Algeria, rather by accident. (It’s a long story involving Napoleon Bonaparte’s unpaid grain debt, a flyswatter to the face of a French diplomat and the Gallic need to avenge even the slightest insult.) Maintaining the colony, however, was proving perilous for regular French troops.

The genius of the French Foreign Legion was that it solved both problems.

Refugees, criminals and agitators were pressed into a special unit of the French military created exclusively for foreigners. To make this urban renewal process as efficient as possible, no questions were asked as to the background of the recruits. And because French law prevented mercenary troops from serving on French soil, these soldiers were immediately shipped off to Algeria. Out of sight, out of mind.

After the “cowboys and indians” movies, Legion movies were the next most common adventure movie in early Hollywood. They faded from Hollywood’s radar even faster than the French empire did in the real world.

I remember reading a book about the Legion in French Indochina in the late 1940s and early 1950s (The Devil’s Guard by George Robert Elford), but I assumed it was largely fictionalized. Checking the Wikipedia entry, I see I wasn’t alone in suspecting it to be less than fully factual:

[. . .] published in 1971, is the story of a former German Waffen-SS officer’s string of near-constant combat that begins on World War II’s eastern front and continues into the book’s focus — the First Indochina War, as an officer in the French Foreign Legion. The book is presented by the author as nonfiction but considered to be untrue by military historians, and usually sold as fiction. In 2006 the online bookstore AbeBooks reported that it was among the 10 novels most frequently sold to American soldiers in Iraq (the only war fiction in the top 10, in fact).

December 25, 2010

Merry Christmas!

Filed under: Books, Media, Randomness — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:10

Among my gifts this year, I received the H.L. Mencken collection Prejudices, so I’ve got lots to read over the next few days.

I also received the “Yes, Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister” DVD collections, although getting a chance to play them will probably not come up for a few days, given how many other DVDs were exchanged as gifts this year.

I hope your Christmas (if you celebrate it) was equally happy.

Now, turn off your browser and go enjoy yourself offline!

December 22, 2010

QotD: A Christmas Carol

Filed under: Books, Humour, Media, Quotations — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:52

It’s Christmas time, and that means it’s time to enjoy A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens’ melancholy tale of a productive businessman who gets worked over by three meddling supernatural social workers one Christmas Eve, transforming him into a simpering socialist.

It’s almost as sad as Star Wars, really.

Douglas Kern, “A TCS Christmas Carol”

December 7, 2010

The economics of Ebenezer Scrooge

Filed under: Books, Britain, Economics, Media — Tags: — Nicholas @ 00:10

Russell D. Longcore looks at the economics underlying Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol:

Next we are introduced to Scrooge’s philosophy on celebrating Christmas. His nephew greets him warmly with a “Merry Christmas!” Scrooge responds:

What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in them through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with “Merry Christmas” on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.

Is he wrong, or is he a prophet? Today, a large percentage of Americans pay for Christmas with their credit cards, borrowing money from the future to pay for today’s luxuries. They work for wages, but American savings rates are near zero, so they are no richer than last year. They trade their irreplaceable time for wages as the years tick off. Where is Scrooge wrong in his assessment of Christmas celebrants?

Next we see an exchange between Scrooge and two do-gooders who come to the office looking for charitable donations.

[. . .]

Let’s pause to learn from this attempt at a shakedown.

The very existence of Christmas… both in the Dickensian era and today… promotes a desire for the giving and receiving of gifts. And that has nothing to do with Jesus. Merchandising is King of Kings in December. With that desire comes the feeling of “Want” described by Gentleman #2., particularly among those who have not. Everyone knows and feels the ubiquitous pressure on everyone to give gifts, even if you cannot afford to do so. Those who do not wish to participate in the expression of so-called “Christian cheer” may not be moved to part with their Abundance to provide the Poor with food, drink and warmth in this particular method of coercion.

As Scrooge reveals, he already supports the institutions that care for the needy. He either gives his own money voluntarily to the debtor’s prisons, the Union workhouses, the Treadmill… or money is exacted from him by taxation for the operations of these institutions. But Gentleman #2 argues that “many can’t go there… some would rather die (than go there). That is a choice made by an individual based upon haughty pride, not true need. Scrooge states that he does not accept the premise offered by #2 that anyone would rather die than go to the poor house, and that he is busy enough minding his own business. And thus ends this part of the story.

December 1, 2010

Five Books interview with P.J. O’Rourke

Filed under: Books, Economics, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:05

P.J. O’Rourke is asked to talk about five books from the field of political satire:

P J O’Rourke talks Swift, Huxley, Orwell and Waugh and says we now live in the world of 1984 but, instead of being a horror show, a television that looks back at you is just a pain in the ass. It’s 1984-Lite. Sad in one way, but a relief in another.

The category of political satire books is simply closed. The top five are so good that in order to make any surprising choices one has to go a long way down to the next level.

[. . .]

I’ll be careful. Animal Farm and 1984.

Yes. One is comic satire and the other is tragicomic satire.

Let’s start with the comic.

Well, Animal Farm sticks in everybody’s mind. All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. Again, something read twice. I read it for the first time when I was 14 or 15 and it was a funny story about badly behaved animals and then I read it again at college and someone pointed out to me that this was sharp social satire. I thought it was an animal story, a kids’ book, but when I took another look at it I realised what he was getting at. The Soviet leadership was pretty well represented there. But one of the things that’s interesting to me about both Animal Farm and 1984 is that they are warnings against collectivism from a man of the left. Sure, any old Tory or Republican might be likely to make this point, though not so well, perhaps, nor so amusingly, but the fact that it comes from a man of the left is interesting. It seems to me to be something Orwell never fully came to grips with. Maybe if he’d lived longer…

What do you mean?

The necessity for collectivism under his leftist ideals and yet the danger of collectivism no matter who it’s done by seems like something he really wrestled with. I think we all buy the necessity for collectivism in a way.

[. . .]

Have you actually been to Sweden? I’ve never been, but I find myself constantly holding it up as the pinnacle of socialist marvellousness. It could be a complete shit-hole for all I know.

I have been and you know what it is? It’s very foreign. It’s full of Swedes. I mean, there are a few immigrants, and it has more now than it did 15 years ago when I was there, but Swedes are really Swedish. They are just remarkably alike. So, when you have a country of only eight and a half million people and they’re very like each other and you take 80 per cent of their income away and redistribute it through political means and they go: ‘Ya, ya, dat’s vot I vonted! Abba records! Herring and a PhD!’ And it’s all okey-dokey. But if you take a country as diverse as the United States and you take everything away from everybody and redistribute it — oh my God, there’d be hell to pay! I mean, some people would want guns, and some people… I wouldn’t even want to ask what some people would want.

[. . .]

1984.

That’s satire more in the Roman mode. The usual definition of satire is humour used to a moral end for a moral purpose, and there’s certainly a moral purpose to 1984 but it’s not funny really. I mean there is a certain dark humour to rewriting history and things going down a memory hole.

It’s funny in the Russian sense of the word.

I like that. Believe me, I’ll steal that phrase.

I’ll see you in court.

It’s sort of like being popular in Japan.

November 24, 2010

Geek Speak interviews Lois McMaster Bujold

Filed under: Books, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 13:08

If you haven’t read Cryoburn, be warned that there are some spoilers in the interview (this excerpt is spoiler-free):

I would have been content to leave the series on the high note of A Civil Campaign, but in the course of the amicable negotiations involved in taking The Curse of Chalion elsewhere, I ended up with an option-filling contract with Baen Books, hence Diplomatic Immunity. For a time, I wasn’t sure if I would alternate books between the two publishers or not, but I got on rather a roll with the fantasies for Eos. Happily, I was able to come up with a second upbeat organic closure for the series with Diplomatic Immunity, after which I turned to Paladin of Souls. (For a while, I had the two Chapter Ones on my plate at the same time, which basically resulted in nine months of writer’s block, at which point I decided to just do Diplomatic Immunity first. Some fortunate, prolific writers seem to be able, efficiently, to keep several projects going at once; it appears I am not one of them.)

[. . .]

The notion of exploring the wider social implications of cryonics, a well-established technology in the series, had been kicking around in my head for at least fifteen years. And the vision of an opening scene where a drug-allergy-addled Miles has a hallucinatory meeting with a street kid, no further story or setting attached, had also been lurking for a long time. (On some level, I think this unanchored scene was a really twisted re-visioning of the opening of Heinlein’s classic Citizen of the Galaxy.) I put the two together, and suddenly hit critical mass. Thematic implications followed.

[. . .]

Ethnic diversity has always been out there; all the colony worlds in Miles’s universe (i.e., everyplace but Earth) are much shaped by their founder populations. We’ve only seen a handful, out of a supposed sixty to one hundred settled worlds/stations/systems; I just haven’t worked around to all the possibilities. (Readers keep wanting me to go back to Vorbarr Sultana, where all their friends are. It’s as frustrating as trying to take a teenager on vacation.)

And for those Vorkosiverse fans hoping for yet another fix after Cryoburn, be of good cheer: Lois is working on a new project with the working title Ivan: His Booke (no, that’s not what it’ll end up being published as).

November 22, 2010

Tintin adventures I’d like to read

Filed under: Books, Humour, Media, Randomness — Nicholas @ 09:24

Murray Groat illustrated some covers to Tintin adventures that don’t, but should, exist:

H/T to BoingBoing.

November 18, 2010

Another fan of Christie Blatchford’s Helpless

Filed under: Books, Bureaucracy, Cancon, Law, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:47

Father Raymond J. deSouza points out that the actions of the OPP in Caledonia have ended up hurting peaceful native and non-native Ontarians:

If you are pressed for time, abandon this column now and immediately read the excerpt in these section from Christie Blatchford’s new book, Helpless. In that book, she details how two-tier justice came to Caledonia, Ont., in 2006 — immunity for native Canadians; and neglect, contempt and harassment for the non-native victims of crime. It is a scandalous tale, simply told.

[. . .]

Lest anyone think that Blatchford’s book is an attack on native aspirations, consider who suffers the most when lawlessness is permitted in native communities: the natives who live there. Not enforcing the law in native communities puts out a large welcome mat for organized crime and corruption.

[. . .]

Yet Blatchford’s book is not about native issues. It’s about the failure of the provincial government and the OPP to enforce the laws — even after a judge issued an injunction to end the illegal activity. Moreover, it’s about the OPP’s abuse of power. The most disturbing pages are about Julian Fantino, then OPP commissioner and now Conservative candidate in a federal byelection, who came perilously close to using police force to restrict the liberties of a free citizen with the temerity to protest the OPP’s policy of non-enforcement in Caledonia.

I noted with disgust that the federal Conservatives had not only nominated Julian Fantino for their candidate in the byelection, but were being quite open about protecting him from questions on his conduct of the Caledonia affair. If I’d ever considered voting for a Conservative candidate in the next federal election, that alone would make me reconsider.

November 17, 2010

“My plan is to make you guys look like a bunch of assholes”

Filed under: Books, Bureaucracy, Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:50

More of Christie Blatchford’s Helpless from the National Post series of excerpts:

“We’ve been sitting there pretty much most of the morning looking for ya, just because we wanted to have a couple words with ya.” He added that police had “some concerns today for you and the safety of the community,” and “it’s our belief that if you or anybody else attempts to erect flags or ribbons directly across from Douglas Creek Estates, that it may cause a confrontation, and we can’t let that happen, and we won’t let that happen.

“We will allow you to raise flags and ribbons, just not across from the Douglas Creek Estates. Okay, and anybody that — anybody that attempts to do that, to raise those flags and ribbons in that restricted area, will be arrested for breach of the peace.”

McHale, of course, asked, “So have the natives been arrested for putting up their flags?”

“They have not,” Cowan replied.

“Why?” McHale asked. “You said ‘anyone.’ Your words were ‘Anyone who tries to put up flags will be arrested for breach of the peace.’”

“That’s today I’m talking about,” Cowan replied.

Around and around they went, with McHale pressing his point and Cowan’s only answer for it that, when natives put up their flags, it was “a long time ago.”

“And I’m not here to comment on that,” Cowan said. “I’m just telling you what our plan is today, and that’s what my purpose is.”

“Well,” McHale said, “you know what my plan is.”

“What is your plan?” Cowan asked.

“My plan is to make you guys look like a bunch of assholes,” McHale said, “and you’ve done a great job [of helping achieve that]. The media will be here, and it will be quite clear to all Canadians across this country, because they will see the native flag. The cameras will show the native flag. And you’ll be there, and your officers will be there, saying, ‘If you put up a Canadian flag, we will arrest you.’”

November 16, 2010

Helpless

Filed under: Books, Bureaucracy, Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:17

The National Post is publishing some exerpts from Christie Blatchford’s latest book, Helpless:

But now, occupiers were showing up in force, at least a dozen of them converging on the lone OPP officer, who had already determined that the driver had no licence, no permit and no insurance — oh, and that the car had no plates. He called for backup, a plea that, in the normal course of events in the policing world, usually brings an enormous, instantaneous, gut-level response: Every cop who can get there does.

No one arrived.

In what was probably the single most important early indicator of how the OPP was disintegrating from within, its officers were no longer answering a call for help from one of their own. The constable had been left to fend for himself.

Furious, heartsick, he did what he could — cautioned the driver — and left before things got ugly. Back at the station, he filed a formal complaint. Within a matter of weeks, he was verbally disciplined for having created a possible “flashpoint.”

It was a sign of things to come. The occupation was just a month old, and whenever OPP officers dared speak up about the way things were going, they were slapped down.

November 14, 2010

Life replicates art, kinda

Filed under: Books, Cancon, Education, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:02

As one of the comments on this article in The Cord points out, it’s highly ironic that “at a speech about a book detailing how the police did nothing to uphold the laws of the land the university did exactly the same thing.”

What was scheduled as a speech by Globe and Mail columnist Christie Blatchford turned sour tonight as protesters opposing the journalist’s new book Helpless: Caledonia’s Nightmare of Fear and Anarchy, and How the Law Failed All of Us took over the stage.

Three protesters locked themselves together at the centre of the stage where Blatchford was meant to speak at the University of Waterloo’s (UW) Humanities Theatre in Hagey Hall, with another individual acting as their “negotiator”. A fifth, Tallula Marigold, acted as the group’s media representative.

“We don’t want people who are really, really racist teaching [the people we love],” said Marigold of Blatchford. “And we don’t want that person to have a public forum because it makes it dangerous for others in the public forum.”

If nothing else, the passion of the protesters has persuaded me that I must buy and read Blatchford’s latest book . . .

November 9, 2010

Do you read SF? Do you like free stuff?

Filed under: Books, Media — Tags: — Nicholas @ 10:18

If so, you really ought to read this post:

Every single Vorkosigan book available for free from Baen

If you’ve never plunged into the mysteries and adventures of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga, now is the time to do it. Every novel and story is available for free at Baen right now, in a variety of formats.

Here’s the link. Have fun!

November 6, 2010

Robert Fulford on Dierdre McCloskey’s latest book

Filed under: Books, Economics, History, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:19

As a dabbler in economic thought (but not an economist), I’m always interested in new books on different aspects of economics. Robert Fulford has probably prompted me to buy Deirdre McCloskey’s Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World:

In a time of sharply limited budgets, this gives a special urgency to the ideas of Deirdre McCloskey, an economic historian at the University of Illinois. She thinks she knows how economic growth works.

Why did northwestern Europe begin growing rich in the 17th century, a process that continues to this moment? Why did various countries elsewhere in Europe have similar success, along with countries created by Europeans, including the United States and Canada?

McCloskey sets aside most of the reasons for prosperity that her academic peers identify. Scientific innovation, natural resources, education, Protestant theology, trade agreements — these can be important but they do not explain global patterns. Often, they are present in societies that have failed.

The West’s success, McCloskey believes, turns out to be a question of imagination, attitude and sensibility. It depends on how we talk and write about business — in fact, how people in the West feel about it.

Fulford also points out that McCloskey has had a very unusual life:

It’s not possible to write about McCloskey without noting the most remarkable aspect of her life, which she described eleven years ago in Crossing: A Memoir. In 1995, Donald McCloskey, a 52-year-old professor, married for 30 years, a father of two, realized that his real identity was as a woman. He began a program of hormone treatment, multiple surgeries and electrolysis, emerging as Deirdre.

As a scholar, she noted that this physical change involved a cultural transformation as well. Having been both a man and a woman, she drew up a long list of changes she’s discovered in herself. Here are a few of them. She cries, she likes cooking, she’s more easily startled by loud noises, she listens intently to stories people tell of their lives and craves detail. She can’t remain angry for long. She’s less impatient, drives less aggressively, has more friends. She’s stopped paying attention to cars and sports. And she feels duty-bound to wash the dishes.

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