archaeocommunologist

[archaeocommunologist]

In the age of Hindu identity politics (Hindutva) inaugurated in the 1990s by the ascendancy of the Indian People's Party (Bharatiya Janata Party) and its ideological auxiliary, the World Hindu Council (Vishwa Hindu Parishad), Indian cultural and religious nationalism has been promulgating ever more distorted images of India's past.

Few things are as central to this revisionism as Sanskrit, the dominant culture language of precolonial southern Asia outside the Persianate order. Hindutva propagandists have sought to show, for example, that Sanskrit was indigenous to India, and they purport to decipher Indus Valley seals to prove its presence two millennia before it actually came into existence. In a farcical repetition of Romanic myths of primevality, Sanskrit is considered—according to the characteristic hyperbole of the VHP—the source and sole preserver of world culture.

This anxiety has a longer and rather melancholy history in independent India, far antedating the rise of the BJP. [...] Some might argue that as a learned language of intellectual discourse and belles lettres, Sanskrit had never been exactly alive in the first place [...] the assumption that Sanskrit was never alive has discouraged the attempt to grasp its later history; after all, what is born dead has no later history. As a result, there exist no good accounts or theorizations of the end of the cultural order that for two millennia exerted a transregional influence across Asia-South, Southeast, Inner, and even East Asia that was unparalleled until the rise of Americanism and global English. We have no clear understanding of whether, and if so, when, Sanskrit culture ceased to make history; whether, and if so, why, it proved incapable of preserving into the present the creative vitality it displayed in earlier epochs, and what this loss of effectivity might reveal about those factors within the wider world of society and polity that had kept it vital.

[...] What follows here is a first attempt to understand something of the death of Sanskrit literary culture as a historical process. Four cases are especially instructive: The disappearance of Sanskrit literature in Kashmir, a premier center of literary creativity, after the thirteenth century; its diminished power in sixteenth century Vijayanagara, the last great imperial formation of southern India; its short-lived moment of modernity at the Mughal court in mid-seventeenth century Delhi; and its ghostly existence in Bengal on the eve of colonialism. Each case raises a different question: first, about the kind of political institutions and civic ethos required to sustain Sanskrit literary culture; second, whether and to what degree competition with vernacular cultures eventually affected it; third, what factors besides newness of style or even subjectivity would have been necessary for consolidating a Sanskrit modernity, and last, whether the social and spiritual nutrients that once gave life to this literary culture could have mutated into the toxins that killed it. [...]

One causal account, however, for all the currency it enjoys in the contemporary climate, can be dismissed at once: that which traces the decline of Sanskrit culture to the coming of Muslim power. The evidence adduced here shows this to be historically untenable. It was not "alien rule un sympathetic to kavya" and a "desperate struggle with barbarous invaders" that sapped the strength of Sanskrit literature. In fact, it was often the barbarous invader who sought to revive Sanskrit. [...]

One of these was the internal debilitation of the political institutions that had previously underwritten Sanskrit, pre-eminently the court. Another was heightened competition among a new range of languages seeking literary-cultural dignity. These factors did not work everywhere with the same force. A precipitous decline in Sanskrit creativity occurred in Kashmir, where vernacular literary production in Kashmiri-the popularity of mystical poets like Lalladevi (fl. 1400) notwithstanding-never produced the intense competition with the literary vernacular that Sanskrit encountered elsewhere (in Kannada country, for instance, and later, in the Hindi heartland). Instead, what had eroded dramatically was what I called the civic ethos embodied in the court. This ethos, while periodically assaulted in earlier periods (with concomitant interruptions in literary production), had more or less fully succumbed by the thirteenth century, long before the consolidation of Turkish power in the Valley. In Vijayanagara, by contrast, while the courtly structure of Sanskrit literary culture remained fully intact, its content became increasingly subservient to imperial projects, and so predictable and hollow. Those at court who had anything literarily important to say said it in Telugu or (outside the court) in Kannada or Tamil; those who did not, continued to write in Sanskrit, and remain unread. In the north, too, where political change had been most pronounced, competence in Sanskrit remained undiminished during the late-medieval/early modern period. There, scholarly families reproduced themselves without discontinuity-until, that is, writers made the decision to abandon Sanskrit in favor of the increasingly attractive vernacular. Among the latter were writers such as Kesavdas, who, unlike his father and brother, self-consciously chose to become a vernacular poet. And it is Kesavdas, Biharilal, and others like them whom we recall from this place and time, and not a single Sanskrit writer. [...]

The project and significance of the self-described "new intellectuals" in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries [...] what these scholars produced was a newness of style without a newness of substance. The former is not meaningless and needs careful assessment and appreciation. But, remarkably, the new and widespread sense of discontinuity never stimulated its own self-analysis. No idiom was developed in which to articulate a new relationship to the past, let alone a critique; no new forms of knowledge-no new theory of religious identity, for example, let alone of the political-were produced in which the changed conditions of political and religious life could be conceptualized. And with very few exceptions (which suggest what was in fact possible), there was no sustained creation of new literature-no Sanskrit novels, personal poetry, essays-giving voice to the new subjectivity. Instead, what the data from early nineteenth-century Bengal-which are paralleled every where-demonstrate is that the mental and social spheres of Sanskrit literary production grew ever more constricted, and the personal and this-worldly, and eventually even the presentist-political, evaporated, until only the dry sediment of religious hymnology remained. [...]

In terms of both the subjects considered acceptable and the audience it was prepared to address, Sanskrit had chosen to make itself irrelevant to the new world. This was true even in the extra-literary domain. The struggles against Christian missionizing, for example, that preoccupied pamphleteers in early nineteenth-century Calcutta, took place almost exclusively in Bengali. Sanskrit intellectuals seemed able to respond, or were interested in responding, only to a challenge made on their own terrain-that is, in Sanskrit. The case of the professor of Sanskrit at the recently-founded Calcutta Sanskrit College (1825), Ishwarachandra Vidyasagar, is emblematic: When he had something satirical, con temporary, critical to say, as in his anti-colonial pamphlets, he said it, not in Sanskrit, but in Bengali. [...]

No doubt, additional factors conditioned this profound transformation, something more difficult to characterize having to do with the peculiar status of Sanskrit intellectuals in a world growing increasingly unfamiliar to them. As I have argued elsewhere, they may have been led to reaffirm the old cosmopolitanism, by way of ever more sophisticated refinements in ever smaller domains of knowledge, in a much-changed cultural order where no other option made sense: neither that of the vernacular intellectual, which was a possible choice (as Kabir and others had earlier shown), nor that of the national intellectual, which as of yet was not. At all events, the fact remains that well before the consolidation of colonialism, before even the establishment of the Islamicate political order, the mastery of tradition had become an end in itself for Sanskrit literary culture, and reproduction, rather than revitalization, the overriding concern. As the realm of the literary narrowed to the smallest compass of life-concerns, so Sanskrit literature seemed to seek the smallest possible audience. However complex the social processes at work may have been, the field of Sanskrit literary production increasingly seemed to belong to those who had an "interest in disinterestedness," as Bourdieu might put it; the moves they made seem the familiar moves in the game of elite distinction that inverts the normal principles of cultural economies and social orders: the game where to lose is to win. In the field of power of the time, the production of Sanskrit literature had become a paradoxical form of life where prestige and exclusivity were both vital and terminal.

The Death of Sanskrit, Sheldon Pollock, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Apr., 2001), pp. 392-426 (35 pages)

[archaeocommunologist]

The Crypto Plot Against America’s Gold Reserves

The crypto “industry” was one of the biggest spenders in the 2024 election. It practically single-handedly bought a U.S. Senate seat in Ohio, turfing out labor’s most reliable senator, Sherrod Brown, with $40 million in advertising. And it convinced Donald Trump to make a 180 with a big sack of campaign contributions. Back in 2021, Trump said crypto was a “scam,” but now he has his own coin, his media site is in discussions to buy a crypto exchange, and he’s fully bought into the claims that the industry is overregulated.

So now that crypto has bought great political influence, it’s time to cash in. How might this happen? The basic idea is to turn the American government into the biggest crypto bag-holder of all time. If the plan goes through, hundreds of billions of dollars of public assets will be spent or leveraged to buy a million Bitcoins, allowing the tiny minority of Bitcoin moguls to finally cash out their holdings into real money. It would be one of the biggest upward transfers of wealth in world history.

[...] Crypto shill Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) proposes the Treasury issue new gold certificates based on the market price [of American gold reserves], and use the resulting cash—$677 billion at current prices—to buy up Bitcoins. In total, her bill would require the government to buy up 200,000 Bitcoins a year for five years, until a “strategic reserve” of a million would be accumulated.

This is revealing on several levels. The whole ideology of cryptocurrency is that it’s supposed to be outside the alleged corruption of governments or the extant financial system. Instead of transactions taking place on platforms run by Wall Street and regulated by the D.C. swamp, fiercely independent crypto entrepreneurs would build new businesses doing … something … out in a fresh economic Wild West.

So why on earth would buccaneering crypto people want the government scooping up a million Bitcoins—or about 5 percent of all that exist? The reason is obvious: so paper Bitcoin billionaires can cash out their holdings into real money without tanking the market. [...] The fundamental value of Bitcoin is zero. Even by crypto standards, the coin is terrible.

[...] Therefore, for early Bitcoin adopters sitting on vast piles of purely speculative assets, there is a huge structural need to get new suckers into the market. For anyone concerned about the corrosive role of money in politics, think about what this means: The crypto industry spent something on the order of $100 million in this election to install a government that will lure sacrificial lambs to a digital asset slaughterhouse, and make a handful of big Bitcoin hoarders generationally wealthy in the exchange.

[...] No one has deeper pockets than the federal government. No need to directly pick the pockets of suckers looking for a get-rich-quick scheme if you can pick everyone’s pockets indirectly by looting a vast store of treasure held in trust for the American people. It’s a logical end point for a technology whose sole meaningful use case is enabling criminal extortion and money laundering: finally carrying out the bank robber’s dream of draining the value in Fort Knox.

[archaeocommunologist]

[archaeocommunologist]

Can you fucking imagine the outrage if a trans man described the statement "trans women are women" as a "gender aphorism?" Like can you even imagine?

[archaeocommunologist]

People really don't understand what a "dogwhistle" is, huh. Ironic, given the number of self-identified dog-people giving me shit for my vocabulary. Down girl!

[archaeocommunologist]

Yes, words do have meaning. And the meaning of "cabal" is "a secret political clique or faction." Similarly, the word "globalist" refers to things or people related to "globalism," which is a political ideology. The fact that these words (and many other words that refer to secret or elite groups) can be used as antisemitic dogwhistles, does not change their everyday meaning or usage. In fact, the basic meaning of a dogwhistle is "an otherwise innocuous word that can be used to signal something else to an in-group." Should we never use the word "urban" because it can be a dogwhistle for Black people?

I'm looking through the extremely bizarre misreadings of me that are making the rounds on transandrophobia tumblr, and apparently my usage of the word "cabal" has "outed" me as... I guess an antisemite? Because "cabal" (which is a completely normal English word, which I used in a standard context) is etymologically derived from Kabalah? Very funny.

[archaeocommunologist]

i use this account to argue in people's replies because i don't feel like using my main account for it. on my main they can ad hominem me with things that hurt. here it's like. oh no, you point out my weird fetish? that i proudly display? so cruel. anyway im gonna go fuck your dead wife

[archaeocommunologist]

I'm looking through the extremely bizarre misreadings of me that are making the rounds on transandrophobia tumblr, and apparently my usage of the word "cabal" has "outed" me as... I guess an antisemite? Because "cabal" (which is a completely normal English word, which I used in a standard context) is etymologically derived from Kabalah? Very funny.

[archaeocommunologist]

if you're among the list of mutuals whose blogs I check individually instead of merely waiting to come across your posts on my dash, then rejoice, for you will be counted among my most prized possessions when I am entombed in my mighty pyramid alongside my worldly riches

[archaeocommunologist]

[archaeocommunologist]

The first half hour of Twin Peaks is a an exquisite piece of melodrama, unparalleled. The entire series is truly, but the premiere is masterful in the way Lynch sets all the pieces spinning like toy tops, which orbit and fly off throughout. But the first 30 minutes are something so beautiful and affected; the people in this town learning of a girl named Laura’s death, the ways their faces and bodies contort in overwhelming grief, attempting to jump out of themselves (a theme which Lynch plays with throughout the duration of the series). The attention paid to commonplace objects and spaces now hold such heightened energy and subtext. The expanse of a phone cord transmitting tragedy, the wind in the Douglas firs, the empty school hallways, the whirling ceiling fan up the staircase. All devoid of some presence that once existed, now a space full of mysteries and traumas.

[archaeocommunologist]

[archaeocommunologist]

@fite-club a few things here:

1.) People already do say this. One needs a better response than "lol kill yourself."

2.) I don't need to engage with Zionists in my personal, professional, or political life, so I have the luxury to say "if you die, I'll celebrate; if I die, you'll celebrate." If I were forced to actually deal with Zionists that would be a very different story. If I were, I don't know, working for UNWRA, "you can't say things like that" would be a valid criticism. Defending your "right" to make violent threats (in jest!) against large groups of people is a disease of powerlessness.

3.) This maxim is about totally foreclosing on the possibility of working with another person or persons. By necessity, the number of people to whom this maxim applies must be kept small and carefully-selected. What possible political goals are accomplished by foreclosing the possibility of working with all men? It makes at least a certain amount of sense to foreclose on working with Zionists, as they are a specific political tendency with specific crimes. But men? Or straight people, or white people? Separatism is a dead end, always has been.

4.) All of this is beside the real point, of course, which is the way in which "kill all men" jokes actually function. They're just a shibboleth to signal sides in the feminist/MRA culture war. People who are "in" on the joke (and therefore usually feminists themselves) know that it's meaningless posturing. Those who are not "in" on the joke (either because they are MRAs themselves or, worse, are just naive) don't know that it's meaningless, so they take reasonable offense, and then mark themselves as outsiders and therefore valid to abuse and brigade. This is stupid, hateful, pointless nonsense and you should stop participating.

A really fun maxim I try to follow online is, "if you die I'll celebrate; if I die you'll celebrate." Particularly with Zionists and certain US chauvinists. It's like, I don't have anything really to say to you, but if you do end up mulched I'll throw a little party. Until that point, bon voyage bitch.

[archaeocommunologist]

In Western discourse, it is claimed that democracy and liberal market capitalism are linked together as conjoined twins. However, liberal capitalism thrives when linked with fascism, as we have seen in Nazi Germany, Franco's Spain, and Pinochet's Chile. If the development of liberal democracy is linked to something, then it is linked to colonialism… The Eurocentric universalization of multiparty liberal parliamentarism as the essence of democracy not only overlooks its historical roots and how it is exercised on the global level, but it also fails to question the rule of capital in liberal democracy. It presents democracy as a purely procedural phenomenon and masks the underlying political and economic content—the exploitation needed for capitalist production and environmental destruction. However, you cannot isolate the political form of management from the laws of the economic sphere.

-The Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism by Torkil Lauesen, pgs.267-268

(PDF included in the hyperlink)

[archaeocommunologist]

A recent report by Haaretz indicates that the Palestinian resistance has taken much fewer losses than expected with the rest being unarmed civilians

In capable of defeating the Palestinian resistance (there's fierce fighting in the north and south every day), Israeli soldiers are content to compete over which division kills the most civilians in so called 'exclusionary zones'

The report goes on describe the routine killing of civilians as well as the philosophy of the Israeli army

Human Rights Watch has declared Israel's actions in Gaza a genocide

[archaeocommunologist]

It's like, you can just admit that elements of Black liberation movements have been recuperated in the US. You say it's not a bad thing to talk about Black American participation in US imperialism, but you sure as fuck don't act that way.

I'm Irish. I have a lot of love for my revolutionary history and the anti-imperial struggle on this island. I have a lot of love for the struggle of the Irish diaspora, in the US and otherwise. That struggle is long-dead. Ireland and the Irish people have been fully incorporated into white supremacy and into global imperialism. If I were still insisting that the Irish are the most oppressed group, you'd call me a chauvinist, and you'd be right.