#identity reductionism

[classic8media]

The Manipulation of Elections: How the Ruling Class Weaponizes "Agents of Chaos"

A short series on HBO called Agents of Chaos details how no more than 100 people were able to overthrow the 2016 United States election in favor of President Donald Trump in an intricate Russian troll farm psyop operation. A similar pattern appears to create a “doom loop” narrative in Bay Area elections and across the country using local networks of Tech Billionaires, Real Estate and Landlord…

[latkejoon]

you ever read a great post that gets One Crucial Thing Wrong

[epitome-the-burnkid-viii]

Sharing eye-opening news suppressed by the mainstream and much, much more daily! Watch my show #SupplementalBroadcast 🎱#youtuberecommendedchronicles🔮 on YouTube & Rumble New episodes posted regularly!!! 🧩🙏🎟️ #prophesy #conspiracy #currentevents #extraterrestrials #TheGreatAwakening

[kissingcullens]

Decolonization Is Not a Discourse, it Is a Material Process

GREAT interview with Leila Shomali and Lara Kilani

“Leila Shomali is a Palestinian PhD candidate in International Law at Maynooth University Ireland and a member of the Good Shepherd Collective. Lara Kilani is a Palestinian-American researcher, PhD student, and is also a member of the Good Shepherd Collective.

Also, read their recent piece: “Anti-Zionism As Decolonisation”

“In this conversation we talk about both the terms anti-zionism and decolonization which have each faced their own forms of elite capture and distortion. Along the way we talk about settler colonialism, the Oslo Accords, NGO’s, the limits of human rights discourse and international law for Palestinians, the problems of neoliberal identity reductionism, and why as Lara and Leila write, “the caretakers of anti-zionist thought are indigenous communities resisting colonial erasure.”

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

OP blocked me so I can’t even respond to yoi properly.

But here:

From what I understand, it was Israel who rejected the ceasefires? See how messed up that is? The fact that we have completely opposite notions of what is what just goes to show the polarization, propagandization, politicization and the constnat reductionism of this whole matter.

Nothing about what I said was in defense of Hamas, but only to provide context to their existence, just like I am aware of why Israel exists as well. I'd like to know where you got that information that Hamas doesn't want Israel to exist, period, but, considering the history of Zionism as its own movement and how it came to be, once again, there is nuance to their goals.

Meanwhile my initial comments was simply to ask about the power imbalance going on among tjis whole thing that I do think is important to take into consideration.

Look at article 13 of the 1988 Hamas charter.

If we're talking power imbalances... do you call the fact that Israel is surrounded by nations that all want them gone a power imbalance or no? There was a speech once by Hillel Neuer, I think was the guy, titled "Where are your Jews".

And Zionism as a movement has been around for thousands of years. Well - the modern movement hasn't been around for that long, I'll grant you, but the concept of Jewish people looking for their homeland, for that specific homeland, I mean, is far far further back than Palestinians, for instance, which dates back to the 1920s as a cohesive national identity.

Again, if I'm saying anything wrong here, please correct me.

[lacan-psychoananalysisaspraxis]

The unconscious is not a non-conscious, pre-existing memory. It is the emergence, in the very moment, of signs of this real…signs that testify to what in one’s own conduct or intention escapes the I and the identifications of the subject, where one finds it difficult to recognize oneself as identical to oneself.

Psychoanalysis isolates the symptom’s rebellious dimension against a reductionism of this part of the human which cannot be measured, which insists and reiterates all the more as one does not want to know anything about it. Lacan pinned it as object a.

New symptoms are taking shape. These are all answers, protests that demonstrate the impossibility of one’s self-identity, the impasses of control and of self-management of emotions, thought, stress, anxiety and trauma.

The analytic orientation knows the over-determination of these symptoms by the effects of speech on the body. The unconscious is not a non-conscious, pre-existing memory. It is the emergence, in the very moment, of signs of this real which does not belong to the organism; signs that testify to what in one’s own conduct or intention escapes the I and the identifications of the subject, where one finds it difficult to recognize oneself as identical to oneself.

Yves Vanderveken, Congress Director, “The unconscious and the brain, nothing in common”, 13 and 14 of July 2019, Brussels.

[haggishlyhagging]

Feminists who identity their deep centering Selves with the term witch are not being merely metaphorical, or cute, or popularizing, or "trivializing." I suggest, rather, that the reverse is true: that to limit the term to apply only to those who have esoteric knowledge of and participate formally in "the Craft" is the real reductionism. This is the case particularly since the cult, as Murray demonstrated (perhaps inadvertently), has been strongly invaded by patriarchal influences.

Together with Robin Morgan, who has done so much both to elicit in women the wide and deep intuition of the meaning of Witch and to resist simple vulgarization, I hope that more feminists will give to the study of witches “the serious study that it warrants, recognizing it as a part of our entombed history, a remnant of the Old Religion which pre-dated all patriarchal faiths and which was a Goddess-worshipping, matriarchal faith . . . [reading] the anthropological, religious, and mythographic studies on the subject.” Hopefully, in doing so we will not sacrifice the original vigor and integrity that inspired the "New York Covens" in the late sixties to proclaim:

“You are a Witch by saying aloud, "I am a Witch" three times, and thinking about that. You are a Witch by being female, untamed, angry, joyous, and immortal.”

Many women have understood this identity of the Witch within, the Self who is the target of the fathers' attacks and the center of original movement. Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English did much to spread knowledge among women of the role of the witches as midwives and healers, showing that their suppression coincided with the creation of a new male medical profession. In the early seventies, Andrea Dworkin named the witchcraze for what it is: gynocide. She showed its interconnectedness with other horrors such as foot-binding, fairy tales, rape, and pornography. Others have searched out pieces of the mosaic which are not easy to find.

Such works should be valued for igniting the Spark which inflames the desire to search further. There is much to be done. Working with increased confidence and precision, Hags must continue in the spiritual tradition of such visionaries as Matilda Joslyn Gage, continuing to uncover our past and paths to our future. This will be possible to the degree that we continue with courage in the Journey of our own time/space. Seeing through the fraudulent re-presentations of the witchcraze will help us recognize the tactics of today's Male Midwives, the professional Wizards who have unsuccessfully "succeeded" the Wise Women—the Unhealers of Modern Medicine.

-Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology

[dipperdesperado]

notes on class analysis beyond class reductionism

In which your favorite anarchist cherry-picks their favorite pieces of identity politics and syncretizes them with his favorite parts of sociological class analysis (with a focus on Marxian conceptions) and center-periphery theories of the same topic… for the sake of abolishing oppression.

Class and economic reduction are some of the worst theoretical and methodological mistakes that we can make in our analysis. Class reductionism is an understanding that the principal unit of analysis for analyzing social conditions is economic class. Other facets of social being, adorned with the dubious “superstructural”[1] labels are seen as unimportant to deal with. Economic reduction is about (1) seeing the “real”[2] determinants of social life as economic and therefore (2) understanding the “base”[3] of society as mechanically determining the elements that exist “superstructurally”. It’s an orientation that talks about inevitable moments of historical development, based on an analysis of the economic situation. When folks rail against Marxist analyses, this tends to be a recurrent target of critique. 

This approach has two big issues. While economics are important, and in some cases are good to see as “primary” in a vague sense[4], they don’t paint the full picture. Reality isn't just economic distribution, production, and consumption, even if we decide that the only “reality” we care about is human sociality. This thinking relatedly doesn't allow us to understand the full scope of what revolutionary potentialities exist by way of class analysis. Said otherwise, focusing solely on class analysis makes that mode have to do more lifting than it is capable of doing, rendering it ineffectual, like trying to make a fish win a footrace, just because it is really fast in the water. We can’t just focus on one variable or fact of interest in our analysis, if we want our analysis to capture a sense of complexity. We need the right tools for the right jobs. Alongside this, we have to always keep in mind that we exist in a dialectical relationship[5] with those tools. A separate can of worms can be opened up if we look at the ways that complex adaptive systems function—seeing the Cerberus of capitalism, modernity, and coloniality as such would illuminate that no one element of its functions is “primary”[6]. That kind of linear thinking only serves to encourage fruitless intellectual pursuits and failed revolutionary regimes. 

If the working class defined by a specific relationship with the means of production, and we have a class reductionist perspective, it can lead to us assuming ideals and extremes represent the whole[7]. We are trying to apprehend totalities with too limited of a dataset[8]. While class and economics are necessary, they are insufficient in an analysis of social conditions, and of the potential that exists for change along realistic[9] lines. 

One way for us to supersede these failure points is by way of a commitment to relationality. When I say this, I am referring to an understanding based in looking at the relationships between our loci of interest[10], in a way that prioritizes evidence (credible information sourced from the world) over hypotheses (or inductive, deductive, or abductive conclusions), with a hyper-critical and skeptical stance towards grand narratives. If there is such a thing, we, as far as we know, can only make approximations. While these can improve, even to the extent that our working models provide all that we need to engage in reality, they will always be models. This commitment isn’t modernist (building grand narratives) or postmodernist (critiquing all structures that exist and living within that critique, by way of being unable to surpass the object of critique). It is metamodernist: an orientation that is dialectical and syncretic, taking the critiques found from metamodernism seriously while believing in the existence of a reality, accessing it through a sober assessment of our capacities and limitations. 

If we want our theory, method, and practice to be based in what is by way of what we want to be, this is paramount. I see class and economic reduction as prioritizing hypotheses to rationalize with flattering evidence, rather than creating hypotheses that are based on evidence. 

A requisite part of this relationality is through having an analysis of positionality. This can be by way of intersectionality[11], interpenetration[12], and/or imbrication[13]. Positionality is an understanding of where you are located, socially, politically, and economically, by way of your identities, properties[14], and experiences. This is looking at the social hierarchies at play and seeing where you are at, in a given moment/period of focus. The "i-words" come in when we use that analysis to inform our practice, bound to a commitment to centering the marginalized. 

The center-periphery model as discussed by FARJ is a useful way to stretch class analysis, but mixing models, without explaining points of divergence before we converge can cause confusion. When we use the center-periphery model to discuss society, and an analysis that is based in intersectionality or similar frameworks talk about bringing the margins to the center, we are not asking for “representation” or “maintenance” of the structures social hierarchy as currently formatted. There is a tacit understanding embedded in this analysis that, if we are to, for example, desire a structure that empowers Black women to have multifaceted, sustaining experiences of freedom and self-determination, whatever we build would be radically different than what currently exists. This commitment is a practical way that we can “destroy” the centers of power. This is what actually allows us to (con)federalize[15] power. This is why understanding positionality is important. If each individual’s uniqueness is their own totality, having an understanding of the different elements, identities, and properties that make up who they are (in regards to it being relevant to the analysis) will allow us to see how we relate to power structures. This gives us an understanding of where to plant strategic and tactically effective action. In any given moment or situation, we might be able to take stock of if we are reinforcing or undermining concentrations of power rather than (con)federalizing of power. If, based on our social composition[16], the most marginalized folks don’t feel safe or heard, we’re doing something wrong in our practice that needs to be revised. 

To make sure we're clear, this is not to say we focus on identity “alone”. This is why we advocate for using economic and political properties along with identities in our understanding of positionality. We can't ignore any of these elements if we want a complete analysis, and centering the marginalized allows our practice to hold the most liberatory potential. Class analysis, which is what I'll call the focus of traditional/conventional leftism, broadly fixates on two things in my estimation: (1) how class interests align and contradict, leading to class conflict, class warfare, and the potentialities for abolishing class. In this vein, the other part of these potentialities is (2) how to build unity. I think that these are useful starting points, but present some issues. Since class analysis is relatively fixed and general rather than relational, it can easily lead to vulgar conclusions from the analysis, where we hyperfixate on specific, mythologized groups of folks that don't hold up to our expectations in reality. It also has the effect of the things we ask for being limited by a desire to build unity.

Unity, in this case, tends to be based on that overarching conception. “we should do this because of our objective class interests” type shit. Again, while it may be true that as economically dispossessed folks, it would be advantageous for us to have control over the means of production or whatever, that alone isn't connecting with the full breadth of how we experience our lives and has an almost Christianity-faith-based, “searching for salvation” vibe to it. “Follow me and I’ll set you free” type shit. It isn't specific enough, as classes aren't monolithic. We have to struggle through our differences, building solidarity based on a bottom-up understanding of shared needs and desires (and how those interact with and shape personal needs and desires). The unity method by way of the most general elements that unite folks is more top-down, simplifying reality in a way that isn't as useful when we're at the ground level. This makes authoritarianism the only real method of holding it together (as top down means easily lead to top down ends), creating weak movements that are vulnerable to outside actors agitating the differences that exist and are being ignored, widening fissures within the movement. Not to mention the way that people who intuitively or lucidly understand that they don't fit into that mythologized model and thus will not participate. I know that when I look at the labor movement, and see all White dudes (but I see many more kinds of embodiment when actually looking at workplaces), I feel like that’s not a place meant for me. 

If we want to have folks join our movements, we need to be more specific in our analysis, so that our practice is more accurate and aligns with the world as it is while enabling us to make it as we like. We should specify the conflicts and contradictions that exist in society so that we can see, across sectors and spaces, where the spaces for intervention can arise, or how to take advantage of the ones that exist. By having positionality and any of the “i’s” in mind, and by looking at facilitating expansive conceptions of desire[17], we can actually create movement spaces that are more holistic in their approach.

A way that this type of analysis becomes useful in multiple situations is by understanding how it can fractalize. For the sake of this conversation, we can work with the scales of Macro (class/umbrella identity), Meso (section), Micro (bloc), and Nano (individual). 

Macro is at the highest level. When looking at analyzing where someone is in society for the sake of liberatory change, the macro level is the most broad/shallow and common features of groups of people. When people talk about the rich, the proletariat, or any other classes, they are on the macro level. This is useful for us to understand “the meta”[18], and get into all of the stuff that class analysis illuminates: class antagonism, the ways that all of the -isms affect people in a broad sense, and how these things change over a broad timescale.

Meso is us zooming in a bit--instead of looking at just “classes”, used here to mean “types”, we start to understand “sections” of those classes using intersectionality and positionality with more specificity. Rather than just referring to Black people or working people, we may refer to Black young women or German working people. It is understanding that, while we are still at a high level, there is more specificity at play that is useful to have awareness of. Just like there are shared experiences of alienation from the Means of Production for all working class people, we can see how zooming in specifically allows us to see what that actually means for certain sections of whatever unifying element of a given “class”. This is able to let us know that not all workers/genders/racial communities are created monolithically, and within a given community there are sections that have their own interests due to their positionality. 

Micro is about looking at actual groups of actual people, seeing the blocs that exist within our subgroups. For example, if we're looking at Black folks, we can see how sections are composed, and we can look at the actual circumstances in an area of interest to see how different sections relate to one another, to see what contradictions are invisibilized by way of not zooming in enough. Rather than sticking at a higher level and saying that there should be unity solely due to one or two shared variables of intersection, there can be an understanding of how people are seen in society as is, with the capacity to try and shift those resonances and dissonances into more beneficial assemblages for the goals of liberation. If there are contradictions between people connected by variables found in the higher level/more general classes, we can start at a bloc level, building our way up towards people seeing and acting in their “class interests”.

Nano is zooming all the way in. It is understanding specific folks, and seeing their specific experiences intimated and imbricated by the above scales. It is easy, especially when trying to understand how to change society, to not look at individuals. But, ignoring individuals, the building blocks of society, will leave good materials on the cutting room floor. I think we should oscillate between more and less individual understandings, so that we can mutualize the relationships between individuals, collectives, and collectives of collectives.

It's worth noting that all of these are connected, and we move from one to another based on what we're trying to understand. If we're looking at the structure of society, then class analysis, in both meanings of the word, is useful. If we're trying to relate to each other as individuals, we need to think about things at that level, not eschewing an awareness of systemic dynamics. We run into a lot of issues if we don't make sure our method is well-suited to our problems that we're trying to understand.

If we can stretch the idea of class to not just be an economic thing, but to focus on positions in social hierarchies, that allows us to understand oppression on different scales from the interpersonal to the societal, and gives us room to think about what it means to be in one position or another. By framing this in ontologies and epistemologies of  Black feminisms, we come away with a flexible framework for analyzing those positions, and we can, in every situation, center the marginalized, so that we have a more specific, intentional way to expand our understanding of prefiguration and material solidarity. This points us towards uniting in ways that undermine different social hierarchies that reinforce one another. By having these tools at our disposal, we can create unified action through maximal prefiguration in our practice. If we are making something that works for the least privileged of us, we have much less work to do for the more privileged of us. This also ensures that those folks aren't left behind, the way that they can be when we don't do the work to zoom in enough. If they are at the “center”, there is no “center”. If there is a “center”, then there are marginalized people who are being ignored. 

Let’s try to concretize this with an example. Start anywhere in the process (or at any level of zoom). For clarity, we will start at the macro level. We have two classes, the exploiters and the exploited. We can then cut that up, by way of intersectionality and positionality, to see that each of these groups have subgroups that have different relations to their exploitation or exploiting. This allows us to know that broadly speaking, there are contradictions and tensions within these classes that allow us to either foster more mutuality or sow more division, depending on how we approach things. Once we are aware of this, we can zoom in more to see how, within these classes, there are blocs that add more detail to those contradictions. We can see that blocs of communities are not intrinsically unified by way of their identity[19], and this keys us into the intentionality that has to go into organizing unified action, which I recommend to be based on solidarity (bottom-up) rather than unity (top-down). We can then get to the individual level, where we try to unearth desire, in the expanded sense where someone cultivates their individuality, what I call ego, or what Lorde calls the erotic. From here, we can build back up, having a meaningful and actionable awareness of social composition that tells us how the social world exists. By way of our ideology[20] and theories[21] for how the world can change, we can develop practice that materializes into that change. 

[Notes]

[1] In Marxian theories, the superstructure is everything that sits atop the economic mode of production of society. It is everything not economic, from art, to culture, to politics, etc.

[2] As in reality, notating an importance in the physical. This is true in a broad sense, but people tend to leave out things like life belief systems and human action as important unless it relates with a very clear causality to this.

[3] The “economic foundation” of society.

[4] I’m pretty skeptical of focusing on economics unless you’re literally choosing to focus on economics, mainly because of all the ideological, theoretical, methodological, and practical baggage that comes from this. 

[5] We exist in a symbiotic (meant in the neutral sense, not the colloquial, “positive”/“beneficial” sense) process with the tools we create and deploy. As we shape the tools from our ideas, the tools shape us right back, pointing us to particular potentialities. 

[6] How can primacy exist when all of the elements operate together to create emergent outcomes? The closest we get is when, by way of our commitment to relationality, we see that certain axes of oppression rear their head in a pronounced way that is still propped up by the other axes. 

[7] This, when combined with things like Eurocentricity, leads to vulgar dynamics in political struggle, where, for example, “working class” ends up meaning “White working class”, even though POC are much more emblematic of the class.

[8] If we're going to make sweeping statements about society, we should either commit to philosophical inquiry (which doesn’t have the same need for “accuracy” in the scientific sense), or we should do rigorous analysis to understand our context, using phenomenology, sociality, history, science, and culture as our “raw” data.

[9] Changes that can actually happen in the most open sense, where we are not relying on supernatural or physics-defying feats of reality-warping for our goals. It’s a combination of inspiration and analysis, where we are simultaneously thinking about the exciting futures that we want and what we can do now to get there. This is distinct from how some employ “pragmatism”, asking people to “vote harder” or whatever. This is doing things that many people may see as idealistic or impossible, but are possible in actuality, which becomes easier to see as we move away from hegemonic understandings of potentiality.

[10] This is just a funny way of saying the stuff that we’re looking at. This could be anything: “object”, “subject”, “process”, “event”, “phenomena”, and/or “thing”.

[11] The way multiple identities intersect, creating phenomenological “coordinates” that are simultaneously similar to specific variables within that coordinate, but where that specific also creates a unique phenomenological experience that can only be dictated on its own terms.

[12] Seeing how different facets of identity are constantly shifting and bleeding into one another, based on different circumstances.

[13] Identities and social relations overlap and bump up against each other on the edges, and thus are able to be recognized as distinct but interconnected. This shows up in specific practical engagements, where a specific person’s identity, when compared to “normative” modes of being (cishet, white, male), impacts their experiences.

[14] I mean this in both senses of the word: economic property, and features. 

[15] (Con)federalism is a mode of social organization that stands in opposition to centralism. While centralism concentrates power within small groups of people and organizational bodies, (con)federalism distributes power to the grassroots level, and connects laterally and “vertically” with other organizational bodies to administer coordination. 

[16] The way a class is “composed”, through whatever collective experiences or positionalities unite everyone within. It is, based on a dialectical understanding of how the Cerberus is functioning, looking to see how we can (1) see what ways we are bound to the systems at play in a practical sense, and (2) find ways to holistically sever our selves from that binding, to create new relationships with each other, based on more communistic values. 

[17] Desire here is the (spiritual, emotional, physical, rational) needs, wants, and interests of an individual or a collective, in a given moment.

[18] I’m appropriating this term from gaming communities, meant there to talk about the toolset/features that are obviously advantageous to employ, so behavior tends to shift towards using those until the game is rebalanced towards fairness. In our case, we’ll focus on how the meta indicates relationships of power-over, leading to us needing to do the “rebalancing”. 

[19] Positionality tells us the ways that solidarity can develop by keying us into where people share or diverge in experiences based on the society in which they exist...it does not show were people's desires lie

[20] The word ideology has a negative connotation…but I think it is honest and useful. I mean it in the basic sense of our foundational assumptions and commitments, that are ideally evidence tested constantly, and revised if evidence demands it, but also allow us to continue working. 

[21] Our theories are the ideas that allow us to see if our ideology is accurate; it is the way that we build upon our foundation to see if it stands up to reality.

[branded-perceptions]

Motivating vs justifying reasons:

without motivation no observation which simultaneously is an ACTION

that in the realm of quantum scale is bound to via subjective decision of observation SIMULTANEOUSLY ACT UPON / alter objective reality in order to measure it which we then justify / explain subjectively via our reductionistic (like a computer compressing) consciousness made up of fictional numeric and linguistic SYMBOLS🎅 that we collectively our subjective emotions attach to

our social desires (and the resulting actions that alter reality according to) what we subjectively long for and thus collectively compete to create (and "race" for / chase mimetically wanting "more" ... "mehr") like past colonialism is defined by HOW / what we "observe" and make sense of ... the socio-psychological metaphor "Quantum observer effect" at "SCALE" (double-entendre: dimension vs "SEEsaw"⚖️) which requires proactive metacognitive BALANCE to make sure in by our habits

(what we "SEE" depends on the filtering of our mind symbols whose order and connotations depend on what we "SAW" in the past)

defined motivational competitions' psychotically self-justifying in-group identity "races" (competitive group chases for via shared symbols convergerted goals, behaviours and identities) collective attention shadows happens no injust causal abuse like "racism".

a behaviour or moral in-group justification that to one group ("kin") appears as "kind" or "go(o)d"🤥😷😇 might appear to another "party" or group ("kin") as "hatred" or "bad": these PSYCHOLOGICAL "quantum fluctuations" in "deCOHERENCE" (📚Free energy principle by Karl Friston) of in-groups' symbolic (sinn bolic) understandings can now be better conveyed and discussed via help of music pattern bridging logos, mythos and underlying emotions, metaphorically flirting with each other's sense-makings instead of physically fighting:

our subjective sense-makings are constructed via and defined by our collective sense-makings and emotionally stabilised via grouped🏟👏👏👏 symbolic🎅 constructs' argumentative team identitifications. No one of us has ever had an "independent" or "individual" mind, but tend to arrogantly believe otherwise. But some introspect more than others and thus learn to evaluate and especially in moral contexts (Immanuel Kant) create social differentiations and symbolic groupings more autonomously with an intrinsic compass.

Everything we think or communicate is inevitably a lie to a certain degree as we are bound to need to compress data of objective systems reality in order to fit into reductionistic psychological symbolic🎅 representations of it like linguistics or algebra that thus has inevitable blind spots as explored by Higher topos theory Jacob Lurie which we can only strive to handle responsibly via proactive curiosity about subjective UNfamiliarity of everything that might not be represented by familiARITY (in-group identifications "ARITY master functions" as used in AI-TECH) of our symbolic subjective perceptions and interpretations of objective reality.

Irony is the mimetic tool to communicate and dialectically evolve that: both linguistically and mathematically (ponder about the meaning of mathematic 0).

the emotional charging of dominance of linguistic / numeric symbolic🎅 constructs' explanatory reductionism of an in-group define what "MATTERS" to / is perceived as "real" (matter) and worthy of pursued by them, emotionally calibrating their motivations and out of this resulting curvature of psychotic justifications we tend to confuse with reason: 🔍list of psychological (group) biases.

https://twitter.com/BEFREEtoSEE/status/1788485006567850320

[power-chords]

The ever-talking double of the Rothian pantheon is a Jew. Jewish talkiness may be an artifact of theology (arguing with God), an effect of history (wheedling with Cossacks), a residue of Talmudic practice, or the product of psychoanalysis (“say everything”). Whatever the source, there is “inside each Jew,” as one character puts it in Operation Shylock, “so many speakers! Shut up one and the other talks.”

The irrepressible talker is mobilized by Roth against any notion of Jewish wholeness or authenticity, of being oneself, at home in the world. The authentic Jew is the fantasy of the Zionist and the anti-Semite alike. Both get a platform in the “Judea” and “Christendom” chapters of The Counterlife, in which they reduce the Jew to a singular, univocal self. Purged of ambiguity and uncertainty, that Jew has only one destiny: to vacate his diasporic premises and go back to where he belongs, the land of his ancestors, where he will stop talking so much, or at least in so many voices.

Roth’s defense of the double against Jewish reductionism and Zionist certainty is also, in a way, the upshot of Arendt’s strictures about the doubling of the self. The fact that “I am inevitably two-in-one,” she writes, “is the reason why the fashionable search for identity is futile and our modern identity crisis could be resolved only by losing consciousness.” The search for a grounding identity—Jewish or otherwise—necessarily finds its terminus in the stasis of a unified self, unable to carry on a conversation even with itself. Down such a path, she suggests, lies death. [...]

Roth and Arendt turn the double into a figure of satire and irony, using its destabilizing comedy to deprive that house of its foundations. Roth’s most fanciful double is Anne Frank. In The Ghost Writer, the young Nathan Zuckerman, like the young Roth, has written a story that earns him the accusation of being a self-hating Jew. His accusers include his parents and Judge Wapter, a family friend and respected leader of Newark’s Jewish community. Desperate for exoneration, Nathan makes a pilgrimage to the home of an esteemed and elderly Jewish writer (modeled on Bernard Malamud) who lives in the Berkshires with his wife. There, Nathan meets the writer’s assistant, Amy Bellette. As the evening goes on, the form of Nathan’s redemption takes shape: Amy is really Anne Frank, and Nathan will marry her. What better guarantor of his Jewish credentials? He imagines returning to New Jersey and the conversation with his parents that will ensue:

“I met a marvelous young woman while I was up in New England. I love her and she loves me. We are going to be married.” “Married? But so fast? Nathan, is she Jewish?” “Yes, she is.” “But who is she?” “Anne Frank.”

According to Bailey, Roth originally wrote the Bellette character as if she were, in fact, Anne Frank. But that simple application of the reality principle prevented him from finishing the book. It was only when he realized that Bellette had to be a fantasy Anne Frank—a fictitious double, conjured from Nathan’s head—that Roth was able to find the comedy in, the meaning of, the story: how an agonistic writer could turn himself into a nice Jewish boy by marrying the nicest Jewish girl that ever lived, how the most sacred figure of the Holocaust—and the Holocaust itself—could be used to resolve the most profane family romance.

Corey Robin, "Arendt and Roth: An Uncanny Convergence"

[canisvesperus]

Here's a question it thinks and asks about often that you can totally ignore:

what are some significant things that are common in veganarchist spaces that more spaces should adopt, and

what are some of the biggest issues in veganarchist spaces where they could learn from other spaces?

Hey there,

Big questions! Here’s what I think.

One thing I have always appreciated in veganarchist spaces is a frequent willingness to deconstruct explicit and implicit biases of all kinds. Nonhuman animal suffering is often an afterthought or a non-issue in other anarchist and leftist spaces, especially those that are rampant with class reductionism. To most veganarchists, concern for very basal and widely normalized forms of oppression opens the door to truly reexamine and continuously reevaluate their thoughts and behaviors across the board. Nothing is too “ridiculous” or too “inconsequential”. For example, the first time I ever heard somebody else speak on youth liberation, it was in a veganarchist community. Unfortunately youth liberation is a topic that is ridiculed by many self-proclaimed radicals who cannot conceptualize autonomy and personhood as something worth respecting in anyone who is unlike themselves and their peers. Saneism and lookism are also frequently discussed, similar situation. Concepts that are considered fringe in other spaces are more likely to be lended consideration in a serious manner, intersectionality is a massive priority, and generally they are more functional, more informative, more liberatory environments for human people of intersecting identities as well as the nonhuman people whose experiences are in many cases informed by collateral effects of human-on-human discrimination. Our experiences are tightly intertwined and this is considered to be a vital tenant informing the opportunities for our collective liberation.

Mainstream veganism is populated by a significant portion of “apoliticals”, single-issue activists (including genuine unabashed bigots), green capitalists, and generally an emphasis on consumer activity over all else in terms of praxis. I cannot overstate how much these types need to open their minds to comprehensive anti-oppression politics. Some of the attitudes in the mainstream undoubtedly influence vegan anarchist thought and it’s essential that we stay aware of how liberalist veganism for example may affect how we approach veganism. I’m going to be completely honest, a lot of human people I know are not knowledgable enough about nonhuman animals themselves, which leads to frustrating debates with respect to non-native species and the the best ways to go about acting as allies to them and to native species alike. Likewise, there is occasional misinformation circulated with respect to nutritional and climate science that we should not allow to go uncriticized. This is also a wider issue in vegan communities— I don’t see enough evidence and fact-checking for popular claims. Science is not the enemy. It’s vital that we work with accurate data for honest problems to find solutions that work for all of us.

I would also say that there is often too strong of an emphasis on insurrectionary activity and not enough attention given to the long-term recovery and support for emancipated nonhuman animals. This does tie into the issue of freeing farmed animals yet leaving them to fend for themselves in a foreign environment. I realize there are very few of us and we are not a wealthy demographic, but I simply do not see enough support for our sanctuaries. There are repatriations to be made for those sanctuary members; we cannot abandon them. Direct action is important, yes, but caregiving is just as important. I suspect some folks are overcompensating for the prevalence of “cute animal” media content in mainstream communities. We should prioritize an appreciation for nonhuman animals as they exist as individuals and unique cultures beyond their struggle for liberation. This in no way detracts from serious conversations about their liberation. Not every discussion and narrative about trans, brown, autistic, humans should be centered around suffering, and this should apply to every person, including those of other species. We need to celebrate their joy too, and have genuine investment in their self expression and daily lives. And I definitely don’t believe that my human peers don’t care about that, after all I would say many veganarchists are “animal lovers” and “nature lovers”—it’s more so an area they must improve upon and learn about from other spaces. There’s a fine balance to be found but in doing so it would be to the great benefit of our nonhuman peers.

I hope this is insightful! My apologies for the late response; my inbox is very full and I’ve been quite busy with my studies.

[battleangel]

Chew. Harden. Lengthen. Satisfy.

The tagline for Hims literal Hard Mints Chewables in an online ad that auto-played as I scrolled through a wiki article literally nauseated me & makes me fucking sick:

Chew. Harden. Lengthen. Satisfy. With confidence.

Hims now makes and sells chewable hard mints for ED (erectile dysfunction) that come in “discreet” tins.

The ad for the Hims Hard Mints is absolutely sickening & dehumanizing.

I just saw an in-website ad for the Hims Hard Mints that auto played as I was scrolling.

I was actually rereading the script for the demiurge episode from Aeon Flux.

The dystopian society that Aeon Flux presented that I watched for the first time on MTV in 8th grade in 1995 has now become a distressing Orwellian reality.

Aeon Flux was deeply dark, mindfucky & deconstructive and included heavily sexual subplots where the main character, Aeon, clad in a skin-tight leather BDSM get up with an impossibly tiny & concave waist & ginormous boobs actually has sex with someone through a hole in her back.

Pretty dehumanizing & reductive portrayal of sex, right?

Just like the Hims Hard Mint ad.

So, the active ingredient in Cialis & Levitra has now been put into a hard mint chewable in a “discreet” tin.

Just like everything else, absolutely no thoughts to what might be behind the ED — anxiety, stress, mind body disconnect, unprocessed emotions and/or trauma, listlessness, lethargy, numbness, emptiness inside, loneliness, aimlessness, mindlessness, constant distraction, being overworked by design in our capitalist corporatist economic system, toxins chemicals & additives in foods & beverages, depressive feelings, malaise, existentialist despair, feelings of self-doubt, abandonment, isolation, inadequacy, constant comparisons, constant competition, keeping up with the joneses, overemphasis on the mechanics of sex, reductionism where sex is reduced solely to harden fuck ejaculate, lack of esotericism, total disconnect of mind body soul heart constantly caused by capitalism which is endlessly rewarded by disordered inhabitants that are slaves to the corporatist machine, lack of philosophical inquiries, never having a thought, watching pornhub on cell phone since 10 creating toxic harmful unrealistic expectations for sex. . .

Treating men like dehumanized sex robots and machines.

Chew. Harden. Lengthen. Perform. Satisfy. With Confidence.

Disgustingly sickeningly exploitative & reductive.

Reducing sex to nothing but moving body parts.

Why chewable? Why mint flavored?

Why in a tin?

Because then it seems like its not prescription medication - which it is, it has the same active ingredient as Cialis & Levitra - its just, pop an Altoid then go fuck her.

Just as mindless as everything else in our current 3 second attention span society.

Why not try to get to the root of what is causing the ED as 90%+ of physical & mental DIS-eases is literally your body mind being at dis ease and is caused by a mind body imbalance of some sort.

Why not look within instead of looking in a tin?

Why is the answer presented as a chewable Altoid?

Fun. Easy. Minty. Fresh. Discreet.

Why not reflection?

Why not meditation?

Why not examining ones own thought, minds, feelings & emotions?

Why not journalling?

Why not experimenting sexually and seeing if the ED is being caused by lack of interest in current sexual activities?

Why not explore your sexuality and sexual identity and see if boredom or malaise or lack of physical/sexual attraction may be at the root of the ED?

Why must everything be unthinking?

Simple?

Automatic?

Just pop a minty chewable chew.

In a discreet tin. Nobody has to know.

The entire ad focuses on the man satisfying the woman by chewing, hardening, lengthening, satisfying, performing with confidence.

Imagine that that is an ad actually describing a thinking feeling human being.

Its fucking terrifying.

Its nauseatingly reductive.

Its dehumanizing as fuck.

Its reducing men to literally nothing more than their anatomical reproductive organs and functions.

What of love?

What of ecstasy?

What of spark?

What of connection?

What of chemistry?

What of instantaneous chemical reactions?

What of soul connections?

What of soulmates?

What of twinflames?

What of beauty?

What of eroticism?

What of sexual soulmates?

What of sweat-filled intensity?

What of anticipation & build up?

What of longing & desire?

What of fantasy?

What of daydreams?

What of seductive allure?

What of devouring moments?

What of soul orgasms?

What of tantric sex?

What of hands free orgasms?

What of mental g-spots?

What of sexual exploration?

What of kinks & fetishes?

What of sexual preferences?

What of sexual identity & sexual expression?

What of wet dreams?

What of sexual attraction to the self?

What of turn-ons?

What of turn-offs?

What of sexual likes & dislikes?

What of trying different things sexually?

What of mixing things up?

What of roleplaying?

What of sexual imaginings?

What of erotic fiction?

What of homemade porn?

What of boudoir photography?

What of making yourself a sexual object?

What of self-fetishization?

What of lingerie?

What of voyeurism & exhibitionism?

What of sex shows?

What of public sex?

What of sexual personas?

What of sexual muses?

What of sexual adventures & misadventures?

What of orgies and one night stands and random hookups?

What of taking a break from sex?

What of temporary celibacy?

What of too much of a good thing applying to sex?

What of determining preferred frequency of sex?

What of getting to know yourself sexually?

What of societal sexual scripts that demand certain things from men & women?

What of not fitting the societally ascribed sexual scripts for the gender you were assigned at birth?

What of the intersection between your extremely individual & personal gender as everyones gender identity & expression is different & how that intertwines with societal dictates for how men & women are supposed to interact sexually?

What of sexual dogma that demands that the outcome of sex be an orgasm for all genders?

What of non-penetrative sex like oral, manual & intercrural?

What of sex being treated like a hypercapitalist machinistic end game?

What of love & loneliness?

No?

Just, Shut up. Chew. Harden. Lengthen. Perform. Satisfy. With confidence.

[venuskind]

On Strength 

Strength arising from yang only tends to be rigid or brittle as it lacks the flexibility and sustainability that only yin can bring to it. A singularly yang strength is narrowly focused and incapable of fully addressing or attuning to multi-layered or complex situations, it will apply reductivism, which can be successful or have negative ramifications or induce unnecessary losses or harm.

Strength arising from predominantly yin tends to be more diffuse, and long suffering as it keeps adapting to the external circumstances, it can lose itself in the multidimensionality and therefore allay decisive action when it could have been of service, which might play out well or cause loss or harm.

Sustainable, and that implies by the nature of life also adaptive, strength necessitates the combination of yin and yang energy. While yin fuels it and allows for longevity and flexibility in expressing strength, yang focuses it and keeps a goal in sight, both yin and yang are necessary to discerns the amount and kind of strength that is adequate for the challenge faced.

Any conditioned preferences for yin or yang in our expression can not only limit the potential of outcomes but be part of the reasons we re-create and re-experience the same patterns and storylines. It is helpful to embrace, and better still know, the oneness of yin/yang and understand what the hermetic principle of polarity describes:

"Opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree.  Extremes meet. All paradoxes may be reconciled."

Mastery of human traits and their embodiment in navigating life is easier when I drop old paradigm ideas of what is masculine/feminine or reductionism as the primary lens for the perception of life.  In holding these ideas and concepts loosely, utilizing them when engaged with the majority who still operates on these premises I need to be anchored in a more expanded perception and knowing of life. It is this anchoring in a more mystical perception of life that frees me from the repetition compulsion embedded in conditioned patterns and trauma. And what is more, the mystical awareness serves as a gateway to enjoying and exploring new narrative arcs and experiences of reality that serve the expansion and growth of embodied knowing. 

🍃

This contemplative insights were brought to me by last night's dreams and today's waking reflections. With that it seems that dream school is back in session in Meland... how I welcome its onset and entertaining lessons!

What are some of your current insights and downloads?

Photography via iStock

[grandhotelabyss]

Thoughts on Jung?

More positive than negative. He's not the great writer Freud is—and Freud is a great writer, a stoical and chastening essayist in the grand manner of Montaigne or Dr. Johnson—so I probably like to read about Jung more than I like to read Jung. But I've read a number of his essays and Man and His Symbol and Answer to Job. (I wrote about the latter here; see also my response to his essay on Ulysses.)

I evaluate Jung's psychology as follows. Instead of shackling us to our personal pasts with the single thick chain of bodily desire (like the Freudians), instead of overestimating the dominance of linguistic and social structures (like the Lacanians), instead of viewing us as programmable automata (like the behaviorists), and instead of reducing us to chemical processes (like the pyscho-pharmacologists), his psychology is implicitly premised on the idea that "all deities reside in the human breast." This makes available to us a richer panoply of human models and goals than most psychological theories, a rousing idea more actually therapeutic than, for example, Freud's celebrated and doleful insistence on "ordinary unhappiness."

While I take all models as provisional or heuristic and none as gospel, I also regard Jung's fourfold model of the psyche (persona, ego, shadow, anima- animus) as more comprehensive than the tripartite psyche either in its idealist Platonic variant (reason, spirit, appetite) or its materialist Freudian inversion (superego, ego, id)—first because it takes primary account of gender, unlike Freud's model with its unspoken male default, and second because the shadow is more specific to the ego it's shadowing than some generalized quasi-Hobbesian sex-and-violence-obsessed id.

And I am persuaded of his "political" judgment that conflict, especially avoidable or unethical large-scale conflict on the order of war or imperialism or genocide, is caused by shadow-projection: by a loathing of an aspect of the self externalized onto the other. "They, those people over there, are greedy, are lazy, are licentious, are full of hate. Not me. I'm pure!" Even unavoidable or ethically justifiable conflict is still menaced by projection in a way that will distort the just cause, as witness recent identity politics: the wise, therefore, remain wary of it. (I've recommended before, and I recommend again, Angie Speaks's 2023 video on Jung and the culture war.)

I do worry that Jungian psychology can be a reductive literary and artistic hermeneutic, but that's no less true of Freudian or Lacanian criticism (or Marxist or structuralist or feminist or deconstructive or Girardian or Straussian or postcolonial etc. etc.). We see the wonders it can work in a major critic like Frye—and I've admittedly read more Frye than I've read Jung.

Jungianism can just as easily fall prey to reductionism as a diagnostic or therapeutic modality, as can all psychologies. "Extrovert" and "introvert" might be the chief example of this problem in Jungian psychology: it's passed into received wisdom as one of those self-diagnoses as self-fulfilling prophecies that probably cause more problems than they solve in people's actual lives by giving them an official-sounding excuse for their destructive behavior: "Sorry, I can't help it—I'm an introvert!"

I don't know enough about his occult or gnostic views to evaluate them; I know they're a target of scorn for his detractors and a source of embarrassment for his more secular admirers. But I spend my time with the poets, not the philosopher or psychologists, so my bar for scorn and/or embarrassment in such matters is very low. Someday I must read Memories, Dreams, Reflections and The Red Book.

[tanadrin]

@youzicha

@tanadrin Yes, I was thinking of you when I posted this, I have never been convinced by your writings here since they seem to be based on nothing at all. Writing "the burden of proof is on the other side" seems functionally equivalent to "I have no arguments for this, I just believe it".

i believe it because embodied cognition is the best account (out of admittedly a not very strong field of contenders) of psychology which explains both the basis of language and how we interact with the world

embodied cognition doesn’t negate the possibility that we can learn from reading, but that reading involves negotiating systems of abstraction (language) that are built on real-world experience. you say yourself:

My point is that none of us have a base in reality to start from. A newborn baby has no concept of fibre or thin or floppy, it has to figure it all out from scratch based on the raw pixel values impinging its optic nerve. It also learns "meaning from form alone", but nobody notices because it feels so natural.

and i think this implies you think there’s a similarity between reading and taking in raw sense data, but i think this is a crucial and revealing mistake. because language as a faculty comes much later in the development of cognition (both evolutionary and in terms of childhood development), and is used to index concepts and generalizations built up from sense data (cf. prototype theory).

the account of language alone as a basis for learning about the world seems to me to assert without argument that cognitive linguistics is all false (this may be true; some evidence for it as a claim would be nice! or at least an engaged critique of the claims of cognitive linguistics) and meaning can be embedded directly in language without reference to an external environment, sense data, or experience (this is arguably tantamount to a claim that all linguistics since Saussure is false; which again, it may be, but evidence against or an engaged critique of Saussurian semiotics would be nice).

the cheeky answer is that the fact that there exist words or even full sentences in two different languages which are identical but which mean different things is a full refutation of this position; but less cheekily, i think it’s a problem for this position that we can easily imagine that there exist two languages--say, English, and !English--whose phonology an orthography is identical, and which share similar lexis and grammatical structures, but for the language !English, each word or grammatical structure in English means something completely different; and that a large body of text in English and !English might be superficially identical but mean completely different things.

You might argue that this could be true for toy examples but not for as large a body of text as, say, the entire publicly available internet. I don’t know that that’s true, but it becomes increasingly plausible for reductiones that are less absurda (less strained examples than !English or smaller text corpora), and I think it still presents a problem for the underlying philosophical assumptions you’re working with.