more on enlightenment, a response to joe

I very much want to get back to the discussion on the Enlightenment and ideology taking place between Thomas and Joe.

Quite awhile back, Joe asked me the following questions: "isn't the anguish that accompanies not knowing, and the associated awareness of one's ignorance, a drive to knowledge? [ . . .] Aren't religious fabrications - with their illegitimate status of truth - a hindrance to knowledge? Will they not lead people to avoid questions and anticipate unfounded answers?"

In a comment prior to this, Joe described religion as "a factor of irrationality which tends to shun rational objections" and I asked whether the source of this dynamic is "really religious belief per se [or rather] a kind of primordial coercion".

First, I do agree that the anguish that accompanies not knowing can be a drive to knowledge. But I can also imagine religious forms of not knowing that drive a spiritual quest. The quest that I'm picturing, however, doesn't concern immediately empirical knowledge but rather questions about, say, the "meaning of being". (E.g., my anguish of not knowing what it means to "love my neighbor" drives me to devote my life or a part of my life to helping the poor).

Second, part of what I meant by a more primordial subjugation underlying religious subjugation is that "a factor of irrationality which tends to shun rational objections" doesn't operate solely within religious contexts. It seems to me every ideology, religious or not, forces discourse to adhere certain irrational and allegedly unobjectionable assertion (i.e., "we're right, even if the facts say otherwise"), and that the Enlightenment is about more than freeing our thought from superstition -- it's about freeing our thought from any kind of ideological subjugation whatsoever.

quiz results

Joseph Stalin and Karl Rove both took my quiz. So far, Stalin, who scored a 60, knows more about me than anyone else. Rove knows the least. It's gotta be a sign of something.

subway letters

The coedine pills in my pocket press against my ribcage. When you draw me with crayons, the fat pokes out. We’re talking about evolution, bodies in the radio. The bed expands wide as an ocean held perfectly still. Sky and earth asleep inside the semi-circular city. Blue tiles on the nose. Exhanges of the S under subway lights. Prickly, having sketched in the shade of the morning. Our minds are geared to want the first things only.

G, among the night limbs, rock back and forth like the long weeds. Two syllables together make a candle flame. Fingers trickle down the sheets. My face: pale, swollen, empty as a kitchen. Sleepless nights flop down around my waist. The letter O extends to the edge of my favorite blanket.

Now that I’m up, I pull myself through the weave of a coarsely textured sky. The desert makes a popping sound. I grip the mattress with my back, one foot rubbing obsessively against the other. Earth’s light streaks through the hollow inside of me, a hollow already in ruins.

good lord, what have i done?

Inspired by Laura Carter's example, here's my Bad With Titles quiz.

winter, tying up some loose ends

Once in awhile, that winter holiday magic works its way into my soul like chapstick into cracked lips. Most of the time, though, I tend to find the winter holidays both dull and dulling. Exhausted by forced socialization and artificial cheer, demoralized by the fact that most everyone I'd prefer to spend time with has fled the city for vacations and/or family reunions, this is the one time of year I find myself wishing I owned a TV.

Tonight, however, I've determined to fight the winter holiday blues by attempting to write about a few things I've been meaning to write about for at least a week or two.

First, I'm delighted to announce -- however belatedly -- that Thomas Basbøll has started a blog, Pangrammaticon. Thomas has a knack for making seemingly offhand, quiet, and casual remarks that function not unlike the proverbial flaps of a butterfly’s wings which, via a series of chain reactions, cause a hurricane on the opposite side of the globe. Although his blog has only existed for a short while, it's already full of rich material. I've learned a great deal about my own positions and the stakes involved in maintaining those positions through discussions with Thomas, and I'm grateful for the time that he's taken to share his thoughts. Although I can't wait to see what he comes up with for his blog, I must also confess a certain envy and trepidation -- he can post much, much faster than I can even hope to respond!

Second, I love the series of prose poems that Laura's been posting, starting, I think, with Rules of Conjecture, proceeding through the stunning Anna to the most recent (as of 11:05pm Sunday night), Contract. Also, I just now noticed that she'd included me on her crushlist awhile back. Am I lame or what? Laura, it's truly an honor to be included. Thank you.

Third, I'm working on responses to both Thomas and Joe on the enlightenment vs. ideology discussion.

Fourth, my partner Gerardo and I participated our first Critical Mass ride. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of bicyclists take over the streets, blocking and dodging traffic, with no pre-planned route in mind. Call it arrogant, call it rebellious, call it stupid -- I call an embodiment of joy itself. We rode up Market street, into the Tenderloin, through the impossibly congested-with-snooty-shoppers Union Square, down through the underground cargo bays of the Sony Metreon, back through the Tenderloin, up to Fillmore, down to the Mission (my neighborhood!), ending at Dolores Park. There were so many beautiful and poetic moments that just blew me away: the huge amps-on-wheels blasting punk, hiphop, and dance music that a couple of brave and strong-legged souls hitched to their bikes; the quiet moments pedaling furiously uphill, no music, no conversation, just the sounds of breath and gears; the kindness of this angelic guy with a huge gray 'fro who stopped every few blocks to do emergency repairs on someone's bike (he helped me switch gears when my bike refused to do it on a steep incline); the soaring down Fulton street toward City Hall, no traffic, just the bikes, feeling like kids feeling like superheroes or supervillains swooping down upon Metropolis.

Fifth, I made it through Buy Nothing Day without buying coffee. I didn't think I'd survive, but I managed to find some Hawaiian coffee that a friend had given me almost a year ago. Lacking a coffee maker, I put some grounds in a tea strainer, then poured the water from cup to cup. It wasn't the best, but it got me through the day.

in recognition of the american indian occupation of alcatraz

This morning (so-called "Thanksgiving") at sunrise, my partner Gerardo will be dancing as a member of a troupe of traditional Aztec dancers on Alcatraz Island, as part of a sunrise ceremony in celebration of the American Indian Occupation of Alcatraz from 1969-1971. I'm extremely proud of him and wish him a beautiful and powerful experience.

Also, a short and saddening article by David Neiwart on Schwarzenegger as the new face of the right's never-ending battle against American Indian tribal sovereignty.

a well-documented demonstration of vote hacking

This is a perfectly logical and detailed demonstration of how votes could easily, easily be hacked. Given everything I know (which is quite a lot, given that my job requires such knowledge) about Access databases and the ways in which software can interface with them, this makes total sense.

cynicism and enlightenment

I read the The Critique of Cynical Reason by Peter Sloterdijk (translated by Michael Eldred, University of Minnesota Press, 1987) about three years ago. It’s one of those books that didn’t make a huge impression on me at the time but haunts me as events in the world and in my life stir the memory of this or that passage. The book is actually many projects-in-one: a detailed analysis of the Weimar Republic as the birthplace of modern cynicism, and a more philosophical analysis of modern cynicism as “enlightened false consciousness [ . . .] that modernized, unhappy consciousness [ . . .] which has learned its lessons in enlightenment, but [ . . .] has not, and probably was not able to, put them into practice.” (p. 5) In these passages, he explores the metaphor of the world-historical process of enlightenment as a flame whose most fearsome and foolishly unacknowledged enemy is the cynicism of the ruling elite, which “consciously tries preserve the naivete of the others”. (p. 83). (Of course I’m mapping this onto the left’s failure to remove Karl Rove -- I mean, Bush -- from office).

Analogous to the image of the flame, [Enlightenment’s] energy is most intense at the center and dies down at the periphery. Starting with the pioneers and masters of reflective intelligence in philosophy and the arts, its impulse is refracted initially in the milieu of the intelligentsia with its inertia, then in the world of social labor and politics, futher in the countless private spheres split off from the universal, and is finally reflected back by pure misery that can no longer be enlightened. (p.83)

Enlightenment, no matter how impotent the mere means of reason seem, is subtly irresitble, like the light, after which, in sound mystical tradition, it is named: les lumieres, illumination. Light is unable to reach only those places where obstacles block its rays. [ . . .] In the language of the eighteenth-century Freemasons, the obstacles that disturbed or blocked the light of knowledge had a threefold name: superstition, error, and ignorance. Enthusiastically and naively, the early enlighteners presented themselves to the powers-that-be in the name of their struggle for light and demanded free passage.

However, they never really got a clear view of the “fourth monster,” the actual and most difficult opponent [ . . .] [This was] the knowledge of domination in the hegemonic powers. This knowledge always has the structure of a double knowledge: one for the rules of conduct of power and one for the norms of general consciousness.

[ . . .] Those who rule, if they are not “merely” arrogant, must place themselves studiously between enlightenment and its addressees [ . . .] The state must know the truth before it can censor it. (p. 78)

toothache, part 2: the root canal

The cavity -- which, weirdly enough, hadn't bothered me until yesterday -- had eaten all the way through to the nerve. It took them about three exhausting hours to numb the tooth, open it up, and scrape out all the pulp. Ew, that scraping sound. Worse than that, though, was that my jaw muscles started cramping about halfway through. They gave me a couple of breaks, when it looked like I was about levitate off of the dental chair . . . but I really had no choice but keep on going. I will never have this done again without nitrous.

The most disconcerting and creepy part of the whole experience, however, was the chaos of the overcrowded office itself. The doctors, staff, and supplies were clearly stretched to the breaking point. Quite a few conversations between my dentist and the assistant took the form of: "Could you get me that xyz123 thing?" "We don't have any." "How can we be out? Did you look in that drawer?" "We were supposed to get some last week but we never go them." "Ok, do you have an abc321 thing?" "No, we're all out of those too." "Well, can you make an xyz123 thing out of a bcd231 thing?"

Yikes!

At one point I stood in line for the x-ray room, with a sheet of latex attached to the outside of my mouth, four or five long metal needles crammed into my tooth, and drooling uncontrollably due to the black rubber block that was being used to hold my mouth open -- in full view of the waiting room, no less. How Matthew Barney-esque -- if only I'd been naked!

enlightenment discussion

I'm intrigued by and greatly enjoying the discussion unfolding between Thomas Basbøll and joe-london in the comments section of the post I left the other day asserting that the Western Enlightment isn't simply one ideology among others. I'm looking forward to jumping in to the discussion, but I think I will be able to speak more clearly after a trip to the dentist tommorrow morning . . .

toothache!

Out of the blue, I have one of the worst toothaches, ever. It hurts to breathe, and hasn't let up in intensity for the past two hours, even after 4 ibuprofen. This is awful. Endorphin high, where are you?

By the way, what's up with those cartoons in which someone with a toothache inevitably appears with a cloth, tied in a bow at the top of the head, apparently holding up the jaw? I have no urge whatsoever to secure my jaw in a similar fashion and I can't conceive of how this would have any affect whatsoever on the pain.

For all you Wittgensteinians out there, you couldn't possibly know this pain. And why did it happen so suddenly? It must have been an unconscious toothache until now. Just kidding. Ouch!

on falsehood and war

Powerful set of quotes (from 1789 to present) fait accompli. The first, from Nick himself:

Since we have heard only lies all our lives
we must assume the truth is unintelligible
and start from there. It's like panning
for gold and not knowing what gold is.

windy night (one-minute vacation)

A very happy surprise: I just discovered that quietamerican included a one-minute recording I made in the online one-minute vacation project. I made the recording with a minidisc recorder and a set of binaural microphones on an unusually windy night just outside my apartment. To listen, click here then look for the Nov 15, 2004 track. Thanks, quietamerican!

the western enlightenment isn't an ideology

In my typically naive yet heavy-handed way, I proclaim:

The Western Enlightenment is not one ideology among others but rather the historical condition which makes it possible to speak of ideologies in the first place.

No longer must those of us who defend such Enlightenment values as democracy and human rights be accused of hypocrisy when we condemn the destructiveness of ideological fervor! (And we often are accused of such hypocrisy -- e.g., "how can you say everyone has a right to practice their own religion on the one hand while, on the other hand, condemning the subjugation of women as a backward and immoral aspect of certain religions?") To answer that "we oppose any ideology which contradicts Enlightenment values" is NOT to admit defeat, is NOT to admit that we're just clubbing everyone over the head with our own version of ideology -- because Enlightenment values are not ideological.

difficulties and expectations

One exercise in the embodied writer class I'm taking asks us to to take a look at resistance to writing in two ways: what makes writing difficult at times, and what (unrealistic, lofty) expectations we place upon ourselves as writers. Here's what I came up with, pretty much straight out of my class notes. Yikes, this seems embarassingly narcissistic and whiny . . . yet I was suprised to discover that my classmates had sets of difficulties and expectations that were similar in spirit if not in detail.

Why is writing difficult?

Exhausting, it takes up too much time, so many other things you should be doing, this whole thing is stupid what do you think you're doing - god, it takes forever to get anything out at all, it's like wringing out an almost-dry sponge - sleepiness gets in the way, too, not enough rest, difficult to sustain the concentration . . .

The thousand different ways poetry should be. You're trying to meausre up to every one, to make the poem impervious to ridicule. It's that constant switching of position of critique, of looking at it from the perspective of every possible paradigm and ensuring that it holds up. And not only must it be impervious to ridicule, it must also do something that you want it to do, it must fulfill a positive, not merely negative need, it must advance a whole philosophy, advance the whole world another step (In other words, it's my lofty expectations which make the act of writing an exhausting experience.)

How/what should I be writing?

Writing that challenges the reader's expectations at every step, but in a delightful or enlightening way. Writing that doesn't sound amateurish, writing that no one can pick apart and destroy. Writing that speaks, that communicates, that says something, that has a deep and immediate emotional impact upon the reader. Writing that's smart and clever but not trite or petty. Writing that's lyrical and has a beautiful, moving sound, layering of images and provocations.

cnn vote fraud complicity

Everyone has probably already seen this: Why Did CNN Change Their Exit Poll Data for Ohio After 1:00 AM? - A BuzzFlash News Analysis. If not, check it out . . .

recommended performance by mary ann brooks

mary ann brooks is one of sweetest and most genuine people I've ever met; she's also a passionate performance artist, singer, dancer, and poet. If you're in the SF Bay Area and looking for something artsy to do tommorrow night, check out her one-night-only performance of her epic project (for which she's been creating and refining material for several years), Niggerati Story, tommorrow night at 848 Community Space, at 8pm. Here's the official blurb:

November 12-13, 848 Community Space Presents inventive
and engaging performance by queer women of color (see
www.848.com for more details). Friday's show features
performance artist mary ann brooks.

What: Niggerati Story
When: Friday, November 12 @ 8:00 pm
Where: 848 Community Space
848 Divisadero St. @ McAllister, San Francisco
Tickets: $10-20 sliding scale,
no one turned away for lack of funds!

Info/Reservations: 415-931-8125
marianabaile@yahoo.com, www.848.com

About Niggerati Story:
Niggerati Story is a collection of gestural stories,
epiphanies, and dreams integrating dance, video
projection, song and ritual. Local performance artist,
mary ann brooks welcomes you to The Church of True
Expression where she conjures up black superheroines,
genderbending preachers, bicycle dances, and ocean
goddesses.

About the Artist:
mary ann brooks is a local Performance Artist, Dancer
and Vocalist and was recently an Artist in Residence
at the Marin Headlands Center for the Arts. This past
year she collaborated with Keith Hennessy's CircoZero,
Tara Brandel's Mn Rua Productions, and Samsara
Acapella Singers. She has also danced, taught, and
performed in NYC, Amsterdam, and Aotearoa/NZ.

coming in for a landing . . .

What a week since last Tuesday. I've exhausted myself with outrage and worry.

All week I tried to write, mostly unsuccessfully. The only thing that seemed to channel what I was feeling into something resembling writing was to go almost completely aleatoric -- not in a dignified way a la Mac Low or Cage, but in an adolescent fuck-you-keep-your-grammatical-and-aesthetic-laws-off-my-textual-body kind of way. Here's an excerpt, for what it's worth . . .

Novo Bullish moons
tom mooneye / bind tome

theme hate safes, omelet thee
theft academe licit, cerebra
whereat the fey -

Kirin abed nephews
abash, dayboy

barterer heed odometer
Gnomon Kereru Mar Blush

swaybacked - hate beneficing wonders
omens, hikes, tom's mooneyes

mood these goofballs kiln
hakes teem - Heel cavaliered

tome-soaked, hefted, plush
Fodor no Fodor hiking
a band, teabag: heft ahead

moons furor
theme tuba
commode

Lefts meet pollute - kit too

ormolu thesis
Waban icon
thief abandons

noon
tom's spiffed kit

Mrs. Bluish swaybacked

theft, here, heels banterer abed
wiping bands: these abs hike moon

batterer kit, former mammoths weskit
Mar Celery Mar Bulrush

soaked teabag, heel too

refurbish omelets barrooms puberty
licensees buffeter
abate habits
bind -

raja -

omens -

booth
skydives

bullet here, bereft
home mulch akin

bat, bail, hate, buffeter abeam
Shabbat giraffe hokum abs

omit theft, bootee akin
bind leaflet goofball skis

moon these abandon tomb
refurbish, ormolus a band

tomb toms

two countries, still at war (a map)

optical scanner fraud in florida

Assuming the numbers are right, this should be on the front page of every newspaper. Being a number-cruncher myself, I can at least vouch for the soundness of the % change methodology. It also appears that an unsecured MS Access database -- extremely vulnerable to hacking and manipulation -- was used in Diebold's scheme to tally the votes.

We've got to keep this story alive; according to Bev Harris of blackboxvoting.org, "[TV] news has been locked down tight, and there will be no TV coverage of th real problems with voting on Nov. 2."

Surprising Florida Presidential Election Results

capital and paranoia

I think Nick Piombino is onto something in his analysis of the vicious cycles of repression, paranoia, and free market seduction.

more evidence the vote was hacked

charisma

Maybe we're over-analyzing this. Maybe elections are more about charisma than anything else. Clinton had it, Bush Sr. didn't. Clinton won. Clinton had it, Dole didn't. Clinton won. And Clinton ran on a platform that included opening the military to gays and providing "socialistic" universal healthcare!

By charisma I mean the ability to impart a sense of a unique and clearly distinguishable self -- even if the projected self is a total lie -- through millions of cues that have nothing to do with the actual content of what one has to say. Reagan certainly had it, a ton of it, and he'd be president right now, from the grave, if it weren't for term limits.

Maybe it's not so much about End of the Enlightenment as it is about the Democrats having chosen too humdrum of a candidate.

purple haze, shape of the nation

greg palast: kerry won . . .

sorry, everybody

hegelian honeymoon, memory

Apart from the protest, the only other thing which has given me comfort over the past 36 or so hours is Nick Piombino’s Hegelian Honeymoon, which arrived in the mail early this week (actually, it probably arrived earlier than that, given the great volume of paper-based spam that ejected itself from the mailbox). I’ve probably read each of the tiny poems about 30 times since opening the book, each reading more enjoyable than the last. (I find Nick’s work in general works this way for me – what’s being expressed comes into sharper focus less through digesting one moment and then moving onto the next than through repeated readings of the whole). Some of the poems work like haikus, others like aphorisms; each offers something of both forms.

The sometimes deceptive simplicity of the poems stands in sharp contrast to a peculiar paradox: for the most part, the language has been stripped of anything that would tie the poems to a particular place and time, to that irreducibly specific detail – so often considered, it seems to me, the atomic “unit” par excellence of poetic production -- that speaks the moment-as-world. And yet the poems are full of content, each one speaking clearly and strongly, each one fully constituting its own substantial world, its own particular personality. While non-specific in terms of descriptive detail, the relation between moments, words, and concepts manages nevertheless to be quite specific.

In this sense, the collection calls to mind a metaphor of memory that, I believe, originated with Aristotle in On Memory and Reminiscence:

The process of movement (sensory stimulation) involved the act of perception stamps in, as it were, a sort of impression of the percept, just as persons do who make an impression with a seal.

It’s as if each of these poems presents such an impression, a “stamping in” – not so much of percepts, but rather of those spiritually intensive moments in which we achieve an understanding of who we are.

abyss

Looking into the Abyss from Buzzflash . . .

for those in the bay area . . .

something to do on this dark, dark day other than hide . . .

Not in Our Name is one of the initiating organizations of an Anti-War March and Rally End the Occupation. Messages of the march and rally include "Out of Iraq Now! No matter who is elected, we say no to war and repression!" The demonstration will gather on Wednesday, November 3rd at 5PM at Powell & Market, and will then march to 24th & Mission.

"On November 3rd, the night after the elections, we will still be against the unjust war and occupation, the police state restrictions of the Patriot Acts, and the ongoing attacks on our immigrant communities."

Barbara Lubin, Executive Director of the Middle East Children's Alliance, said: "The lives of children around the world—especially in Palestine and Iraq—are in danger every day because of the militarism and misguided foreign policies of both political parties. Meanwhile, those who speak up for children and provide humanitarian aid are coming under increasing scrutiny and pressure. The Middle East Children's Alliance is proud to join Not in Our Name in its call to stand up to war and injustice—for the sake of all our children."

Participants are encouraged to bring flashlights, drums, and noisemakers to this permitted event. The march will feature the Loco Bloco Drum and Dance Ensemble. Leaflet For up-to-date info, more leaflets and posters, a list of endorsers, and more, see www.nionbayarea.net

laura carter on election results

You said it, Laura. The only item I would add to the list is that voters in 11 states elected to enshrine hatred in their constitutions by banning same-sex marriage.

visualize it!

It may be too late to phone bank but it's not too late to visualize a Kerry victory!

obligations, reactions

The embodied writer class I'm in asks us to email at least one "check-in" the group each week. Here's mine. Hope it's not too whiny . . .

Absolutely exhausted and feeling overwhelmed by obligations from work, from friends/family, from obligations that I hold myself to. The image that comes up -- particularly as I try to feel this through my body, in terms of my body -- is that of my hands, arms, and shoulders being restrained and pulled slightly outward and back in order to prevent them from contracting into a protective, defensive position, clamshell-like. And yet the impulse to retreat can be unhealthy too, when it threatens to overwhelm every other impulse, even the joyful and vital ones. It’s difficult to know when to heed it and when to keep pushing against the boundaries of my comfort zones.

I also saw the Peter Sellar’s production of To Have Done with the Judgment of God/Kissing God Goodbye. So wonderful to hear the Jordan piece given such a strong, dignified delivery – though it made me sad (no, angry, if I pay attention to the way my body feels as I write this, the feeling is definitely anger, the muscles in my arms and neck taut, my jaw clenched, my breathing picking up pace and intensity) to think about how rare it’s become to hear such an unapologetically feminist work delivered without an implicit snicker, rolling-of-the-eyes, or some other gesture intended to show ironic distance. As for the Artaud piece, I’d read parts of it before, but had never heard it performed. The part where he talks about feeling suffocated, where he references the pains of his own body and mind -- both of which were, presumably, irrevocably beyond capacity to control – moved me tremendously, and I’m still a bit shaken from the experience.

Breathing exercises – why do them? I’m doing them (when I do them, which isn’t every day – in fact, I think I’ve only done it once this week) for two reasons. The first is to simply ground myself in the present. I feel solidly at home after I do the exercises, and my body feels like a part of the earth or at least a part of nature. I’m also doing it help breath come into my writing, to let that connection that I discovered between reading lines of poetry and breathing find expression in my writing. To breath the words, so to speak. We’ll see if the metaphor translates into any sort of reality, but I feel optimistic at this point . . .

My reaction to the exercise in which someone stood almost-but-not-quite-touching behind us, silently, differed from just about everyone’s, I think, in the following way: I couldn’t tell whether or not anyone was actually standing there. I’m not sure what to make of it, but the fact that I couldn’t tell seems consistent with other details which have persisted throughout my life: an inability to mimic, with any precision, what someone else is doing with her or his body; an inability to figure out where I need to put my hands in order to catch a ball; the fact that more than one person has remarked that I don’t always seem wholly cognizant of my surroundings, even in seemingly dangerous places; how easy it is for me to bump into things as I walk across a room . . . in short, I think I’ve just realized that I have a kind of perceptual deficit when it comes to picking up on what’s the side or in back of me. I’d always just assumed I was failing to “pay attention” . . . but suddenly I wonder whether its more of a physical phenomenon than a question of focus and will . . . which would be a huge relief . . . Nevertheless, I’ve been working on staying “open” to what’s to the side and back of me, especially in those circumstances where I tend to develop tunnel-vision, such as walking alone for extended distances. Doing so feels a bit disorienting and “exposed”.

Writing . . . not much luck lately, but a lot of creative energy has been taken up with work. Inner critic is pretty strong with regard to new stuff but strangely silent with regard to stuff I did a month or two ago. I’m pulling forgotten pieces off my hard drive, thinking “this isn’t so bad after all” . . .