Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously, or, There Is No Green Discourse
[This is yet another essay on Environmental Politics, in response to the essays "Farewell to the Green Movement? Political Action and the Green Public Sphere" by Douglas Torgerson (a bastardization of Habermas, featuring Arendt, probably likewise bastardized, though I've not read her) and "Politics Beyond the State: Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics" by Paul Wapner (which seeks to extend the scope of 'politics' beyond its traditional moorings, e.g. activist groups). My main argument is that what is (by some) called 'Green (political) Discourse' is merely parasitic upon other forms of discourse and has no autonomy whatsoever; this discredits the notion of a 'green public sphere', which in turn discredits the efficacy of politics regarding environmental problems. In case my pessimism seems disconcerting, I have come to view my position as a theoretician as being akin to that of the hacker who is hired by a bank in order to expose the weak points in the system so that the bank can duly fix them.]
De Quincey’s Prolegomena to All Future Systems of Political Economy
For nearly two years I believe that I read no book but one; and I owe it to the author, in discharge of a great debt of gratitude, to mention what that was. The sublimer and more passionate poets I still read, as I have said, by snatches, and occasionally. But my proper vocation, as I well knew, was the exercise of the analytic understanding. Now, for the most part, analytic studies are continuous, and not to be pursued by fits and starts, or fragmentary efforts. Mathematics, for instance, intellectual philosophy, &c., were all become insupportable to me; I shrunk from them with a sense of powerless and infantile feebleness that gave me an anguish the greater from remembering the time when I grappled with them to my own hourly delight; and for this further reason, because I had devoted the labor of my whole life, and had dedicated my intellect, blossoms and fruits, to the slow and elaborate toil of constructing one single work, to which I had presumed to give the title of an unfinished work of Spinoza’s, viz. De Emendatione Humani Intellectus. This was now lying locked up as by frost, like any Spanish bridge or aqueduct, begun upon too great a scale for the resources of the architect; and, instead of surviving me as a monument of wishes at least, and aspirations, and a life of labor dedicated to the exaltation of human nature in that way in which God had best fitted me to promote so great an object, it was likely to stand a memorial to my children of hopes defeated, of baffled efforts, of materials uselessly accumulated, of foundations laid that were never to support a superstructure, of the grief and ruin of the architect. In this state of imbecility, I had, for amusement, turned my attention to political economy; my understanding, which formerly had been as active and restless as a hyena, could not, I suppose (so long as I lived at all), sink into utter lethargy; and political economy offers this advantage to a person in my state, that though it is eminently an organic science (no part, that is to say, but what acts on the whole, as the whole again reacts on each part), yet the several parts may be detached and contemplated singly. Great as was the prostration of my powers at this time, yet I could not forget my knowledge; and my understanding had been for too many years intimate with severe thinkers, with logic, and the great masters of knowledge, not to be aware of the utter feebleness of the main herd of modern economists. I had been led in 1811 to look into loads of books and pamphlets on many branches of economy; and, at my desire, M. sometimes read to me chapters from more recent works, or parts of parliamentary debates. I saw that these were generally the very dregs and rinsings of the human intellect; and that any man of sound head, and practiced in wielding logic with scholastic adroitness, might take up the whole academy of modern economists, and throttle them between heaven and earth with his finger and thumb, or bray their fungous heads to powder with a lady’s fan. At length, in 1819, a friend in Edinburgh sent me down Mr. Ricardo’s book; and, recurring to my own prophetic anticipation of the advent of some legislator for this science, I said, before I had finished the first chapter, “Thou art the man!” Wonder and curiosity were emotions that had long been dead in me. Yet I wondered once more: I wondered at myself that I could once again be stimulated to the effort of reading; and much more I wondered at the book. Had this profound work been really written in England during the nineteenth century? Was it possible? I supposed thinking18 had been extinct in England. Could it be that an Englishman, and he not in academic bowers, but oppressed by merchantile and senatorial cares, had accomplished what all the universities of Europe, and a century of thought, had failed even to advance by one hair’s breadth? All other writers had been crushed and overlaid by enormous weights of facts and documents; Mr. Ricardo had deduced, a priori, from the understanding itself, laws which first gave a ray of light into the unwieldy chaos of materials, and had constructed what had been but a collection of tentative discussions into a science of regular proportions, now first standing on an eternal basis.
Thus did one simple work of a profound understanding avail to give me a pleasure and an activity which I had not known for years; it roused me even to write, or, at least, to dictate what M. wrote for me. It seemed to me that some important truths had escaped even “the inevitable eye” of Mr. Ricardo; and, as these were, for the most part, of such a nature that I could express or illustrate them more briefly and elegantly be algebraic symbols than in the usual clumsy and loitering diction of economists, the whole would not have filled a pocket-book; and being so brief, with M. for my amanuensis, even at this time, incapable as I was of general exertion, I drew up my Prolegomena to all Future Systems of Political Economy. I hope it will not be found redolent of opium; though, indeed, to most people, the subject itself it a sufficient opiate.
This exertion, however, was but a temporary flash, as the sequel showed; for I designed to publish my work. Arrangements were made at a provincial press, about eighteen miles distant, for printing it. An additional compositor was retained for some days, on this account. The work was even twice advertised; and I was, in a manner, pledged to the fulfillment of my intention. But I had a preface to write; and a dedication, which I wished to make a splendid one, to Mr. Ricardo. I found myself quite unable to accomplish all this. The arrangement were countermanded, the compositor dismissed, and my “prolegomena” rested peacefully by the side of its elder and more dignified brother.
_
18: The reader must remember what I here mean by thinking; because, else, this would be a presumptuous expression. England, of late, has been rich to excess in fine thinkers, in the departments of creative and combining thought; but there is a sad dearth of masculine thinkers in any analytic path. A Scotchman of eminent name has lately told us, that he is obliged to quit even mathematics, for want of encouragement.
De Quincey – Confessions of an English Opium Eater, pg. 52-54
Thomas De Quincey’s manuscript was published posthumously as The Logic of Political Economy, and is available for free download here.
Utopia & Speech-Act: For a Pragmatics of Civil Disobedience
[This is a fairly old essay; the one, in fact, which led me to start a blog in the first place. The thesis (which I wish I had made more explicit) is this: whenever someone posits a political ideal (a utopia, defined as any political system which optimizes for an aspect of political life, e.g. human happiness, justice, etc.), they make the inherent mistake of trying to derive a prescription ("this is the ideal that we must pursue") from a description (i.e. their 'model' of an optimal society). The act of positing a utopia, then, acquires legitimacy only as a performative utterance, meaning that legitimacy is a function of the power relations which sustain a given ideal (as in the case of Rawls and the academic network supporting him).
My professor, in short, hated it: his main complaints were that my argument was "definitional fiat," that I didn't stick closely enough to the readings (which were selections from Plato, Thoreau, Martin Luther King Jr., & Rawls, as well as a couple of Encyclopedia entries on Civil Disobedience), and that I overestimated the influence of Rawls as an "ideologue" (especially since Rawls explicitly states that his system is not compatible with contemporary capitalism). Needless to say, were I to write it again, it would be completely different, and no doubt much more sophisticated (e.g. evoking the Heideggerian distinction between 'ready-to-hand' and 'present-to-hand' in my point about the 'unauthored' graffiti). Notwithstanding, I feel that the essay remains thought-provoking enough to warrant sharing; if you feel that my professor's opinion is justified, please tell me, since the reason I started blogging was precisely to learn to write more clearly in order for my thoughts to fit into the sphere of academic discourse.]
Linguistic Capital
I’ve grown dissatisfied with the title of my blog. I don’t know how it comes off to others, but on the whole, I think it would be a better branding strategy (and to be sure, it cannot be denied that the title of this blog, as that of any blog, is a brand) to have a title which is more ‘iconic’. Much as I liked the way The Wordsmithy originally evoked (at least for me) the notion of an winding assembly line of machinic labor in the production of language by the unconscious, I don’t imagine that it brings about the same associations for others. More likely, it comes across as somewhat self-aggrandizing, via the inevitable association with myself as ‘Wordsmith’. The latter, I must admit, was originally a significant contributor to my choice of title, since a former business teacher of mine used to refer to me by that silly little nickname.
Linguistic Capital, conversely, is more plain, and more ‘literal’. It carries an equal risk of seeming self-aggrandizing, portraying myself as someone with a privileged position in the symbolic economy, but in actuality, we’re all linguistic capitalists, whether we like it or not. I’ve been gravitating back to semiotics in my private thought, though I’ve not produced anything worth publishing (yet). The concept of linguistic capital, once explained, makes clear my focus on the symbolic/libidinal economy. What’s more, I’ve begun to branch out onto other internet media, and can maintain something of a theme, as cheesy as that may be.
That is, I have decided to start a Tumblr blog. For some time now, I have adored Tumblr blogs for the way they encourage succinctness and figural communication, as opposed to discursive. I’ve decided, in keeping with the aforementioned theme, to entitle it Symbolic Capital, which may not be quite as sexy as Linguistic Capital, but more appropriate for its medium. It will largely consist of mixed media, i.e. pictures, music, videos, quotations, often paired with short statements. As well, readers will be able to (anonymously or not) “ask me anything,” which is another of the many elements to which Tumblr blogs seem more adapted than other media.
Furthermore, I’ve finally replaced that dreadful butterfly. QR codes, to me, are absolutely fascinating, in that they unlock an entirely new stratum of reality for those possessing advanced enough technology. In this respect, however, it epitomizes the gulf between wealthy and poor, whether this division be thought of in terms of North/South, bourgeois/proletariat, or some other binary. To those without a QR-reader, its opacity will no doubt serve as a reminder of the political nature of signs; those with the requisite technology, however, will find a quotation. As for the pingback & tiny blavatar versions, what once was a constellation of pixels―strictly regimented in order to deliver a precise message―fades into static, which I find quite appropriate. For now, here’s a large version:
I have several interesting projects in the works, one of which being quite extensive, which I’ll hopefully be able to work on over the winter break. In the future, readers can expect to see some posts on theoretical physics (since I’ll be taking a course on Einstein), a revamped version of my neuromarketing essay (which had numerous glaring deficiencies), explorations of the work of Deleuze & Guattari as I familiarize myself with their conceptual apparatus, and hopefully some essays on economics, a topic which I find very difficult to write about.
[Edit (12/22): I've also updated the About section on my Academia.edu page, which goes into detail about my research interests, for anybody who is interested.]
Aperçu of the European Debt Crisis
The above picture is an excellent chart from the New York Times (click to enlarge) outlining in an accessible manner the forces comprising the European Debt Crisis. Even now, the stock market remains volatile, and the Euro is currently at an 11-month low.
For further information, I recommend these discussions on Charlie Rose, though I admittedly haven’t been following the issue as closely as I would like. For those whose interest is piqued, the Wiki page is very comprehensive about the general history of the crisis, and this article addresses the most recent developments in political & financial negotiations. Lastly, this gauge by CBC concisely summarizes possible outcomes for the Eurozone from best to worst.
The Economist Who Refuted Wittgenstein
However, in the Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein abandons the idea of language as axiomatic representation of the world, and the idea of the ‘unspeakable’. Discussions with [Piero] Sraffa seem to have played their part in his abandonment of the latter. In this connection, there is an anecdote that Wittgenstein himself liked to tell his pupils, one of whom – Malcolm – recounts it thus in his biography of the master: one day, as they were travelling together on the train from Cambridge to London, ‘Sraffa made a gesture, familiar to Neapolitans and meaning something like disgust or contempt, of brushing the underneath of his chin with an outward sweep of the finger tips of one hand’.21
The gesture can only acquire a specific meaning from the context in which it is performed, thus contradicting Wittgenstein’s idea that every proposition had to have a precise place in the axiomatic order of rational language, independently of the various contexts in which it may be employed.22
21: Malcolm, 1958: 69.
22: According to Malcolm (1958: 69), the object of the discussion was Wittgenstein’s idea ‘that a proposition and that which it describes must have the same “logical form”, the same “logical multiplicity”’; according to von Wright, as Malcolm reports in a footnote, the object of the discussion was the idea that each proposition should have a ‘grammar’. In a conversation (21 December, 1973) Sraffa confirmed the anecdote, telling me that von Wright was right.
Roncaglia, A. (2000). Piero Sraffa: His Life, Thought, & Cultural Heritage. New York: Routledge, pg. 23, endnotes pg. 44.
For a brief skeptical discussion of whether Wittgenstein was really refuted, see here.
The Stakes of Grammatology
The well-known quarrel between Lacan and Derrida over Poe’s “The Purloined Letter” did not come from nowhere. Consider in this regard Lacan’s formulation from “The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious,” that one is to grasp the letter à la lettre, that is, literally, and Derrida’s counter in the title to section one of his Of Grammatology, “Writing Before the Letter,” in French, avant la lettre, that is, before the fact, before, that is, the literal. Never to shirk a provocation, Lacan responded in the points edition of the Écrits by instating that his insight into the “instance/agency of the letter preceded any grammatology.” This in turn appears to have prompted The Title of the Letter: A Reading of Lacan by Derrida partisans Jean-Luc Nancy and Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe. The titular phrase, le titre de la lettre, might also be rendered as “the deed to, or rank of the letter.” Here is not the place to elaborate the stakes of this face-off, but suffice it to say that at issue is the nontrivial problem of whether philosophy can think the general economy of signs that conditions the possibility of language, whether spoken or written.
~John Mowitt, in Lyotard – Discourse, Figure, Editor’s Introduction, pg. 397, endnote 7.
