June 8th, 2009
I like the fact that liberals are back. It is becoming easier and easier to declare the solutions to certain problems “liberal” solutions; easier to argue that government, well run, has a place in the lives the people; easier to self-identify as a liberal in mixed company. As a contribution to this welcome reemergence of liberalism, I would like to discuss one of the key differences between liberals and conservatives, a difference that, I believe, defines what is unique about liberalism: its relationship to belief.
Liberals and conservatives do not have different beliefs. They have a different relationship to belief. Conservatives are committed to belief. This means that they are always committed to a certain content, a certain set of statements, which always carry the weight of moral certainty: “Marriage is between a man and a woman,” “Abortion is murder,” “Human life begins at the moment of conception,” “Government is the problem, not the answer.” It is wise to remember, though, that in the not-too-distant past there were other statements of belief that were passionately defended: “Slaves do not love their children the way we love our children,” “Jews are killing Christian children to use their blood in making matzah,” Women are not rational.” The trouble with belief is that the latter set of statements can be, and have been, held with just as much fervor and moral certainty as the former. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: politics
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June 8th, 2009
In my last blog, I talked about how the UFC is a great illustration of paradigm change, how a fighter can create a new style of fighting that renders the older styles obsolete, but how the old styles struggle along from defeat to defeat until they are finally done. 
As I was writing that posting, I couldn’t help but think about Barack Obama and the Republicans’ efforts to attack him on everything from the stimulus package to the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to his speech in Cairo on America’s role in the middle east. The Republican attack machine right now is simply going through the motions that have always worked for them. Attack. Smear. Take the pettiest angle on any issue. Concentrate on trivia. Mischaracterize statements (e.g. Fox News’s attempt to portray Obama’s Cairo speech as an “apology”). These techniques once seemed unbeatable, and their originators seemed like political geniuses, but I think today that we can look back and draw some different lessons. Read the rest of this entry »
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June 8th, 2009
On Saturday June 23, Lyoto Machida won the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) light heavyweight championship after stopping champion Rashad Evans in the second round with a flurry of blows that, according to the moment’s conventional wisdom, he should not have been able to throw.
To save you the suspense, let me address right now why philosophers and other such deep thinkers should be drawn to the UFC and mixed martial arts: More than any phenomenon of today’s culture, the UFC provides one of the most direct, immediate and sometimes brutal example of paradigm change. What is accepted practice at one moment can change in a flash. Truths do not gradually blend into new truths. What happens is that old truths are blasted away in the blink of an eye. In the UFC we see this kind of explosive change all the time. In fact, what makes the UFC so interesting is that it has condensed hundreds of years of evolution into two decades. Sometimes, the creature called Mixed Martial Arts changes form perceptibly in the space of one five minute round. Read the rest of this entry »
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March 26th, 2009
At the end of winter, there is much this city teaches me about how civilization conquers nature, or rather how it acts out its conquest.
This weekend I helped my girlfriend Tess break up ice in her back yard to prevent her basement from flooding when the big melt came. Ice breaking is a primally satisfying activity. You find a chunk of ice that looks defiant and you approach it with authority and a steel shovel. When the weather is just right your victory is assured. The first blow of the shovel blade announces your presence. The second and third cut a thin groove in the ice, a target for further blows. After an hour of self-taught shovel technique, I realize that the secret of shoveling is much like the secret of chopping wood: let the axe (or in this case the shovel blade) do the work. I lift the shovel loosely let it dangle in the air for a moment (while for some inexplicable reason the words “I sacrifice you in the name of Quetzalcoatl” run through my mind) and bring it down with a relaxed stroke on target. After a few strokes comes the payoff. The crystal lattice of the ice gives way and a chunk breaks off with a resigned sigh. I break off one piece of ice so large it would make a very satisfactory front desk at an ice hotel. This is the beauty of ice. It resists, but when it breaks, it does so with a delightful suddenness. Remember the crumbling glaciers in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Read the rest of this entry »
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March 18th, 2009
Life in my city, Montreal, wraps itself around unseen centers of gravity. What makes all the difference in this city is not the particular architecture — a mix of old world aesthetics, some dashes of large scale brio, a livable human scale, and a few heroically bad judgments — but the ungraspable specters of place that lounge at every street corner.
One night in the fall, for the thousandth time, a francophone clerk at the corner grocery store wished me a “bon fin de journee.” As I walked home I thought about how, for English speakers, there really is no equivalent of a “fin de journee.” This is why I like the French in this city. Not only does their energy keep out the unilingual riff-raff, but they know at some profound level of their being that an “end-of-the-day” is a something, that it is worth noting and naming, and that, without this animating extra-being, a city is merely a collection of roads and structures. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Deleuze, Montreal | No Comments »
March 12th, 2009
No one was more surprised than I was at discovering that a meta-analysis on the effectiveness of long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy (LTPP) (psychoanalysis, in other words) published in JAMA last year concluded that “In this meta-analysis, LTPP was significantly superior to shorter-term methods of psychotherapy with regard to overall outcome, target problems, and personality functioning. Long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy yielded large and stable effect sizes in the treatment of patients with personality disorders, multiple mental disorders, and chronic mental disorders. The effect sizes for overall outcome increased significantly between end of therapy and follow-up.” It turns out that statistical analyses have made an at least plausible case that those years spent in the “talking cure” are measurably effective, and even more effective than the more putatively efficient forms of therapy like Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. What surprised me most about this study was the surprise that it engendered in me. “Psychoanalysis is effective as a treatment?” I thought to myself. “Who knew?” I realize that I had been perfectly happy handing over the notion of “cure” to other forms of therapy. Read the rest of this entry »
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March 6th, 2009
What attracts me to philosophy and critical theory is that it answers questions. The answer may not be familiar, and indeed the answer may come with another question, but if philosophy can’t engage the questions that we debate, then it is not worth much. We need philosophy more than ever now. The kinds of ethical questions we must tackle at the beginning of the 21st century demand forms of direct and creative thinking. In fact, we find our conventional truths so often undermined today that the need for theoretical thinking is greater now than it has ever been.
All this is in the way of introduction to one of the more controversial issues the United States faces: the legalization of gay marriage. I don’t offer an answer to the question of whether it should be legalized or not (for me the question is not that interesting: of course it should. Full stop). The more interesting question is the source of the opposition to gay marriage. Why care? Naturally, there is a “moral” answer to this question. Opposition to gay marriage is rooted in intolerance, ignorance, hatred, etc. True enough, as far as it goes, but, like most moral statements, it doesn’t offer much in the way of understanding. We dismiss those who oppose gay marriage without exploring the fertile question of why it is such an issue in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Gay Marriage, Heidegger, Lacan
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March 3rd, 2009
Check the sidebar under My Papers for a new entry entitled “Freud’s Virtual Mourning and The Crow’s Flight Beyond Melancholy.” This paper brings together Freud’s theory of mourning as it evolves throughout his career, Deleuze’s theory of virtuality, Lacanian theory of subjectivity and Alex Proyas’s cult classis film The Crow, based on the graphic novel of the same name. Enjoy.
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March 3rd, 2009
The Encounter
Dr. Seuss is so easy to read not just because of the sing-song rhythms of his poetry, but because it is always so comfortingly personal. “The Sneetches” is about understanding and cooperation, The Cat in the Hat is about personal responsibility, and the story that we will look at now, The Zax, seems to be a cautionary tale about the price of irrational stubbornness (or about irrationality in general). The tale is simplicity itself. It begins with an encounter in the desert.
What is strange about this picture is the seeming inevitability with which these two Zaxes are drawn to each other. It’s a big desert, but apparently there is only one path though it.
So the argument ensues, with each Zax appealing to his traditions and education. “For I live by a rule/that I learned as a boy back in South-Going School./
Never Budge! That’s my rule.
Never budge in the least! /
Not an inch to the West! Not an inch to the East!“
Finally — and this this is the “lesson” that the story imparts — the world just expands around them, ignoring them and leaving them in this fruitless deadlock. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Freud, Lacan | 2 Comments »
February 28th, 2009
One of my favorite passages from Faulkner, Judith’s monologue upon giving Charles Bon’s letter to Quentin’s Grandmother, passing on something precious to someone she barely knows, strikes me as a weirdly accurate description of what happens on the internet:
…and then all of a sudden it’s all over and all you have left is a block of stone with scratches on it provided there was someone to remember to have the marble scratched and set up or had time to, and it rains on it and the sun shines on it and after awhile they don’t even remember the name and what the scratches were trying to tell, and it doesn’t matter. And so maybe if you could go to someone, the stranger the better, and give them something — a scrap of paper — something, anything, it not to mean anything in itself and them not even to read it or keep it, not even bother to throw it away or destroy it, at least it would be something just because it would have happened, be remembered even if only from passing from one hand to another, one mind to another, and it would be at least a scratch, something, something that might make a mark on something that was once for the reason that it can die someday, while the block of stone cant be is because it can never become was because it cant ever die or perish…(Absalom, Absalom!) Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Alan Bourassa, cultural theory, Faulkner, Freud, Lacan, philosophy, psychoanalysis
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