Incomprehensibility, Understanding, Control

Some assorted and eclectic pieces from my daily wandering through the internets on the economic bill: Larry summers is trying to kill infrastructure. Some moderate/conservative democratic congressman, Jim Cooper, is saying that Obama is secretly pushing for less spending. Venture capitalist progressives (?) like Leo Hindery are being shut out. And The Nation's daily pessimism seems too much on point. Meanwhile, the emerging narrative is something like, bipartisanship vs war: who's winning?




I haven't cared much for the hermeneutical divinations of Obama's cabinet picks nor for the now-continual analysis of media representations and narratives. Analyzing representations is easy, and is all the media has done for two years during the campaign. The sorts of narratives thrown up by the media, mainstream or otherwise, are attempts to make sense and organize the reality or unreality or sur-reality of politics. This clearly isn't a form/content issue (as if things could be simplified so clearly) but neither is it all form; there is a content here, all the more unstable in its formlessness.

What I mean, more prosaically, is that I do not understand any of the news stories above. I don't understand the economy, or politics, or political economy. And I distressingly feel that reading neither James Galbraith nor Frederick Jameson would help me. If we could spy on the government the way they spy on us, or, more simply, if we could assign an ethnographer to the "field" of the White House, I'm not sure we could fully account for the process by which this bill is being produced, let alone understand a more abstract entity, like "The American Economy."

We would certainly learn something from all these endeavors and more. But like a recession, the content of these proceedings is immanently elusive, something defined in retrospect (perhaps, borrowing from Zizek, we can reframe the Nation article: the US economy will have been destroyed by Geithner and Summers). But by asserting a content, however elusive, we also recognize at some level the consequences: the 'realness' of the economy (that way that its forces produce something recognizable as reality), and also the realness of our political situation (the way that it is susceptible to forces that shift it one way or another).

These thoughts, or lack of thoughts, plus a weird non-encounter from earlier today, plus the perpetual stillness of Orange County, leave me this afternoon vaguely terrified.

Love and Work

For a long time I've been concerned to the point of obsession with the education, especially and perhaps narcissistically my own. It took three years in college to find, or perhaps realize, an interest in a set of knowledge more specific than 'everything' and there was much soul searching in the meantime (the administrators at my undergraduate university would probably be delighted at this 'journey' of self discovery and would put me in their brochures. I am certain of this.).

This tendency for over-self-reflection has only grown as the stakes of my education have grown. I don't think I am alone here at UCI in thinking that there is something vaguely 'wrong' here, if not with the education itself then with the situation as a whole. Probably most at fault are macro factors, like the disintegration of the university in general and in particular the humanities. There are medium-level factors, like Irvine, which bother some more than others (readers of this blog or knowers of me can guess my stance in this regard...).

Then there are specific things like the structure of our lists, feedback or lack thereof on papers, etc. These are things that generally get grouped within the broader problematic of "professionalization," which, in sounding both terrible and necessary at the same time, tells you everything you need to know about graduate school. I hate the term because it divides the hopefully nuanced work we do into hardened categories: that which is quirky, experimental, and creative vs. that which is rigorous, conventional, job-getting. I also hate the constant stating and restating of our "interests," this meaningless, oppressive practice that neutralizes us in advance.

This became a point of particular concern for me recently, as I slogged through writing my MA paper, which bored me to a painful degree. I've quickly realized that the most important thing for me is to not get bored, because if I'm going to be bored there are lots of other boring things to do out there in this world (well, maybe less so now...). I've also realized that I see academic work very much in terms of that thing that I've always valued above all else: art. Writing, most obviously, but writing in different forms and contexts, and not just writing. I think an academic milieu can be a supportive and productive one for working, but it can also be a destructive one.

My experience goes both ways. The one thing I, and the like-minded professors I've been talking to, need both in my work and life is social contact, community. Intellectually, this is missing, at least in comparative literature, which is why I find anthropology and the various interdisciplinary departments here so interesting and, homey. Why do people in my department not engage with each other, when they are the only people within 10 square miles or more that share the same general interests? Are they just "busy" and "tired"? Do they value their privacy, do they see in books a chance to escape, to hide, to be alone, free from fake smiles and social obligation? Is solitude a cycle that reinforces itself (as it is, now, for me)? Could I be so negative to say that some are so parochial in their interests that they lack a fundamental curiosity that would drive them out of themselves? Are they just not that into me? I don't know, but it's too bad, because it is likely that few if any of us will get jobs. So as far as I can see, the time available to us to be thinkers and writers, to make and exchange ideas (and make them in their exchange) is now. Of course we should prepare ourselves for the future, both its academic and non-academic possibilities, but in fact interaction facilitates rather than distracts from this preparation. This being more important, for me, than correctly citing my sources, than being "well read," than learning how to perform an expertise in a given subject, and certainly more important than this constant hand wringing and worrying.

So much for the potential intellectual community. As far as the social community...well, I'm the kid who threw a party that no one came to.* The sad thing is that I wasn't all that surprised.

*one person did come. still.

Awwww!!!

But this historic rivalry, one of the best in any sport, is also a friendly rivalry, despite all the power and spin these two well-mannered young men employ against each other when they are on opposite sides of a net. And so it was no surprise that Nadal, the first Spanish player to win the Australian championships, was soon putting his left arm around Federer and helping him pull himself back together long enough to finish the speech that he had begun

"Of course it can happen to all of us," he said of Federer’s breakdown during the ceremony. "It was an emotional moment, and I think this also makes sport grander, to see a great champion like Federer expressing his emotions. It shows his human side. But in these moments, when you see a rival who is also a comrade feeling like this, you enjoy the victory a little bit less."

This of course is reminiscent of that time when Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson tearfully embraced after the 1991 NBA finals. Oh - it wasn't Magic? Well then who...oh...right...

Ok, two more obama things and then I'll stop

Dear non-existent reader, look at this nice photograph:

Also, you can play him in a game (via Wonkette)

WTF (the good kind)

Not that I have any readers left, but I just have to say, what is happening right now politically is remarkable. I don't mean all the "historic" stuff (as opposed that which is not historic, or a part of history). Maybe our expectations have just been lowered or maybe, despite paying attention when we were younger, we were not able to understand what Clinton was really doing. Either way, this past week stuff has been getting done, and it's good stuff: ending torture, increasing transparency, closing financial loopholes, increasing emission standards, and thinking about nationalizing the banks. These are things that I've been dreaming and obsessing about for the last few years, and now it seems so effortless.

It also seems that people don't know how to react. It is an undiscussed fact that people on the left are more wary of the government, particularly big government, than the small-government conservatives who have given us not only the biggest, most wasteful government in the history of the planet but also a fairly extensive police-state apparatus, all in the name of freedom. This means that the left is instinctively hyper-reacting to everything Obama does, such as this so-called "jack bauer" exception. They may be right to do so, but I'm increasingly confident that Obama is 'one of us', but more politically skilled. We'll see.

And on the right, well, it's pretty funny. Some are trying to silicon valley their way out of the contemporary situation. There is also the unintentional comedy of David Frum, he of the American We Have No Clue What We're Talking About Institute, trying to reorganize the right via blog. If you start reading these and other similar websites, it's clear that they don't know what hit them and don't understand how to live in a world where their scare-tactic racial politics (eg crime/drugs/terror, the "southern strategy," civilizational wars, "economic responsibility," etc) no longer work. When David Brooks says that Palin "is a fatal cancer to the Republican party," he is just afraid of what they've created since 1964.

Since fear always has a place in politics, Sarah and the Palins (the Republicans) will be back. There can be no myth of the permanent majority (plus, in a working democracy what would that even mean?). Still, the way in which Bush and friends have almost systematically discredited every single Republican idea and moreover managed to link the Republican brand to incompetence and political divisiveness in a generation of diverse voters cannot be underestimated. I also don't want to start sounding like the 22% group in talking about how the President is such a great man that everyone likes. But it's been a while since reading the news was the good part of my day.

didn't it rain

This is more like it. Today it rained, almost all day, and it was wonderful. There is a dogmatic conformity here to the notion that the blindingly sunny, 85 degree days in the middle of January are what count as "good weather," one of of the many things that make this place so wonderful. I've been resisting my own resistance to this myth, but this is not good weather. One friend described my inclination towards Colorado weather - which can only be described as involving a series of intense climates in rapid succession, as if in a political revolution - as similar to being in an abusive relationship. I reject this, because it still relies on some unthinking 'sun = good' logic.

The sun here feels like it is right on your face, that it is burning its way through your skin, attempting to render you helpless against everything, especially thought. I can't think in this heat (a problem especially for graduate school). Too many days start out foggy, with friendly clouds trying to offer us protection, only to be eviscerated by the Irvine sun that respects nothing. The worst part is seeing people bounce along, seemingly not noticing this or any other kind of violence.

On a related note, the other day I was traveling back from LA in the middle of the night not completely sober and with the air conditioning on when I ran into roadwork that forced me through a detour through La Mirada or some equally faceless part of southern California. I've come to understand Irvine and the more urban parts of LA, at least in the 'contingent' ways that are possible, but the areas in between, as Los Angles fades into Orange county, escape me. It truly feels like nowhere made into a place. One imagines oneself as if a character in a video game, that makes a running motion when controlled to move in a certain direction. Only in this case one has been directed into a dead end, and no pushing on the wall reveals a secret passageway to the next level. So you face a wall, more or less helpless, while still making a running motion.

At least it's raining.

san francisco