The Schizo-Stroller

“It was not until the modern era that the hive was found to be a radical matriarchy and sisterhood (with only a smattering of male drones) and that the notion of the Queen Bee as supreme supervisor was discounted. When a swarm pours itself out the front slot of a hive, the queen bee can only follow.” (Borgo, 2007:142)

I’m currently reading David Borgo’s ‘Sync or Swarm: Improvising Music in a Complex Age’, in it he quotes George Lewis referencing John Cage’s musical and philosophical stance:

“After three hundred years of the very real silence of violence and terror, rather than a freely chosen conceptual silence of four minutes or so, one can well imagine the newly freed slaves developing a music in which each person is encouraged to speak, without conflict between individual expression and collective consciousness. in contrast to this notion of improvisation as a human birthright, a simple response to conditions, an embodied practice central to existence and being in the world, Cage’s Puritanical description of improvisation contrasted the image of a heroic, mystically ego-driven Romantic improviser, imprisoned by his own will, with the detached, disengaged, purely ego-transcending artist who simply lets sounds be themselves” (George Lewis, “The Secret Love between Interactivity and Improvisation, or – Missing in Interaction: A Prehistory of Computer Interactivity” 2003:3)

Borgo goes onto suggest that the disavowal of improvisation by pan-European composers such as Cage was due to the increasing awareness that jazz was starting to compete with high art on its own terms but that this philosophical terrain often downplayed issues of class and race in favour of the “more solipsistic and community-denying isolationism of Eurocentric discourse” (Cage quoted in Borgo 2007:88).

Borgo goes on to quote Lochead, quoting Cage’s oft quoted passage where he describes his desire to create music “free of individual taste and memory (psychology) and also of the literature and traditions of art” (Borgo 2007:88). Borgo then suggests that:

“although Cage could control the compositional process, he could not control listening. It is in listening that music is created and listening is never free of memory. Cage did arguably play an important role in urging listeners to hear more fully their natural environment, but he did so by attempting to displace the human from its integral role within that environment. Free improvisers advocate similar qualities of active and engaged listening, but they implicitly acknowledge that the infinite variety of sound around us requires a human social space for interaction and selection” (Borgo 2007: 88).

IF OOO, speculative materialism etc are having their 4″ 33′, where are the George Lewis’s of philosophy right now?

If you don’t want to be ruled by fear and aggression.

That’s the job of the mammalian brain. As that bit was trained by suckling, one needs to find the mother-lode.

If the mother-lode is lacking, and even if it isn’t, one needs to find the significant-other lode. Or more precisely the significant-others lodes. For they are multiple.

Then language can move from a command ethics to a knowledge ethics.

An idea of reference usually refers to the experience of a phenomena having personal significance. The mild version is when for example one finds oneself being embarrassed by a slightly narcissistic moment when we realise a celebration is not for us. However more psychotic versions are the classic TV or radio talking to us, or the paranoia that the people on the train are talking to us. Of course there are mythological versions, one could put augury in this realm – the geese are flying north when they should be flying south, therefore war is coming.

Now i do get the TV and paranoia in a public place thing regularly, but I am aware that this is me projecting how I’m feeling.

So when re-reading Walter Benjamin’s Illuminations, I came across the paper “On some motifs of Baudelaire”, Benjamin is talking about Proust’s understanding of aura. Benjamin has been using Proust to explore memoire involuntaire. “To perceive the aura of an object we look at means to invest it with the ability to look at us in return”, “experience of the aura rests thus rests on the transposition of a response common in human relationships to the relationship between the inanimate or natural object and man”.

And with respect to a familiarity of the aura, Proust states “Some people who are fond of secrets flatter themselves that objects retain something of the gaze that has rested on them… they believe that monuments and pictures present themselves only beneath the delicate veil which centuries of love and reverence on the part of so many admirers have woven about them. this chimera… would change into truth if they related it to the only reality that is valid for the individual, namely, the world of his emotions.” (Benjamin, 1999, p.184)

The problem is that I do KNOW this truth. but that doesn’t stop these ideas of reference coming even at the slightest hint of stress.

It seems my ant has a raging bull elephant under its charge. I need to get it to fetch wood and water. to do that though it seems I need to soothe my reptile first.

The nu-atheists a priori acceptance of progress which is a very Christian belief system

(re: debate – it should be noted that intelligent commentators on evolution who are not nu-atheists tend not to be too bothered about the debate (it’s not a debate – the science won a long time ago – what masquerades as debate is really the nu-atheists attempted coup for leadership of conservatism))

(re: intelligent commentators – i’m dumbing down for the day)

(re: self-reflection – my arse)

Yeh, we all get them, but this arrived in my email box this morning. All time classic! I’ve put in the ‘Art’ category.

Salam Alylum,

My name is Mrs Safi Ghadafi. I am a wife to late Moammar Gadhafi former president to Libya. I contact you with my dua heart and deep faith of almighty Allah swt, to seek your foreign investment beneficiary partnership. I have sum of ($72 Million USD)for a confidential investment protect in your country.

Kindly get back to me if you are interested with your contact information’s and more details on which area of investment you can dully invest the funds?Bless almighty Allah swy, bless your family, bless Islam.

Please send your acceptance letter to my private mail(safi_ghadafi@yahoo.com)

I await your sincere response/ Allah-Afiz

MASHALLAH

Sincerely yours
Mrs Safi Ghadafi

For over a year now I’ve been hearing voices saying ‘Hayek’ or ‘Nozick’. Since last March in fact when my daughter was first hospitalised, these two along with ‘Foucault’. I realise as single words they are empty signifiers and I can fill them with what I will, but as they are a communication between my Other, created by my unconscious projecting onto the real, I guess I’ve got a better chance of gaining some meaning from it as any.

The ‘Foucault’ I have always associated with the experience of Great Ormond Street, and the fact that I had just finished the Birth of the Clinic (by then though I had moved on to the Order of Things). My therapist, who fortunately had also read the book, reminded me how Foucault talks of clinical discourse turning the subject into the object. And realising how it was my baby daughter this was happening to, and i was observing from two removes (later in the CDU of my local hospital a nurse with much experience of working with children and families in intensive care, and whose own child had been in intensive care talked to us about how, when a child ends up in intensive care the mother is pushed at a remove from the care of her own child, and the father, who is often pushed at a remove from the relationship with the mother, becomes separated from the child by a further remove. She stated her own husband had had issues with this). So with all this it made sense that I would hear this signifier. As our relationship with the hospital infrastructure became less intense and our own familial relationships improved this voice became less intense and prominent.

However, the signifiers naming the two right-wing theorists has continued. I can only associate this with the fact that with the burgeoning awareness that I would have to rely further on a state that under Tory rule was increasing its draconian governance and surveillance not just due to my own disability, which was at this time already under attack in the media, but now through my daughter.

The ‘Hayek’ I associate with my belief that the Tories know that they are likely to lose the next election and are stripping the state bare for theirs and their friends own pockets. The dominant ideology clings to his economic theory but the reality of the events from 2007 onwards meant that his ascendance is on the wane. The ‘Nozick’ i associated with the reality that to keep this post-Hayekian economic dominance the rich would have start to dismantling the state leaving only a skeleton state protecting private property. The floating of policies to privatise roads and the police confirm this for me.

As the infrastructure of water, gas, electricity, the railways and social housing had been sold off under the Thatcher government, what else is there left? Our genes?

But why do these signifers keep coming at me? I am aware they come when I am upset at the complacency of a world that feels powerless to do anything. But it also comes when I feel negative solidarity, mis-directed energies of the powerless towards the powerless and I feel isolated and alone. These voices seem to come from intelligent but deluded others who stemming from a middle class unaware of the real conditions of an underclass, who are busy setting themselves up with resentful carry go bring come simmering, underneath, bleat their desperate belief in their assuredness in a Robinson Crusoe selfhood, unaware of their own emotional cripplehood.

I associate this with my loss of connection with a more emotionally substantial left-orientated middle and working class, leaving these lost constructs, soft bodies projected onto a cold Real that is best represented in my mind by these emotionally dead philosophies that are unable to recognise the lives of Others, most prominently the lives of those others that they exploit.

‘Fuck ‘em’ said the ex-Black Panther.

But i still find it hard to keep my dignity.

After so many years of them refusing my right to peace, as they refuse so many others’ rights. So many human rights refused. Again and again.

Why? Because they refused themselves their own rights? Can we try to empathise with them for that?

When I am strong and well… perhaps. I can try. But the bastards have tried to grind me down for years.

The meek shall inherit the earth, but the fucking ignorant can go fuck themselves.

I’ve read book after self-help book telling me the only thing i can do is to take responsibility for my actions. and I try to, oh, i try to. But my crime seems to have been to be forced to shoulder the burden of others’ emotional responsibilities. And like an abused mule, stricken with one too many emotional bags to carry from yet one more emotional shirker, I kick. Buckaroo!

But do I get my own Society for the Protection of Abused Mules?

Do I fuck!

Instead i get contained by those who would blame the whipped dog for biting in frenzied self-defense.

I’m sick of being the holy scapegoat. Even the strongest get overwhelmed when there are too many cunts around.

Fuck’ em!!

No more keep calm, carry on.

Get angry! Fight back!

Let us take a scenario, oft told, of the language of the child abuser.

“I am doing this to you because you made me” being the most obvious.
We also have “I’m doing this to you because you are bad”
Or “I’m doing this to you for your own good”

In this structure we can see a pattern: “I do this to you because you…”

So the abuser blames the abused for the reason they are abusing them.
The prejudiced blame the people they are prejudiced about for the reason they are prejudiced.
The persecutory blame the people they are persecuting for their persecution.

This is the linguistic structure of abuse.

The language of those who blame the person who left the door open for the abuser’s act of walking through it.

The trauma is the event. But the experience may seem the worse the more the abused is blamed for it, either by the abuser, or by those they turn to for succour.

According to some sources the amount of time it takes to recover, with appropriate support, from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a year to two years (although some events like CSA where the abused is too young to understand the experience and is more inclined to believe the words of the abuser, this is not the case).

It would suggest that the rate of recovery depends on the amount and quality of support. However if this language of abuse has a structure then one can argue that post-trauma the more one is exposed to this linguistic structure in one’s everyday life the harder it is for the victim of the abuse to understand that in fact they are NOT responsible. The longer it takes to recover.

First thought: The phrases ‘I feel judged’ or ‘I feel excluded’ are emotionally incorrect in a logical sense. The correct phrases are ‘I think I am judged’ or ‘I think I am excluded’, even, ‘I seem to be judged’ or ‘I seem to be excluded’ but as words that end with an -ed are most often judgements or observations that happen to the person (although there is a grey area as they may be observations of affects, hence ‘I feel outraged’ gives a sense of feeling, hence the affects will more likely illicit emotions to do with anger (although not necessarily) but are still not specifically defined), they cannot be feelings as emotions are processes (chemicals if one wants to be neuroscientific) that happen in the body. As regards words ending with -ed, one has either been judged or been excluded or not, whether one feels or for that matter thinks one has. However if I say ‘I think I’ve been judged’ it is a matter of agreement and can potentially be settled, however if one says ‘i feel I’ve been judged’ and someone says ‘Well you haven’t been’ it is harder not to take the disagreement personally, as one is evidently feeling something (there is some definite neurochemistry going on) but as an emotion has been confused with a judgement that has a truth value (emotions are qualities not truths, therefore have a different validity) then what is left when the feeling is denied One can say ‘I feel paranoid because I think I am judged’, or ‘I feel upset because I think i am judged’, perhaps ‘I feel angry because i think I have been excluded’ (hence one will most likely feel angry at being outraged but perhaps also sad or hurt). This is not to say the observation of judgements does not come with a corresponding feeling, but these feelings have multiple possibilities, hence if I say to you ‘i feel judged’ you might think I am paranoid when in fact i am feeling upset and anxious.

Second thought: Rhetoric is the skill of persuasion, often politically, using emotionally laden language. This language need not be, in fact perhaps necessarily is not, in conformity with the logic above. Hence if a politician suggest that they ‘feel slighted by asylum seekers getting a free ride’ you are free to insert your own emotion with regard to this ‘slight’ which indeed is a value-laden observation and judgement, not an emotion of its own.
The classic statement would be ‘I feel this is the right thing to do’. Really, do you feel happy, do you feel slightly conflicted, do you feel angry because you have no other choice, do you feel guilty because you think its right but many will suffer, because you know its right for only a few? It’s a very powerful statement though, as although there are limits to the possibilities for emotion set by the context, they are multiple and therefore can grab the attention of and perhaps persuade far more than if the statement had been more emotionally honest.

Third Thought: How does one deny rhetoric without either an ad hominem (perhaps a straw man) or more rhetoric?