Saturday, September 22, 2012

Weber, the prophet



Western rationalism is constantly inventing newer and better means; it has, however, ever less to say about goals and ends. This is not the only reason that Weber looks upon [so-called] development with ambivalence. Advisedly, he invariably places the word "progress" in quotation marks. Part of Weber’s diagnosis of modernity is an unmistakable pessimism about the possibilities of individual freedom. The "fateful forces" of modern life, [scientism], bureaucratization and capitalism, seem more to threaten than to promote human freedom and autonomy. Weber’s somber words in his book The Protestant Ethic are famous:

"No one yet knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals; or, if neither of these, then mechanized petrifaction, embellished by a sort of convulsive self-importance. For of the 'last men' of this final stage of cultural development, it might well be truly said: ‘Narrow specialists without minds, pleasure seekers without heart; in their conceit, these nullities imagine they have climbed to a level of humanity never before attained."

(Christian Schwaabe of the Goethe Institute; translation by Jonathan Uhlaner)

Friday, September 21, 2012

Mirror Mirror on the Wall


What is it that you experience when looking in a mirror?  Do you see yourself?  Do you see yourself in a virtual room behind the wall?  Do you see yourself in this room behind the wall looking back at yourself?  Would you consider the space of the mirror a utopia: an unreal place full of ideal forms?  Would you consider it a heterotopia: a space "different" (hetero-) from but related to virtually all other spaces; a sort of enacted utopia outside of, yet in tension with, all other spaces?

The mirror is, after all, a utopia, since it is a placeless place. In the mirror, I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal,virtual space that opens up behind the surface; I am over there, there where I am not, a sort of shadow that gives my own visibility to myself, that enables me to see myself there where I am absent: such is the utopia of the mirror. But it is also a heterotopia in so far as the mirror does exist in reality, where it exerts a sort of counteraction on the position that I occupy. From the standpoint of the mirror I discover my absence from the place where I am since I see myself over there. Starting from this gaze that is, as it were, directed toward me, from the ground of this virtual space that is on the other side of the glass, I come back toward myself; I begin again to direct my eyes toward myself and to reconstitute myself there where I am. The mirror functions as a heterotopia in this respect: it makes this place that I occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass at once absolutely real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass through this virtual point which is over there. (Michel Foucault, "Of Other Spaces")


Sexuality is that mixed-topos of the mirror: both u-topic and hetero-topic: both a “non-place” place populated by ideal forms and an “other-place” place that is “a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real site, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.” Objectifying myself, taking myself as an object that will offer itself to me to be known, I myself know myself reflexively by making use of a third-party surface that can reflect me back to me. So I objectify knowable, and indeed already-known, others. 

What’s more, knowing these others knows them as having an essential worth. I thus place myself into a moral relation of other-cherishing and/or other-loathing so that, within or against these others, I might “see myself [over] there where I am not.” In knowing the other, in other-cherishing and/or other-loathing, I can know myself and thus cherish or loathe myself in kind. In knowing myself as within, as of, the other I cherish myself if I cherish this other and loathe myself if I loathe this other. In knowing myself over and against the other, I can cherish, loathe, be ambivalent, or be indifferent to my sense of difference or exclusion. 

Of course, in these self-reflexive epistemological methods of self-knowing/valuation, I am not seeing any particular other in his or her singularity. The others that I draft into my processes of self-making are all instances of some idealized other, a reflective surface that shows me to me as though in a mirror: “in an unreal virtual space that opens up behind the surface.” My sexual self that appears in a virtual room that stretches out behind the wall is thus “a sort of shadow [a doppelgänger] that gives my own visibility to myself, that enables me to see myself there where I am absent.” This is sexuality as utopia.

Of course, the ideals that the singular other instantiates are hardly products of my fancy.  These ideals are the deeply entrenched and rather recalcitrant grids of intelligibility, the dispositif, against which I make sense of my world and within which my life is enmeshed.  Thus, the mirror that is this other is not utterly ideal, it “does exist in reality, where it exerts a sort of counteraction on the position that I [actually] occupy.”  This is sexuality as heterotopia.  

Through sexuality, functioning heterotopically, I discover my absence from “the place where I am,” viz. in the utopic space of the mirror, as I see myself in an “over there” that is “back here,” in the real space of my room, facing a mirror.  “Starting from this gaze that is, as it were, directed toward me, from the ground of this virtual space that is on the other side of the glass, I come back toward myself” and “I begin again to direct my eyes toward myself and to reconstitute myself there where I am.”  Thus sexuality, as a mirror is a mixed-topos experience.  It “makes this place that I occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass at once real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass through this virtual point which is over there.”