tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46985339876733765722024-03-13T04:16:46.356-07:00LIMINAa suspended space where we cast our skin into the fire and cavort about with sinew and bone exposed, naked in our honesty. or just a spot where i am candid about how many ways i've found to scrape my knees and chin in various attempts to evolve.piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.comBlogger74125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-38828494484072558262013-08-23T22:24:00.003-07:002017-07-18T22:39:44.610-07:00The Brahmavihāras as Applied to LifeThe <i>brahmavihāras</i> (the "divine abodes") are core ethical principles in Buddhism that are meant to shape the way a Buddhist navigates the world. Buddhists cultivate these principles as a matter of answering that age old question, "who ought I to be, what ought I to do?"<br />
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In simple form, the brahmavihāras are:<br />
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<ol>
<li>loving-kindness (<i>maitrī</i>)—the sincere wish for (and thus dedication to) others having all that they need for happiness</li>
<li>compassion (<i>karuṇā</i>)—the sincere wish (and thus dedication to) others being free from causes of suffering</li>
<li>empathetic joy (<i>muditā</i>)—the sincere reveling in the happiness, success, and good fortune of others</li>
<li>equanimity (<i>upekṣā</i>)—embracing life, the world, and being for just what it is</li>
</ol>
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If one is committed to the brahmavihāras, is it not necessary to renounce at least the following things?<br />
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<ol>
<li>objectifying practices (monogamy, pornography, neo-liberalism)</li>
<li>harmful rituals of habit (environmental destruction, animal torture, corporeal self-destructiveness through refined sugar, alcohol, etc.)</li>
<li>realism, nihilism, relativism (attitudes fundamental to the propagation of various social harms)</li>
</ol>
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Objectification (treating people like objects) and instrumentalization (treating people like tools) are incompatible with the brahmavihāras because the brahmavihāras take as the object of their activity sentient beings (and certainly, at the least, other human beings). Objectification and instrumentalization proceed on the basis of a category error whereby one mistakes one type of thing in the world with a fundamentally different type. A sentient being is a type of thing in the world who can suffer and/or flourish, who can act and react to its environment, and who we can vicariously relate to and/or emulate. A non-sentient thing is a material, a resource, or an object. This type of thing is freely available for manipulation and implementation, and cannot suffer, flourish, react reflexively to its environment, nor serve as a mirror, as a basis for vicarious experience. And from a Buddhist perspective, objectification and instrumentalization are incompatible with the brahmavihāras because, at the least, should such a category error be permitted, one could then take materials, objects, and resources as objects of <i>karuṇā </i>or <i>maitrī</i> and/or otherwise exclude certain beings as appropriate objects of brahmavihāra activity.<br />
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Harmful rituals of habit are, by definition, harmful and thus incompatible with the brahmavihāras. The costs incurred in capitulating to the impulses of appetite, to the routines of cultural coining, or to the proclivities of an unsustainable self are costs that many others, both present and future, will incur. The brahmavihāras preclude the possibility of forcing others to subsidize one’s own harmful rituals of habit.<br />
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In this postmodern milieu, it is undeniable that knowledge and power are inextricably co-imbricated. Do not, then, the brahmavihāras preclude the possibility of functioning in blanket deference to reified identities? Does not such strong attachment entail an ineluctable form of epistemic violence? However, mistaking the absence of an essential identity for the non-existence of a self is nihilism, a perspective that comes with its own forms of epistemic violence (e.g. fascism). And vicious relativism asymptotically approaches nihilism.<br />
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The question for Buddhist moderns is one of how to engage with life in ways that participate wholly in the spirit of the brahmavihāras. For example, if the standard courtship, dating, and marriage model in the USA is one that objectifies and instrumentalizes others, how can one engage in intimate, caring, and erotic relations with others in a manner that leaves aside objectification and instrumentalization? Can erotic cinema, even films that depict explicit sex, be created and consumed in ways that do not feed objectification? If so, how is it possible to foment a massive conscientious demand for such? Can one eat foods and get around town in ways that conscientiously avoid the horrors of factory farming and carbon monoxide poisoning? These are but a sliver of a fraction of the self-destructive habits that are likely to force hardship on future others, habits that are unambiguously diametric to the commitments one makes when shaping oneself according to the brahmavihāras.<br />
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Buddhist moderns: to what extent are each of the various widespread attitudes and habits that you participate in (and therefore bolster/proliferate) transgressions of samaya? To what extent is this aspect or that of your lifestyle an infraction, breach, or violation? And your ongoing, willful indulgence despite insights and understanding gleaned from the dharma, is that not a complete break?piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-62581642181426328672013-06-21T21:41:00.005-07:002013-08-23T22:58:40.235-07:00You, Her/Him, and Another: A Thought Experiment<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Following is a thought experiment designed to illuminate how monogamy compels us to wield mere information as a weapon against both ourselves and others, inflicting deep and long lasting harm. The thought experiment makes use of four nearly identical scenarios. Each scenario involves three individuals: You, Him/Her, and Another. You, is <i>you </i>dear reader. Him/Her is somebody that you are dating or have dated and Another is someone with whom Him/Her has, at some point, a one-night stand. In each of the four scenarios that follows the individuals and the one-night stand itself are identical.</div>
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<b>THE FOUR SCENARIOS</b></h2>
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<b>Scenario #1—Once Upon a Time</b></h4>
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You have been dating Him/Her for about five months when the question of past experiences arises. Your lover tells you that they’ve only had one one-night stand in their life. The one-stand in question is, of course, the same one that features in all four scenarios. Your lover tells you that it was about two months before the two of you met, that it took place between Him/Her and Another after meeting at a pub, and that both of them really enjoyed the experience. Nevertheless, they did not get close and only maintained casual contact. After hearing of this interesting but innocuous past experience, you file it away as a mere piece of trivia, a matter of getting to know your partner better.</div>
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<b>Scenario #2—Devastating Overlap</b></h4>
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Scenarios #1 and #2 are identical with the exception of timing. You have been dating the same individual as in #1, only this time for about a year. In this scenario too your lover divulges the self-same information: the exact same one-night stand with the same sex took place between Him/Her and Another after they met at the same pub. It was, as with #1, a good experience but there remained only minimal contact (and no physical relationship) between them. In this scenario too the one-night stand took place seven months ago. In other words, it took place while you were dating. You are devastated, crushed, broken-hearted. Your emotions shoot up to level 10 and you careen forth and back between despair, fury, regret, vengeance, self-doubt, self-righteousness, and more. You are equally physically impacted: shaking, crying, yelling, destroying things, binge eating or not eating at all, returning to old vices, etc. Despite Him/Her’s assurances that there is genuine and deep love for you—and despite ample evidence over the past year in support of these assurances—you terminate the relationship.</div>
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<b>Scenario #3—The New-Love Shield</b></h4>
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Scenario #3 has the same three individuals with the exact same one-night stand. In this scenario, you <i>had been </i>dating Him/Her for one year. After a year or so, however, the relationship was dissolved with more than mild drama and hurt feelings on both sides. Whatever contact you have had since has quickly devolved into fighting. But it’s been four months since the breakup and you have a new lover that you are enthralled with. Him/Her, of course, does not know this. To spite you, your ex sends an email detailing a one-night stand—the very same one-night stand as in the other two scenarios above—that evidently happened between Him/Her and Another the night just prior to this email after they met at a pub. It was, as the email tells it, an altogether enjoyable experience for both Him and Her. You are ecstatic about your <i>new</i> relationship and are more or less unaffected by the email. You write it off as a juvenile attempt to wound you and you have no trouble putting it out of mind.</div>
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<b>Scenario #4—The Vulnerability Lens</b></h4>
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Scenario #4 is identical to #3 with the exception that, in the four months since the break up, you haven’t been dating. There is no one new in your life. There is no new lover that makes you feel special and who is a source of ongoing happiness. This time when you receive the email detailing the one-night stand between Him/Her and Another that took place only one night prior it cuts to the bone. It hurts deeply and your emotions careen forth and back between despair, fury, regret, vengeance, self-doubt, self-righteousness, and more.</div>
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<b>ANALYSIS</b></h2>
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<b>1. two wildly different interpretations of the same data</b></h4>
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In all four scenarios, you were dating someone who gave you some information about him- or herself: at some point there was a one-night stand with Another. In each case the one-night stand is exactly the same: Him/Her met at the same place, had the same sex, enjoyed it to the same degree, and maintained the same minimal level of Platonic contact afterwards. In the first scenario, hearing of the one-night stand had little effect. In this first case, hearing of the event and hearing that it was a fulfilling experience caused no hurt. You were perhaps even a little happy for your lover. The second scenario, however, is radically different from the first. Even though, in both scenarios, the exact same one-night stand took place seven months before your lover tells you about it, the information is a mere curiosity in the first case and the source of excruciating pain in the second. What is the difference? The difference, of course, is not in the material conditions. Those are identical in both scenarios. The difference is in how you interpret the meaning, value, and significance of the information. The same amount of time has passed, the same people are involved, and you came to learn about it in the same way. Nevertheless, in the first scenario you interpret the data, the new information, as largely irrelevant and you simply file it away in your brain under “facts about my lover.” In the second scenario you interpret the same data as not only relevant but of paramount importance. In fact, given the overwhelming evidence that points to Him/Her’s genuine love for you—a love that is unquestionably felt in return—you make the single most important thing in determining the destiny of the relationship NOT any of the myriad things shared and exchanged between You and Him/Her, but instead something between Him/Her and Another. Let's be clear: once the monogamous contract/ultimatum is in place, once exclusivity has become the wellspring of meaning, value, and significance, then betrayal of that agreement is a heinous act and cannot be other than devastating. The point here is not that, given a monogamous relationship, You could interpret the information about Him/Her and Another in some benign fashion. The point is that the mutual bind itself—that mutual contract You and Him/Her force upon one another in the standard monogamous relationship—forces this interpretation and prohibits any others; it thus skews the relationship heavily toward the resulting devastation. But this mutual bind is not natural, necessary, or even beneficial. The core agreement in monogamy is mutual control over each other’s body. As such, one of the most severely defective characteristics of monogamy is that it makes the most important thing about love a matter of what each person does <i>outside of the relationship. </i>This, of course, automatically breeds paranoia, insecurity, and possessiveness. What’s worse, it makes physical contact with any others trump all else in meaning, value, and significance: an interpretation that makes an event that lasted less than three hours trump all that has been shared and exchanged in your relationship over the course of a year.</div>
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<b>2. mistaken identity in the chain of cause and effect</b></h4>
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It is common for us to lament our situation when we’ve been cheated on and ask, “how could he/she do this to me?” And, again, let’s be clear: in the case of monogamy where the very heart of the relationship is a promise of exclusivity, there is little in this world more fucked up than stepping all over your relationship and your lover/spouse’s very emotional/social/physical well being (sometimes irreparably) by betraying someone’s trust to satisfy carnal cravings. This thought experiment is NOT a defense of infidelity. This exercise in hypotheticals is designed to show the incoherence of monogamy.* Digressions about how heinous cheating is aside, the sentiment “how could he/she do this to me?,” contains a fundamental error in its logic. The actual sex act that constitutes the one-night stand in each of the four scenarios may be the direct cause of many things (such as an STD) but it is NOT the direct cause of the pain and suffering endured in scenarios #2 and #4. The erotic contact between the two bodies did not yield the woe. This is clear in #2 owing to the fact that you felt nothing at all when the one-night stand was actually unfolding. While Him/Her and Another were having sex, you were at home cuddled up with an engrossing book, or you were with friends playing cards, or you were at the movies with your mom… or, more than likely, you have no idea exactly what you happened to be doing while they were having sex. It wasn’t the material conditions of the one-night stand that caused hurt, pain, and suffering. It was the mere information itself. It is the sheer <i>idea </i>of Him/Her having sex with another. Now, some might want to object and say that the duplicity that kept the one-night stand a secret for seven months does not mean that it wasn’t the one-night stand itself that caused the harm. As soon as you were aware of the betrayal the damage was done: if there was no act of infidelity, there would be no damage. Therefore, you might want to say, it <i>must </i>be a primary cause of the hurt. But this is clearly not true. If we consider yet another scenario, one in which there NEVER WAS a one-night stand <i>but</i>, owing to the paranoia, possessiveness, and insecurity mentioned above, you somehow become erroneously yet utterly convinced that, while dating you, Him/Her had a one-night stand with Another after meeting at a pub, then the same insufferable consequences follow. The mere <i>idea</i> of this one-night stand, even without any basis in reality, can still cause the <i>exact same outcome. </i>It is you who, in the first scenario, fold up this information like a scrap of paper and stick it in the back pocket of your mind. And it is also you who, in the second scenario, wield this same information against yourself as a knife to make a thousand cuts.</div>
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<b>3. underlining the main point</b></h4>
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The third and fourth scenarios are helpful in underlining the main point. The main point is that the attachment and insecurity at the heart of monogamy compel us to interpret events in self-damaging ways. Between the third and the fourth scenarios it is clear that the determining factor in making the information we receive harmless or harmful is our own state of mind. When we feel secure and cared for as in scenario #3 it is easy to simply dismiss the information and perhaps even feel compassion (or else pity) for our ex. When we feel self-doubt and insecurity as in scenario #4 it is easy to turn this information into a bludgeon with which to beat ourselves mercilessly. It is the way that monogamy orients us with respect to ourselves and others that drives us to interpret the simple fact of two other people having enjoyable and healthy consensual sex as <i>something so terrible that the mere idea of it alone inflicts endless torment</i>. It is owing to the way we connect to and prioritize our own selfish needs and wants—and it is therefore not at all <i>love</i>—that makes us set each other up for failure and set ourselves up for self-abuse.<br />
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*This incoherence is part of the explanation as to why, despite nearly universal consensus that infidelity is a repulsive act, it still is universal enough to transcend language and culture, political views, age, race, gender, etc.</div>
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piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-27462253834039980912013-01-01T22:18:00.000-08:002013-08-23T22:59:06.224-07:00Eros as Sexual Anarchism<br />
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<i>anarchism</i>—non-centralized social organization by virtue of free association of individuals instead of by compulsion</div>
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While our sexuality has been subject to complex ecosystems of governance that function through microeconomies of power that are most highly condensed when intersecting within institutions such as the state and the church/synagogue/mosque—and in its condensation as it flows to and from those other "institutions" such as the family and medicine—<i>eros </i>would be something else. In promulgating eros, I seek not the reconfiguration of institutional controls but instead a sort of fecund sexual anarchism. </div>
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Eros seeks not to include yet one more group within the dysfunctional morass of the heteronormal domestic model. Instead it seeks to make this standard model unfamiliar, strange, and undesirable. It seeks to shed this model like dead skin. In lieu of this model it seeks: not any single thing. To render the standard model defunct by virtue of making it alien, archaic, barbaric to our sensibilities will open up the ground of possibility for eros: as of yet unknown practices of bodily intimacy that are permeated as much by an unreason created/permitted anew as by a nonce reason that makes use of organizational principles and conceptual structures but which takes nothing for granted as natural, necessary, primary, foundational, or essential.</div>
piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-59504223621444785132012-09-22T17:15:00.002-07:002012-09-22T17:17:18.537-07:00Weber, the prophet<br />
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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 <i>The Protestant Ethic</i> are famous: <br />
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"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."</blockquote>
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(Christian Schwaabe of the Goethe Institute; translation by Jonathan Uhlaner)</div>
piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-11865459083648281492012-09-21T09:56:00.003-07:002012-12-30T23:51:24.731-08:00Mirror Mirror on the Wall<br />
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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" (<i>hetero-</i>) from but related to virtually all other spaces; a sort of enacted utopia outside of, yet in tension with, all other spaces?</div>
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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")</blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Sexuality</span> is that
mixed-topos of the mirror: both <i>u</i>-topic and <i>hetero</i>-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. </div>
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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 <i>within, </i>as
<i>of</i>, 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. </div>
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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.</div>
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<span style="line-height: 32px;">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 <i>dispositif</i>, 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. </span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 32px;">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.”</span></div>
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piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-51959232099475910092012-08-01T08:44:00.000-07:002012-08-01T08:47:50.049-07:00Two Cats, Two Kō'ansSo you're familiar with Schrödinger's cat, right? In brief, Schrödinger uses a cat to illustrate a bizarre reality that quantum mechanics points to. He places the cat in a box-like trunk with a vile of poison that is connected to a timer. Once the timer runs out of time, the vile is shattered and the cat will die. He closes the lid of the trunk and starts the timer. Here's the thing: the amount of time on the timer is determined randomly by a computer and nobody, including Schrödinger knows what it is. It could be 1 second or it could be 100 years. <br />
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With the lid closed and with no clue how much time is on the timer, there is no way to know whether the cat is dead or alive inside the trunk. According to quantum mechanics, however, the question of the cat's state—alive or dead (mutually exclusive states, mind you)—is not a valid question, the situation is indeterminate until an observation is made. While the trunk remains closed and we remain outside speculating and placing bets, the cat is not alive. It is not dead. It is not both alive and dead. It is not neither alive nor dead. This four-fold indeterminacy is the case, is the fact of the matter according to quantum mechanics, up until such a time that an observation is made. Making an observation forces the state of the cat to resolve itself into one of the two mutually exclusive conditions. Then and only then is the cat found to be either alive or dead. As long as the box remains closed, however, the cat is literally not alive, not dead, not both, and not neither. <br />
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Thus quantum mechanics provides an actual answer to the age-old question: if a tree falls in a forest and there is no one there to witness it, does it make a sound? The answer from the perspective of QM? Your question is bogus. Until there is an observation there is no sound. But that is not because sound is only sound if someone hears it. Instead that is because, until an observation is made, the forest, the tree, the falling, and the physical properties of all of these (such as sounds) are all in an indeterminate state as long as there has been no observation. The fallen tree does not exist. It does not not-exist. It does not both exist and not-exist. It does not not-exist and does not not-not-exist.<br />
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I think that Schrödinger's cat makes a fine Zen <i>kō'an</i>.<br />
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Today I read these
fascinating <i>kō’ans</i> in Jin Y. Park’s book <i>Buddhism and Postmodernity</i>. The first one also involves the tragic fate of a cat [translation modified slightly for effect]:</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<i>Nanquan saw
monks of the Eastern and Western halls quarreling over a cat. He
held up the cat and said, “If you can give me an answer, one
genuine truth, you will save the cat. If not, I will kill it.” No
one answered. Without hesitating, Nanquan cut the cat in two.</i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In my mind, this
<i>kō’an</i> is fascinating for myriad reasons. But there's two in particular that caught my attention: (1) the violence to the cat and (2) the use of and impact of indirect discourse (assuming that the monks have just received an
extraordinary teaching). The two, of course, are intertwined.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Here’s my take on the <i>kō'an</i>:</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
1. By virtue of the force with which
they were employing words, it was clear that each side in the argument believed their
words were right and true. Further, since the words of the opposing
contingent of monks were spoken in opposition, each side was
asserting the additional belief in a dualistic truth and falsity that
these words were vehicles for. Yet when called to give a truly
correct or right word, they both failed. When the stakes were
minimal, they bought into the veracity of their own conceptions with
gusto and quarreled, creating a problem. When the stakes were high
(and only so as a consequence of the situation the monks themselves
created), their conceptions and verbalizations thereof were
completely impotent.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
2. Each had mistaken the presence of
the cat as a source of suffering, as a source of angst, as the source
of a problem. In fact, each of the monks themselves were sources of
a faux misery blown out of proportion and treated as though “part
of the world.” They had been affecting distress with each other
over the cat. When the cat, a source of possible joy and a proper
object of compassion, is killed they are exposed to genuine misery,
to real distress. By inadvertently killing the cat and by seeing the
cat killed, the monks experience true distress.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Interestingly, a different source gives
an extended version whereby a monk named Zhaozhou returns to the
monastery shortly after the cat is killed. When he returns Nanquan
recounts the incident. When Nanquan gets to the part where he
himself gives the monks the ultimatum, where he says, “If you can
give me an answer, one genuine truth, you will save the cat...”
Zhaozhou immediately takes off one of his grass-made sandals and puts
it on top of his head and walks away. Nanquan sighs to himself,
“ah... if you’d been here you would have saved the cat.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
This seems to support my hypothesis.
In response to the teaching that was making use of indirect discourse
to convey its message Zhaozhou offers indirect discourse as a means
of providing a viable answer without falling into the trap set by
Nanquan:</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
3. The master, having asked for even
one genuinely true word or genuinely correct statement, had asked for
the impossible. Truth is not conveyed by language which necessarily
operates by virtue of treating as identical that which is clearly
singular. But even some sort of statement such as, “master,
genuine truth cannot be conveyed by words,” would not have saved
the cat. For that assertion too is so much language drawing on a
mammoth epistemological framework for its coherence and cogency.
What would’ve saved the cat would’ve been a response that, while
not invoking language, nevertheless carried with it the force of the
inadequacy of language to convey genuine truths. Zhaozhou’s
response was just such a response.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
4. In thinking about this <i>kō’an,
</i>it strikes me that the
power of indirect discourse is in what it illuminates, highlights,
conveys, exposes, and ‘opens up’ by way of the choices and
exclusions that it makes and in the communicative forms that it
attempts and resists. A similar such <i>ko’an </i>is
one wherein a master replies to a question with a forceful yet
indirect answer [modified slightly for effect]:</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<i> A monk asks
Zhaozhou: “Ten thousand things return to one. To where does this
one thing return?”</i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<i> Zhaozhou
replies: “When I stayed in Qinzhou, I washed my robes, which when
wet weighed seven pounds.”</i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
monk in this case seems to be asking about ultimate reality. This
kind of metaphysical speculation is a snare. So the much more
enlightened Zhaozhou embarrasses the monk’s investment in this kind
of question by offering as an answer, as a legitimate answer and not
a redirect or distraction or irrationalist response, an account of an
everyday experience he had in a specific location at a specific time.
This strikes me as potent indirect discourse and an incredible
lesson in ethical praxis. What do you think? And what about the
poor cat?!?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-38452753778389004202012-06-28T09:07:00.000-07:002012-06-28T12:53:57.238-07:00on an instance of collusion between knowledge and power<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">*On Facebook today I shared <a href="http://www.queerty.com/judge-rules-against-jennifer-keeton-counseling-student-who-supports-reparative-therapy-20120628/" target="_blank">a story</a> about a Georgia Federal District Court ruling against a woman named Jennifer Keeton who, in her personal and professional life (as a counselor-to-be) refused to pretend that she didn't believe that homosexuality was a disorder that required treatment (reparative therapy). Her refusal got her kicked out of her master's program at Augusta State University.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">My good friend <a href="http://brainjourneys.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Sean Lemson</a> asked how I felt about "it." Whether he meant the ruling, the story, the nature versus nurture debate or otherwise, I decided to post here and answer a question that Sean didn't really ask. <br />Sean, here is a quick and dirty response to the question of what I think about it. My feelings on the matter are more complicated and harder to put words to. ;)</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>power-knowledge in the news</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
Sean, I think it is an interesting collusion between “medical specialists” and “legal power.” This woman has been told that she is not to bring her moral prejudices into her work when, in reality, her field (psychology) is nothing other than moral prejudice. It just so happens that her moral position conflicts with the most recent authorized positions. Of course, the psychologist’s bible, the DSM, considered homosexuality a mental disorder up until 1980. An interesting question is this: to what extent is Keeton’s position truly conflicting with that of psycho-science?
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
At the precise moment that
“homosexuality” was removed from the DSM, “gender identity
disorder” was <i>added</i>. An authority on this “disorder”
for a long time was a psychiatrist named Richard Green, whose book
<i>The Sissy Boy Syndrome</i> was
considered gospel, or at the least it commanded a good deal of respect. The point is, the current edition of the DSM-IV
considers “sissy boys” to be mentally disordered. As Green
insists that sissyhood is key to boys growing up to be gay men, it is
hard not to see “gender identity disorder” as, at least in part,
a strategic shift away from reparative therapy (too little, too late)
to <i>preemptive</i> therapy.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It
seems to me that the judge did not rule against Keeton because she
was bringing moral judgments based on faulty metaphysics into her
work in counseling people. He ruled against her because, in his
opinion, the moral judgments based on faulty metaphysics that are
brought into counseling sessions should be tightly controlled by the
self-appointed self-governing authorities of
psychology/psychotherapy/psychoanalysis (such as that of the credential-conferring institution that took punitive measures in response to her defiance). However capricious, flawed,
or even dangerous the governing bodies of
psychology/counseling/clinical therapy might be, the judge made it
clear that it is nevertheless enforced by the power of the state.
Shiver inducing, no?</div>
<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<br />
<br />piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-53649997051715976382012-06-27T11:34:00.002-07:002012-06-27T11:34:42.015-07:00Sonnet 129<div class="tr_bq">
As A.O. Scott relates in his <a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/12/02/movies/shame-directed-by-steve-mcqueen-review.html" target="_blank">review of the movie <i>Shame</i></a>, this poem, "as incisive an anatomy of erotic compulsion as exists in English, begins by evoking 'the expense of spirit in a waste of shame' and cycles through the rages and frustrations of lust before collapsing in exhausted fatalism." For full effect, ingest slowly by duly masticating.</div>
<br />
<blockquote>
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame<br />Is lust in action; and till action, lust<br />Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,<br />Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;<br />Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight;<br />Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,<br />Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,<br />On purpose laid to make the taker mad:<br />Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;<br />Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;<br />A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;<br />Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.<br />All this the world well knows; yet none knows well<br />To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
-William Shakespeare </blockquote>piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-64702473227138245322012-04-10T15:24:00.001-07:002012-04-10T15:25:38.008-07:00Capitalism: Dukkha par excellence?<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>(notes for a chapter </i><i>on Buddhist Ethics in</i><i> my dissertation on Buddhism and Ethics of the Erotic)</i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">According to David Harvey’s reading of Marx, capitalism requires ever evolving ingenuity in the “art” of inducing psychic, emotional, and physical turmoil so that it can “capitalize” on the perpetually renewed sense of urgent need that is generated (<i>The Condition of Postmodernity</i>, pp. 106-107):</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">The struggle to maintain profitability sends capitalists racing off to explore all kinds of other possibilities. New product lines are opened up, and that means the creation of new wants and needs. Capitalists are forced to redouble their efforts to create new needs in others, thus emphasizing the cultivation of imaginary appetites and the role of fantasy, caprice, and whim. The result is to exacerbate insecurity and instability, as masses of capital and workers shift from one line of production to another, leaving whole sectors devastated, while the perpetual flux in consumer wants, tastes, and needs becomes a permanent locus of uncertainty and struggle... Capitalism, in short, is a social system internalizing rules that ensure it will remain a permanently revolutionary and disruptive force in its own world history. If, therefore, ‘the only secure thing about modernity is insecurity,’ then it is not hard to see from where that insecurity derives.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As capitalism functions according to the assumption that content persons are the worst of consumers, it must perpetually manufacture discontent. Ideally, the seeds of perpetual discontent can be sown such that individuals never cease to crave and thus to spend. This “basic fact” of capitalism suggests that its mortal enemy may not be Marxism but Buddhism. To the extent that Buddhist thought and practice is Buddhist precisely because it is aligned against psychic, emotional, and physical disturbance, turmoil, and/or anguish (<i>dukkha</i>) it is necessarily hostile to, never mind incompatible with, capitalism. The question, however, of whether or not Buddhism is equipped to take on such an omnipotent foe is very much an open question. As modern Buddhism matures and clinical studies are undertaken to legitimate its contemplative practices, the specter of an <i>anti-Buddhist</i> doppelgänger becomes frighteningly real. To the extent that meditation practices are being appropriated to keep individuals docile—i.e. for the sake of anesthetizing individuals against the stresses and strains of dehumanizing labor conditions and depressive marketing strategies—...to the extent that these practices will ultimately function to lubricate the wheels of capitalism, raising the ceiling on the level of discontent individuals can tolerate before becoming malcontent, and thus aid in the production of docile workers who are nevertheless rampant consumers, Buddhism is being tapped to contravene its very <i>raison d’être. </i>The question that seems to be missing from the “mind-life” approaches to Buddhism is one of whether postmodern Buddhism will be a literal opiate for the masses or else a refuge from the juggernaut onslaught of capitalism.</div>piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-53909237396579923652012-02-20T18:52:00.001-08:002012-12-30T23:50:13.888-08:00Controlling, Determining, and Otherwise LimitingWhen a person, group, or other controlling entity seeks, struggles for, or achieves/is granted control over the conduct of another (or others), said party becomes a “governor,” in the broad sense of the term, caught up in “government,” where governmentality refers to the entire range of practices “that constitute, define, organize, and instrumentalize the strategies that individuals in their freedom can use in dealing with each other” (Foucault, <i>Ethics</i>. 300). In other words, in relationships that are first and foremost <i>power relations</i>, there are incentives, tools, and strategies for making use of whatever freedom one has in attempts at controlling, determining, or limiting the freedom of others.<br />
<br />
Is not the standard monogamous project one that is best characterized, not as an erotic relationship nor a loving relationship, nor even a domestic partnership, but instead a relation of <i>power</i>? Is not the quintessential concern in the standard monogamous project the ability to control, determine, and otherwise limit the freedom of another? In a relationship where all the love, attention, affection, respect, appreciation, and on and on... in a relationship where all that one could desire from another is not only present but abundant, what need is there for governing the other’s freedom, for curtailing possibility? By what exigency or right does one find it not only acceptable but imperative to make another subject to such governance? And more pressing still, how is it not only acceptable but a normal expectation that one will <i>leverage their very love</i> as the strategic means for procuring such governmental power over another? Yet this is nothing more nor less than the ultimatum that people present each other with every day in pursuing “love”: submit to my governance or else I shall occlude my love for you and reject your love for me!<br />
<br />
And just to emphasize that our approaches to love, intimacy, and family are the apotheoses of perversity, the vast majority are not satisfied with merely being granted such governance. “You must govern me in kind! If you lack interest, even in the slightest, in taking such possession of me, your willing <i>helot</i>, the shallowness of your love is exposed! If you truly loved me you'd insist on being my governor!” <br />
<br />
After all, in this most barbaric of models, to love is to take hold of, to govern, to possess; of course, the inevitable extreme of love, then, is to consume, to devour. Since it is a mutual and reciprocal domination, of course, the apex of love, love's culmination, is the obliteration of oneself and one's beloved.piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-1883954447914531032012-02-14T17:03:00.000-08:002012-02-20T18:45:37.666-08:00St. Valen(trans) DayThe "trans" in Valentrans Day speaks to a "beyond" that is nothing less than the subversion of the violence that we perpetrate upon ourselves through ill-fitting conventions with which we have saddled ourselves. But to understand this, we must first understand a bit about the history of Valentine's Day...<br />
<br />
Most of us know Valentine’s Day as the contemptible holiday alleged to be for lovers but which functions in large part to circulate insipid clichés by way of unabashed consumerism. That is, when it doesn’t function as a torturous reminder that empty gestures are still better than involuntary solitude.<br />
<br />
The perverse pomp of Valentine’s Day, however, hides within it a certain richness of potential. Valentine’s Day was originally something more akin to Veteran’s Day: a day to commemorate martyrs. An elaborate faux history has been fabricated, circulated, edited, and enhanced to bring the day commemorating the fallen victims of murderous violence into line with rather adolescent notions of romance. These faux histories themselves have a long history. So much so, in fact, that faux history itself is nothing short of a Valentine’s tradition in its own right.<br />
<br />
In the spirit of this tradition, I hereby proffer a more authentic faux history of Valentine’s Day:<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>VALENTINE'S DAY</b>, in its original context, is a celebration of the great Gnostic teacher and mystic Saint Valentinus. Born in Egypt at the beginning of the second century (CE), Valentinus taught a sort of Eastern-influenced existentialist form of mystic Christianity. Valentinus wrote:<br />
<br />
“God created man and man created God. So is it in the world. Men make gods and they worship their creations. If would be fitting for the gods to worship men.” (Logion 85: 1-4)<br />
<br />
Mankind finds itself always already thrust into a painful and confusing world. So-called orthodox Christians understand this condition as a consequence of original sin; all that is ill or wrong in the world is a consequence of our disobedience to God. On this model our very existence is ineluctably plagued with guilt. Guilt is man’s fundamental burden to bear. <br />
<br />
Valentinus, however, had a radically different notion. The problems that plague us are not rooted in our collective past insubordination but is instead a defect of creation itself. The burden of blame is not mankind’s but is God’s. This is a shocking statement, but it is important to remember that Valentinus understood that reality is something constructed by the ego. The flawed creation of God is the flawed creation of a God of our own imagination. In other words we exacerbate and compound our woe by interpreting the world and especially ourselves according to radically flawed conventions. According to Valentinus, it is not through some sort of vicarious participation in the ultimate sacrifice of God on the cross that we achieve salvation. We are saved by way of mystic processes of attaining true knowledge (gnosis) of ourselves. We are ignorant, we suffer from our ignorance, and only ignorance’s opposite, gnosis, will save us:<br />
<br />
“Perfect redemption is the cognition itself of the ineffable greatness: for since through ignorance came about the defect . . . the whole system [kosmos] springing from ignorance is dissolved in Gnosis. Therefore Gnosis is the redemption of the inner man; and it is not of the body, for the body is corruptible; nor is it psychical, for even the soul is a product of the defect and it is a lodging to the spirit: pneuma (spirit) therefore also must be redemption itself. Through Gnosis, then, is redeemed the inner, spiritual man: so that to us suffices the Gnosis of universal being: and this is the true redemption.” (Adv. Haer. I. 21,4)<br />
<br />
TRANS- : across, beyond, on the other side, surpassing. <br />
<br />
Trans-scending the ill-fitting conventions that we’ve saddled ourselves with, that cause us suffering, is an act of love towards ourselves. This is the love of Saint Valentinus the Gnostic teacher. This love is a type of work: it is a process of attaining (or creating!) true knowledge (gnosis) of ourselves. This is not an easy path to salvation. The world we happen to find ourselves in thwarts true knowledge of ourselves thereby thwarting our love for ourselves. This story is not only the story of salvation told by Saint Valentinus. This is also the story of Hedwig. Thus, the trans- in Valentrans Day is one of subverting the violence we perpetrate upon ourselves by going beyond the ill-fitting conventions we have saddled ourselves with. <br />
<br />
Those of you who know Hedwig’s story, then, know that there are few movies more suited to the authentic spirit of Valentine’s Day than Hedwig and the Angry Inch.piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-30454698796655587272010-12-26T10:58:00.000-08:002012-12-30T23:49:47.851-08:00sexualityKindred to "family" as vivisected below, anything other than a cursory look at so called "sexual identity" reveals a similarly troubled coherence. Sedgwick, again:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
<br />
[T]hink of all the elements that are condensed in the notion of sexual identity, something that the common sense of our time presents as a unitary [and universal!] category. Yet, exerting any pressure at all on "sexual identity," you see that its elements include<br />
<br />
<dl><br /><dd>your biological (e.g., chromosomal) sex, male or female;<br />
<br />
</dd><dd>your self-perceived gender assignment, male or female (supposed to be the same as your biological sex);<br />
<br />
</dd><dd>the preponderance of your traits of personality and appearance, masculine or feminine (supposed to correspond to your sex and gender);<br />
<br />
</dd><dd>the biological sex of your preferred partner;<br />
<br />
</dd><dd>the gender assignment of your preferred partner (supposed to be the same as her/his biological sex);<br />
<br />
</dd><dd>the masculinity or femininity of your preferred partner (supposed to be the opposite of your own);<br />
<br />
</dd><dd>your self-perception as gay or straight (supposed to correspond to whether your preferred partner is your sex or the opposite);<br />
<br />
</dd><dd>your preferred partner's self-perception as gay or straight (supposed to be the same as yours);<br />
<br />
</dd><dd>your procreative choice (supposed to be yes if straight, no if gay);<br />
<br />
</dd><dd>your preferred sexual act(s) (supposed to be insertive if you are male or masculine, receptive if you are female or feminine);<br />
<br />
</dd><dd>your most eroticized sexual organs (supposed to correspond to the procreative capabilities of your sex, and to your insertive/receptive assignment);<br />
<br />
</dd><dd>your sexual fantasies (supposed to be highly congruent with your sexual practice, but stronger in intensity);<br />
<br />
</dd><dd>your main locus of emotional bonds (supposed to reside in your preferred sexual partner);<br />
<br />
</dd><dd>your enjoyment of power in sexual relations (supposed to be low if you are female or feminine, high if male or masculine);<br />
<br />
</dd><dd>the people from whom you learn about your own gender and sex (supposed to correspond to yourself in both respects);<br />
<br />
</dd><dd>your community of cultural and political identification (supposed to correspond to your own identity);</dd><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
</dl>
<br />
<br />
and—again—many more. Even this list is remarkable for the silent presumptions it has to make about a given person's sexuality, presumptions that are true only to varying degrees, and for many people not true at all: that everyone "has a sexuality," for instance, and that it is implicated with each person's sense of overall identity in similar ways; that each person's most characteristic erotic expression will be oriented toward another person and not autoerotic; that if it is alloerotic, it will be oriented toward a single partner or kind of partner at a time; that its orientation will not change over time. Normatively, as the parenthetical prescriptions in the list above suggest, it should be possible to deduce anybody's entire set of specs from the initial datum of biological sex alone—if one adds only the normative assumption that 'the biological sex of your preferred partner' will be the opposite of one's own. With or without that heterosexist assumption, though, what's striking is the number and <i>difference</i> of the dimensions that 'sexual identity' is supposed to organize into a seamless and univocal whole.</blockquote>
<br />
<br />
from <span style="font-style: italic;">Tendencies</span>, pp. 7-8piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-75716129946783777062010-12-20T05:04:00.000-08:002012-12-30T23:49:30.497-08:00familyIn our time (now) and in our place (here), the institution of marriage is supposed to be assimilated into the institution of family, becoming its very nucleus. This institution, too, exists in a substantially, if not radically, different form than it did even prior to WWII. The failure rate of this institution is, perhaps not surprisingly, expanding nearly on pace with marriage. Though "family" is a term that has shifted and morphed through time and is something that often looked different from place to place, class to class, etc, it is, just like marriage, becoming increasingly incoherent. Consider this passage from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
Think of that entity "the family," an impacted social space in which all of the following are meant to line up perfectly with each other:<br />
<br />
a surname<br />
a sexual dyad<br />
a legal unit based on state-regulated marriage<br />
a circuit of blood relationships<br />
a system of companionship and succor<br />
a building<br />
a proscenium between "private" and "public"<br />
an economic unit of earning and taxation<br />
the prime site of economic consumption<br />
the prime site of cultural consumption<br />
a mechanism to produce, care for, and acculturate children<br />
a mechanism for accumulating material goods over several generations<br />
a daily routine<br />
a unit in a community of worship<br />
a site of patriotic formation<br />
<br />
and of course the list could go on.<br />
<br />
from <span style="font-style: italic;">Tendencies</span>, pg. 6</blockquote>
piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-64674993803337848712010-12-02T07:32:00.000-08:002012-12-30T23:49:08.808-08:00axiomsthe question of why—why does the attitude towards another change as feelings for that other deepen—is actually a constellation of questions all caught up together. is it a natural transition? is it a necessary transition? what is gained in this transition? what is lost in this transition? from whence do our ideas and practices come? regardless of the answers to these questions, it seems to me that there are several interrelated outcomes of this shift that are worthy of scorn: appreciation gives way to expectation, gratitude gives way to demands and ultimatums, exploration gives way to assimilation, and perhaps most crucially, mutual respect is exchanged for mutual control. these maddening outcomes and many other aspects of contemporary monogamy are the original catalysts that led me to question why we go about things the way we do in the first place. the answers to these questions are complex where they are not elusive. I had no desire to suspend all romantic engagements until I had sufficiently grappled with these questions and so proceeded cautiously in my relationships by making use of the following axioms that I considered to be self-evident:<br />
<br />
• the contemporary paradigm of monogamy is neither naturally arising nor necessary<br />
<br />
• persons are ends unto themselves and should not be used as tools, as means to selfish ends<br />
<br />
• love is other-orientedpiiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-89942562217135475032010-11-20T12:48:00.000-08:002012-12-30T23:47:43.695-08:00courtshipone of the interesting starting points for thinking about why our monogamy, our marriage-model, is sickly is one whereby we consider contemporary courtship. courtship tends to proceed along a couple of fairly distinct phases: the fledgling phase of initial contact and engagement, the transitional phase wherein the twosome become "invested," and the final phase, monogamy, wherein the couple play out an ersatz marriage. in the beginning, the generosity and care, the compassion and selflessness of a fledgling relationship is a marvel to behold. we can recognize in these giddy beginnings something precious. generally speaking, the mindsets and concomitant interpersonal dynamics of first and second dates, of that period of time when the future is still a deep nocturnal mystery and anything can happen, of the precipice overlooking sheer possibility, are the lovers in us at their best. we feel privileged to be in the company of this other person of whom we are bedazzled. we make no demands, do not feel we own rights with respect to their time, attention, body, or affection. we do not feel that this beautiful being with whom we are hoping to begin a love affair is accountable to us in any way. we make few assumptions and harbor few expectations. can you imagine a second date where one of the would be lovers demands to know why a call wasn't returned or else demands to know who their date spent the previous several days with and in what capacity? when we first begin the ritual of courtship we lay no claims; the other person is their own person and, beholden to none, can do anything they so desire. that they choose, out of endless other options, to offer their time, attention, affection, etc. is a source of great joy and pride. as the fledgling phase begins to slip into the transitional phase, however, this all begins to change. instead of the other being cherished for who they are in their singular uniqueness, they begin to be measured against implicit and explicit criteria. each person's process of evaluating the other is just one in an extensive series of actions that are consequent upon a critical shift from other-interest to self-interest. the full effect of this shift is realized in the final phase of courtship: monogamy. mutual agreement to be beholden, to be accountable, to be limited, to be possessed, etc. is the mature expression of the shift from other-oriented (e.g. reveling in the undeserved affections of another) to self-oriented (e.g. reciprocal imposition of limits). the question for me is this: why does the first phase give way to the second and third? why can we not retain what is valuable, what is beautiful, in the ways in which we initially engage one another even as our relationships deepen?piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-50528477078155409352010-08-14T09:09:00.000-07:002012-12-30T23:48:23.086-08:00monogamy<span style="font-style: italic;">monogamy</span>. the qualifying prefix "mono" means one and the core part of the term, <i>gamos</i>, is a Greek term that actually means "marriage." indeed, the terms for husband and wife are <i>gametēs</i> and <i>gametē</i> respectively. the etymology of the term is not a matter of simple trivia. the practice of monogamy, as much as the word, has everything to do with <i>marriage</i>. this is true despite the fact that often the practice and the word are conceived of in terms of sexual partners: if you are monogamous you restrict your sexual activity to one and only one person. there are several reasons that monogamy, despite it's marital connotations, is understood in terms of what people do with their bodies. the most important reason, perhaps, is that we have made sex the very locus of value and significance in our romantic relations. but i am getting ahead of myself; we can return to this critical issue later. <br />
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even though people often intend the term to designate personal dedication to a principle of restricting physical intimacy to a single other, monogamy cannot strictly refer to a quantum of sexual partnering. if we tried to interpret "monogamy" as meaning "one sexual partner" we'd have to contend with incoherency consequent upon considerations of time and meaning. one partner? when? only one partner ever? certainly not: not only is virginity little prized when it pertains to men, few if any would claim that monogamy is not possible between two people when at least one of them has been sexually active with one or more other persons in their life. perhaps the sexual sense of the term is "one partner at a time?" in the strict senses of the terms, this is also not a viable configuration. one partner <i>at a time</i> would necessarily refer to one partner versus multiple partners <i>simultaneously</i>. few if any would imagine monogamy to refer to isolated discrete sexual encounters that involved only two individuals as opposed to a threesome, foursome, fivesome, or other orgiastic assemblages. no, monogamy in the sexual sense, refers to the complex notion of maintaining one and only one sexual partner over the course of an indeterminate period of time. this period varies in duration according to the whims of the two so involved. so the key variable here is clearly time. as we've already discerned, the span is not a single event nor is it all periods of time. so what, we might ask, makes a particular stretch of time distinct from other periods of time where sexual engagements with others does not count as non-monogamy? the period of time integral to the definition of monogamy is one in which a twosome initiate and subsequently enact a marriage whether ersatz (dating) or the genuine article (matrimony).<br />
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the institution of marriage, then, is merely the outward facing surface of the <i>gamos</i>, the truer marriage in which all people young and old participate when engaging one another romantically: an interpersonal arrangement that is ruled by an emotionally and psychically gripping constellation of beliefs from which the moral character of certain actions derives. it is this constellation of beliefs that i find lacking at best and the source of great suffering at its worst. from these beliefs arise contractual obligations, the structure of interpersonal dynamics, and the moral relevance of actions. and again i must ask, despite the difficulties that will inevitably befall me should i seriously pursue this inquiry, what if the very concepts that we use to imbue our relations with meaning, value, and significance, yield intense harms? is it worth reevaluating these concepts when such a task can only be done through a process of rending oneself from these grids of meaning that have thus far provided the very conditions of possibility for one's own values, identity, and aspirations? i have no conviction within me as strong and as certain as that which assures me that the long and painful process of tearing off my very skin is worth it as nothing is more important in life than love. yes, i will be utterly naked and exposed. yes i will be afraid. but the stakes cannot be weightier.</div>
piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-55104273026575358382010-08-06T09:31:00.000-07:002010-08-06T09:43:54.256-07:00the institution of marriage<div>From my vantage point, the institution of marriage is a morass of loosely related social, cultural, judicial, political, and religious rituals and power structures that function primarily to bestow legitimacy on particular types of contractual unions. Of course, the very notion of legitimacy is dependent upon its obverse, illegitimacy, for its coherence and strength. Since the function of this hodgepodge of structures is to sanction, which is in essence a matter of including and excluding, it is not so difficult or strange to find oneself in opposition to it. Power is like "force" in physics: it is necessarily relational and the relation that appertains is naturally bilateral; in other words, mutual resistance is an integral aspect of power. Thus, marriage is not a static thing but an ever mutable conglomeration of beliefs, practices, etc. that are perpetually contested. To find oneself in opposition to this institution is hardly radical. But these juridical and religious practices of domination are merely a veneer finish covering a much more potent and extensive power structure: that of the conceptual matrices which organizes and makes sense of our world. </div><div><br /></div><div>We understand the meaning, value, and significance of things by lining them up along conceptual grids or matrices. These grids of intelligibility according to which we make sense of our world, however, are hardly "God given." They are nothing more than historical constructs: the happy accidents of cultural and institutional collisions. We are docile people precisely to the degree in which our ideas conform to those matrices. No legislation moral prescription/proscription is needed where people are already convinced that they should act in such and such a way because it is natural, valuable, meaningful, significant, right, fulfilling, etc. However, we are often mistaken about genuine happiness or wellbeing and its sources. What are we supposed to do when the conceptual grid across which we make sense of our world compels us to conceive of things in a way that is harmful?</div><div><br /></div><div>So the institution of marriage, for me, is an unworthy object of attention. From the embedded meanings, both archaic and refigured, of the symbols and rituals (white = purity = virginity = untouched by another man; vows = promises to God = intention to fulfill God's command to be fruitful and multiply; etc.), to the lopsided and outmoded gendered aspects (the daughter/bride is an object bequeathed by one man unto another), to the state's function of sanctioning only certain unions which it will then bless with a privileged status and concomitant rewards… all of these are easy targets. But even those who've soured over the institution of marriage, who've attacked it or shunned it, maintain abject loyalty (however unwittingly) to the conceptual structure which undergirds it. Seemingly unable to discern the source of their misery, countless couples, despite coming together with the most praiseworthy and admirable intentions, cause irrevocable harm to the one whom they love the most. With or without marriage, people appear as though doomed to inflict pain upon one another. But much of this pain is, in my mind, a direct consequence of poisonous ideas about love. The object of my ire is thus not marriage per se but <i>21st century American monogamy</i>.</div>piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-71495515665715523292010-08-04T09:38:00.000-07:002011-07-05T09:09:08.005-07:00intimacy revisited<div>You know, within the incomprehensibly vast spectrum of possible interactions with another human being, the organizational headers "romantic" and "platonic" seem utterly pathetic. They afford precious little while precluding so much. Physical intimacy, after all, is not only a beautiful way to connect to another human being it is a biological <i>need.</i> Infants, for example, that are given adequate food and shelter but who are kept from intimate contact with another human being will die rather quickly.</div><div><br />
</div><div>I think it is time that we revolt against what has been supplied us in terms of possible interactions. We are just missing out on too much. Each and every one of us are singular persons non-identical to any other person that has, does, or will live. The sheer uniqueness of each person that we come into contact with, never mind the unique context within which the interaction or relationship unfolds, necessitates a certain plasticity in our ways of engaging one another, does it not? </div><div><br />
</div><div>Do we really need to limit all of our affection to only those with whom there is hope of a lifelong romantic partnering? Can we not be affectionate with anyone dear to us as a way of expressing as much?</div><div><br />
</div><div>And "romantic vs. platonic" is not the only foul tyrant oppressing our intimacy. There is the plainly stupid category of so-called identity that we refer to as sexuality. Straight or gay? That's what I'm given to make sense of my emotions, urges, actions, etc.? I may be many things, but straight is not one of them. Neither is gay. Trying to divvy people between these two is like trying to perform a surgical incision with a broad sword. I become close with a classmate who happens to be considered the same gender as I and I cannot be affectionate without being gay? Does that really make sense to anyone? And should there be any physical expression of our closeness... well that is proof positive: I must be homosexual?</div><div><br />
</div><div>When I think of all of the men that I know or have known and all of the women that I know or have know, there is such a dizzying degree of variation that I cannot imagine how psychic or physical intimacy ever came to be parsed along gender lines in the first place. Historically speaking, it has never been as extreme as it is now.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Even gender divisions don't make a lot of sense. If I enjoy the company of burly men am I gay? What if I enjoy the companionship of extremely effeminate men? What if I tend to get close to women who are so manly as to make most men look girly? Am I straight? Gay? What if I find affections with a man who lives her life as a woman? </div><div><br />
</div><div>It cannot be simply a matter of craving penises versus vaginas. Who I want to cuddle up with at night, who I want to partner with in various domestic adventures, who I want to have children with, who I want to hold hands with... these desires cannot simply be epiphenomena arising from the particular body parts that I most want to play with. These desires are irretrievably located in the persons with whom I want to share myself in this way or that. Besides, if playing with other mens' penises didn't immediately and irrevocably make a man a fag who knows how many men might engage in such pleasures irregardless of whom they want to partner with to fulfill other needs?</div><div><br />
</div><div>Isn't it time to rescue ourselves from the cages of "romantic versus platonic," "straight versus gay," "masculine versus feminine," and other such false dichotomies? The fullest expression of our selves as creatures capable of love is presently but a glimmer on a painfully distant horizon. We can start by bucking the system. Set aside the ridiculous meanings that acting intimately are supposed to be evidence of and let such actions be just what they are: a beautiful way to express a feeling of closeness. Hold hands, kiss, touch one another affectionately, say caring things, cuddle, and caress those who are deserving of such attention from you. Someday, and it could very well be soon, you will no longer have the opportunity to express such things with those you should. And then it is too late.</div><div><br />
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(see earlier posts for what are most likely better entries on this topic)piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-76472630355796870192010-07-11T13:57:00.001-07:002010-07-11T14:00:16.970-07:00self? (part VIII)After going a considerable distance toward overcoming the Cartesian split by recognizing body as self, that there is a bodily form of memory, and that memory is utterly dependent upon body, the final two species of content reintroduce a bastardized form of Cartesian dualism into the heuristics, the justification being that it is a useful but ultimately false dichotomy. The remaining content types constitute a dipole, with <i>phenomenon</i> acting as the (earthly) engaged, experiential, phenomenal pole and <i>impression</i> acting as the (heavenly) abstracted, higher order, disengaged, mental pole. The Greek word <i>phainomenon</i> means “thing appearing to view.” Likewise, articles within the archive that can be classified as phenomena are literally those living experiences of being that are present to you in the present. These momentary articles of the archive include all of one’s perceptions, are the objects of awareness and reflexive awareness, and in sum amount to the phenomenological experience of being you. Impressions on the other hand are those dispositions, values, fantasies, propensities, desires, fears, beliefs, etc which are each in their own way the byproduct of one or more of the other species. Just as Derrida’s <i>Archive Fever</i> was written in response to the Freud archive but subsequently becomes an ineluctable part of the Freud archive, this fear is a consequence of that memory, this expectation is the byproduct of that perception, this value is the cumulative effect of these memories plus this body plus these prostheses, etc. Upon closer analysis, the dichotomy between the tactility of phenomenal articles and the intangibility of impressional articles clearly breaks down since dispositions, fears, and the like condition experience and one’s phenomenal experience can be synonymous with a fear, belief, or disposition. For purposes of discovery, however, in seeking access to the archive and discovering its contents, these categories will prove quite useful.piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-2086947173784549202010-04-06T15:03:00.000-07:002012-12-30T23:45:14.667-08:00sexuality?<b>sexuality</b>: it is allegedly some sort of inborn erotic compass that attracts an individual to this gender or another or else whose pointer has arrows at both ends. since there are purportedly only two genders one can be attracted to, viz. one's own or one's opposite, sexuality comes in only two legitimate flavors: gay and straight (bisexuals are often perceived to either have a broken compass or else to merely be confused as how to read it or else as falsifying the reading). evidently, then, all that is needed to establish one's sexuality is to determine which of the two genders is the object of love (but not all love) as well as the object of physical affection (but not all physical affection). it seems to me that there are countless ways to love and engage in physical contact. we all initiate, dissolve, and maintain a wide range of loving relations in the course of a lifetime. we all engage in countless processes of physical contact in the course of a lifetime. love is often present without physical intimacy. physical intimacy is just as often present without love. i can only assume that the idea is that there is a certain way of loving that is always accompanied by a desire for a certain type of physical intimacy and vice-versa. it must be this special type of love-physicality dyad that flows forth from one's sexuality. or is it that one's sexuality emerges within the dyad? either way, i cannot imagine which of the infinite ways of loving and equally infinite types of contact (ways and types that once were, now are, or are yet to be imagined) are self-evidently those to be cited as evincing a so-called sexuality. it seems to me that any of the particulars that might be pointed to as particular to this special sort of love-mode and concomitant physical desire will not only be arbitrary (at best) but will often fail to be exclusive to the special and indicative love-physicality mode. and, two genders? the qualifications for one gender or another are also largely arbitrary and always include too few or too many. further, is the love-desire attraction a biological attraction (based, for example on penises and vaginas) or is it an attraction to types (e.g. to masculine people or feminine people)? if we can nary construct a definition of so-called romantic love that neatly separates it from so-called non-romantic love while remaining other than farcical <i>and</i> we can nary conceive of a definition of gender that splits the human race neatly into two camps, what are we to make of this meta-concept, sexuality?piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-35169668273144628272009-11-08T07:53:00.000-08:002009-11-08T07:56:06.755-08:00self? (part VII)The third species of content that populates the archive is prosthesis. As the etymology of the word suggests, prostheses are those articles “placed <span style="font-style: italic;">in addition</span>”. Recalling the lessons of <span style="font-style: italic;">śūnyatā</span>, they are those objects, events, people, etc from which the self has/is/will be dependently arisen. Two subgenres of prosthesis relate to the two senses of the term, the first being the 'etymological' and the second the 'definitional.' In the etymological sense of the term, prothesis acts as a "sign" (in the semiotic sense of the word) for those articles that prop up, undergird, give rise to, or condition the other two species of content. Examples in my case include: a surname; an asthma inhaler; a great uncle; petroleum; American English; alcoholism; the American highway and railway system; the Sun. The definitional sense of the term acts as a sign for those articles that function as continuation, substitute, extension, or augmentation of <span style="font-style: italic;">body</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">memory</span>. Examples that apply to my archive include: a photograph of my mother taken during her senior year of high school; a pair of black and white Converse shoes; a digital copy of an essay titled <span style="font-style: italic;">Whitey X</span>; a preferred/nick name; a passport; a “dear John” letter; my reflection.piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-3341258197471158812009-10-29T14:45:00.000-07:002009-11-04T08:31:25.195-08:00self? (part VI)The second species of content identified below is <span style="font-style: italic;">memory</span>. Whether reflecting upon the self in abstract terms by invoking conceptual images or as an agent or patient in some sequence of events by invoking perceptual images, both feats are accomplished via memory. This species of article can be separated out into two subgenres: declarative and procedural.<br /> <br />Declarative memory is fact-based memory and takes its name from the notion that this type of memory can be an object of knowledge; it can be discussed or declared. Declarative memory can exist in one of two forms: <span style="font-style: italic;">episodic</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">semantic</span> (see Table 1 below). Episodic memory is perceptual and casts one’s self as either agent or patient within a sequence that is marked by narrative tone or structure. Semantic memory is conceptual and is a record of facts versus experience. Examples of semantic memory include things like “I am white. I am thirty-three years old. I live in Ohio.”<br /> <br />Procedural memory is memory that is activated “subconsciously” and is typically related to conditioning or skill. Procedural memory may be a bodily memory such as how to play a musical instrument or ride a bicycle or it may be cognitive à la how to read or how to get home from school. Procedural memory, by definition, cannot be examined by the consciousness: any knowledge of procedural memory is actually meta-knowledge which constitutes a declarative memory of ability and not knowledge of the procedural memory itself.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GNr3JwkhfJs/SuoWktxYivI/AAAAAAAAADs/T-YJE6VwOMQ/s1600-h/memory+table.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 71px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GNr3JwkhfJs/SuoWktxYivI/AAAAAAAAADs/T-YJE6VwOMQ/s320/memory+table.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398151923374787314" border="0" /></a>piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-29063486591243586632009-10-19T18:10:00.000-07:002009-10-19T18:13:19.667-07:00self? (part V)The first species of content identified below is that of body. Living (and dying) in a world still swaying under the spell of Cartesian dualism, where religious ethics of every creed pit the soul against the body, most people take the body as the locus of the self most of the time. Our bodies are viewed as casings for our soul, regardless of whether ‘soul’ is meant as consciousness (the seat of will, ideas, knowledge, reason) or as the eternal spirit alluded to by King Solomon. As the <span style="font-style:italic;">property</span> of the self in the classic Lockean sense, the body is typically considered as belonging to and subsequently not thought of as <span style="font-style:italic;">being of</span> the self. Indeed, in an increasingly sterilized society where we dwell and work in climate controlled environments, vacate into sanitized receptacles perpetually filled with clean water and with minimal trace of previous content, where we prevent the body’s natural odors from arising by constantly washing it away or masking it with chemicals, and where the sick and dying are isolated, hidden from view, and tended to by specialists, it is small wonder that bodies are typically thought of as little more than a means toward an end. This detached perspective, however, may be dramatically upended should the body become damaged or malfunction. The field of neuroscience, for example, is rife with harrowing accounts of loss of <span style="font-style:italic;">proprioception</span> (an autonomic sensory faculty of the body that gives one a perpetual account of where the different parts of the body are located in relation to one another whether moving or still), of “locked-in syndrome” (where one loses the ability to move any part of the body but is otherwise in perfect mental health, thus becoming a prisoner in their own bodies), of phantom limbs: that is to say, of people who are suddenly and unexpectedly made aware of the body as an undeniable and vital component of self.<br /><br />As one of the aggregates of self, the body is also a historical record. Calluses are records of effort and repetition, scars records of intervention, injury, or angst. One’s complete history of drug use is in a hair follicle whereas one’s entire evolutionary lineage is recorded in every cell. Acne, the hue of the skin, the condition of the eyes, odors, and more, combine to form a “state of the union” address, an account of one’s health. Tattoos are windows into a past and/or a personality while bone structure and hair color are a tribute to the mother and father. Indeed, the body is such a rich record, an entire history of events can be reconstructed via a “close reading” by pathologists or forensic examiners.piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-11955904726502864762009-06-15T02:25:00.000-07:002009-06-15T02:29:03.507-07:00self? (part IV)The articles that populate the archive of me are, as Charles Merewether asserts, “the foundation from which history is written." And the history that is written from the contents of my archive is done so perpetually; scratch-outs, annotations, new translations, fresh omissions, reclamations, interpretations and reinterpretations, new evidence, old motives, and an array of agents and patients yield a history in the making, my history, the story of me. The articles act as warrant, as evidence of this history, of a narrative, and even possibly of an argument. Moreover, the articles literally constitute the self and are therefore implicit within any metaphysics of self. Finally, while the contents of the archive change over time, they act as a causal chain to “former selves”, making the present self and past selves continuous with one another thereby establishing numerical identity (the past me and the present me are one and the same person; there are not two different people) circumventing any need to rely on some sort of qualitative identity (a highly problematic attempt to establish the persistence of self through time by way of identifying similarities between past and present incarnations).piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698533987673376572.post-55860513087284559462009-05-21T09:00:00.000-07:002009-05-21T09:19:43.423-07:00self? (part III)<p align="justify">The definition of archive as given by the New Oxford American-English Dictionary is “a collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution, or group of people.” In the archive of self as I have explored it, there appears to be five species of content (article, document, record, etc): body, memory, prosthesis, impression, and phenomenon. While these articles are not necessary for creating a general philosophy of identity, they are essential to any attempt at procuring knowledge of the self as the articles themselves are the precondition for positing and pursuing any question that falls within the classes outlined above. The content of the archive acts as <i>evidence</i> from which a sense of <i>person</i> can be ascertained. As Paul Ricoeur puts it:<br /><br /><blockquote>In the notion of a document the accent today is no longer placed on the function of teaching which is conveyed by the etymology of this word… rather the accent is placed on the support, the warrant a document provides for a history, a narrative, or an argument. This role of being a warrant constitutes material proof, what in English is called ‘evidence’… (TA 67)</blockquote></p align>piiopahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652802783703880961noreply@blogger.com0