Mushin-Sho

I wondered if we were exotic to each other; hair, eyes, skin, lips, location, actual potential. Then the academy fell and I thought: the exotic is perfect intimacy discovered by surprise.

 Via Steve Shaviro:

 

The word ‘decision’ does not here imply conscious judgment, though in some ‘decisions’ consciousness will be a factor. The word is used in its root sense of a ‘cutting off.’ The ontological principle declares that every decision is referable to one or more actual entities, because in separation from actual entities there is nothing, merely nonentity — ‘The rest is silence.’
—     Whitehead on decision: Process and Reality 43

 

I was expecting it

I was afraid of it

my warrior man

trying not to kill the thing I want to protect

And then I saw him, another Native man, leaning against a wall near the gift shop. Well, maybe he was Asian—lots of those in Seattle. He was a small man, pale brown, with muscular arms and a soft belly. Maybe he was Mexican, which is really a kind of Indian, too, but not the kind that I needed. It’s hard to tell sometimes what people are. Even brown people guess at the identity of other brown people.—Sherman Alexie

(rough, unchecked for grammatical errors)

A brilliant professor who has been hugely influential in my development got me thinking about this movie by asking the following:

BW: An interesting film, with the documentary embedded within the "fictional" courtroom drama. What did you make of that?

Response: The images of that embedded documentary are now part of the common mind, but it was brave and important that they were included in the movie. However, I tended to agree with the prosecution that it was an emotional rather than legal tactic that obscured the question at hand: To what degree are the judges responsible for the charges?

The movie was honest enough to admit that this was an emotional appeal by noting the American prosecutor’s involvement in the liberation of Dachau.

There is more to be said, obviously, but those are some initial thoughts.

BW: What I think is remarkable is the shift of POV when the prosecutor gets up on the stand and is then a witness to the liberation of Dachau. This throws identification into the mix and conflates judgment with American identity. It’s a total qualification of the supposed universal standard.

Response: Indeed, it is a remarkable qualification in a movie that indicts patriotism and even the notion of "victor’s justice." The scene, I think, also highlights one of the central questions of the film: who speaks for the universal? During the documentary, there are shots of the principal actors, and others including black MPs, all of whom are disgusted and disturbed by the images. The reactions invoke the universal; there is no one who would not be appalled. But, as you noted, the universal is qualified by the American prosecutor’s narration; he, and America, claim to be the universal’s voice, its literal judge-jury-executioner.

The moment is damning and obscuring simultaneously. I felt the trail’s momentum shift and there was no hope for those on trail. When the German defense lawyer, however, argues that the images invoked an emotional appeal (a universal one) and obscured the question of responsibility, I was sympathetic to his argument.

The supposed universal standard, then, is troubled in at least three ways: first, it has an American accent; it is based on an arational emotional appeal; it obscures rather than clarifies who is responsible and who can judge.

I just want to take a few moments to think about this film in writing. First, the title of this post is a tribute to the film’s self-reflexivity, which begins with its own title. Perhaps obvious, but the obvious should always be stated, the film is not merely about a trial but about judgment itself. This is made obvious by the ostensible villains of the film, the indicted judges who presided over and during the Nazi period. The American prosecutors opening lines, delivered with spitting vehemence, acknowledge the uniqueness of the perpetrator’s crimes by noting that they were committed in the name of the law. Since the Nazi laws have already, and rightly, condemned, the judges are also guilty, because they were the laws’ executioners. Even more, and paradoxically, the judges are guilty of having failed the law, or rather, the Law.

One judge argues that they, and judges as such, are there to enact laws that are already in place, not to create new ones. This is rejected. By enforcing laws, Nazi laws, they have, according to the film, failed their allegiance to the Law; I use this vague term as a placeholder for the film’s own messy conceptions of universal ethics, justice and judgment.

The American tribunal, of course, is there as the Law’s avatar. That the three-man tribunal ultimately includes a dissenting opinion is a final acknowledgement that the Universal, as such, has no voice in our world, that it is always already qualified and made particular. I noted three qualifications of the universal in my response and want to explore two of them now, albeit hastily.

I claim the prosecutor’s films from the liberation of Dachau, which he aided, and Buchenwald invoke the universal through the emotional; there is no one, including the indicted judges, who are not appalled. I think this is right, but it raises the question of how we come to the universal, through what faculties can it be perceived. In other words, this moment questions the assumption that universal claims, particularly those articulated as human rights, come out of a common human rationality. After all, who would question a human’s right to life or their inherent dignity? But the teary eyed reaction of everyone in the courtroom points us in a different direction. The inherent dignity of human life, on which all human rights are founded, is a felt thing; I’m not sure one can defend it on rational grounds without slipping into a hierarchy of species (and thus stewardship of the planet), or divine presence (and thus Religion and its pitfalls) or a myriad of other failed systems. No, like the official UN Declaration, we must take it as self-evident, and thus, tautological: inherent dignity grounds all human rights whose goal is to protect inherent human dignity.

But perhaps I am misunderstanding humanity. Perhaps, rather than claim that the courtroom’s reaction is a non-rational thing, we should try to understand emotions as rationality of a different order, a different kind of reasoning that, depending on your bent, sees more darkly or more clearly. To be fully honest, I rely on my intuition to guide major decisions, including my scholarly work, but often fail to explain a certain response in any reasonable way. “I just know” must suffice.

I think the American prosecutor would understand me. Having participated in the mission to liberate the Dachau concentration camp, he argues with righteous indignation and channels that understandable fury through legal arguments. But this is not the first time he has used the films. Another character notes that this is a favorite tactic, a weapon, a “house of horrors” that every tribunal is made to suffer. The point, of course, is not to wonder if such documentary footage was really shown during the Nuremberg trials. Rather, I think the film is pointing to the heart of the trials, the thing that kept blood pumping through the excruciating process; that thing is what I have been calling the universal as emotional. Formally too, the documentary footage appears in the last third of the film and does nothing less than trump the defense’s brilliant counterarguments, which themselves deserve study. Our emotional horror, like that of the tribunal’s lead judge, overrides any sophisticated legal reasoning and we are left with one word only: guilty.

Even if some of what I am saying is true, that the universal is, at base, a felt arational thing, the Americans still seem to be its manifestation; the prosecutor and judge are horrified and find the defendants guilty. But there is a brilliantly integrated, and appropriately marginalized, presence that rejects American claims to universality, the black GIs.

They stand behind the dock where the defendants sit, next to the doors they open for witnesses to enter, and handle the microphones when the indicted are asked to make statements. They wear immaculate khaki uniforms with helmets, white gloves and white armbands with black lettering that reads, M.P, military police. And in the film, they indeed police the military tribunal’s claim to universality. The black GIs are always at the outskirts, doing things without lit faces so that their features are lost in the purposeful cover of their uniform helmets. They are a searing indictment of America in the film’s double historical context; by 1948, the date of the trail, their presence as second-class citizens and frontline shields had been solidified; by 1961, when the film is released, black GIs realized they were not going to receive the same access to resources, financial and otherwise, that their white counterparts would.

The German reaction to their presence during the American occupation, however, is not something I know much about except by way of two opposing exaggerations. First, I taught a class at Wayne State that included weekly conversations with Detroit senior citizens; it was an amazing experience for everyone involved. One black WWII veteran told us a story, several times, of his tour of Germany. During an R&R outing with his buddies, he began talking with a beautiful German woman. Later in the evening, when they were dancing, she began groping his behind and, in some versions of the story, even put her hands down the back of his pants. He was shocked and not pleased. When he asked his buddies about it, they told him that she was looking to see if he was turning into a monkey. “What?!” “Yea man, they think we turn into monkeys after midnight and she was looking to see if you had a tail.” Other seniors, including black women, acknowledged that such a myth existed. My students and I were at a loss; we were appalled, embarrassed for him, and also wanted to laugh with him and the seniors who got a kick out of the story. I still have no idea if it’s true, but it makes for a damn good tale (sorry, bad pun).

On the other side, a German tour guide gave our American Studies group a “rah rah America” narrative as she and her older mother showed us around Munich. The guide used her mother for confirmation and anecdotal evidence about the German occupation to American troops. In their story, the American soldiers were god sent and minor gods who were chased after relentlessly, partly in hopes of acquiring American citizenship through marriage. Black soldiers, in this account, were absolutely not discriminated against because they wore those godly uniforms and their strangeness made them even more appealing. There were many marriages and many mixed children during this time. Perhaps, but aside from the large immigrant Turkish population, I could count on my hands the number of black people I saw there. But, again, I confess and emphasize my ignorance in this matter.

The truth about all these things is probably in some messy middle; it is certainly not universal.

we would have tiger cubs

they would have claws too

long ones

always in ready pose

so they can hang from trees

to attack us

B: So do you feel bad about that?

X: I have two thoughts on it. First, there is a lot of regret. I was too young, obsessive and ##### to know what was in front of me. And I didn’t even know that I was ##### when I was; it used to wreck me and I would have no idea why and she suffered the effects of that too. There is also regret about having caused someone I loved so much pain. But that’s the other thing. You know, I saw my #### in India and that was really crazy. It also reminded how much other people are affected when you’re #####, and I’m scared of making anyone else go through that. I mean, I’m actually kind of happy that things didn’t work out because what if I can’t get a handle on this thing, then she and her family would be sucked into that hell too and I don’t want to live with that. I’d rather suffer alone than make someone else repeat my experience.

B: Yea, you can rationalize it like that, but those who love you will be there to support you through that. Yea, it would be hard, just like if your wife were dying but they would be there for you; that’s what it’s about. And you’re just rationalizing not getting close to people.  

X: Yea, I know. I’ve thought about that too and it’s probably true. But I’m genuinely scared.

B: No doubt. And I can feel you on ###### getting to you cause I recently saw ### hanging out with another # and it bothered me too. And I haven’t dated # in a long time. I can’t even imagine how I’d react if I saw ## with someone else; this is so much more recent.

X: Yea, it’s crazy. There is just no such thing as a life without regret. If you don’t regret something then you haven’t fucking done much with your life.

B: But you can’t dwell on that either. You have to let it go and move on.

X’s eyes gloss over on hearing the cliché advice. B notices this.

B: I’m sure you’ve heard that before, but it’s still true.

X: I’ve lost my faith in that narrative, that everything happens for a reason, or whatever wording it takes. I need faith in that story again.

B: It’s probably something someone made up just so we could continue to live our life and give us some peace. But it’s helpful.

In the Darkness

 

Y: Don’t talk about death like that. So casually. It makes me nervous

X: I don’t mean suicide death, I have a different idea of what that means. For me, to die would be to give up my life and ambitions, thank my family for everything, and then volunteer for an organization in the service of others and just do that completely. It would be a surrendering of all dreams, hopes, ambitions, whatever, an emptying of my life and transform myself into an empty server. That’s my idea of a suicide.

Y: Yes, working for others would be great. It would give you time until your desires came back.

X: This is true. They always come back. [Maybe the idea would fail completely]

X: Know what else I’ve been thinking about?

Y: Hm, tell me.

X: We were talking about our admiration for Nietzsche’s courage, for daring to unmoor the world from whatwere, for his life-world, the founding absolutes, for daring to see what happens when you destroyed the key meaning making narratives.

But, and I haven’t read enough Nietzsche to know, but it seems to me that there continues to be one narrative that persists, especially in Human Rights discourse. And that is the inherent value of a human life. I mean, we know that our living existence in the world, especially the first world, means that we take up too much space, consume too much food, water, energy and whatnot. We are criminal by our very existence.

So why is there an inherent value or dignity to human life? How does that have any kind of foundation? It doesn’t seem to me to be something to be reasoned out, but a felt assumption, the ground on which all other creations are built.

Y: Yes, it’s the final fortress of meaning.

X: Well said. I don’t know. When I’m in this space, I just cease to understand to feel that foundation. It just doesn’t make sense. And if that doesn’t make sense, then getting out of bed and going through a day is damn impossible.

Y: Yes.
 

Death and life were just adjacent verandas. ––Rushdie

 

Rushdie is right, except that in Sankapalli Death and Life were a bit further apart. About fifty meters to be precise. From the door of my again-dying grandfather we walked along the main dirt road, flanked by other houses with their own specters, and arrived at the modest home set slightly below road level. As a child, I played with someone who lived here, an older girl, a sister whom I foggily remembered. She was gone now.

A grandmother, her son and daughter-in-law greeted us warmly at the verandah. We were given seats below the lone fan. The hottest part of the day had passed but the muggy evening wasn’t cooling quickly enough. We sat sweating and had to refuse the well water because it would wreck our soft westernized stomachs. There was a water shortage in the village too; irrigation systems failed.

The daughter-in-law called in her daughter. A little girl promptly came out, went smoothly to my beckoning mother who smilingly squeezed her and told her she was adorable. Dressed in a light blue sleeveless top, a full length white and blue skirt that bellowed softly when she walked, her smooth confident features were highlighted by short boyish black hair. She sat down in a white plastic chair, slightly slouched, and prepared herself for the usual questions. Then I remembered her.

I had come to India eight years ago in 2001 and came to Sankapalli then too. The pilgrimage was done in the half dark because we arrived late in the evening and the power, the current, was out. In the last hour of light, I climbed to the roof of my grandparents’ house and stood there looking over the low rooftops. The monsoon air carried the smell of straw and cow, of dung and tropical moisture. I realized that this is where I felt most at home in the world, my life in America a distant complicated nightmare. I wished I could cry and shed the tears appropriate to such a realization. I didn’t cry.

We walked along the main dirt road to the house of a grandmother whose son had married a good woman a few years before. They had a daughter. She was one or two then and crying because she was sick. I couldn’t see her tears in the darkness but heard her clearly; everyone has an ear for distressed children. My brother, an avid photographer, took many pictures of her, a fact that her parents told her when we returned eight years later. I remembered her then.

She smiled to the strangers in front of her.

Telugu was flung back and forth in the room, only bits of which I caught or wanted to. When things were quiet again, I asked the little girl what her name was. I didn’t understand her reply and looked at my Mom for clarification.

“Rakshita,” she annunciated.

The summer holidays brought her back to Sankapalli, away from her school in Karimnagar where she lived in the hostel (dorm). Someone asked how she liked it there and, in standard Indian fashion, her parents answered for her. Rakshita got used to the place after a year but still hated the food. The studies, those sacred idols, were going well and that, after all, was what mattered most. She had friends there her parents said smiling, and she confirmed with firm nod of her head when my Mom asked if that was true. Rakshita’s mother announced that her daughter wanted to be a doctor, and my Mom again confirmed it with her. A smile sufficed.

My brother’s face was impressed and Mom simply said, “Good.” The room suddenly smelled of a courtship, the hopeful mentoring, guiding, inspiring of a child by others from the village who had achieved her goal. My family was no longer the “standard Indians” (smart doctors in America) that I teased them as, but real-life-fairytales who descended from their astral homes to again visit their home village. And everyone wanted to bless their house with these ethereal beings.

Mom was called away to yet another neighboring house and we stayed behind at Rakshita’s house. Her parents asked her to talk to us, to break her silence and perhaps practice her English. The obviousness of the situation made it awkward.

“Is your school English or Telugu medium?” I asked stumbling toward a conversation. That I asked in Telugu didn’t help matters.

“English,” Rakshita and her parents answered.

“So, you are already sure you want to be a doctor?” I aked, in English this time. Too fast. She didn’t understand and raised her chin very slightly to gesture her question. I tried to repeat myself, but failed again.

“You know Annaya is a doctor too,” I said, pointing to my older brother next to me. He was busy taking photos with a large white telephoto lens that allowed him to see closely form a distance, to capture intimacy without invading. Rakshita simply smiled in acknowledgement of my brother’s achievement. I wondered if we were recognizable, if she could see herself in our lives or were we simply too alien; can an hour-long visit make your dreams possible?

Her mother moved her closer to the fan so that she sat facing us, just a few feet apart now.

“So, do you want to stay in India or go to the US when you become a doctor?” I asked. Again, she couldn’t understand my mid-west American basha. “Way too fast dude,” my brother said to me quietly. I tried slowing down and repeating myself, but her calmness made me nervous and my words tumbled out and fell flatly on the floor. They didn’t reach her. I tried repeating my question in Telugu and, after some help from her mother and my brother, Rakshita understood.

“Yes, I want to go,” she announced in a trained English heavy with accent and desire.

My heart broke. Her words reverberated through my body creating a current of emotions that nearly leaked out of my eyes. I chided myself for being weak, for being a cliché, for indulging in pity for this girl whom it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good. But the thoughts rushed on.

What if what if no that’s an absurd idea what the fuck are you thinking you think you’re a god damn savior or something rescuing “rescuing” this girl and taking her with you to America do you know what kind of cliché fucking narrative fantasy logic bullshit that is here comes the first world saving the poor childish third world and caring for it are you fucking crazy my god I’m so lucky that Mom moved to America holy shit she’s me when I was young I was that age when I left too I don’t remember being that aware or poised I was a fucking mess and man oh man that transition was painful would you want to put her through that but I we could warn her of what’s coming and she could get a great education and become a doctor that could work anywhere even in India if she wanted what about her parents huh do you think they’d want to lose their daughter like that yea it would be like a choice from the movies or something Indecent Proposal well not for sex but a once in a lifetime choice for your entire future come to America with us and we will take care of you as you become a doctor and her parents would grievingly say ok because that is best for their daughter this is fucking sick are you serious you went through that nonsense and it wasn’t best for you so why the hell would you wish that on someone else but god she really believes in America she really wants to go that would be a hard realization too that America isn’t as great as she thinks that people will be mean to her wow that’s fucking crazy she really wants to go what if it were possible what about her does she have a choice or will she be so grateful for your fucking rescue would she want to go what if I told her that she would lose all sense of home that Sankapalli would no longer feel like home would feel like home once of twice more maybe but when you’re grown up you won’t have a home just houses and important placese but no place where you really relax because you’ll be a stranger everywhere does that shit even matter when you’re just trying to set up a better life do you even lose a home then or just get a bigger better house in the city or in America jesus is that really the choice doctor and homeless or what I don’t know whatever happens to you here bribing to get into schools unless you kick ass on crazy exams when you’re too young to know what your own body is doing let alone having to work on others’ bodies holy shit what if it were really possible to leave

And on and on the thoughts raced, circling furiously around her five English words.

My brother showed her how to take pictures with his camera. It was heavy in her hands as she turned it this way and that with her eye in the viewfinder. I hoped it was a preview for her, a hands on experience of a far away place. She took pictures of the house and her mother.

We decided to catch up with Mom and said good-bye to Rakshita and her family. My brother asked them, grandmother, her, her mother, to stand for a final-more-formal photo. He wished her well in her studies and said that he was older than her when he left for America, four years older actually. I said I was her age when I went to America.

“Good luck,” was all I could manage before turning my back and walking out of the verandah.

Senior endured the multiple health problems of the very old, the daily penances of bowel and urethra, of back and knee, the milkiness climbing in his eyes, the breathing troubles, the nightmares, the slow failing of the soft machine.––Rushdie

A running critique of American culture, one that has become a cliché, holds that Americans don’t value their elderly like people in the old world. The nuclear family being the standard unit of existence, the elderly are confined to retirement communities, nursing homes, or other rarely seen quarters. The elders, as an ideal old world would argue, are not to be treated this way; they are integral to the family as supplemental guides to both their children and grandchildren and should properly assume their post with the regal air proper to one with white hair.

Things are never that simple. The dignity of hard won wisdom decays slowly with the flesh; the beautiful wrinkles of a full life stiffen with the bones they cover; the mind slips and breaks hips irreparably.

I visited my ancestral home village, Sankapalli, and visited my dead grandfather’s younger brother. My grandfather was a police officer after independence before his eyes began to fail. His pension days were filled with reading, a task made less daunting by the numerous eye surgeries that his two doctor-daughters-in-America made possible. These daughters were the product of a union that emphasized education above all; in his last years, however, he wasn’t able to see those precious printed words.

And suddenly, here was his little brother honoring the dead sibling by wearing the same face. The resemblance was uncanny; my Mom noticed it first. He had recently suffered a series of minor strokes, suddenly going blank and falling flatly on the stone floor, distressing his wife. He stood waiting for his guests, us, to sit down first but took a seat on his family’s insistence. I sat directly in front of him and held his hand. They told him my name and asked if he remembered me. He tilted his head left and right: yes, he remembered.

My Telugu failed me miserably and my body tensed from the awkwardness. He couldn’t care. I looked at his downcast eyes as they floated through their milky paths and wondered when I too would be disconnected.

“Are you doing well?” I asked politely, trying to get a few words of him
“Yes”

And that was the end of that.

My mother asked him questions about his health: when was the last time he had fallen? Was he in any pain? Is he visiting his neighbors? Is he reading?

That was not my role. I was merely a grandson paying proper homage to an elder. What does one say to another who is dying? Whatever questions I wanted to ask were in a foreign tongue made worse by an incomprehensible accent. There was no need for a dialogue when presence sufficed, no need for questions when the final answer was so close, no need for a story about to end. I simply wanted to drink his aura and digest these final lessons.

People can die again. My grandfather will die again in his little brother. And again, his grandson will wonder if such a death is a punishment or a blessing.

I’ve just returned from Tirupati and the trip solidified an idea that was already coming together in my mind. I will never go there again. I will never visit another temple that has any kind of VIP Darshans. Period.

Because we are privileged and my aunt is a ranking government officer, she was able to get us special tickets to a puja my mother wanted to attend. This same access allowed us to receive Darshan twenty minutes after the puja and leave the Temple complex entirely within a few hours of getting there. A lot of rupees and connections were used to make this all happen.

My very privileged experience, indeed the easiest trip to Triupati I’ve ever had, is in stark contrast to what most people have to go through. Certainly, those with enough money, even without government contacts, will be afforded similar treatment. Most of the temple’s visitors, if the three-kilometer Darshan line is any evidence, have to wait all day, if not days, for a glimpse of an avatar’s stone image. The glimpse is only that, and even if one’s hands are clasped in prayer the guards on duty will angrily shove you through the congested line and yell for you to keep moving. As if there is nothing to see.

There are many among the throngs of people who bare this inequality with awesome devotion, starting waves of “Govinda, Gooovinda” chants, or repeating the name more quietly. There are many who are irritated, angry, push and shove their way forward. I can understand both, revere the former but identify with the latter. Save the setting, nothing about Tirupati strikes me as godly; I have no desire to worship inequality.

I ask my Mom mildy, “So what is so special about Tirupati? Did something holy happen here?”
“I don’t know,” she smiles slightly embarrassed, “it’s just a popular place.”
I ask my aunt the same question, hoping more from her sincere desire to be there.
“I don’t really know what the story is. I’m not sure,” she replies with a confused face.

Horrible Temple practices are enough to make me angry, but the blind adherence to those practices, affirming them with money and time, by educated people makes me furious. What is godly about uncritical attendance of pujas repeated mechanically by disinterested priests?

A more generous narration would attend to the sincerity of my family’s devotion, the serenity gained from being at the Temple, and their belief that real blessings have been gained. But I find this to be too generous. Those benefits of faith are nowhere evident. Instead, those family members who are quick to anger, wear perpetually annoyed faces, carry themselves humbly or too proudly continue to do so even while performing their devotions. Nothing changes. I am often too critical of my family but my criticisms usually center on the same issue, blindness: of critical questions, of self-critique, of learning better methods to achieve a goal, etc. I can’t see why they don’t see.

On a final note I’d like to say, especially for those who may be googling, that The Golden Temple of Sripuram is a spiritual shithole. This gigantic waste of time, space, money, and energy is a tourist destination and nothing more. There is even a “deluxe hotel” next to the temple (note the lower case ‘t’) that is built to look like a temple itself. Their desire to suck the money out of you while giving you a godly excuse is bold enough, but that they succeed is appalling.

Built to anticipate massive numbers of visitors, the line to the actual place of Darshan is almost two kilometers long and traces a star shaped path along lush gardens, which must be quite expensive to maintain in the South Indian heat. Fortunately, there are also stalls selling milk biscuits and water to the devotees. More obnoxious still, numerous signs posted along the way offer “wisdom”. These are little more than “spiritual” platitudes about creating good karma, being kind to others, the necessity of devotion, etc. Pick up a book of proverbs or two from any “Eastern” spiritual tradition and you will receive the same lessons; that is apparently what the self-aggrandizing toolbag of guru did. There are pictures of “Amma,” the aforementioned guru, that literally have him crowned, holding weapons associated with the gods of Hindu cosmology, wearing garlands, and being bathed in milk (again, a tradition reserved for idols). Of all the fake spiritual teachers and leaders I’ve heard about in India, this idiot gets the “blatantly-hypocritical-asshole-who-gives-spirituality-a-bad-name award.” Congrats.

God is a practice. Even without the grand narratives of religion, of which I’m not a fan, one can believe in the divine potential of human beings, of their ability to perform godly behaviors. I am thinking of both great spiritual figures in human history and those minor deities in all our lives whose passion, patience, kindness, or equanimity, inspire us to be better, to practice being divine humans.

We arrived at the Temple in our large car, were given access to a close parking spot reserved mostly for large, that is to say important, people, and out tumbled our large bodies round with American spare tires.

A man met us there, and said he had already arranged everything for us. We left our sandals in the car and walked on the hot, wet, stone dirtied by the march of people. After washing our feet, for symbolic reasons clearly, we walked into the Temple interior and met with a small heard of cows whose foreheads had been properly anointed with bottus and other colored powders. The holy cows were sanctified again at the temple. My uncle took the rope to one, and I was given the rope to another. I looked at her,  privately apologized for the weirdness of human behavior and asked for her patience during this ritual that I had never heard of or performed. (It is for good health). She tried to walk elsewhere and I pulled on the rope, shortening it to keep her close so that the little children wouldn’t be scared. She followed obediently.

We were to make a full circle of the Temple interior and my private, indeed telepathic, conversation with her continued. “You’re beautiful and certainly know this route better than I do, so lead the way.” She stayed slightly behind, as if to reinforce a hierarchy of species. I slowed down so that I was by her head. We turned a corner and I had to step carefully around the remnants of recently washed away dung that her partners blessed the Temple with. A slow pace. A serene expression in her eyes and, what I imagine must have been, a confused and slightly distant look in mine. I tug again to keep her moving and away from a snack of flowers she has discovered. Damn humans.

Returning to our starting point, I am told to place the rope’s hoop around an anchoring stone, which is also anointed with sacred powders and must be bowed to. I say goodbye and think, could swear that, she glances for one hopeful moment at me then turns and returns to snack finding.  I wonder what she hoped for?

My family and I are guided through a series of narrow corridors formed by temporary mental fencing. A guard opens a gate and we slip form the crowd and are taken to God’s abode from the side. We are to gaze at infinity askew. This is the V.I.P entrance given to those who can donate generously. One Darshan (the blessings gotten from glancing at a saint or his image) follows another and we barely interact with the other visitors. Small gates open to grant us front row visions. I’m baffled by the brazenness of this setup, and begin praying for greater equality among people. I’m not sure God heard me.

One can never just leave a Temple without sitting for a moment in the sacred space. We are guided to a thick carpet to enjoy our holy pause. No less than five priests are chanting divine words, led by a finely aged renunciant at whose feet we bow before leaving. Generous donations are given.

I’m wearing black shorts and white polo shirt, Ying-Yang colors. People stare at me and I feel like an ungodly space alien.

As we exit, I notice again a begging child, a beautiful little girl who is no more than five years old. She tugs at the saris and pant legs of strangers, none of whom miss a stride across the holy ground. I have no change, only 500 Rs ($12) notes that I am too tempted to hand over. I fail to do so. Beggar women outside gesture their need for food, all five fingers touching and reaching for the mouth with nothing but air.

We take some family pictures. I wonder if I should smile. And we drive away.

The central mistake I’m trying to avoid while being in and thinking about India concerns time, particularly Fabian’s “denial of coevalness.” Or, to paraphrase Conrad’s language from Heart of Darkness, to penetrate into the wilderness was to go back in time, back to the origins of the planet. The place you are exploring, then, does not exist at the same calendrical moment, but is rather what your own home must have looked like decades or centuries ago. This view is blind to the complexity of the globe, the false universalism of modernity and dislocates places from the present by rendering them “backward.”

My Athamma (maternal aunt) points to a large complex of buildings with small one room apartments and tells us––as we speed by in a (for India) luxury car––that these are government housing initiatives for the “backward classes.”

The hip clothing fashion here, as I said in a previous post, is mostly incongruous with a climate and, in my elitist view, a poor miming of Western dress. Middle and lower class men, especially in Karminagar (where I am right now), dress in 1970s fashion: bell bottoms that are tight at the thigh and flared at the bottom, shirts with wide collars and flared sleeves, in patterns that are dizzying and colors that rival the noon South Indian sun. But my language, and its underlying episteme, is wrong.

There are frequent power outages here. “Current poyindhi,” my relatives say. The electricity is gone. The electric current went away. The current, the present is elsewhere.  

I was going to write in detail about this moment, but found a YouTube video that will do the job better. This is DJ ZTrip paying homage to all that is Detroit, all the sounds that allowed everyone who performed at Movement, (including the douchebag who kept shouting "Chi-Town") to do what they do.

Hip-hop beats with drum kicks at Techno bass frequencies, scratching samples, Plastikman’s infamous Pakard track overlaid, LL Cool J mixed in, and some things that unfortunately don’t make the video: scratching that turns into pure noise and sounds like the wind, mixing in a lone "De Troit" that repeats, echos, fades and comes back; this was an pure and absolute Detroit moment; the sounds would simply not make sense in another space, and would certainly not be the final peak of a DJ set; an homage that deserves homage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTxHylpVDgo

 

 

I was nearly in tears. For the rest of the festival, if a DJ didn’t make a gesture to acknowledge Detroit, to acknowledge that this post industrial wasteland gave birth to their sounds, he could fuck off.

A friend asked me if Hyderabad was exciting as it would be to her. Here is my reply:

India generally, and Hyderabad specifically, frustrates me a great deal. I’m attached to this place, mostly through childhood memories and a sense of gratitude for shaping some key early experiences, no matter how joyous or painful they may have been. I’m also deeply annoyed by the filth, congestion, disarray, lack of consistent electricity etc… Shopping malls have arrived here and my aunt and uncle were rather proudly showing us the sights. It’s the dawn of hyper-consumerism and thus, tacky, repulsive, aggravating to the senses and sensibilities. I know I sound like an elitist prick––something like Adorno’s critique of mass culture––but these are my feelings nonetheless.

Hyderabad and India don’t have the appeal of the exotic for me. It feels more like an outcast family member, a shameful thing that one still loves or is obliged to love. I’m hoping to change my sense of this place as I stay here longer.

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I bought and am reading Salman Rushdie’s Shame here, hoping to use him to think through Indian political history as well as my own troubled reactions to this place. The novel serves to remind me that powerful minds have sought to think through India’s political-cultural ethos, and I have arrived belatedly. Or rather, I have returned belatedly.

The stark contradictions are too easy to see. “Contradictions” is perhaps the wrong word, although it has the benefit of echoing Marxist critiques of capitalism.  But I’m not comfortable with it because it has the power of a quick explanation, an inner satisfaction that you have just made sense of what is before you. The feeling is intoxicating, and I’m addicted enough to enter the academy for it. “Contradictions,” I feel right now, simply doesn’t do justice to the incomprehensibility of it all.

What I’m looking at: Next to massive Western style shopping malls are small pan (not pawn, but pan, tobacco) shacks, motor bikes with five people on them including a few small children ride next to a new mass of small cars and some larger cars including BMWs and Benzs, while virtually all seem to ignore the amputated and age wrinkled beggars––they have developed city eyes––women in old saris bearing heavy loads are walking along the roads to god knows where, but the servant in our house may be a clue, because I’m sure she too walks to this place in our Colony.

A Resort: My Babbai and Pinni (paternal side aunt and uncle) decide to take us to a Rajastani Resort on the outskirts of the city; we just want to spend time with each other. “Resort” doesn’t mean what I thought it would mean; I mistranslated the term. This “Rajastani” space is a resort in the sense that Disneyland is a resort; it’s a theme park for the middle class and their little children. We arrive early and miss the official greeting of drums, a horn and a bottu (a red dot, but extended, so a streak between the eyebrows). My littlest cousin, who is also a little sister and on her way to becoming a doctor, keeps asking if I’m bored. I keep replying, “No,” that I find the whole place funny and entertaining (gumathgi unadhi); she’s not sure how to take this and I’m not entirely sure what I mean, except that it is the most honest reply I can give. At first, I take the place to be sincere, an attempt to replicate an authentic Rajastani village, complete with tree climbers (who, from high up, will surely have a view of the swimming pool), and buildings that are all trying too hard. But it’s so damn kitschy that I’m laughing, amused by its failed sincerity. Pinni says she wishes my Mom were there too. I agree, she would get a genuine kick out of this place. I think of my nephew Samarth and how much he would really enjoy running around this kid friendly space. And I’m having a weird brand of fun.

We watch a puppet show, where a drummer sings the narration while playing and the puppets dance the story. It’s a miniature spectacle. My sisters seem to get a kick out of it. Pinni feels bad for the workers who are just trying to make a living. Paapum.

The sun sets and, as my sisters promised, covers the resort’s defects. Lights come on and dimly illuminate pathways leading form one Rajastani moment to another. We attend a stage show, a summary of all the resort’s human performances, including puppet show, a few dance numbers, a magic show, and an M.C. who can also balance spinning wheels on his palm, head, foot and chin. The whole thing is impressively cheesy and strangely enjoyable.

As I recount this to my friend, she asks if the place was really sincere. I think about it twice and wonder if I have mistranslated again. I remember the bored and distant look on the workers’ faces, glancing elsewhere as they performed, a sincere glaze over their eyes as they repeated the act for the thousandth time. I wonder what roads their thoughts travel and if there is room for a few Benzs.

An Enclave: My Mom wants to see the “Financial District” and the surrounding new developments. We travel a different direction, away from Rajastan, but to another outskirts and pass a road that leads to the gated communities of multimillion-dollar (not rupees: current exchange rate is $1: 45 Rs) homes. The roads become narrow, bumpy and littered with lorries (trucks) that bump you into the dirt. Then the buildings come.

They are not that impressive at first, resembling too closely the same steel and concrete structures that are common to India. But soon we come upon a massive building, with a curved front and the beginnings of a green reflective glass skin. My brother is stunned and wants to get a picture; my Mammaya (maternal uncle) is worried that he may get arrested. I reply, arrogantly, that he would just have to show his passport (U.S citizen, I am not) to get his release and am answered, laughingly, that it will get him in more trouble. The sprawling Wipro compound is next. They used to make detergent when I was young, and still do apparently, but have expanded into many electronic ventures as well. Microsoft, Infosys, Franklin Templeton Investments, HSBC, UBS, and a bevy of other multi-nationals have or are setting up shop here. There is another financial building, for a company I’ve never heard of, which dwarfs the rest; I remark that the company may be trying to build an Asian, or at least South Asian, headquarters here.

Within fifty yards of each transnational temple is a shantytown for the workers building them, complete with a few pan shops. “And the contradiction,” I say as we drive up to one. Mammaya doesn’t understand what is surprising about this, and will remark later, after we look at the housing developments, that the menial laborers who will work there are sure to set up similar shantytowns all around. There is something happy about this because the wealthy will never succeed in convincing themselves that they are somewhere else besides India.

There are more multimillion-dollar homes to be constructed in this district, which, if the billboards are to be believed, eerily resemble the McMansions of Arizona or Southern California. Another massive housing enterprise will boast over ten towers of forty floors each, and four units on each floor. We pass through a gate manned by a man in a too traditional (and too black for the damned summer) guard’s uniform to visit some models. An agent shows us through demonstrating knowledge about this complex and details about every other development his parent company owns. The units are spacious enough but with odd annoyances like proportionally small kitchens and bathrooms, doors that open into storage spaces, oddly placed control units and other features that will drive the detail obsessed insane. After the rupee to dollar conversion, they were being sold for a reasonable (for the Western middle class) price.

We are shown a scale model of what the whole housing development will look like, including the numerous identical towers, massive courtyard complete with 35,000 sq ft clubhouse and its amenities. The agent is proud to note that the complex will span over twenty-six acres, include full shopping malls, “specialty and super-specialty” hospitals and a host of other things my immediate shock didn’t allow me to hear. The implication was rather clear; one wouldn’t have to leave the complex for most things, if anything. A bubble that would keep most of India outside, except when cleaning was required.

Outside the complex’s entrance, another pan shop.

 

If “contradiction” doesn’t do justice to the emotions such places evoke, perhaps another borrowed word from another foreign tongue will: aporia. Puzzlement, unresolved or irresolvable bafflement, a starting point to begin thinking and asking what is to be done? 

 

 

I’m in Hyderabad, which along with Bangalore has become shorthand for outsourcing. Thomas Friedman is a Jackass. That has nothing to do with my point, but he helped put these places on the map as boogie monsters challenging American supremacy.

On to the clichés: Overcrowded, polluted by toxic gasses and blaring horns, auto-rickshaws still battling in the streets with families on scooters and bikes (motorized and not), no real traffic laws except some bare logic of don’t hit and don’t get hit, no personal space either on the road or in public spaces––driving two inches from other vehicles is common place––people bumping into you like a natural barrier, idiot male machismo that won’t step out of the way even if they’re in the wrong––physically and during conversations––horrific miming of Euro-American male fashion that is totally inappropriate for the climate––seriously who wears a sweater vest over a dress shirt with a popped collar during the summer in India?––and tacky combinations that make the eyes hurt, tiny low powered cars that are trying to emulate Bentlys from Rap videos––an auto-rickshaw is not supposed to bump, although that was pretty cool––among many other oddities.

“Learn to queue you fucking savages.”

The people are so much smaller than me it’s crazy. I’m not very tall, am a bit stocky, but I’m at least a few inches taller than most and much thicker. I’ve unhappily developed an American spare tire, which my family is happy to point out.

I used to be looked at like a space alien, my NRI (non-resident Indian) status plainly obvious, but not so much now; a quick glance if anything, then they are moving on.

My two wonderful weeks in Munich were over, and because they were so rich with success, touching down at Detroit Metro Airport felt more like a crash landing. The two-week high, quickly reached and peaking at every moment, ended, and I needed an upper.

My nephew Samarth was the first person to teach me that one can kill out of love. As I frequently tell my students, after they have gained some insight into the processes of dehumanization that make violence possible, there is no one who would survive an intent to harm him. They wouldn’t walk again. I’ve studied martial arts for eight years, I tell my students, and continue to do so. But that is irrelevant. There is already a consensus, silent smiling head nods that sign off on the invisible ethical imperative. My students agree. We would kill.

Wayne State University, located in Detroit, accepts a wide range of students and the quaintly named “non-traditional” students. There are some who could attend any university in the world, but choose Wayne for financial, personal or even political reasons. There are others who can barely, if at all, write a complete sentence. Older students who have returned to school, voluntarily or because of a “restructured” economy, work full time and raise kids, are the first to understand the crudity of my nephew ethics. There is no need to explain further. And when I tell them that they have just glimpsed the ethical clarity of one who believes he kills out of love, for family, for country, the full force of the problem hits them. We sit for a moment wondering what to do.

When I returned my nephew, student and teacher, was in the suburbs of Detroit celebrating his little brother’s birthday with his doting grandmother. I was thrilled to see him. “Itchy,” says Samarth, squirming and giggling as I tickle him with a two-week old beard. And we’re off to play.

Back at my apartment later that night, the loneliness is staved off by a sticky sweet voicemail message.

I arrive back at Peddamummy’s house in time to play with Samarth alone before his own birthday party begins. We play soccer in the basement, but it quickly turns into a game of keep away. I don’t let him get the ball easily and when he does, I challenge him at every turn. He is smiling all the time. Merrily, Merrily, Merrily….

I want to teach him to be doggedly, happily, persistent.

Spiderman arrives. He gathers all the kids and leads them through games, dances and other shenanigans. I’m watching Samarth all the time and, although a bit confused, he’s really digging it. At least one kid is terrified of Spiderman and refuses to venture near the superhero’s suburban abode. The adults empathize; they’re weirded out too.

Spiderman begins a magic show just as I’m handed a video camera. Right on. I squat down between two cynical teenagers making fun of the show, quell the desire to punch them in the throat, and point the camera at my nephew. Nothing matters except his reactions. He’s delighted, genuinely surprised when an empty tube suddenly fills with candy, and asks his Mom if she too witnessed the moment of creation.

As things quiet down, I coordinate plans to head down to the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, formerly called the DEMF, now Movement.

The notion of a rooted-cosmopolitan is paradoxical despite the insistence of those who have argued that local and global feeling can flow in the same direction. To insist on the paradox is to pay closer attention to those moments when our rooted feelings block the route to their global expansion. This is true enough, but there are a few ways of inhabiting this paradox besides simply insisting on the clash between global and local.

First, and to use my own guilty language, we must locate the paradox in and as a historical moment. While this is academic common sense, it is worth noting because it rejects the universalism of the paradox, transforming it instead to a necessary and unsettled position. That is, we may have to face both ways at once for now, but this may not hold true in the not too distant future to come. Rooted-cosmopolitanism is less a paradox then and more the political position necessary for a Left that must attend to the decay of American urban centers because of job loss, and to the possibility that job movement overseas helps ‘those’ people. However, it is possible to imagine a moment when newly industrialized spaces abroad develop unions, and unionized labor, that turn to their American brethren for transnational solidarity. This crudely Derridian position is strengthened when we take account of power’s spatial relations.

Power is a slippery thing for poststructuralists generally, and Foucault particularly, because, following Gertrude Stein, “there is no there there.” One consequence of this, often unsaid, is to acknowledge that we (the dissenting public) have power. Note, for instance, the careful avoidance of the word “camp” in relation to Guantanamo Bay. The Bush administration was aware of that word’s memory and rejected its use for fear of the public’s disapproval; implicit here is an acknowledgement that public opinion, at home and abroad, must be attended to lest they lose what Bush called “political capital.” In this moment, there seems to be a synergy between the global and local so that “public opinion” becomes something of a transnational force to be reckoned with. Recent Israeli aggression in Gaza, however, reminds us that the power of public opinion is not always so holistic, but may create the circumstances where rooted-cosmopolitanism is indeed a paradox.

Those in American hopeful and optimistic that Barack Obama’s presidency will right the ship as it were should be called by their proper name, patriots. His silence, or rather lack of explicit condemnation of the Gaza strikes, has been disappointing. There is a disjoint here between national and global feeling here because we are at once patriotic––disappointment and criticism too is a form of patriotism (Chomsky?)––and want to end the Gaza massacres. These two feelings, however, may be more inline than previously noted, however, because we want Obama to speak out against Israel, to let the world historical record note that America condemned these actions. What we want, in other words, is a public opinion. (Divestment, of course, is this opinion’s material realization) Israel’s cooptation of the American “War on Terror,” I think, is an attempt to sway the superpower’s (and its voting public’s) opinion in its favor, to create a synergy between local feeling and its more cosmopolitan instantiation in the form of backing Israeli actions. If you support a(n American) “War on Terror,” you must back our efforts as well. Here, however, other forms of power muddy the picture.

Are the public relations machines only directed at the militarily and economically powerful? Are those the only spaces that matter for Israel, or do they also need to court something like “world opinion,” including less well-endowed countries?

It seems to me that there are two ways to suffer. You can either be fully human and suffer all the usual vagaries of existence or try to be superhuman and suffer the successes and failures of each ecstatic reach.

As I prepare to write a review of Joseph Slaughter’s Wellek Prize winning book, Human Rights, Inc.: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law, I want to use this space to think through some moments including one that I misread.

In the third chapter, Slaughter argues for that human rights law presumes the existence of an operational public sphere that disseminates and naturalizes “the basic assumptions about the human personality and socialiaty” (146). If exclusion from this public sphere constitutes a human rights violation, a mode of repression, it is because “human rights law treats the individual person as a figural embodiment of (a synecdoche for) a group of which it part and effect” (160). The point, Slaughter argues, is that violations of individual rights also aim to harm “the texture of social relations and the scope of the public sphere” (162). Individuals, then, are not Enlightenment’s monads but the “atomic unit[s] of social relations––the embodiment of group personality and vulnerability.” A genocide victim, in Slaughter’s example, does not die as the particular but “as an instance of a racialized, ethnicized, nationalized” group (161). While this makes sense, especially given genocide’s etymology, I am disturbed by the weird epistemic system in play here.

Bluntly said, if Slaughter’s analysis is right, and I believe it is, human rights law necessarily dehumanizes the particular individual. Although the human rights person is in a dialectical relationship with a larger group identity through the public sphere, that relationship subsumes violations against individuals into a larger concern for the group or their shared public sphere. The point here is not to discredit human rights discourse, but rather to question again the relationship between epistemic and bodily violence. That is, despite legal human rights discourse’s explicit desire to prevent violence of all sorts, it nevertheless performs an epistemic violence by subtly dehumanizing the individual. Epistemic violence, then, does not necessarily lead to or a requisite for the possibility of bodily violence, but can in fact prevent or prosecute it. Weird.

I am unsure if this reasoning is correct, but this is the space of play.

The previous post was supposed to discuss clarity but turned in its own terrifying direction. No more. I shall impose my will on this page! (booming voice)

During a very dark period early in the summer, I wrestled with an existential crisis that threw me into every knowledge reserve I had. The darkness was not quite Plato’s cave, but did bring me back to a very Greek inquiry; “What is the Good life, and how does one live it?” This is part of the reason my posts on Crusoe turned into playful ramblings on the “Good/good.” These old questions joined with two intellectual interests, the ethical turn and Marxism, so that the individual good life could, indeed should, only be understood in relation to larger collectives and humanity in general. What then does one do with gift-curse of consciousness when other conscious beings (humans primarily) suffered on a daily basis? Each one of these terms–––consciousness, being, human, suffering, action–––would break apart into nothingness when looked at too closely, but their aggregate somehow had crushing weight.

If I thought about death, it would only be in terms of a utopian longing to be outside myself, in a different consciousness. Another way to die, it seemed to me, is to dedicate one’s life utterly to the service of others. This seems a plausible, even worthy, solution until one questions how one is to serve properly and make the best use of one’s abilities.

Clarity.

At some point, I realized that the most utopian desire is the one for ethical clarity.

One answer to the question that closes my previous post comes in the colloquial reassurance that pain is a prod to grow. Perhaps, but I think instrumentalizing pain is disrespectful to a moment’s suffering and, more importantly, to the sufferer whose tears must then stream into a larger teleology. The grander scheme, the divine plan, the inevitable growth does not comfort but robs suffering’s immediate weight only to replace it with the larger burden of a predetermined future. One can no longer suffer in peace. They must stand, however shakily, and live in a future that has colonized the present.

One can, however, grow by living fully in painful moments without flinching and looking ahead to its absence. Here too the future lives, but without predetermination. The future comes as the present’s servant, bowing to its master and listening carefully to his muddled instructions. He orders two opposites in one breath, tries to seduce the servant before prostrating shamefully. Suddenly, he speaks clearly and announces, “my deepest desire is for ethical clarity,” before collapsing pitifully on the floor. The future notes these words and leaves the sufferer.

The past, present’s tyrannous unbending father, arrives and proceeds to beat the shit out of his son, taking care to strike harder unhealed cuts.


Oh purple prose, how I … thee

The discipline did not die; it just went on a family trip to San Jose and nearby Lake Tahoe. I was hoping to experience the Sublime but the wind blew that desire away, literally. Too choppy water and too shaky gondolas prevented us from getting properly imperial views of the lake and its surrounds. When my brother, cousin and I tried a mountain bike trail, the altitude defeated us. The air was too thin at 7,000 ft and the ascent to sharp, a 1,000 ft over five miles, for our mediocre conditioning to handle. I did, however, gain a new perspective during the trip.

As a literature student and critic in training, one is taught to make much of “Culture” by granting it the power to mold our perceptions. Or, in Ranciere’s reading of Kant, to train us in “the sensible:” that is, we learn both how to perceive, and more radically, what to perceive, and politically what is possible. But I lost track of all this, and worse, forgot why I studied culture so closely.

Then I spent time with my Indian relatives some of whom are my age. The difference between them and me? They are married, have stable jobs are essentially set to live out their lives in a predictable, not unfulfilling, future primarily concerned with family. If this sounds like an indictment, it is not and I did not experience the thought with a smile. Rather, I was very envious of their general security, their wealth relative to my student wages and, perhaps most importantly, the smaller universe they desired and created for themselves. This universe, however, is not purely an autonomous creation; it is co-created by Indian-American culture, which demands nothing less than everything they have already attained. All of which is to say that, for the whole weekend, I felt very very behind in the “life narrative” that Desi culture writes so fervently.

Is pain always the prerequisite for an insight or re-realization?

Are an extra hundred words enough to make up for a lost day? No, but seeing old friends may be worth the loss.

Onwards.

During a recent conversation with my martial arts teacher, we discussed certain “life narratives” that we create for ourselves. These narratives shape our lives by giving day-to-day occurrences meaning in a larger narrative. A minor car accident, for instance, is proof our own exceptionally bad luck, or our impossible clumsiness, or a Divine reminder to let go of attachments to the material world, or a million other possibilities. Psychotheraphy, of course, is partly about bringing such narratives to the surface, and engaging in conscious behaviors that help rewrite any undesirable stories. During out discussion he gave language to two more that haunt me, namely the desire to be, or believing that one is, more than human or less than human. Both these narratives have one very worldly effect, exhaustion.

If I am more than human, I do not need the sleep required by mere mortals and can, should, work more hours with more intensity than my peers. The narrative ‘logic’ is at once helpful and harmful. I may, at times, be motivated to keep going despite some obstacle and this may indeed be a good decision. When the drive turns competitive, however, then the source of pleasure turns from doing and finishing work to its quality relative to one’s peers. Even more troublesome, and this is my struggle, is that once motivating narrative transformation into a dictum; why have you stopped working? There is always a chance to do more, and through that possibility enters the guilt of not doing so.

more later…I don’t feel like writing right now

My last post went off track when I realized that Crusoe inadvertently links Christian morality, the Good, with material accumulation, collecting goods, through the loosely cognized term “Use.” While that proved interesting, I would like to return to the moment I meant to focus on yesterday.

The context is the same. Crusoe is pondering Providence, reading the circumstances of his life through Christian morality, when he begins the ironic sermon against Covetousness I touched on yesterday. As Crusoe goes on, however, Use is linked to something even more slippery than the Good and goods, namely thought itself. “Another Reflection,” says Crusoe, “was of great Use to me,” only a moment after he finishes his lecture on Covetousness like this: “All our Discontents about what we want, appear’d to me, to spring from the Want of Thankfulness for what we have” (130). An ascetic reading of these two moments tells us that one should be ever happy because ever thankful for what one has, reflection and its uses. Reflection, then, becomes an itemized good that has Use and, insofar as it is being put to good use, is also the owner’s Good.

Reflection does not necessarily equal reason, rationality or a host of other things. For Crusoe, it seems to me, Reflection is linked with morality if not a moral quality itself. That is, Reflection is taking a God’s Eye view of myself; this is its highest Use and if this God given good is employed in that manner, it is also doing-being Good. And the source of happiness.

The introduction of pleasure into this equation is rather odd. Employing my Reflection, I realize that I should be thankful for what I have including, and perhaps especially, the ability to Reflect itself. If I am thankful, says Crusoe, I am also content. This final move is the oddity, perhaps only because I am collapsing contentment, happiness and pleasure, each of which have their own histories. My terminological sloppiness, however, may be productive here because it allows for the uninstrumental to emerge at the heart of an instrumental equation. In other words, pleasure and happiness are the end points; they cannot, or are not, Useful in the same way that Reflection, or even the Good, is.

This is not simply mental masturbation. As the opening of yesterday’s post indicates, the context––perhaps stakes––of these thoughts lie at the nexus of aesthetics, pleasure, use value, cognition and perhaps, if yesterday’s “good”ness is included, imperialism.
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Unedited

Ever get the feeling that what you have just written is total garbage. Yeah, me too.

Day two of a new discipline is always very hard. I was going to say “the hardest” but that seemed hyperbolic and, more importantly, ran against the realization that every day of a difficult discipline is ‘the hardest’. Lest this exercise turn into a narcissistic admiration of my difficulties, let me turn my attention to two observations made during today’s reading.

First is Robinson Crusoe, which has lovely introduction by J. Donald Crowley in my Oxford World’s Classics edition. Among the many things Crowley’s introduction provides is a nice review of the criticism to date, as it should. Notable among these is Ian Watt’s reading of Defoe’s protagonist as “Economic Man,” the details of which deserve more thought than I have time for at the moment. Watt’s term, however, rose to the surface because some friends and I had been discussing “use value” in relation to both Crusoe and aesthetics more generally. Today’s reading included Crusoe reflecting on his condition, especially his wants.

The section runs for few pages and is encased in a larger discourse on his relationship to Providence, previous “wicked” ways and current repentance. The Island is thus part great punishment, for his past sins, and great fortune, because it brings him closer to God. (Crowley provides a brief history of this paradox, termed “the fortunate fall” by theologians). Amidst these reflections, Crusoe says, “all the good Things of this World, are no farther good to us, than they are for our Use” (129). There are two conclusions to be drawn from this statement. First, given the larger religious context and the diatribe on “Covetousness” that follows, Crusoe suggests that we acquire only what we need and nothing more. Second, there are “good Things” in the world that are potentially “good to us” and these two ‘goods’ are linked by “Use” (129). Things and morality are joined together as “goods” when they are joined in goods that are of Use. This is why Crusoe can remark, without irony or self-awareness, that he is “Lord of the whole Mannor,” “King, or Emperor over the whole country which I had Possession of,” a short paragraph before his discourse against “Covetousness” (128).

Here, then, is a short primer on the “rationale” behind British Imperialism. Crusoe’s anti-covetousness stand is cancelled out by the potential of good Things to be good to him. That is, the world must be explored for good Things, which must then be tested to see if they can be potentially good to us. The natives, of course, are not aware of all the uses of their local stuff and so must be pushed aside for their own good. Even more, they are not using their lives for the ultimate good that is worshipping and serving the Christian Go(o)d; thus, they too can be put to good use. If I become “King, or Emperor over the whole country,” it is not because I am covetous, but because Providence is blessing me for doing Good (with goods); I am simply putting all the good things in the world that can be good to us to good Use.

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Unedited:

None of this was what I was originally thinking about, but hopefully it has done me some good.