Matthew Yglesias: Programming Note

Programming Note

I hosted a party last night, leading a late wakeup and the need to do much cleaning. I've also got deadlines up to here and want to try and get shit done in time to see TV On The Radio tonight, to posts may be sparse. One brief thought, though. John Holbo says the "reality-based community" remark proves Bush is a Zizekian, but as Will Wilkinson pointed out to me last night, the implicit connection between Bush's reality-creating abilities and America's military strength ("we're an empire now") is more in the Foucaldian vein. Truth is power and all that. And yes, I really am this lame in real life.

October 17, 2004 | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8345160fd69e200d8342492bc53ef

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Programming Note:

» Gift Basket from Tom Jamme's Blog
Sweet Blessings, a new Christian-based online shop featuring cookie bouquets, candy bouquets and gift baskets, opens with a campaign to donate a portion of all profits to Habitat For Humanity. The devastation of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, while not a... [Read More]

Tracked on Oct 7, 2005 9:12:10 AM

Tracked on Oct 7, 2005 9:14:04 AM

Comments

Sorry I missed the party.

Posted by: Rowdy | Oct 17, 2004 2:51:08 PM

Why is it Foucault yet "Foucaldian?" This is for me an important question, for in the early 70's, while trying to bring Being and Nothingness into a discussion of Blue Oyster Cult, I called the dude "Sarter" and lost my audience. She eventually married a cornerback, and I have yet to recover my confidence.

Posted by: bob mcmanus | Oct 17, 2004 3:11:03 PM

Sad story, Bob. Strange, though--you lost her on Sartre, and yet she ended up with a cornerback? An unusually philosophical one, I presume?

Or, more likely, your Blue Oyster Cult discussion failed because it needed more cowbell.

Posted by: Haggai | Oct 17, 2004 3:20:22 PM

Let it be noted that this discussion was prompted by your readers, thus mitigating the taint of nerdiness. It's nerdiness on demand.

Posted by: praktike | Oct 17, 2004 3:42:22 PM

Dammit Haggai, I wanted to make the cowbell reference. Why are you here on a Sunday anyway?

I'll have to settle for telling Bob that perhaps he should have explored the space of the studio.

Posted by: JP | Oct 17, 2004 4:03:14 PM

I think it's "Foucauldian", simply because the French have a number of spelling rules based on what sounds best. Same with "Bourdieusian". Then again, it's been ages since I've actually seen variants of these words in original French, so it could be one of those things American academics make up.

Regarding the more substantive point, I keep feeling lately that Baudrillard needs a little dusting off. Both because of a media which discusses a 'debate' without reference to truth (Matt's point a couple days ago) and because of an administration hellbent on collapsing truth into spectacle.

Posted by: Chris | Oct 17, 2004 5:08:59 PM

I'll have to settle for telling Bob that perhaps he should have explored the space of the studio.

Heh, sorry I beat you to it, JP. Bob's got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!

(I wonder if Bob knows what the hell we're talking about...)

Is it surprising that I'm here on a Sunday?

Posted by: Haggai | Oct 17, 2004 5:32:10 PM

Ummm ... The Bush administration a la Suskind is neither Foucauldian nor Zizekian if by that you mean that it has an account of the world consistent with that given by either philosopher. Neither philosopher approves of wholescale delusion. It is just that both try to explain how such delusion happens.

Zizek believes that ideology is a given structuring dimension of social experience,and that it has such tenacity because it works through disavowal. Hence, for instance, irony typically only propagate the ideology it targets--ideolgoy already being enunciated in quotation marks, as it were. So we see that even the creators of South Park are powerless to do anything other than bolster the current US imperial fantasy, with their puppet movie. How do things change? Not through reasoned discourse, so much as through the slow grinding gears of the historically inevitable shifts in the mode of production.

Foucault believes that all discourse depends on truth claims, and that one person's ideology is another person's empirical reality. This is not to say that there is no ultimately more accurate empirical reality. But it is to say that the outcomes of contests among ways of framing and presenting that reality can't be predicted insofar as we ourselves are constrained by our own repertoire of frames and our position within them.

So, thus far, advantage Zizek for explaining the mindset revealed by the Suskind quote. Except: Foucault does aver that the will to truth is a will to power, and that frames that can propagate themselves, will, absent the control of some metaframe that hampers them. (This is something like the notion of a propagation of a meme, except insofar as the frame that spreads is not just an idea, but a perspective.) Certainly such propagation is what the quote envisions.

People often think that Foucault's account of the power of discursive proliferation makes him a pessimist about social change. But the opposite is true. While Foucault obviously gives the power of the big lie its due, he also, at the same time, helps explain the power of small, local truth-telling to reshape social bonds.

When you have a President who has no shame about legitimating himself with the ultimate metaframe of Religion, and who has political advisors who have no shame about doing whatever it takes to propagate his positions, and geopolitical advisors who will take any long-term risk for short-term empire, you have a social phenomenon that is monumentally overextended, and tremendously vulnerable, in the Foucauldian point of view, to counter-discourses that can unravel the tapestry of power by pulling at any one of its many loose threads.

But such a counter-discourse needs a public arena in which to stage itself, and the SCLM is not about to provide that arena. Rather, it provides endless self-parody of a kind better analyzed as Zizekian ideology. Which brings us to the question of the internet ...

Posted by: Ottoe | Oct 17, 2004 5:49:35 PM

I wonder if Bob knows what the hell we're talking about...)

Nope

Posted by: bob mcmanus | Oct 17, 2004 6:20:47 PM

Actually, there is something about "needs more cowbell" on the far edge of my memory, and I am sure if told there will be an "oh yeah" moment. The recollection is not close enough to be painful.

Ottoe, thank you for your comment.

Posted by: bob mcmanus | Oct 17, 2004 6:33:16 PM

Failure to get the girl can often turn out to be a blessing. I can provide references if anyone wants them.

Posted by: Zizka | Oct 17, 2004 6:44:03 PM

Bob, we were referencing a Saturday Night Live skit from a few years ago where Christopher Walken was the guest host. The skit was a VHI Behind the Music recollection of Blue Oyster Cult recording "Don't Fear the Reaper" (your mention of that band triggered our references). Will Ferrell plays a band member who just bangs on the cowbell as they record the song. Walken plays the producer who, bizarrely and hilariously, keeps insisting that "it needs more cowbell!" when the other band members complain.

Posted by: Haggai | Oct 17, 2004 7:00:09 PM

Cowbell Project

Well, we have gotten weirdly off-topic. My vague memory was not that, I don't remember seeing that SNL (I watch little TV, never have). But from this site I see that the Beatles used cowbells in multiple songs, and that was my vague memory. I would speculate that Walken was quoting from studio chatter on a Beatles song. Maybe the "Let it Be" sessions.

My Blue Oyster Cult reference was "Dominance and Submission", and I have to say that only parts of my sad story are untrue. A brunette with ironed hair. The cornerback was made up.

Posted by: bob mcmanus | Oct 17, 2004 7:48:26 PM

Is it surprising that I'm here on a Sunday?

Not in particular. I was just implying that instead of reading political blogs on the weekend, you should be out partying, or playing ultimate frisbee, or cruising for chicks. Not that I have any excuse either.

I was going to say that Bob's tastes are far too refined to have been exposed to that kind of pop cultural filler. Bob, I picture you spending Saturday nights reading Hunter S. Thompson before the fireplace and smoking a pipe with your German Shepherds. That said, that particular SNL sketch is one of the funniest of all time, and I definitely suggest downloading it off the Internet if you ever feel so inclined.

Posted by: JP | Oct 17, 2004 8:05:18 PM

I was at MY's party last night, which was a lot of fun. But I should definitely play more frisbee.

Posted by: Haggai | Oct 17, 2004 8:26:30 PM

I was at MY's party last night, which was a lot of fun. But I should definitely play more frisbee.

Do people here actually know each other in real life? Weird. I kinda feel left out.

Also, for some reason I thought you lived in Michigan, Haggai.

Posted by: JP | Oct 17, 2004 10:34:00 PM

I think it's as if the administration claimed that the fact that obsevation of phenomena affect them systematically is proof of their (the admin) great gift to do so, which is justification for continuing to do so. None of these theorists claim that anyone can actually create reality, which is what the admin seems to be claiming it can do.

Posted by: William S | Oct 18, 2004 1:49:38 AM

JP, most people here probably don't know each other. I did live in Michigan until a few months ago. I now live and work in Alexandria, VA, just a few miles south of DC.

Posted by: Haggai | Oct 18, 2004 10:42:46 AM

Haggai -

Welcome to the Greater Metropolitan D.C. area!

Hope you're enjoying it so far.

Posted by: SoCalJustice | Oct 18, 2004 10:59:37 AM

Thanks, SoCal. I always liked this area a lot, so I'm having a great time living here. Whereabouts do you live?

Posted by: Haggai | Oct 18, 2004 11:05:52 AM

You're welcome - and I agree, it is a great area.

I live in Dupont Circle - I've been there for about the past 2 years. Before that I lived up in Cleveland Park.

Posted by: SoCalJustice | Oct 18, 2004 11:13:47 AM

OK, here's a little secret- revolutions happen when the people out of power decide it's THEIR turn to make reality.

For example, everyone with a finger in the pie is going to dither about universal healthcare until the cows come home. What needs to happen is for a majority to say "To h--l with that- other countries like us have healthcare and it's just a question of deciding to do it."

Caveat time- in Britain, social welfare reflects obligations going back to feudal times. Their social welfare system is not built on revolution, but on fulfilling promises made by previous generations as society changed.

You can't suspend a universal reality, but a lot of our problems are caused by a temporary suspension of a local reality. One way or the other, solving these problems will involve taking 'reality' by the neck and shaking a little sense into it.

Posted by: serial catowner | Oct 18, 2004 11:26:54 AM

Ah, the perfect place to ask the question I, as a non-philosopher, had. This notion that, as Masters of Empire, the Bushies redefine reality - where does it come from? My (very poor) understanding of upthread discussion is that you're talking about the origins of the self-delusion, but do either Strauss or Trotsky/Lenin/Marx seriously suggest anything like this notion? Up til now, those had been the sources, as I understood it, of much neocon self-delusion, but it's not clear to me wehther any of them believed that, with enough power, the ruling elite can redefine reality.

Sorry this has nothing to do with BOC, but I'd love an answer.

Posted by: JRoth | Oct 18, 2004 4:37:45 PM

Posted by: lady luck | Jul 10, 2006 8:19:01 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.