The Lesser Power: Levinas on Judaism and Kenosis

By joneilortiz on June 8, 2009

Cheddar Mortadelle Cosmos, 2005, by Philippe Mayaux

Cheddar Mortadelle Cosmos, 2005, by Philippe Mayaux

My last post on the Biblical and philosophical concept of “kenosis” ended with a reference to Emmanuel Levinas, whose essay, “Judaism and Kenosis,” though unread at the time seemed to promise an altogether different approach that that found in contemporary and poststructuralist philosophies, which remain in large part derived from the Christian tradition. From Luther to Hegel to Derrida and Cixous, kenosis refers to the achievement of empathy, immersion, and other forms of ‘embodiment’ and ‘externalization’. For Levinas and the tradition he captures, kenosis suggests the opposite, an impasse between existences.

Levinas’ essay, for its part, radically departs from this, Christian tradition and sketches out, in my opinion, the more enlightening, the more philosophically authentic position. Where the Christian model stresses a seamless movement between, or transcendence of, ontological orders, the Judaic perspective stresses unbridgeable, unresolvable differences; which, I think, describes our world more closely than does the secular philosophical legacy of incarnation, identification. A fundamental schism in philosophy is thus revealed in the posing of this question, which is itself already a Christian one. Indeed, as one would expect, Levinas quickly reminds us that, “There is probably no need, here, to remind ourselves that the idea of divine incarnation is foreign to Jewish spirituality.” (Levinas Kenosis 114) Continue reading “The Lesser Power: Levinas on Judaism and Kenosis”

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Posted in Literature, Philosophy | Tagged , , | Leave a response

Personal reflections on the therapeutic process: Learning from termination.

By Philip Rosenbaum on May 29, 2009

The process of terminating with ongoing psychotherapy patients, especially long-term patients (those generally seen for a year or more) is one that can be very meaningful and emotional for both therapist and patient. Termination has appropriately been linked with past experiences of loss and abandonment, existential fears of death and dying, as well as with opportunities for new growth and development. Under the best of circumstances the decision to terminate is agreed upon by the client and the therapist, providing them both with the opportunity to work through the process. However, more often than not termination is dictated by one party or the other, brought on by factors such as expiring insurance, a patient’s moving, or in my case stopping at training sites in order to begin my full time internship.

In my case having worked extensively at one clinic in addition to other sites, preparing to start internship meant terminating not only with the patients I had seen over the year, but also with patients whom I had been seeing for the past three years. Having never terminated with patients who I had seen for even close to this long, and certainly never having terminated with so many patients all at once, I was unsure what to expect both from my patients and myself during the termination process. Given this, perhaps it is not surprising that much like I have found throughout my clinical training, my expectations and thoughts about what terminating would be like did not match my experiences. This seemingly common – at least to the training experience – phenomenon creates in my mind an interesting gap, created not by poor expectations, but rather by the inherent difficulties of training. In other words, despite the fact that I had been taught and even experienced when completing previous externships what termination would be like (i.e. see above) it remained difficult to know how it would be when it was this different.

The hardest part of termination for me has been trying to assess the effectiveness of therapy and to evaluate how I performed as a therapist. Going through the termination process I remember voicing doubt to fellow classmates and supervisors about how I helped my patients. While many had made progress towards goals they also often remained stuck in certain places. From my perspective it was difficult to ascertain that what I did during sessions helped them achieve their goals, as opposed to it just being a product of time and their own growth.

Reflecting upon my uncertainty and ambivalence I think it is in some ways part of the tension that is a part of therapy. Both the therapist and the client have an idea of what they are working on, or what the “problem is”, but how they approach it and work at it may not be so clear. Indeed, as a student I feel that this uncertainty may even be exacerbated as there is a propensity towards trying new techniques or representing the material in ways that reflect recent readings, discussions, ideas etc. That this process of working in different therapeutic frames is likely normal if not central to the training, does not necessarily alleviate the feelings that the patient would be better off with a more established therapist, or generally that they deserve better.

Despite this, during the process of terminating one of the most consistent and perhaps surprising observations was how deep my relationship was with my patients and vice versa. While going through notes I was amazed at how much had transpired in their lives and my own over the course of my sessions with them. Not only did I feel tuned into their lives but it also felt as if I had actively participated with them. In this sense reading through notes about their stories I found myself at times thinking in terms of “we”. For example, how “we” handled a certain issue or “we” achieved certain goals. The feeling of connectedness in some ways belies the uncertainty, almost by saying that this was “you” in the relationship and that your effect was real.

This is in some sense the actualization of the gap that I described earlier. The role of the therapeutic frame and theory is meant to structure the therapeutic space providing the tools to help the patient work and make changes. However, this space does not in effect account for the human-to-human interaction that comprises all of the therapeutic interactions. Indeed, as described above, while talking with my patients about our relationship what was striking was how much they valued the relationship. That to me the frame more often than not felt ambiguous seems to have had a minimal bearing on them. What mattered more to them was that I was there, and that they knew that I would be there to listen, to share, to acknowledge, to discuss and to explore. As my patients discussed with me the aspects of myself that they valued and found effective during therapy, it was amazing how little they had to do with approach or technique. Carl Rogers knew this of course and orientated humanistic psychology around it. Cynically, I feel that in some ways the parts of me that worked the hardest for example to conceptualize them or to make certain interpretations were the least acknowledged.

What terminating has helped me to begin thinking about is how to minimize this gap. One way that comes to mind is how theory can be orientated and utilized around the actual interactions in the office. I understand this personally as a deepening and extending of my thinking about interpersonal approaches to psychotherapy that work off the therapeutic relationship. What I have come to appreciate in terminating is the need for the therapist to present himself or herself in an authentic manner so that the aspects of themselves, whether they are warmth, honesty, directness etc can be felt and understood clearly by the patient.

In many ways this feels both very obvious to me and is also somewhat of a revelation. To me it means both working as myself but doing so in ways that are clearly conveyed to my patient. Theory then becomes a way of looking at the ensuing interactions between my patients and me, providing a perspective to both elaborate upon our shared experience and create new ones. In other words, in therapy a space is created to have experiences that are real but can be explained in ways that allows for the growth of the therapist and the patient.

As a final thought it is probably not a surprise that I felt this gap while terminating with my clients. Termination is not only a time of reflection, but it is very obviously the end of the therapy. This can lead to a sense of safety where both the therapist and the client knowing that their time is ending can act more like themselves in therapy. While throughout termination I was thinking about theories about what is happening for the patient and myself, it still nonetheless felt as if my interactions with my patients were more genuine and less a matter of us participating in social role playing. Experiencing these authentic interactions, while also hearing about what my patients were taking from therapy has not only helped make terminating with them a meaningful experience but also an educational one as well.

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Posted in Social Sciences | Tagged , , | 3 Responses

TIME Magazine on the Future of Work

By joneilortiz on May 17, 2009

The Future of Work

The Future of Work

As the latest instance of a major media outlet prescribing mass surrender of even the most limited workplace rights, the cover copy for the May 25, 2009 issue of TIME Magazine reads:

“Throw away the briefcase: you’re not going to the office. You can kiss your benefits goodbye too. And your new boss won’t look much like your old one. There’s no longer a ladder, and you may never get to retire, but there’s a world of opportunity if you figure out a new path.”

The cover image, for its part, gives form to the distasteful idea that a young dope fresh out of college could soon be your boss, not for his wits and skills, but because experience, knowledge, wisdom – the costly corporate ladder, in short – has been pulled out from under everyone climbing it. The young guy – and the boss, for TIME, does indeed seem to be generally male – may not know much about what he’s doing, but he costs less and is cheaper to insure.

What TIME seems to be explicitly endorsing here is the no holds barred, free-for-all, openly oppressive corporate model (or non-model, really) emerging in the wake of the collapse of the already-tenuous, already-insufficient system of benefits, promotion, and reward. TIME may not have anything to say about the mechanisms facilitating the collapse, but they’re happy to describe with pep the new world order and “what this means for you.” Can we really call this journalism, even with the most liberal sense of the term?

Sure, this worldview may now be a reality, but what is so reprehensible about TIME’s description of it is not the world it references, but the carefree manner in which its emergence is taken as an irreversible, and ultimately acceptable, state of affairs. The phrase “kiss your benefits goodbye too” could hardly be more collaborative in spirit, and detached from the full painful effect it engenders. It comes off like it’s no big deal that people will rather suddenly no longer have access to basic medical care. Just adjust and adapt; that’s all.

Furthermore, as anyone who has suffered or survived a mass layoff or company restructuring can attest, these measures are neither necessary nor evenly distributed. Companies are happy to lay off thousands of people, and slash benefits for the rest, before touching the salaries, bonuses, or stock options of the management class, which of course already soak-up an overwhelmingly-disproportionate percentage of company income.

Indeed, the slashing of benefits and further precipitous drop in wages comes as the swift achievement of a long-restrained attempt to permanently crush labor power, to squeeze workers even more than they already were. The financial collapse merely provides the alibi or excuse for implementing a labor arrangement that will persist long past the recovery and which was already in effect well before the “official” September 2008 collapse. The pay gap between executive/management and labor is increasing, not decreasing, and with greater, not lesser, speed.

Just where the “world of opportunity” has been relocated, as TIME insists it has, remains a mystery, but, like Xanadu, we cannot be helped or advised on our journey to “figure out a new path” to this mythical place. And yet, there’s no doubt we’ll continue to encounter, with much greater frequency, vague references to these new paths and alternative means of enrichment, which will have to remain as elusive as they are fictive. The need for this myth is, however, itself a symptom of the strategic refusal to acknowledge the scale with which the labor force is currently being robbed, squeezed, and turned-out for the benefit of a very small group of people. It’s only a matter of time, then, before these upbeat, disillusioned pep talks ring dangerously hollow.

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Posted in Politics | Tagged , | 3 Responses

Pre-history of the jingle

By David Hahn on April 28, 2009

Might the jingle be a very old thing, pre-dating radio and television? Here is Bakhtin trying to explain the type of orality featured in Rabelais through the medieval and early modern cris, or street cries:

“The cris were loud advertisements called out by the Paris street vendors, and composed according to a certain versified form; each cry had four lines offering and praising a certain merchandise…We must recall that not only was all advertising oral and loud in those days, actually a cry, but that all announcements, orders, and laws were made in this loud oral form…This fact should not be ignored when studying the style of the sixteenth century and especially the style of Rabelais” (The Bakhtin Reader, 218).

Like the street vendor, Rabelais in his authorial introductions is loud and boastful, as quick to praise the (wise) reader who has bought his book as condemn the (stupid) reader who has not. “Shit on them,” as Rabelais says. Can you imagine Mary Higgins Clark saying such a thing? I can’t.

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Posted in Advertising, Literature | Tagged , , | 1 Response

From Psychodynamics to Semiotics: Revisiting Levenson

By Philip Rosenbaum on April 25, 2009

Donnel Stern’s introduction to the single volume edition of the psychoanalyst Edgar Levenson’s two major books, The Fallacy of Understanding (1972) and The Ambiguity of Change (1983) (published together by Analytic Press, 2005) attempts to both contextualize and highlight the important aspects of Levenson’s work. Not surprisingly, Stern’s introductory remarks are shaped by the current state of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. He traces how in these two books Levenson provided a cornerstone for the development of Relational psychoanalysis a popular contemporary therapeutic approach. According to Stern (2005a) “it was Levenson who first understood that continuous unconscious influence necessarily implies mutual enactment.” And that “the encompassing idea, the commodious concept of inevitable unconscious interaction that creates the possibility for articulation of the differences that came later, originated with Levenson” (p ix my emphases). While Stern locates the emergence of mutual enactment in Levenson’s structural system of thinking about psychoanalysis, it is clear to the reader that Levenson’s key contribution is the concept of mutual enactment and not the system from which it emerged. In this manner, the importance of mutual enactment is determined by its influence on object relations theory and its current role in psychoanalytic thinking.

Stern’s contextualization of mutual enactment is an interesting example of the process of studying the progress of psychoanalysis that Levenson himself utilizes in The Fallacy of Understanding. Echoing Thomas Kuhn and also in many ways Foucault, Levenson utilizes a historical and paradigmatic reading of psychoanalysis to develop his structural theory. Levenson identifies 3 paradigms of psychoanalysis, mechanical, informational, and ecological, identifying himself as part of the latter. Reflecting on the differences between these paradigms leads him to make the observation that behind each paradigm shift are the changing meanings of key terms (i.e. transference, defense, repression). He traces these changes to the need for them to represent more accurately the current socio-political context, as delineated by world events and the population being treated. Indeed, it is this insight about cultural influence extending to even psychoanalysis that fueled Levenson’s thinking about an ecological view of psychoanalysis. The impact of this thought is noted by Marylou Lionells, a contemporary of his who observed that:

“Levenson goes on to outline an approach to psychoanalysis that breaks every rule, violates every tenet, turns both theory and method on their heads … He further argues that as the treatment relationship unfolds, patient and analyst are inexorably intertwined in an elaborate recurrence of unconscious patterns, and that the recognition and elaboration of these patterns constitutes the experiential information that will be ultimately helpful” (Marylou Lionells, “Commentary: Psychotherapy of the Young Adult: The Fallacy of Understanding,” Center For Innovation in Psychoanalysis, 2006).

Here, we see the revolutionary or paradigm shifting impact of Levenson’s work, especially that of mutual enactment. To both Lionells and Stern, mutual enactment lead to changes in the meanings of terms like countertransference and the unconscious. These changes have become so engrained within contemporary thought and practice that Stern feels the need to remind the reader to appreciate how revolutionary they were when originally articulated. Despite their mainstream status and the popularity of Levenson much of the work he did on developing an ecological psychoanalysis appears to have been left unexplored and undeveloped. In fact, in the years that followed, psychology as a whole (likely spurned on by advances in cognitive science and neurology) seemed to endorse an increasingly reductionist view of the individual. Thus, while the idea of mutual enactment remains in psychoanalysis, much of the comprehensive and ecological view of the underlying psychological processes described by Levenson and others has until recently been forgotten. It is my contention that revisiting Levenson’s structural and ecological thinking has much to offer for both psychoanalysis and psychology as a whole. Accordingly, in what follows I would like to offer a brief overview of this view, paying particular attention of his movement from a structural approach initially closer to psychoanalysis to a structural approach that utilizes the science of semiotics or signs. Given that this is a topic I hope to revisit in future writings my intent here is more to lay out the theory and point to areas of conversation than to necessarily explore it in depth.

Levenson initially articulated his theory in The Fallacy of Understanding and as noted by Stern, it is decidedly structural. As mentioned above, he developed his theory by examining the previous paradigms of psychoanalysis and identifying in each of them an archetypical patient (the neurotic for Freud, the schizophrenic for Sullivan). He identifies his generation patient as the “drop-out” (also labeled “the contemporary patient”) who we would recognize as a member of the “tune-in turn-on dropout” of the 1960’s. What makes this generation unique is that although they rebelled from their parents they did so with the intent on showing how rigid and hypocritical they were. In this sense they rebelled while also staying related to what they were rebelling from. Levenson explains that this was possible because the “drop-outs” were parents who though appearing to value mutuality and open communication did not actually support independent thought and activity. This created a sense of inauthenticity, from which the contemporary patient was rebelling, but required relating to be validated.

Accordingly, Levenson noted that when brought into therapy these patients no longer wanted to be “cured” as in the traditional sense this meant returning or re-conforming to society. Indeed, he goes on to suggest that as a result of the actions of the “drop-out” so much of traditional society was being challenged and changed that perhaps the therapist himself or herself would require changing. He asks: “But what if the problem defines both the therapist and the patient? Perhaps one stops helping and begins a different kind of participation” (Levenson, 2005b p 138). In this manner, Levenson demonstrates a willingness to depart from the view of therapist as scientist to one of artist, or in other words from one of knower to one of constructer.

Building off this view he claims that the analyst who interprets is guilty of a “fallacy of understanding” whereas instead an analyst needs to embrace the “drop-outs” perspectives on the world. Drawing upon the concepts of holism, transformation, and relationships, Levenson argues that since experience and knowledge cannot be viewed outside of context and since context implies relationship then psychoanalysis must focus on relationships. Moreover, since relationships are not necessarily stable or determined (due to both changing context as well as the subjectivity of the other) the self in some senses strives for and constructs stability, which in large part is supplied by social order/structures. The way in which the societal structure influences individual construction of self, i.e. reflection, isomorphism, and transformation, is viewed as a type of “aesthetic structure”. This structure is what is recreated or altered in therapy and thus necessarily involves the therapist, who willingly or not partakes in its re-construction. Accordingly,

“In the larger society, patient and therapist are transformations of each other. But in addition, the patient has his own structure which is not only a construction, that is, part of the larger patterning of his society, but also a reflection of his biological givens (talents and flaws) and his idiosyncratic experience. It is this aesthetic structure which is the key to therapy” (Levenson, 2005b p 39).

What is of note in this early conceptualization is how Levenson thinks about the role of society in structuring an individual’s mental life. While acknowledging individual subjectivity, Levenson appears primarily concerned with the argument that psychological processes are rooted in system participation. Of course, it is this view that enables him to develop the idea of mutual enactment, as his structural theory requires that both therapist and patient be active in recreating patterned behaviors. It is not until The Ambiguity of Change that he begins to flesh out how his structural approach can also be used to think about intra-psychological processes.

Here, Levenson presents the reader with a question about psychological process, asking whether it is dynamics or semiotics. Underlying his question is a move away from thinking of psychological problems being caused by distortions of an inner reality that is conflicting with the real world to one that views the individual as being unable to solve the mysteries present in the world. These mysteries result from the complexities of cultural and semiotic life that the child is born into. More specifically, Levenson feels that “Psychological difficulties arise because of difficulty in sorting out the nuances of social experiences, especially as it is mediated through language … neurotic difficulties arise from semiotic incompetence” (Levenson, 2005c). In other words, cultural tools such as language are continuously mediating experience and that failures of mediation can cause psychological difficulties!

This is of course no small claim, especially for a psychoanalyst and opens up a number of ways of thinking about mental life and its relationship to mental difficulties. Levenson himself further explores the issue by discussing the differences between neuropsychology in Freudians day and in his own. The key difference to Levenson is one of holistic networks of mind versus hierarchical topologies of systems emphasizing different layers of control. Here we see how his thinking has progressed. In The Fallacy of Understanding, he thinks about social structures as being hierarchical with one controlling an other and so on, such that the individual was enmeshed some place in between. Now he thinks of control moving laterally and spatially in addition to vertically. This is of course possible due to the multi-faceted nature of signs, which have an over abundance of potential meanings. In this manner, novel meanings are continuously constructed by the individual. The openness of meaning making becomes an asset to therapy, as no longer does the therapist have to focus on an interpretation (a traditionally vertical process) but can instead explore the lateral and spatial aspects of meaning making. This shifts therapy from one of “cure” to one of “enrichment of networks”. Therapy now can focus on the novel and creative aspects of human meaning making as opposed to the destructive and conflictual.

When brought into the realm of mental life the construction of psychological problems can be thought of in a more open manner. Levenson draws our attention to the ambiguity about meaning and experience, (especially in the therapeutic relationship can itself) which is central to human beings. Indeed, it is precisely this ambiguity that semiotics both minimizes and maximizes. Towards this end, semiotics mediation involves or implies an ongoing relationship between the individual and their environment that is continuously being mediated by cultural tools, such as language. In addition to Levenson’s suggestion that psychological problems can result from not only not knowing how to use these tools, it is also possible that individuals are not able to appropriately navigate and/or regulate one’s cultural experiences. In this manner, semiotics can be used to trap individuals in meanings, by providing too much information to be navigated or even too little. Similarly, the individual becomes capable of constructing their own semiotic traps that can limit their meaning making (perhaps causing depression) or over extend it (leading to anxiety). Alternatively, psychological problems can be thought of as failures to interact with other individual’s patterns – or to be able to regulate self-other relationships. The idea of semiotic regulation (see for instance, Rosenbaum, 2008 attempts to articulate thoughts about how this fails in the case of depression) seems to fit nicely into Levenson’s network of mind.

While trying to put together a conclusion for this foray into Levenson’s thinking, I consistently got side tracked by thinking about why his ideas of psychological process have not been developed. While his key contribution of mutual enactment is almost universally accepted, it is generally located within psychological theories that have become increasingly reductionist. As far as I can see, despite his best effort at putting forth a unique structural and semiotic view of mind his ideas were transformed in such a way that still preserved the whole he was breaking away from. Perhaps what is necessary is to first unravel why certain dominant thoughts about thinking characterize the relationship between psychoanalysis and the individual and then think about providing alternative theories.

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Posted in Social Sciences | Tagged , , | 2 Responses

“New Media Technology” Delegation Travels to Iraq

By joneilortiz on April 21, 2009

Jeremy Scahill is not pleased:

The U.S. State Department has announced it is sponsoring a “New Media Technology” delegation to Iraq to “explore new opportunities to support Iraqi government and non-government stakeholders in Iraq’s emerging new media industry.” Of all of the areas in Iraq in desperate need of attention, its “emerging new media industry” is not the one that pops to mind. Things like clean water, electricity, right of safe return for refugees and an end to the occupation seem more pressing than increasing Nouri al Maliki’s Twitter followers. But unfortunately, that’s how U.S. priorities in Iraq seem to work.

Anyway, the super star tech delegation, according to the State Department press release, includes “a mix of CEOs, Vice-Presidents and senior representatives” from “AT&T, Google, Twitter, Howcast, Meetup, You Tube and Automattic/Wordpress.”

But the final company listed as participating in the delegation begs for some sort of special review: Blue State Digital, a firm which boasts its services were “Critically important to President Obama’s victory” in the November election. Indeed, federal campaign spending records indicate that the Obama campaign paid the firm at least $2,864,138 in 2007-2008, including more than $700,000 on election day.

But I wonder if Scahill’s anger is slightly misplaced. This project doesn’t seem to be occurring at the expense of, or instead of, other infrastructure projects, so to phrase it that way is a little misleading. I don’t think a prioritizing of projects is necessarily the central issue here.

According to the State Department’s press release:

During their visit to Iraq, they will provide conceptual input as well as ideas on how new technologies can be used to build local capacity, foster greater transparency and accountability, build upon anti-corruption efforts, promote critical thinking in the classroom, scale-up civil society, and further empower local entities and individuals by providing the tools for network building. As Iraqis think about how to integrate new technology as a tool for smart power, we view this as an opportunity to invite the American technology industry to be part of this creative genesis.

Is this old-fashioned economic colonization, only this time channeled through new media and information technology corporations, or is it a genuine attempt to put in place potentially-democratic tools and infrastructure conducive to coordination and transparency?

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Posted in New Media | Tagged , , | Leave a response

Lessing on Lessing, in the Hamburg Dramaturgy

By joneilortiz on April 15, 2009

If you know Lessing principally as the author of the Laocoon (as I did), then Hamburg Dramaturgy, a collection of his popular theater reviews, is sure to cast him in a stunning new light. Who knew Lessing was such a wit? (I, at least, did not.) Though he is still known for his ironic literary style, the academic quips on which this reputation is based can hardly compare to the sharp-tongued prose and relentless raillery of his then-widely-read and much-acclaimed print column.

In fact, if it wasn’t for Victor Lange’s footnote, you might not know that the performance reviewed by Lessing (below) was of a play written by Lessing himself. For that reason (but not that reason alone), the suggestiveness for which he was famous seems to shine through all the more clearly in this strange, brief, hamstrung review of a performance of his own Miss Sara Sampson.

“It is not possible to demand more from art than what Mdlle. Henseln achieved in the role of Sara, and indeed the play altogether was well performed. It is a little too long and it is therefore generally shortened at most theatres. Whether the author would be well satisfied with all these excisions, I almost incline to doubt. We know what authors are, if we want to take from them a mere bit of padding they cry out: You touch my life! It is true that by leaving out parts the excessive length of a play is clumsily remedied, and I do not understand how it is possible to shorten a scene without changing the whole sequence of a dialogue. But if the author does not like these foreign abbreviations, why does he not curtail it himself, if he thinks it is worth the trouble and is not one of those persons who put children into the world and then withdraw their hands from them for ever.” (”G. E. Lessing, ”No. 13,” in Hamburg Dramaturgy. Translated by Helen Zimmern. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1890 (1962): 38).

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Posted in Literature | Tagged | Leave a response

Neil Levi on Carl Schmitt and the Question of the Aesthetic

By joneilortiz on April 7, 2009

Point and Shoot, 2008, by Martha Rosler

Point and Shoot, 2008, by Martha Rosler

It’s a common accusation of the left that politics, liberal and conservative alike, becomes “aestheticized” through persistent suspensions of law and declarations of emergencies. But what, exactly, Neil Levi asks, in a timely, subtle paper on Carl Schmitt, is so “aesthetic” about political decisionism, a doctrine still fresh on our lips in the Obama era. The following, well-known quote from Schmitt’s Political Theology sums up this philosophy succinctly:

“The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything: It confirms not only the rule but also its existence, which derives only from the exception. In the exception the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition.” (PT, 15)

Richard Wolin, whose interpretation of this passage is widely shared, finds the image of politics promoted here “aesthetic” in spirit, on account of its celebration of “rupture, discontinuity, and shock, which Wolin describes as ‘aesthetic values.’

“Yet Wolin never tells us why Schmitt’s interest in exceptions, hardly unusual in the humanities and social sciences, is ‘quasi-aestheticist,’ never explains why rupture, discontinuity, and shock are especially ‘aesthetic values.’ He takes their status as such for granted and does not ever seem to find it necessary to explain what he means by the term aesthetic.” (Neil Levi, “Carl Schmitt and the Question of the Aesthetic,” New German Critique 34, No. 2 (Summer 2007): 27-43: 35)

But on the other hand, perhaps there is something ‘aesthetic’ about transgression, ‘breaking through the crust’:

“Yet Wolin’s sense that there is something ‘aesthetic’ about Schmitt’s proclamations on the state of exception is understandable. The notion of the extreme has a certain fascination that one might compare to that exerted by certain transgressive works of art. To dwell on the state of exception is obviously to dwell on the more dramatic aspects of political life, on moments that are conflictual and intense. But do these considerations make an interest in the extreme situation quasi-aesthetic?” (35)

Levi indeed observes that Schmitt’s image of transgression “evokes the Russian formalists’ idea of estrangement, or ostranenie“, except that instead of “calling into question [...] outmoded moral and political conventions [...] Schmitt’s estrangement seems designed rather to give one a sense of the awesome sovereign power authorizing and enforcing the laws that govern everyday behavior. Shklovsky’s estrangement ruptures everyday conventions to change the status quo; Schmitt’s exception works to reinforce it” (Levi “Schmitt” 36). Is this, then, the mode of “aesthetics” critics of Schmitt have in mind when they use the term pejoratively?

It would seem not, in that the more progressive theories with which Schmitt’s is contrasted do “not assume that the aesthetic component of a political idea automatically disqualifies it from the realm of politics proper”. Benjamin’s much-touted remarks in “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility” are for this reason largely inapplicable here, a fact Levi conveys succinctly when he observes that Benjamin’s point was that, for some — e.g. Marinetti, — war, specifically, was “already a work of art”. “Aestheticization” was thus, for Benjamin, more a “mode of perception” than a component of political theory per se (at least in this instance), although, in a different sense entirely, Schmitt does at times define the political “as an intensity, so that any conflict or opposition, once it attains a certain degree of existential antagonism, becomes political” (Levi “Schmitt” 30), a proposition with which Benjamin would most certainly have agreed.

With the more polemical understandings of “aestheticization” out of the way, Levi then turns to Schmitt’s own views on the matter, noting in passing that, “As it happens, Schmitt takes great pains to encourage his readers not to think about politics as aesthetic. What is ultimately so interesting, even amusing, about the charge of aestheticization against Schmitt is that it targets precisely those situations that Schmitt himself thinks distinguish the political from the aesthetic” (Levi “Schmitt” 37). Schmitt in fact spends a great deal of time trying to separate the latter from the former. “The aesthetic,” Levi observes, “functions as a kind of disturbing presence that Schmitt repeatedly disavows” (Levi “Schmitt” 37).

Linking this phenomena to “contemporary diatribes against postmodern irony, especially during the soul-searching that took place in the United States for a few weeks after September 11, 2001” (39), Levi then proceeds to enumerate Schmitt’s identification of “aesthetics” with decadent European bourgeoisie “arts and entertainment”, which for Schmitt categorically functions as the fundamental obstacle to the political. Though Schmitt, and perhaps decisionism in general, does view the arts as a purely negative force, they are nonetheless seen as a powerful and inextricable force acting on, or within, political forces. For Schmitt, the dominance of an “aesthetic perception” announces and prepares political defeat.

“Schmitt sees the aesthetic as the existential negation of the political in two apparently contradictory ways. On the one hand, he suggests that the dominance of aesthetic perception is a precursor to destruction of the Lebensform, to political defeat: “Everywhere in political history the incapacity or the unwillingness to make [the] distinction [between friend and enemy] is a symptom of the political end” (The Concept of the Political, 68). For example, before the Revolution the Russian bourgeoisie romanticized the Russian peasant, he says, while “a relativistic bourgeoisie in a confused Europe searched all sorts of exotic cultures for the purpose of making them an object of its aesthetic consumption” (CP, 68). For Schmitt, romanticization and exoticization of the other are modes of aestheticization. Aesthetic consumption, he thinks, is a condition, like [page] consumption proper, with fatal consequences. It negates political perception—negates, that is, the ability to recognize a mortal threat when one sees it.” (Levi “Schmitt” 38–39)

This final point, which concludes Levi’s piece, points to the limits of the “aestheticization” hypothesis — in several ways. For one, it shows how explicitly-militant political doctrines like Schmitt’s must in the end rely upon a paradoxical relation between aesthetic forms and political disavowals thereof. The bourgeoise romanticiziation of the Russian peasant, much like, say, contemporary American exoticizations of the Middle East, was a form of enmity, not a distraction from it. Indeed, in light of the extensive work on cultural mechanisms of colonial control, represented most forcefully by Said’s Orientalism, Schmitt’s opposing of “romanticization” to “enemy” seems symptomatic of his own clearly militant (not to mention proto-Nazi) political doctrine. Levi’s paper serves to highlight this important distinction, and in the process re-focuses attention away from the aesthetic image summoned up by political discourses to the cultural role of art and aesthetics assigned by those theories, which is something else entirely.

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Posted in Philosophy, Politics | Tagged , , | Leave a response

Synaesthesia, Aristotle, and Product Experience

By joneilortiz on April 3, 2009

“Sunaisthēsis is the distant origin of the modern “synaesthesia”; the verb from which it was drawn, sunaisthanesthai, can be found in two passages of Aristotle’s treatises. “Formed by the addition of the prefix ‘with’ (sun-) to the verb ‘to sense’ or ‘to perceive’ (aisthanesthai), the expression in all likelihood designated a ‘feeling in common,’ a perception shared by more than one. It is telling that the Stagirite invoked it in his analysis of friendship in the Eudemian as well as the Nicomachean Ethics. [Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics H.12.1254b24, and Nicomachean Ethics 9.9.1170b4] At this point in the development of the Greek language, the term applied to the communal life of many, and its meaning lay far from the one that would later be attributed to it by the commentators.” (Daniel Heller-Roazen, The Inner Touch: Archaeology of a Sensation. New York: Zone Books, 2007: 81.)

Modern philosophy’s focus on consciousness and cognition has in certain ways served to obscure prior ’corporeal’ conceptions of experience, a fact reflected in translators’ persistent grappling with Aristotle’s terminology, which seems to have no precise modern correlate.  Translations of sunaisthēsis tend to opt for terms that connote its opposite, a mental, cognitive faculty. Thus, in “contemporary discussions of Alexander, Simplicius, Damascius, Philoponus, and Priscian, one very often finds the Greek expression [sunaisthēsis] rendered by ‘consciousness’ and ’self-consciousness’”, even though, to be sure, “other choices have also been made. In his English version of Alexander’s Quaestiones, Robert W. Sharples consistently translates the term as ’self-awareness,’ and in his edition of Alexander’s commentary on the De sensu, Alan Towey opts for another expression, further still from the modern idiom: ‘joint perception.’” (Heller-Roazen Touch 83) These textual decisions seem all the more important when we consider the fact that Aristotle doesn’t seem to have a term for ‘consciousness’ even when he’s not talking about sunaisthēsis.

 ”It has been noted more than once that Aristotle, a child of his times, seems to have lacked any exact equivalent for the modern term. At times, the fact has been presented simply as a matter of linguistic means, as when Charles H. Kahn remarked that ‘the [page] Greek of Aristotle’s day has no term which really corresponds to the modern usage of “consciousness,” for the process or condition of awareness as such,’ or when Richard Sorabji observed that ‘Aristotle has no word corresponding to “mental act,” or to Descartes’ cogitatio (consciousness),’ or when, finally, Deborah K.W. Modrak noted that ‘Aristotle has no general term for consciousness.’ (Kahn, “Sensation and Consciousness in Aristotle’s Psychology,” p. 22; Sorabji, “Body and Soul in Aristotle,” p. 68; Modrak, Aristotelian Theory of Consciousness?” p. 160.)” (Heller-Roazen Touch 38–39)

Modern mistranslations aside, the concept of sunaisthēsis can be seen to have split, and taken on new meanings, over the centuries since Aristotle first introduced the word. For one, beginning with Galen, the original empathetic and communal connotations were overtaken by a more physiological, perceptual register, which remains to this day. Indeed, as Heller-Roazen describes it, sunaisthēsis became a word for sense as consciousness, a collaboration of the senses that produces awareness, attention, or ‘registration’.

“One of the earliest indications of a shift in the sense of the expression can be found in the medical literature that flourished after the beginning of the Christian era. It has been noted that Galen, for instance, employs sunaisthēsis to designate a sensation ‘in common,’ not in that it is shared by many but in that it reaches a single body all at once, while consisting, in effect, of multiple physiological affections: the physician can characterize [page] pain, for example, as being ‘felt simultaneously with the perception of the seething of the blood’ (meta sphugmou sunaisthēseōs). [Galen, On the Therapeutic Method 8.1 (10.875.14 Kühn)] In other medical authors of the period, such as Aretaeus, one finds the nominal and verbal forms of the expression used in a much more general sense: here the word appears to designate the acts of ‘detection,’ ‘registration,’ and ‘realization’ of any sensation. [Aretaeus, Arataeus 2.9.2] The word in this broad meaning soon left the terrain of medicine and entered common usage, and it was not long before authors as diverse as Philo Judaeus and Sextus Empiricus could invoke it to refer to the process of ‘noticing’ or ‘remarking’ upon a felt fact. [Polybius 5.72.5; Philo Judaeus, De virtutibus 76; Sextus Empiricus, Adversus mathematicos 9.68]“  (Heller-Roazen Touch 81–82)

This concept, and its historic tension with theories of consciousness, seems especially relevant today, in that the contemporary ‘practical sciences’ — behavioral advertising, product testing, user-based design, etc. — rely on a conception of the subject that seems closer, in principle, to synaesthesia than to, say, the intellect.  Though the former now for the most part refers to an ‘inappropriate’ transfer between senses — where, for instance, you see what you hear — it also refers to the normal developmental process of ‘integrating your senses‘. However, in a much wider sense, synaesthesia is regularly induced, or manipulated, through artistic and commercial practices. “The way the brain buys” is, as the phrase suggests, in many ways the result of a complex orchestration of stimuli, environmental conditions, and subjective desires. It is now well-understood that conscious mental acts are only one, small part of the puzzle.

Indeed, product experience, for instance, is increasingly shown to rely upon subliminal, or at least less-than-attentive, sensory factors. Ludden & Schifferstein’s remarkable paper on the “Effects of Visual-Auditory Incongruity on Product Expression and Surprise” is the case in point. “Product experience,” they conclude, ”is influenced by information from all the senses.

Our experiments provide insight into how sounds contribute to the overall experience of a product’s expression. We manipulated the sounds of dust busters and juicers so that they either did or did not fit the expressions of the products’ appearances. In some, but not all cases, we found an inverse relationship between the degree-of-fit of a sound and the degree of surprise evoked. Furthermore, we found in some cases that the expression of a product’s sound influenced the overall expression of that product.

Though it’s a little odd that Aristotle would be vindicated in this way, the point to be grasped here is that, beyond deliberation and decision-making, experience is also, in a deeper sense than expected, a complex, sub-conscious negotiation of sensory material. What is noticed, what might seem the most important feature, may, thus, be a decoy or constitutive distraction from a more elaborate interplay of explicit and subordinate affects and features. You might think you’re buying the juicer for its juicing abilities when, in fact, it’s that and more — its sound, its look, and the degree of fit between the two. Which is precisely why Harley Davidson has been trying to trademark the Harley-Davidson roar. They’ve realized that it’s a bigger factor than you might think in the appeal of their product and your decision to buy it.

All of this points the way to a recovery of the ‘communal’ aspect of Aristotle’s sunaisthēsis – if only because, ultimately, the relative correlation between a sound and an image, between the juicer’s look and its whir, is cultural, emergent, and short-lived. Though we can’t go into it here, this forgotten dimension to sunaisthēsis, and synaesthesia, constitutes that other ‘common sense’ – the general, widespread, uncharted folk knowledge base that defines a people and their shared aesthetic sensibilities.

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Posted in Design, Philosophy | Tagged , , , | Leave a response

Novelty and the Commodity

By joneilortiz on March 31, 2009

Textile display, 1972, Eatons Department Store

Textile display, 1972, Eaton's Department Store

There are, it would seem, two kinds of novelty: the one that breaks from tradition, ushering in a new order, and the one that perpetuates the same under the guise of change. The latter, associated with fads and trends, marks the logic of consumption, whereas the former, querying the new and indeterminate, suggests a revolutionary break from the status quo. Distinguishing the two may, however, prove more difficult than the language suggests. Even for Adorno, the first to really bracket-off the commodity in this fashion, breaks from tradition dangerously compare to the logic of tradition itself:

“It (the concept of Modernism) does not negate earlier artistic exercises as styles have always done; however it negates tradition as such. To that extent, it ratifies the bourgeois principle in art. Its abstractness is linked to the commodity character of art.” (Theodor W. Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie, ed. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann. (Frankfurt, 1970), 38; quoted in Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, tr. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 59.)

The “abstractness” common to the negation of tradition and the bourgeois principle of art is the ‘questioning’ integral to tradition itself – which appears, in retrospect, as a succession of fads, styles, aesthetics. Peter Bürger, the philosopher of the avant-garde, so too defers to Adorno’s claim that “In an essentially non-traditionalist society (the bourgeois), esthetic tradition is a priori questionable. The authority of the new is that of the historically ineluctable” (Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie, 38; quoted in Bürger, 59). Distinguishing the commodity-novelty from the emancipatory-novelty becomes accordingly difficult, if not categorically impossible. Which is to say, if art, too, is driven by a need for “newness”, then the commodity (in this regard at least) may not fundamentally, only substantially, differ from the artwork.

Bürger, for his part, notes this in passing – “It must be remembered that where art does in fact submit to the coercion to bring what is new, it can hardly be distinguished from a fad” – but goes on to accredit the ‘fad effect’ solely to projections of “the person who wants to see it there” (Bürger, 61). Here, in a sharp change of direction, the failing of the artwork is attributed to its apparent over-openness to interpretation, which is to say, the viewer’s appropriation of the work toward ‘whatever’ end. The work as fad – Warhol’s 100 Campbell soup cans, he gives as an example – serves as a projection screen for the subject’s specifically consumerist desires. So, it would seem, novelty is really a function of interpretation and falls squarely on the side of the subject, not the work. (But if it’s only a problem of interpretation, then how is it that certain works are regularly susceptible to this subjective error?)

Bürger moreover attribrutes this form of meaninglessness to the Neo-avant-garde in particular, “which stages for a second time the avant-gardiste break with tradition [and] becomes a manifestation that is void of sense and that permits the positing of any meaning whatever” (61). It is in this sense that the historical avant-garde is perceived as itself sliding into novelty; even the name, neo avant-garde, is designed to mark this empty repetition. The concept of the new, he adds, is “too general and nonspecific [… and] provides no criteria for distinguishing between faddish (arbitrary) and historically necessary newness” (63). Indeed, for Bürger the concept of the new can only fail to adequately “designate what is decisive in such a break with tradition”; it hence remains on the side of “the means of artistic representation” (63).

Bürger’s attitude toward the question of newness in avant-garde works here approaches Gianni Vattimo’s oft-quoted condemnation of the commodity character of the new: Continue reading “Novelty and the Commodity”

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Posted in Commodity, Philosophy, Politics | Tagged , , , | 1 Response

 Page 1 of 10  1  2  3  4  5 » ...  Last »