http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/in_wit...

Kvond: By “whiteness” I do not mean literal whiteness, though Stringer does adopt the INCREASING professorial tendency to glance calmly over his glasses in somewhat of a caucasion mannerism, as you mention….

All the rest can be easily read.

Kvond: I can't say that I agree. Obviously he was instrumental in the taking of the towers and the pit in the first place, and it was his cool-headed but draconian response that clearly was that of his thug past, the same feirceness that Avon favors. I see no evidence from season one that he was somehow soft or lacked instinct. I supposed was that he had learned his lesson from season one, that it no longer “paid” to bring heat to a situation, hence his economics.

JL: “But whether that pursuit of legitimacy is a pursuit of “Whiteness” … I'm not sure the one quite maps onto the other. Do his mannerisms, personality, delusions otherwise invoke a form of Whiteness? I guess it could be argued that his professorial demeanor connotes a certain kind of grandfatherly whiteness — but not necessarily or at least not predominantly. There's also a kind of violence risked in equating a thug's delusions of social legitimacy with specifically racial delusions.”

Kvond: By “whiteness” I do not mean literal whiteness, though Stringer does adopt the INCREASING professorial tendency to glance calmly over his glasses in somewhat of a caucasion mannerism, as you mention. The whiteness he wants is the same whiteness that “Clay” Davis is after (who also adopts some caucasian mannerisms when appropriate). It is the whiteness of invisibility, where you remain largely unmarked so you can effect buisness, law, economic power. When contractors see Stringer coming, they see a marked person, someone they can play. Stringer is trying to scub himself clean. Its not simply the importation of white ideology into the ghetto, but rather the real world acknowledgment of what it takes to exercise power, grow wealth, remain anonymous to law, outside of the ghetto.

JL: “The key part of the exchange here is when Stringer attributes the operation's problems to a business cycle, as if it's just a dip in the graph that will eventually correct itself. This is of course straight macroeconomic, free market theory. But what I think the show is saying here, on a less economic level, is that events 'on the ground' have changed in such a way that the ideas 'in the air' can no longer be used to describe them, whether or not those ideas were accurate before.”

Kvond: I don't know. What really did Stringer get wrong? I can see the theme you suggest rather obviously on the police side of the game, and there is a tendency for The Wire to mirror points of contact, but Stringer was probably right about the buisness cycle. The huge problem that he had was an incredibly simple economic one, he had no supply (not to mention that the loss of the towers means a spreading out of the customer base. The move towards the collective was precisely the right economic move, and he was well positioned. I don't really see where the “model” failed. For your point to hold you would have to write a show where supply remained high and strong, and still Stringer had his downfall. When you say that “parameters” of the situation changed, these largely were economic parameters.

But there is another issue here. The scene, from the second season I believe, and not the first (is this my mistake) is also about not the failure of Stringer's pure economic model, but about his Machievellian maneuver to put Omar onto Brother Mouzone. When Stringer tells Avon that this is just an economic downturn, he is hiding his executive action against Avon's judgment. So, in a sense, he's just blowing smoke at Avon with his economic theory. It is an economic downturn, there was a loss of supply; and hands on action is needed. Stringer quite rightly has his hand fist deep into what is required to make the right economic move, he has to betray Avon's hiring of a hitman, let go of the towers because in real economic term supply is needed and territory isn't what they thought it was. While Stringer is talking economics, he is properly also acting behind the scenes, changing things on the ground. Now this causes him some trouble, but the trouble comes from him and Avon not seeing clearly what is needed. Avon is still thinking of all the dynamics needed to hold the towers, which they won together.

JL: “Maybe, then, it would be better to frame this dissonance not as one between abstract and real but as one between ideology and events. Stringer is clearly overlooking — or not seeing, mistaking, etc. — something. I'm open to ideas for how to express this misrecognition, but I don't think identity exhausts the question”

Kvond: But I don't see his mistake, other than the cost of betraying Avon at several levels.

You're completely right that he's after legitimacy (–that's a much better way of putting it) — but to the point of delusion, I think. The macroeconomics theme introduces the element of ideology, from 'outside' the ghetto; it's an improper factor that Stringer is trying to incorporate. Which is why Avon has to remind him that legitimacy and all that is just not possible. But whether that pursuit of legitimacy is a pursuit of “Whiteness” … I'm not sure the one quite maps onto the other. Do his mannerisms, personality, delusions otherwise invoke a form of Whiteness? I guess it could be argued that his professorial demeanor connotes a certain kind of grandfatherly whiteness — but not necessarily or at least not predominantly. There's also a kind of violence risked in equating a thug's delusions of social legitimacy with specifically racial delusions.

But your main objection seems to be over whether or not Stringer can be said to have “applied the wrong model (too abstract) to a real economic situation”. Perhaps I have overstressed the abstract vs. real dynamic, assuming this binary isn't a false one (–I think it generally is); but either way I do think the show organizes itself in these terms, however problematically. The key part of the exchange here is when Stringer attributes the operation's problems to a business cycle, as if it's just a dip in the graph that will eventually correct itself. This is of course straight macroeconomic, free market theory. But what I think the show is saying here, on a less economic level, is that events 'on the ground' have changed in such a way that the ideas 'in the air' can no longer be used to describe them, whether or not those ideas were accurate before. It's more like the parameters of the situation have changed so much that it can no longer accommodate the same myth. (If this is what you mean when you say that the things themselves are in conflict, I agree.)

Maybe, then, it would be better to frame this dissonance not as one between abstract and real but as one between ideology and events. Stringer is clearly overlooking — or not seeing, mistaking, etc. — something. I'm open to ideas for how to express this misrecognition, but I don't think identity exhausts the question. As for Marlo, say no more! I'm about to start the third season!

M.O.: “In fancying his work a more intellectual, abstracted affair than it is in reality, he mistakes one set of mechanisms for another. Where a certain amount of physical violence is called for, which has no market correlate, Stringer discerns instead a ‘business cycle’ that will pass of its own accord. It is at this point that Avon (Wood Harris), the boss, reminds him [above] that the street is not the market, that the one does not quite map onto the other. Here one could say that what Avon, or The Wire, is really saying is that all market conflicts, legitimate or not, ultimately descend into a brutal clash of interests, and that Economics itself — the NYU class, the academic theories, the vocabulary of abstractions — only serves to mask this basic reality.”

Kvond: I have to say that I disagree with this if you feel that the point of Stringer Bell is that he applied the wrong model (too abstract) to a real economic situation. Stringer does quite well, and has only a small problem with Marlo. His real problem is that while he is generating money, it is really isn't money that he's after. He's after legitimacy, in a word “Whiteness,” something he can never have. It is not that there is endless conflict that can never be made economic enough, but rather that the things, the values we pursue economically, are themselves in conflict. The clash between Avon and Stringer is not economic, but identity-ridden. Remember, the entire Wire escalation occurs because Stringer Bell becomes too violent in season one, virilently killing off even the loosest end, bringing on all kinds of heat (Omar, etc.). It was being “too thug” in the first place that gets the Wire going, not recognizing the position that had been earned by the violence to get there. Stringer's crime was the crime of identity.

You see the very same question of idenities played out the in person of Marlo in the end.

“if it leans more toward the Aristotelian sense of ethos/character than toward questions of right and wrong, I question how helpful that term is, in light of its moral associations.”

Ethos/character strictly speaking in the Aristotelian sense has little to do with “morality” or the “moral” as we understand the terms (as a set of obligations or duties, moral right, moral wrong, etc). To think of ethos/character as having “moral” associations is to impose Judeo-Christian, and perhaps post-Kantian, assumptions onto the term. Aristotle advocates behaviors and actions that we might find “morally” reprehensible.

This is what is so challenging about Aristotle, and also what I think drew moral philosophers in the last half century to him: how to understand an “ethos” that in some areas perhaps abuts, yet is by no means compatible with, our sense of the “moral.” It seems increasingly relevant given the clunkiness of our “moral” vocabulary, rights and wrongs, etc, but that clunky vocabulary probably won't go away anytime soon. So we will continue to have problems in understanding whether Tony, Avon, Stringer are doing the right/wrong thing, in what ways, etc. But then again, who doesn’t like problems? :-)