#pseudposting

[pseudorca-crassidens]

ティナ Tina

at Aqua Park Shinagawa via @okigon_aqupa

[biopolitique]

The reparations discourse is a classic case of the reasons why politicising memory only leads to the perpetuation of grievances, with “memorial competition”, resentment and civil discord as results. Against memory, history must prevail.

In the 1980s, France was coming to terms with the reality of the German occupation and the responsibility of the French state in the Holocaust was increasingly accepted. This led to laws giving a special status to the remembrance of these events. Yet in a bizarre turn of events, historians that bitterly fought against holocaust denial in the preceding years (such as Pierre Vidal-Nacquet) turned against those “memorial laws” with equal determination. They argued that giving a sacred aura to these events was counter-productive: they prevented historical inquiry which would correct myths and historiographical mistakes by making them unquestionable. These critics can be linked to those of Norman Finkelstein on the subject.

Understanding historical events and past realities beyond the veil of myths requires inquiry, which memory/remembrance impede due to the untouchability they grant to emotional accounts and memories of those. They keep the past alive when what we really need is to dissect it.

[dilmz]

Dude. “Profit” is commonly used to mean the benefit of doing something. Beyond that, shove your labor theory of value up your butthole. Just because someone spends a bunch of time doing something doesn’t make it valuable, you punkass pseudposter. That idea had already been overturned by the marginal revolution in the 19th century.

You’re not even using the English language correctly, bitch. Profit isn’t something you extract to ‘break even’. Breaking even means you don’t make a profit or a loss. It has ‘even’ in the name. Fuck you and your terrible peabrained take.

[biopolitique]

I don’t understand how someone can claim to be anticapitalist yet support drug use. I have a few suppositions as to why some people hold this view.

First one is, decriminalising consumption. I would especially understand it from the point of view of Americans or any other country with (grossly) repressive laws against consumers. While I am also hostile to such rules, it is a second order problem. The issue is indeed drug production and the structures that allow it, the very structures that produce the consumer as well — since drugs have an escapist function. This brings me to the latter points.

I believe — it’s a pure conjecture — that drug consumption and production must be seen in their eyes as a benign, common activities, that do not disturb society. Drug use is considered monolithically: Yemenis chewing on qat, Italians sipping on wine, traditional uses of coca, all lumped together with amphetamines, cocaine, heroine and all the others. But the reality of drug trade nowadays, both legal and illegal, is that it is intrinsically capitalist, with little difference between the legal firm and the illegal cartel — cartel, a word that was commonly used to describe legal economic phenomenons a few decades ago...

Drug trade has followed closely the development of imperialism and capitalism. The first drug lords were British merchants of the East India company; the Opium Wars and the progresses made in the XIXth century in the pharmaceutical field have created the most common modern drugs. It is the tail side of capitalist production, surviving thanks to its capacity to challenge and corrupt governments that are unable to uproot it. And how could they? A drug war cannot be won, unless fundamental changes are made. The difficulty of the task should be obvious enough to anyone.

So, why would self-proclaimed “anticapitalists” join the side of capitalist enterprises? At this stage only wild guesses could be made. They could be seeing the issue from the vantage point of the consumer and/or the average dealer, i.e. the ones the most at risk and exploited the most in the process. It could be childish anti-authoritarianism, reducing all political discourse to the strident shriek of: “you’re not my mom!!”. Or perhaps, it is the equally misguided view of criminality having any revolutionary potential, fed by the romantic image of the bandit as a figure of the sovereign individual. A fine belief! But history has shown the preferred side of criminals. It’s only logical: they live off the society that “outlaws” them, and you wouldn’t let a business die wouldn’t you? Unless you’re some kind of communist?...

More could be said in that vein. I’ll leave it at these few assumptions, which may or may not be true. In any case, I firmly believe that one cannot support drug use in the present system while claiming to desire to change it — let alone overthrow it. Analysing the concrete conditions of our world should help us on our moral choices, for there is nothing more political than the moral a society imposes upon itself.

[biopolitique]

Thinking back on Jünger’s anarch I’ve come to think that it is a form of armed pacifism aimed towards the institutions.

Take Switzerland. The reason it was mostly left alone in the great conflicts that ravaged Europe since its creation is that the country had both a hostile terrain and a hostile population. This second point is critical: a daring Hannibal of modern times could cross any terrain, but even a Napoléon could not do much against determined partisans. With its ideology of the citizen-soldier, the Confederation was able to fend off its powerful neigbours with the sole threat of a merciless guerrilla — think of Wilhelm II’s quote on the matter. In short: it doesn’t matter if you “would rather not to” but have no possibility to.

Which brings me back to esteemed Mr. Ernst: the capacity of the anarch to blend in the social order combined to its power to leave it at any moment, only to better come back, is not a contradiction but an exercise of one’s own sovereignty. In there lies the possibility of change — as long as you don’t go down that jüngerian road of pure individualism. To use the terms of his metaphor, you might survive alone once out of the ship; but to live, a few friends will help down there in the forest.

[biopolitique]

Foucault didn’t get Saló tbh. The movie is not about historical nazism or fascism, as the term has a particular meaning in the mouth of Pasolini. Some texts in his “Corsair writings” indicate that it simply refers to a totalitarian organisation of society, and Saló is an illustration of his idea of a transgression “from above”, which is “tolerated” — someone else said “everything’s permitted, nothing is possible”. Right-wing or leftist readings that criticise PPP for being a sort of Critical-Theory-Puritan (for different reasons) fail to understand his ideal of freedom.

Foucault is right, however, when he attacks those who critique the posture of the spectator. That’s the weakest aspect of the work of Pasolini . Rancière wrote a good book on the matter.

[biopolitique]

If you don’t take Winston as a character you’re supposed to “relate to” 1984 is a great novel not only about totalitarianism and its horrors but also how individual resistance is unhelpful when it comes to challenge the entire system — he has sexual desire and a longing for intimacy, that makes him an outlaw, but does not give him the strength to withstand the assault of disciplinary measures.

He ends up happy drinking Gin. Is it so bad? Is it? Wouldn’t you be happy drinking Gin at a bar, cheering for the latest war? You’d be, don’t pretend you would not be.

“Life under authoritarian regimes is boring and predictable”

The qualities I attribute to 1984 are most apparent in Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece : Brazil

[biopolitique]

I always respect faith since I do not have it (yet?), even though I mostly disagree with the translation of said beliefs into non-spiritual domains — i.e. politics, morals, laws, etc... I think if it was not for that I’d be more inclined towards Islam than Christianity, but I resent the idea of a god-given law. God’s concerns are not of this world, and I’ll be damned if only one specific language can express the will of God... this is a strictly personal, misinforned opinion but I think that giving language a sacred status in that context is a proof of failure, for an eternal truth could be understood regardless of the reader’s mother tongue. I staunchly disagree with tradcaths that see Latin as a must for mass, for instance. Latin’s legitimacy is nothing compared to that of Arabic or Hebrew for the corresponding texts, be spiritual or even physical! Intellectually or spiritually, it is superfluous. A thorough work of adaptation and translation has to be undertaken in order to make the Bible available to laypeople, most certainly, but is not better than to sing songs of praise which you cannot even understand?

(Disclaimer: These are the opinions of an outsider of the church. I have had many discussions with steadfast believers, of various kinds — trad or prog — and those are my mere thoughts)

[biopolitique]

The war between Iran and the USA is yet another instance of the importance the theologico-political for a country (or any entity really) to exercise its sovereignty. These two countries are perhaps the most advanced in the field, though in different ways.

What I’m getting at: you’d never imagine any of those two countries going to war with the EU. Europe prides itself of being a culturally secular “bloc”, the direct heirs of the Enlightenment. To be European is to renounce history, to renounce action, to have no enemies and no friends, to live your last days in a sterile nursing home, recalling distorted and fading memories of your great youth, alone. Europe is not even born as of now, and yet it seems blocked in a perpetual late life, an awful yet always-worsening senility.

I cannot, will not, do not want to, be European.

[biopolitique]

I don’t like people who think they can escape society or redefine it.

Jünger got it right. While still largely an escapist, he knew that you could never really get away from society. Your fellow man is always there, in your shadow.

Foucault got it too, I already talked about it. But unlike Jünger, he was more the kind to think about a process of redefining.

[biopolitique]

Behind my appreciation of people such as Dalí or Bowie lies the fact that their carnivalesque camp, being wholly miscible in queer* forms of fascism reveals the impotency of the carnival as a subversive form. This spectacle, the play between dualities, is fundamentally unable to abolish the duality, to go beyond what is. It is an inclusive exclusion. They make an obscene display of supposed transgressions that are effectively too out-there to simply be there and threaten what is within. With these the centre holds.

[biopolitique]

The more I think about it the less a trans-to-nazi or nazi-to-trans pipeline seems ludicrous. They both reach such degrees in the politicisation of bare life that what brings them together overrides what separates them. This does not mean that they can be indifferentiated, as they forcibly oppose each other when it comes to things such as what they claim to defend (the biological individual vs. the biological community, to give a specific example). It simply mean that they use the same conceptual methods, i.e. pseudo(?)-scientific reductionism coupled with a promethean view of the capacities of mankind. In the end, both claim to be revolutionary when they are nothing but the mindless modernist frenzy of nihilistic men.

[biopolitique]

As a French general just said, the whole Soleimani dramatisation was just done with US domestic policy in mind. Soleimani has been targeted countless times and never killed. What was Trump thinking ? That he didn’t want an embassy occupation like Carter in 1978. Because the mere symbol of it would kill his bid for a second term.

Let’s face it: the US and Iran have been at war for quite some time now, and these recent developments will not change the situation too deeply. It just brings this hostility to a new level in terms of publicity, but not in those of military might.

Americans may console themselves by asserting that Soleimani was a terrorist, which is true if as long as you hold this standard for many US generals and diplomats who do basically the same thing.

Are you ready to kill for a re-election ? Is this your definition of patriotism ?

[biopolitique]

The nature of scientism is that every now and then someone invents scientific racism again

[biopolitique]

People will call themselves “anarchists” and then literally defend The Spectacle... like there’s anything subversive about porn or video games nowadays — if there was any at all in the first place

[biopolitique]

Tfw Foucault actually did not say that things are like prisons, but studied the evolution of punishment not for itself but to study The Prison, that is the soul of the prisoner, as the mirror of the mystical body of the king, as defined by Ernst Kantorowicz.

(Discipline and Punish is a work of inverted political theology)