Murder, She Said
Here is one of Tim Shorrock's latest articles. He'll be coming to speak at GMU next thursday, April 1.
Friday, March 26, 2004
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Perry Anderson, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism
This is a difficult book to summarize and I am far from being qualified to critique it. The amount of historical research involved in the book is phenomenal (at least from my perspective) and he has done much to periodize these gigantic historical formations. The most important attribute, I suppose, is the method of study itself. He doesn't really have any grand conclusions--in fact he basically ends the book by saying that it is just a prologue to the Lineages book. There is a sort of assertion about the slave mode of production that he makes early on, but it is really just a hypothetical observation that he makes. He basically claims that the slave mode of production--as it existed in Classical Greek civilization and was perfected during Roman Antiquity--has a significant cultural effect. Because work is denigrated (as being something only the lower classes do) and the intensification of labor is usually accomplished by making slaves work harder or getting more of them, the impetus to create labor saving technology is never developed in these time periods. Though he doesn't really spend a lot of energy proving this (although it is always difficult to prove a negative) the assertion is a thumbnail of what the book (and likely the sequal) seems to argue: that there are discernible social and historical forces that cause events to unfold in a particular way. I don't know exactly how to critique this from a historiographic perspective, but the titles of the two books (Lineages and Passages) indicate the most likely critique I can think of: it is a linear narrative of history that proports to explain things in terms of sequential causality. However, as problematic as this might be for some pomo chaos-theory inspired historians, I think it is still an important thing to do. For one thing, most of the time, it seems to work. Certainly there were probably a number of countervailing forces that he doesn't take into account in his sweeping version of history, but he at least draws a broad portrait--both temporally and spatially--of how these societies unfolded.
And he is certainly more rigorous in his descriptions of causality than Marshall McLuhan--who, though I was reading him for the other field, ended up being an interesting foil for the discussion Anderson is having. Unlike McLuhan who basically has two different categories (literate and non-literate) that explain virtually every difference in any society, Anderson is much more careful in considering the determining forces of history, often showing the contradictions that emerge the larger you extend your observation. He is also extremely concerned with particularities and explaining the divergences between different historical developments--calling northern and south eastern europe "control" cases in the study of these historical development. He then goes on to carefully consider why the "far North" (i.e. Scandinavia, esp. Sweden) developed into feudalism despite being left out of the Roman empire and why the area "south of the Danube" (i.e. the balkens, etc.) didn't ever fully develop into feudal economies despite the fact that they were central to late Roman expansion. A good summary of most of the book is available at various places in the last chapters--though he never engages in a total summary--but he is roughly arguing that, in just about every case, there are historical limits to any cobination of social and economic forces (or in the more Marxian terminology, to any mode of production). It would seem that the rather trite cliche "what doesn't kill you will make you stronger" is often reversed for the development of these societies, the new saying being, "what makes you stronger will eventually kill you." This seems to be what he inevitably argues about any conjuncture:
Greek civilization develops into the first radical democracy, where virtually everyone has equal voice--except that the only way this somewhat classless society is able to exist is that it is based on slave labor. In other words, there is actually a large, disenfranchised majority that serves as the sort of class boundary that allows for Greek democracy to flourish. However, the radically democratic structures don't travel well so as Greece tries to expand, there is no way to keep the geographically defined democracy and the empire all at once. Hence there are internal limits to the development of this mode of production. These are overcome by the Roman Empire, but only for a while: and so on and so forth. In the east, there is the same story: the area "south of the danube" is able to survive the fall of Roman Empire, and repelling most of the invaders that helped precipitate its fall. But by doing so, it actually ends up hindering its own development because it is never forced to give up its antiquated (and liminal) mode of production. Hence all it really does is stave off the collapse for a millinea or so--and to create a situation where the collapse is far more total and debilitating than the seemingly creative destruction of the Roman synthesis with its Germanic invaders.
This points to another key theme in the book. Rooted in what seems to be a sort of enlightenment conception of the progress of civilization (despite its starts and stops, failures and success), Anderson seems to argue that there are a set of necessary stages in the course of development and that the test case of proper development is still Western Europe. Furthermore, he seems to believe--probably very much like Marx--that there is a necessary destruction of antiquated modes of production in order to move forward. I don't think he isn't on solid ground here--and couldn't critique him for it historically either way--but I do note that this is a fairly popular interpretation of the course of historical development. It is also the sort of rallying cry of the neoliberals who have little concern for forms of life or cultural heritage (except when they are "ours") and believe strongly that the rest of the world should simply strive to imitate us or quit complaining. This is probably not entirely borne out by Anderson's analysis--and to be sure he is much more interested in the particularities and combinations of social forces that lead to various historical developments than the sort of "democracy and capitalism for everyone" that has been promoted for the past century or so. He just seems to set the stage for that type of reading by assuming a sort of propriety to feudal development. Perhaps some of this will be nuanced in the next book, but for now, I am just noting this similarity.
Another note: along with the stuff on McLuhan I also read some James Carey articles about Harold Innis. I don't know enough about Innis to properly give a set of thoughts on him, but I have read enough to know that I am interested in including some more sustained readings of his work in the larger version of the field statements. He was McLuhan's mentor, but had a much broader understnding of the role of communication in society. He seems to precede people like Mattelart in looking past the medium and considering communication in general and, more importantly, the way that institutions and power relations constrain the development of those media. He is still similar to McLuhan, however, in his discussion of the bias of communication. The distinction between spatially binding and temporally binding media is most commonly referred to. Basically, the temporally binding media tends to not travel as well--either because it is on a bulky substance or it is part of an oral culture that can't guarantee unaltered transmission--so the focus is on the lineage of the history of the society. Thus the binding tends to be a sort of deep cultural heritage, concerned with its continuity through history. The opposite, it would seem, is true of the spatially binding media, which travel better and tend to encourage and enable geographical expansion at the expense of historical perspective. I think these are helpful distinctions if they aren't understood essentially and would like to look into them for the fields.
This is a difficult book to summarize and I am far from being qualified to critique it. The amount of historical research involved in the book is phenomenal (at least from my perspective) and he has done much to periodize these gigantic historical formations. The most important attribute, I suppose, is the method of study itself. He doesn't really have any grand conclusions--in fact he basically ends the book by saying that it is just a prologue to the Lineages book. There is a sort of assertion about the slave mode of production that he makes early on, but it is really just a hypothetical observation that he makes. He basically claims that the slave mode of production--as it existed in Classical Greek civilization and was perfected during Roman Antiquity--has a significant cultural effect. Because work is denigrated (as being something only the lower classes do) and the intensification of labor is usually accomplished by making slaves work harder or getting more of them, the impetus to create labor saving technology is never developed in these time periods. Though he doesn't really spend a lot of energy proving this (although it is always difficult to prove a negative) the assertion is a thumbnail of what the book (and likely the sequal) seems to argue: that there are discernible social and historical forces that cause events to unfold in a particular way. I don't know exactly how to critique this from a historiographic perspective, but the titles of the two books (Lineages and Passages) indicate the most likely critique I can think of: it is a linear narrative of history that proports to explain things in terms of sequential causality. However, as problematic as this might be for some pomo chaos-theory inspired historians, I think it is still an important thing to do. For one thing, most of the time, it seems to work. Certainly there were probably a number of countervailing forces that he doesn't take into account in his sweeping version of history, but he at least draws a broad portrait--both temporally and spatially--of how these societies unfolded.
And he is certainly more rigorous in his descriptions of causality than Marshall McLuhan--who, though I was reading him for the other field, ended up being an interesting foil for the discussion Anderson is having. Unlike McLuhan who basically has two different categories (literate and non-literate) that explain virtually every difference in any society, Anderson is much more careful in considering the determining forces of history, often showing the contradictions that emerge the larger you extend your observation. He is also extremely concerned with particularities and explaining the divergences between different historical developments--calling northern and south eastern europe "control" cases in the study of these historical development. He then goes on to carefully consider why the "far North" (i.e. Scandinavia, esp. Sweden) developed into feudalism despite being left out of the Roman empire and why the area "south of the Danube" (i.e. the balkens, etc.) didn't ever fully develop into feudal economies despite the fact that they were central to late Roman expansion. A good summary of most of the book is available at various places in the last chapters--though he never engages in a total summary--but he is roughly arguing that, in just about every case, there are historical limits to any cobination of social and economic forces (or in the more Marxian terminology, to any mode of production). It would seem that the rather trite cliche "what doesn't kill you will make you stronger" is often reversed for the development of these societies, the new saying being, "what makes you stronger will eventually kill you." This seems to be what he inevitably argues about any conjuncture:
Greek civilization develops into the first radical democracy, where virtually everyone has equal voice--except that the only way this somewhat classless society is able to exist is that it is based on slave labor. In other words, there is actually a large, disenfranchised majority that serves as the sort of class boundary that allows for Greek democracy to flourish. However, the radically democratic structures don't travel well so as Greece tries to expand, there is no way to keep the geographically defined democracy and the empire all at once. Hence there are internal limits to the development of this mode of production. These are overcome by the Roman Empire, but only for a while: and so on and so forth. In the east, there is the same story: the area "south of the danube" is able to survive the fall of Roman Empire, and repelling most of the invaders that helped precipitate its fall. But by doing so, it actually ends up hindering its own development because it is never forced to give up its antiquated (and liminal) mode of production. Hence all it really does is stave off the collapse for a millinea or so--and to create a situation where the collapse is far more total and debilitating than the seemingly creative destruction of the Roman synthesis with its Germanic invaders.
This points to another key theme in the book. Rooted in what seems to be a sort of enlightenment conception of the progress of civilization (despite its starts and stops, failures and success), Anderson seems to argue that there are a set of necessary stages in the course of development and that the test case of proper development is still Western Europe. Furthermore, he seems to believe--probably very much like Marx--that there is a necessary destruction of antiquated modes of production in order to move forward. I don't think he isn't on solid ground here--and couldn't critique him for it historically either way--but I do note that this is a fairly popular interpretation of the course of historical development. It is also the sort of rallying cry of the neoliberals who have little concern for forms of life or cultural heritage (except when they are "ours") and believe strongly that the rest of the world should simply strive to imitate us or quit complaining. This is probably not entirely borne out by Anderson's analysis--and to be sure he is much more interested in the particularities and combinations of social forces that lead to various historical developments than the sort of "democracy and capitalism for everyone" that has been promoted for the past century or so. He just seems to set the stage for that type of reading by assuming a sort of propriety to feudal development. Perhaps some of this will be nuanced in the next book, but for now, I am just noting this similarity.
Another note: along with the stuff on McLuhan I also read some James Carey articles about Harold Innis. I don't know enough about Innis to properly give a set of thoughts on him, but I have read enough to know that I am interested in including some more sustained readings of his work in the larger version of the field statements. He was McLuhan's mentor, but had a much broader understnding of the role of communication in society. He seems to precede people like Mattelart in looking past the medium and considering communication in general and, more importantly, the way that institutions and power relations constrain the development of those media. He is still similar to McLuhan, however, in his discussion of the bias of communication. The distinction between spatially binding and temporally binding media is most commonly referred to. Basically, the temporally binding media tends to not travel as well--either because it is on a bulky substance or it is part of an oral culture that can't guarantee unaltered transmission--so the focus is on the lineage of the history of the society. Thus the binding tends to be a sort of deep cultural heritage, concerned with its continuity through history. The opposite, it would seem, is true of the spatially binding media, which travel better and tend to encourage and enable geographical expansion at the expense of historical perspective. I think these are helpful distinctions if they aren't understood essentially and would like to look into them for the fields.
Friday, March 19, 2004
Reading McLuhan, Understanding Media...
The first half is very literary and historical and sociological. Though the focus is ultimately on technology, he is much more concerned with the way that it functions socially. Communication technology he figures as just another advancement--and, like Mattleart later on, he is also widening the definition of communication so that the wheel is also a communication technology. Unlike other times where a broad definition seems to make the concept itself seem meaningless (simply because it is unclear that the concept, or the word for it, means anything at all once you make it that broad, cf: culture) the inclusion of somewhat unorthodox examples of communication actually make it clearer what he means. I have some reservations about the extended metaphor of "the extension of man" and this desire to have our central nervous system extend outward (presaging Haraway's cyborgs I suppose) is part of the problem to which the electronic media are the solution (along with many other comm technologies before then.) But it does seem that he has accounted for what Polanyi might call a double movement in that, as these new forms of communcation/media/culture are introduced, there is a way that society tries to protect itself--only instead of a counteraction to the social change, he describes a numbness that develops either at the site of the change or generally throughout the social body, which helps dull the convulsive shifts.
The shifts he's decribing aren't just--or even really at all--a reorganization of the social field or the modes of production, consumption, etc. but rather it is a redistribution of the sensory emphases of the subjects of the culture. He compares this to an anaesthetic that would be required for the social surgery of the implementation of a new technology which will drastically reorder the sense rations of the culture. For this discussion, he does some very interesting things, among them, his (I suppose) famous discussion of hot and cold mediums. What I find interesting in this discussion is that, while he says there is a distinction between the two, he also tries to talk about the way they are functioning in society.
"Nevertheless, it makes all the difference whether a hot medium is used in a hot or cool culture. The hot radio medium used in cool or nonliterate cultures has a violent effect, quite unlike its effect, say in England or America, where radio is felt as entertainment. A cool or low literacy culture cannot accept hot media like movies or radio as entertainment. They are, at least, as radically upsetting for them as the cool TV medium has proved to be for our high literacy world."(31)
The distinction he makes here between hot and cool cultures seems arbitrary (of course all these distinctions are). He basically means that a cool culture is more of an oral culture. But the cool media are things like books (usually) which leave something to interpretation (a description that Adorno would probably like). So these could be cool cultures because oral words leave something to the imagination but he counterposes it with the supposedly hot culture of the West which he calls "literate" meaning, it would seem, that it is centered around literature which would make it "cool" as well. To complicate this, he has a bit of a strange discussion about jazz (p.27) where he initially calls it a hot form of music but then says "Cool jazz came in quite naturally after the first impact of radio and movie had been absorbed." In other words, while the medium or form itself might have certain tendencies which might be described as "hot" or "cool" these are only relevant in reference to the context in which they are functioning--both socially and in the "media ecology."
This also means that the distinction he draws between hot and cool cultures is also somewhat nullified. A more significant observation that he makes is that
"Any invention or technology is an extension or self-amputation of our physical bodies, and such extension also demands new ratios and equilibriums among other organs and extensions of the body. There is, for example, no way of refusing to comply with the new sense ratios or sense 'closure' evoked by the TV image. But the effect of the entry of the TV image wil vary from culture to culture in accordance to the existing sense ratios in each culture." (45)
This is a better, more general way of describing this process. Instead of trying to measure the hotness or coolness of the medium or culture it is better to consider the dialectical relationship between them at any given time--realizing that there will be some sort of social effect when a new technology is introduced. However, the rest of the book seems devoted to describing the different mediums--their essences--which would seem to preclude there being a great deal of interaction with the culture or the other media in it. Though I plan to read the last sections closely, I will note that I think the useful aspect of the first part (which would seem to undermine any discussion of the essences of mediums) is his discussion of the way artists are able to use new media to create hybrid forms, changing the earlier media as well as integating the new. Moreover, he seems committed to this line of reasoning saying
"media as extensions of our senses institute new ratios, not only among our private senses, but among themselves, when they interactamong themselves. Radio changed the form of the news story as much as it altered the film image in the talkies. TV caused drastic changes in radio programming, and in the form of the thing or documentary novel."(53)
Aside from his unfortunate use of the term "talkies," I think most of this makes sense and is a good conceptualization for the way societies take on these forms. He also gives a central role to artists as the people who "show us how to 'ride with the punch,' instead of 'taking it in the chin.' It can only be repeated that human history is a record of 'taking it in the chin.'"(66) All of this is curiously similar to some of the things that Adorno says about culture as well. Here, like Polanyi, he isn't necessarily cautioning the distructive potential of these cultural and technological changes. He simply thinks that being aware of how they will destroy and reorder lives and consciousnesses will help us to better prepare for them.
I recall one of my professors (Dr. Babbili) attending a conference in Canada a few years ago that was discussing what the social impact of the internet would be and how best to channel it. Instead of having this kind of conversation, Americans seem fine with sticking to message: anything is possible, keep the options open, let the corporations--oops I mean "free market" decide what is best. The only reason to intervene is if someone puts free music or naked pictures up: then we can just sue them and everyone will be happy.
It should be said, perhaps, that McLuhan was Canadian.
The first half is very literary and historical and sociological. Though the focus is ultimately on technology, he is much more concerned with the way that it functions socially. Communication technology he figures as just another advancement--and, like Mattleart later on, he is also widening the definition of communication so that the wheel is also a communication technology. Unlike other times where a broad definition seems to make the concept itself seem meaningless (simply because it is unclear that the concept, or the word for it, means anything at all once you make it that broad, cf: culture) the inclusion of somewhat unorthodox examples of communication actually make it clearer what he means. I have some reservations about the extended metaphor of "the extension of man" and this desire to have our central nervous system extend outward (presaging Haraway's cyborgs I suppose) is part of the problem to which the electronic media are the solution (along with many other comm technologies before then.) But it does seem that he has accounted for what Polanyi might call a double movement in that, as these new forms of communcation/media/culture are introduced, there is a way that society tries to protect itself--only instead of a counteraction to the social change, he describes a numbness that develops either at the site of the change or generally throughout the social body, which helps dull the convulsive shifts.
The shifts he's decribing aren't just--or even really at all--a reorganization of the social field or the modes of production, consumption, etc. but rather it is a redistribution of the sensory emphases of the subjects of the culture. He compares this to an anaesthetic that would be required for the social surgery of the implementation of a new technology which will drastically reorder the sense rations of the culture. For this discussion, he does some very interesting things, among them, his (I suppose) famous discussion of hot and cold mediums. What I find interesting in this discussion is that, while he says there is a distinction between the two, he also tries to talk about the way they are functioning in society.
"Nevertheless, it makes all the difference whether a hot medium is used in a hot or cool culture. The hot radio medium used in cool or nonliterate cultures has a violent effect, quite unlike its effect, say in England or America, where radio is felt as entertainment. A cool or low literacy culture cannot accept hot media like movies or radio as entertainment. They are, at least, as radically upsetting for them as the cool TV medium has proved to be for our high literacy world."(31)
The distinction he makes here between hot and cool cultures seems arbitrary (of course all these distinctions are). He basically means that a cool culture is more of an oral culture. But the cool media are things like books (usually) which leave something to interpretation (a description that Adorno would probably like). So these could be cool cultures because oral words leave something to the imagination but he counterposes it with the supposedly hot culture of the West which he calls "literate" meaning, it would seem, that it is centered around literature which would make it "cool" as well. To complicate this, he has a bit of a strange discussion about jazz (p.27) where he initially calls it a hot form of music but then says "Cool jazz came in quite naturally after the first impact of radio and movie had been absorbed." In other words, while the medium or form itself might have certain tendencies which might be described as "hot" or "cool" these are only relevant in reference to the context in which they are functioning--both socially and in the "media ecology."
This also means that the distinction he draws between hot and cool cultures is also somewhat nullified. A more significant observation that he makes is that
"Any invention or technology is an extension or self-amputation of our physical bodies, and such extension also demands new ratios and equilibriums among other organs and extensions of the body. There is, for example, no way of refusing to comply with the new sense ratios or sense 'closure' evoked by the TV image. But the effect of the entry of the TV image wil vary from culture to culture in accordance to the existing sense ratios in each culture." (45)
This is a better, more general way of describing this process. Instead of trying to measure the hotness or coolness of the medium or culture it is better to consider the dialectical relationship between them at any given time--realizing that there will be some sort of social effect when a new technology is introduced. However, the rest of the book seems devoted to describing the different mediums--their essences--which would seem to preclude there being a great deal of interaction with the culture or the other media in it. Though I plan to read the last sections closely, I will note that I think the useful aspect of the first part (which would seem to undermine any discussion of the essences of mediums) is his discussion of the way artists are able to use new media to create hybrid forms, changing the earlier media as well as integating the new. Moreover, he seems committed to this line of reasoning saying
"media as extensions of our senses institute new ratios, not only among our private senses, but among themselves, when they interactamong themselves. Radio changed the form of the news story as much as it altered the film image in the talkies. TV caused drastic changes in radio programming, and in the form of the thing or documentary novel."(53)
Aside from his unfortunate use of the term "talkies," I think most of this makes sense and is a good conceptualization for the way societies take on these forms. He also gives a central role to artists as the people who "show us how to 'ride with the punch,' instead of 'taking it in the chin.' It can only be repeated that human history is a record of 'taking it in the chin.'"(66) All of this is curiously similar to some of the things that Adorno says about culture as well. Here, like Polanyi, he isn't necessarily cautioning the distructive potential of these cultural and technological changes. He simply thinks that being aware of how they will destroy and reorder lives and consciousnesses will help us to better prepare for them.
I recall one of my professors (Dr. Babbili) attending a conference in Canada a few years ago that was discussing what the social impact of the internet would be and how best to channel it. Instead of having this kind of conversation, Americans seem fine with sticking to message: anything is possible, keep the options open, let the corporations--oops I mean "free market" decide what is best. The only reason to intervene is if someone puts free music or naked pictures up: then we can just sue them and everyone will be happy.
It should be said, perhaps, that McLuhan was Canadian.
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
MSNBC - Avoiding attacking suspected terrorist mastermind
BANG! Here's one for the books--White House kept the "war on terrorism" from catching a terrorist ("Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant with ties to al-Qaida, is now blamed for more than 700 terrorist killings in Iraq") who's now killing our troops in Iraq because they wanted to send our troops to Iraq (and get killed by terrorists) and they thought killing this guy would weaken the case for war. So instead of carrying out any of the plans the Pentagon made (from June 2002 on) to go after this guy in his weapons lab operating in N. Iraq, the White House sat on it and made Saddam into the bad guy. Now we've got Saddam but we're getting killed. I think maybe we went after the wrong guy. Too bad this won't make the headlines.
BANG! Here's one for the books--White House kept the "war on terrorism" from catching a terrorist ("Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant with ties to al-Qaida, is now blamed for more than 700 terrorist killings in Iraq") who's now killing our troops in Iraq because they wanted to send our troops to Iraq (and get killed by terrorists) and they thought killing this guy would weaken the case for war. So instead of carrying out any of the plans the Pentagon made (from June 2002 on) to go after this guy in his weapons lab operating in N. Iraq, the White House sat on it and made Saddam into the bad guy. Now we've got Saddam but we're getting killed. I think maybe we went after the wrong guy. Too bad this won't make the headlines.
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