--Julian
Slavoj Zizek
Where does this resurrection of anti-Communism [in the former Eastern Bloc] draw its strength from? Why were the old ghosts resuscitated in nations where many young people don’t even remember the Communist times? The new anti-Communism provides a simple answer to the question: “If capitalism is really so much better than Socialism, why are our lives still miserable?”
It is because, many believe, we are not really in capitalism: we do not yet have true democracy but only its deceiving mask, the same dark forces still pull the threads of power, a narrow sect of former Communists disguised as new owners and managers — nothing’s really changed, so we need another purge, the revolution has to be repeated ...
What these belated anti-Communists fail to realize is that the image they provide of their society comes uncannily close to the most abused traditional leftist image of capitalism: a society in which formal democracy merely conceals the reign of a wealthy minority. In other words, the newly born anti-Communists don’t get that what they are denouncing as perverted pseudo-capitalism simply is capitalism.
Read the whole thing here.
—David
Rick Fields believes that the current trouble with authority in American Buddhism arises in part from the attempt to transplant an oriental monastery/temple tradition into an occidental setting of laymen and women, neither monks nor priests. By analogy, the troubles in American Hinduism might be seen to emerge from the transportation of a rigid system of caste and social role (in which 'householders' cannot be sadhus) into a society based on the rejection of the validity of such roles. But what of Islam, which has neither priests nor monks, and in which the ideal Sufi remains 'in the world'—family, job, etc.—'but not of it?' In Fields's theory such institutions would be relatively easy to adapt to Western 'democratic' social structures. Perhaps, however, the problem is not at root one of incomparable social structures or inappropriate institutions, but precisely a problem of authority. The oriental religions have looked for ways to implement a theory of virtually absolute authority in a social setting based on a culture that has passed through and been deeply changed by the Protestant Reformation, bourgeois and proletarian revolution, and so-called sexual revolution. As Foucault points out, these 'revolutions' only become articulated within the discourse of history at the very moment in which they 'disappear'—so that, in his paradoxical reading, our society is in fact post-Protestant, post-revolutionary, and post-sexual. The new 'authorities' created by revolution and reformation are themselves now seen to be empty. Even the 'experts' of the sexual revolution have proven themselves false prophets: we are not dancing toward an era of liberated desire, but lurching backwards toward some dark age of plague-fear and sexual hysteria in which all desire will eventually be experienced as 'abuse' or 'sin.' Thus within the American Roman Catholic Church we have cardinals who fulminate against every form of human pleasure in language as deeply imbued with hysteria (if not literary style) as Cotton Mather's—while at the same time vast numbers of priests are in trouble for 'abusing' various orphans or parishoners. Televangelism has lost much of its political i.e., financial, power since the 1980s in a series of sexual and fiscal scandals. In the 'Orient' adulterous women and homosexuals are stoned to death. There's a great deal less sexual freedom in the world now than in medieval times, perhaps even Victorian times. All the talk talk talk about sexuality (as Foucault says) has led only to new modalities of repression/oppression. . . .
Let me be clear: personally I do not disapprove of sexual intercourse nor of 'deviant' desire and pleasure. I do, however, disapprove of hypocrisy, power-tripping, and the self-aggrandizement of self-proclaimed avatars. I can even imagine erotic love as an integral aspect of spiritual/pedagogic companionship, but only on condition of its open consensuality. I reject (for myself) the moral/sexual codes of outdated and reactionary religious ideologies, but I accept (for myself) the best ethics I can imagine, based on a perception of the other as an aspect of self, so that my desire to some extent depends on the other's desire and not on the other's loss. If I can do this for myself, then I can demand of anyone who claims to be able to teach self-realization that he too follow this minimal ethics of mutuality. . . .
I suggest that many of the Oriental traditions have fallen prey to a guru-prinzip which makes the nearness of realization a kind of commodity, promised but never delivered, since deliverance would threaten the power-monopoly of the guru. . . .
Traditional power relations are tragically out of synch with our needs for connection and conviviality. . . . Spirituality is not a master/slave relation—it is not an "Oriental despotism." Not any more. Not now. Maybe it never was. Who cares? Here and now:—we need something different.
—Peter Lamborn Wilson in Sacred Drift: Essays on the Margins of Islam
—David
Pablo Picasso was a poet and a good one, but it would be a tragedy if his literary work had somehow diverted attention from his achievement as an artist. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha was an artist and a good one, but it is in no way a tragedy that her book, Dictée, has, to a large extent, eclipsed her artwork. This is not because the artwork is unworthy of attention, but because the experiments with language (and also images) that became Dictée, a masterpiece of avant-garde autobiography, were not peripheral to her artistic practice, but of a piece with it. Indeed, the more closely one considers Cha’s artistic and literary work, the harder it is to tell where one leaves off and the other begins.
That's the beginning of my review of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Exilée and Temps Morts: Selected Works
Read the whole thing here.
—David
I read somewhere that author Dan Brown has an hourglass in which the sand flows for one hour. He uses it when writing to tell him when it’s time to take a break.
Every morning I sit at my desk and get lost in the pleasure of exploring kanji Chinese characters. I knew immediately that a 60-minute hourglass was exactly what I needed as well. I ordered one at the hobby store Tokyu Hands (¥13,500/$150/100 euros/£.90). It arrived recently and has quickly become a fetishised object.
This precision instrument is a thing of simple beauty and perfect utility. When I look up and see that the contents have trickled to the bottom, I know it’s about time to stand up and do something physical before sitting down once again, inverting the glass, and diving back into the Japanese language.
--Julian
Nice to have the sporadically clogged conduit flowing freely again. I added three books to the "Books I Finished in 2009" folder today.
—David
In an old part of Tokyo in the late afternoon, I passed a narrow alley. The houses faced each other, almost touching, and pots of flowers and plants filled the available space. The sky behind had turned red, and I felt a sudden and unexpected rush of love for the density of human existence; so many lives being led so closely together.
Tokyo at sunset
chaos of humanity
ache of affection
--Julian
We go to the movies a lot here in rural Chigasaki, and usually stumble out from our aisle seats when the end credits begin to roll. We do it with no thought other than that the film's over, and there always seem to be others making a quick exit.
Yesterday we went to metropolitan Tokyo to catch a film that hadn’t made it to local screens. What astounded me was that everyone stayed in their seats during the end credits. As the names were slowly presented for minutes on end, I looked around at my fellow audience with growing incredulity. I noted that a few were quietly checking their phones, but otherwise no one spoke or moved until the lights went up.
I can only guess this was etiquette: a show of respect toward the film, any film. The one we’d watched had been a crime against cinema; Dave White deftly and accurately describes it as “a swirling suckpool of incoherence.” But no one moved anyway. I suspect this is uniquely Japanese behavior and, now that I've thought about it... I like it.
What's your end-credit behavior?
--Julian
