Eric Schliesser's Blog, page 23
January 18, 2022
The Haifa Republic and the Future of Liberal Zionism, Pt: 1
1. The administration of the Military Government in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district will be abolished.
2. In Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district administrative autonomy of the residents, by and for them, will be established.
3. The residents of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district will elect an Administrative Council composed of eleven members.
4. Any resident, 18 years old and above, without distinction of citizenship, or if stateless, is entitled to vote in the election to the Administrative Council.
5. Any resident whose name is included in the list of the candidates for the Administrative Council and who, on the day the list is submitted, is 25 years old or above, is entitled to be elected to the Council.
6. The Administrative Council will be elected by general, direct, personal, equal and secret ballot.
7. The period of office of the Administrative Council will be four years from the day of its election.
8. The Administrative Council will sit in Bethlehem.
9. All the administrative affairs of the areas of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district, will be under the direction and within the competence of the Administrative Council.
10. The Administrative Council will operate the following Departments:
a. The Department of Education;
b. The Department of Religious Affairs;
c. The Department of Finance;
d. The Department of Transportation;
e. The Department for Construction and Housing;
f. The Department of Industry, Commerce and Tourism;
g. The Department of Agriculture;
h. The Department of Health;
i. The Department for Labor and Social Welfare;
j. The Department of Rehabilitation of Refugees;
k. The Department for the Administration of Justice and the Supervision of the Local Police Forces; and promulgate regulations relating to the operation of these Departments.
12. The Administrative Council will elect its own chairman.
21. These principles may be subject to review after a five-year period.--December 15, 1977, HOME RULE, FOR PALESTINIAN ARABS, RESIDENTS OF JUDEA, SAMARIA AND THE GAZA DISTRICT (Top Secret; Sensitive) in FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES, 1977���1980, VOLUME VIII, ARAB-ISRAELI DISPUTE, JANUARY 1977���AUGUST 1978 [Hereafter: "Home Rue"]*
In Omri Boehm's short book, an extended pamphlet really, Haifa Republic: A Democratic Future for Israel, Begin's "Home Rule" plan -- quoted in its entirety above -- plays a crucial role (see pp.143-150). And as Boehm notes, the plan is usually treated as "a step on the way to Oslo's failed Palestinian Authority." (150). However, Boehm (recall also this digression) would like to treat it "as a step beyond Oslo." Crucially, "the plan did not offer the Palestinians a sovereign state, but something unimaginable today--and this [is] why we must heed it: it offered fully citizenship to every Palestinian, every one whom would "entitled to vote for, and be elected to, the Knesset." To Israelis it guaranteed full freedom of movement and economic liberties in the West Bank and Gaza, conceding likewise that Palestinians would be free to live, settle, work, and purchase land on the full territory....Begin's plan could just as well have been known as the One-State Program." (144)
The "Home Rule" document is presented alongside the discussion that prime minister Begin had with President Carter and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance about the plan, and so it is very much worth following the link to it. For, it makes clear that the question of sovereignty was deliberately postponed because of incompatible claims (by Israelis and Palestinians) and because of security concerns by the Israelis. Unlike some (see this editorial in the New York Times), I think Begin is willing to conceive of de jure sovereignty for the Palestinians downstream. But the discussion with Carter also makes clear that part of the point of the plan is to prevent a Palestinian military buildup on the West Bank (so de facto an attenuated sovereignty).
Here, I want to postpone detailed discussion of Boehm's important book. Boehm goes beyond Begin's Home Rule by envisioning a genuine confederation (my word not his--he describes his own plan as a one state "federation" (p. 150) or a binational federation) between Israelis and Palestine. But before I get to that in a series of follow up posts, I want to reflect a bit on "Home Rule." Somewhat naively (but hopefully not mistakenly), I'll treat the record of the discussion between Begin and Carter as background to it.
It is worth noting from the outset that "Home Rule" makes demands on Jordan, and creates certain faits accomplis relative to it. In particular, it would require Jordan to give up its claims on the West Bank, and it would require that it would grant Palestinians political rights in Jordan even thought they would be living outside its borders. As "Home Rule" notes in understated fashion this still needed to be negotiated, and this was not on the direct horizon then.
I don't think we should treat "Hume Rule" cynically in light of the foregoing. For we should note that at some point some Palestinians would have had a choice to become citizen of one of two states and have to choose for which of the three parliaments/council they would claim political rights. Interestingly enough, when Jordan and Israel did end up making their peace (without any Palestinian involvement) in 1994, it was far less favorable for individual Palestinian freedoms.
Another important feature of "Home Rule" is that it sets up a department for the rehabilitation of refugees. This suggests that Begin was willing to accommodate a principle of return of Palestinian refugees. Begin's response to Carter on the matter of immigration (and de facto return of refugees) is most illuminating:
President [Carter]: Who would control immigration?
Prime Minister [Begin]: This Council. Going back to Resolution 242, there is no contradiction. On immigration, this is a problem that the Administrative Council could deal with, but only reasonable numbers of new immigrants could be accepted. We could only accept new immigrants up to the point where our own security would not be affected
At the time, there were 350,000 refugees (by Begin's lights--that number may be controversial). It's a bit of shame Carter does not follow up at this point to clarify whether Begin's concern with security here means that he would like to have some means to keep out PLO fighters (see also below) or whether he means that beyond some point the numbers of refugees cause a demographic threat. Interestingly, enough in the follow up discussion Begin suggests that he hopes some Palestinians might go to Kuwait. (In context that's wishful thinking.)**
It's unfortunate that there is no mention of compensation (of lives and property) to Palestinian victims of 1948 and 1967. This would show, I think, enormous goodwill and also provide genuine recognition for the victims. (It also might allow Israelis who were forced to flee many Arab lands after 1948 also claim some compensation.) It would be odd for the State of Israel to decline this because it is willing to accept compensation from Germany for Nazi crimes.
Even so, as Boehm notes, by creating freedom of movement, freedom of settlement, freedom to buy and sell land, and a whole range of individual political freedoms :Home Rule" has been the most liberal political plan that has circulated in the long, torturous history of Israeli-Palestinian relations. In particular, the underlying vision gives all individual Palestinian non trivial rights to determine their own social and political future. In addition, it gives the Palestinian council authority over lands under its jurisdiction including the right to "expropriate land"--something clarified by Zbigniew Brzezinsk. And this really would have undermined further expansion of Israeli Settlement program (in occupied territories).
Begin has had a bad press among the intelligentsia inside and outside of Israel. And Boehm (who is by no means a Likudnik, as we will see in future posts) is right to stress that Begin is, as Begin said to the Knesset defending "Home Rule," motivated by "fairness to all men of goodwill...here we proposal total equality of rights--anti-racialism" (p. 149). And that Begin clearly and explicitly wants to avoid ending up in a situation like Rhodesia then characterized by white minority rule and a form of Apartheid. And "Home Rule" really is one of the rare occasions where liberal principles were proposed to start a genuine road to peace and true equal rights.
However, "Hume Rule" also has some obvious drawbacks. This becomes clear when one realizes that the capital of the elected Palestinian council is supposed to be in Bethlehem. Begin's explanation is that there shouldn't be "two capitals" in Jerusalem. He does not explain why, but presumably because he does not want to share sovereignty of it. He then adds for good measure that Nablus is also ruled out (without any explanation, but perhaps because he did not want to help Mayor (and pro PLO) Bassam Shakaa's then rising influence), but that Ramallah is an option.
This is notable for two reasons: first, this suggests that while Begin could explicitly imagine giving up sovereignty over the the West-bank (and Gaza), he was unwilling to contemplate the same over East Jerusalem. The fact that there could not be two capitals in Jerusalem also suggests, second, that he did not conceive of Hume Rule as a federation of equals. Of the three entities involved in it -- Jordan, the Palestinian council, and Israel -- Israel was supposed to be and remain pre-eminent West of the river Jordan.
This is also clear by an important omission in "Home Rule." Namely the overall responsibility for security. At one point Begin clarifies:
We think that this is a fair proposal because it did not decide on sovereignty.
While the Palestinian council will have jurisdiction over police forces, Israel will have a near monopoly on real firepower. So, of the two parliaments Israel and the Palestinian Council, only one will have a real military power. And the point of that was to keep out those that rejected Israel's right to exist (then the PLO) and their firepower. To be anachronistic, this would be a confederation of un-equals. And part of the strategic point is to divide the Palestinians between those willing to accommodate themselves to Israel and the rejectionists. Unlike the negotiations with Sadat, when it comes to the Palestinians, Begin is unwilling to negotiate with the enemy.
And while I personally do not doubt Begin's good will and earnest desire for peace -- even if the occasion for "Home Rule" was prompted by a desire to provide President Sadat with something he could "he take credit for his trip"--, in a way Home Rule's drawbacks do anticipate some of the the crucial underlying problems of Oslo: by excluding some Palestinians from the political process, the rejectionists on the Palestinian side had sufficient arms and veto power and an incentive to doom Oslo from the start, which, in turn, brought the Israeli rejectionists to power for a generation.
So, to sum up, I agree with Boehm that many of the principles of Home Rule are essential to a future liberal Zionist program. As regular readers know, that despite my own skeptical liberalism, and my mitigated Zionism, I have long claimed that Zionism is the effect of the failure of liberalism (and this is why it's interesting to political theory) and that there never was a truly liberal Zionism in Israel ((recall here and here), especially here and here; and here), except as a very small minority (recall here). So, "Hume Rule" is the exception to my position. The question to which I turn in a future post, is whether the argument and underlying vision of Boehm's Haifa Republic can really avoid the obvious problems with "Home Rule" and to what degree it is a promising vision for the future now that conditions have changed dramatically. To be continued.
*The discussion between Begin and Carter clarifies that the "stateless" mentioned in "Hume Rule" are Palestinians in Gaza, who at the time were stateless.
**By 1977 there was already a sizable (and relatively flourishing -- despite many obstacles to their civil and political rights) Palestian diaspora in Kuwait. But the Kuwaiti government had already ruled out further immigration by Palestinians. (See here for background.)
January 17, 2022
On T����w�� and Elite Capture
In 1957 the pioneering African American sociologist E. Franklin Frazier published an English translation of his study of the U.S. black middle class, Black Bourgeoisie. We might also think of it as a pioneering work in the study of elite capture of politics. Frazier accuses the black middle class of being insecure and powerless, constantly constructing a world of ���make-believe��� to deal with an ���inferiority complex��� caused by the brutal history of racial domination in the United States. Immediately controversial upon its publication, the book notes in a preface to the 1962 edition that Frazier was both applauded for his courage and threatened with violence...
There is another crucial insight that can be gained from applying the analogy of games to our discussion of elite capture. Design decisions structure a game���s built environment, baking the outlook of designers into the decisions players are faced with. In similar fashion, elite decision-making determines what options are available to non-elites. This is precisely the role that the press, social media influencers, military top brass, and titans of capital have in our lives. That is, they frame the conditions of work (and play) for the rest of us.--Ol��f�����mi O. T����w�� (May 7, 2020) "Identity Politics and Elite Capture" Boston Review
Last year Ol��f�����mi O. T����w�� published a number of striking essays on elite capture (I mentioned these in passing here). In Addition to the piece from Boston Review I have partially quoted above (and will quote below), I also warmly recommend this post here. And judging by his personal website (and Amazon), he is about to publish a whole book on elite capture. But since there are a lot of fascinating moving parts in the Boston Review essay, I'll focus on it alone. Do read the essay because it very cleverly draws on ideas by C. Thi Nguyen to explicate what they call "value capture," which for Thi Nguyen and T����w�� involves the narrowing and simplification of values in virtue of participation in a (gamified) process.
As T����w�� (recall also this post) notes, "Elite capture is not unique to black politics; it is a general feature of politics, anywhere and everywhere," (emphasis added). Elite capture is, thus, a law of politics. It's a natural effect of the division of labor within politics, and the natural obstacles (time, expertise, lack of transparency, etc.) to monitoring by non-elites of elites, and so shows up within political parties, unions, and basically any social organization that allows some kind of distinction between the membership and its leadership. Elite capture is also reinforced by the absence of political consensus in the context of pluralism (which makes elite negotiation and representation so important).
Now T����w�� rightly singles out Frazier's (1962) Black Bourgeoisie as a landmark study of elite capture, but it should not come as a surprise that a law of politics has been studied before: the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Italian Elite school of political sociology-- with Pareto, Mosca, and Michels as most famous scholars -- had developed a whole theory of politics ground in this political law. Including an account of rent-seeking.** In his 1943 book The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom, James Burnham had introduced them as a group to a wider English speaking public, and ideas about elite capture are central to his reconstruction. (Of course, Pareto, Mosca, and Michels were very well known to specialist sociologists and economists of the age.)* Both Walter Lippmann's (1922) Public Opinion, and Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942), are also very indebted to ideas of the Italian Elite school.** And while I'll leave this hanging here, in fact, Pareto (partially mediated by Parsons) and Schumpeter shaped the analysis of the ideas on crony-capitalism and rent-seeking in public choice and Chicago economics (recall here).
I don't mean to disparage the originality of the Black Bourgeoisie, a book very much worth re-reading. In fact, it was so controversial in its own day that Frazier encountered what we would call canceling in his own time. As he recounts in the 1962 preface to a reprint of the book, "I was invited by a Negro sorority to discuss the book but so much bitterness was aroused by the invitation that it had to be canceled. One leading member of the sorority accused me of having set the Negro race back fifty years." (p. 2) If one goes on to read the book one learns that fraternities and sororities play a key role in his analysis of elite formation (or "molding") and recruitment, and elite commitments.
In his Boston Review essay, T����w�� argues convincingly that identity politics as pioneered by Combahee River Collective was originally part of a broader effort to avoid certain kinds of elite capture (that expressed itself in tokenism and marginalization), and so an enabling condition of coalition politics. And he notes that they suggest more strategies (including consciousness raising, and elite participation in activism) to avoid elite capture in the "right kind of political culture."
Now, above I used T����w��'s words to attribute a law of politics to him. So, if I were interested in gotchas it would be tempting to suggest here that by his own lights political culture cannot solve the problem of elite capture, it can only mitigate it. And perhaps this is all T����w�� means to argue. (Maybe the book will shed light on this.) But, of course, the problem is that according to the theory of elite capture, political culture is shaped by elite institutions and practices, as T����w�� himself notes. So, I don't think this solves his problem.
But he has another out: he could argue that by "the right kind of political culture" he means a species of sophisticated anarchism (say, of the sort recently revived in The Dawn of Everything by David Wengrow and David Graeber). For, at least conceptually some kinds of anarchism avoid the distinction between membership and leaders (masses and rulers, etc.) As it happens, the Italian Elite school and Burnham don't ignore anarchism, and claim it, too, is inevitably shaped by elites. (Something Ursula Le Guin also suggests in The Dispossessed.) But it's conceivable one can develop a form of anarchism that is not subject to the phenomenon of elite capture. And T����w��'s closing emphasis on the fact that 'we're in it together' might suggests he inclines toward such a view. (I return to this below.)
I want to close with three observations. First, Pareto was what we would now call a classical liberal when he developed ideas of elite capture. But when Burnham popularized Pareto's ideas, Burnham -- a professor of philosophy at NYU -- was an ex-Trotsky-ite (then famous for his book The Managerial Revolution) and on his way of co-founding the revival American conservatism (co-founding The National Review with William Buckley).+ And for Burnham the key to freedom, in the context of the inevitability of elite capture, is the possibility of opposition to the government which requires a rule of law, which in turn requires that within society that there are multiple social forces that counter each other and mechanisms to prevent the concentration of power. (And because Burnham is no liberal this does not require a focus on markets or property rights.)
And so my first observation is that 'elite capture' is not an idea exclusive to one political orientation. It's an important idea to all students of political life. And it is a standing problem for conceptualizations of politics that assume representatives speak for their (political, union, or shareholder, etc.) electorates or where politics is treated like an ideal speech act. So, T����w�� is right to emphasize it, and I look forward to engaging with his book.
However, second, it's possible that T����w�� does not think of 'elite capture' as a general law of politics, as I presented him. For he writes, "it is a fully general problem of politics in a world that distributes power and resources unjustly and unequally." (emphasis his!) And this suggests that he thinks elite capture can be avoided once the material conditions have been equalized (i.e., "resources unjustly and unequally") and there is no difference in power. But the only possible political system that delivers that is a form of anarchist-syndicalism. Fair enough. But this is more than a change in political culture.
Third, I fear that in using Thi Nguyen's ideas on "value capture," T����w�� also ends up suggesting that without mediation of elites there is a more authentic and discrete set of values and commitments that should guide policy. That is, value capture corrupts the will of the people. Now, I think one can recognize the phenomenon of value capture in the political sphere, but deny that this always involves a corruption of ordinary or popular will in the context of the division of political labor.++ (The idea that elites corrupt by way of elite capture is very popular among far right populists.) For, in virtue of the division of cognitive and political labor, outsiders, masses (etc.) will often be in the position of having no access to a minimal opinion on a topic at all. I grant that such a view can easily slide in a cynical or meritocratic attempt to down-play the views (and interests) of non-elites, but that's not what I am suggesting here. Rather, it's the political process itself that makes clear what the people's values and their orderings are (and this is shaped by elites). So, such value capture is necessary to a well-functioning liberal democracy. And that requires elites that work in the interest of those they represent. So, rather than elite capture only being a problem to liberal democratic political life, it must given its inevitability also be part of its solution. To be continued.
*Pareto had also featured prominently in Talcott Parson's 1937 The Structure of Social Action, itself an unlikely bestseller. But elite capture is more tangential to its argument,
**I owe this point to a fascinating, recent (2018) paper by Richard Bellamy The Paradox of the Democratic Prince: Machiavelli and the Neo-Machiavellians on Ideal Theory, Realism, and Democratic Leadership." in "The Democratic Realism of Machiavelli's The Prince." Bellamy also suggests one can read Gramsci as a theorist of elite capture, which might be salient to T����w��''s project.
+As I noted on twitter, Burnham's Suicide of the West is full of material that have become tropes on the American political right, but it is also infused with ideas about civilization and racial hierarchy and simply racist.
++ Obviously, if one presupposes something like anarchism what I am about to say begs the question.
January 14, 2022
The Dispossessed (Spoilers), Pt 4.: on the limits of Anarchism
The second year I was in Elbow, I was worklister, the mill syndicate cut rations. People doing six hours in the plant got full rations just barely enough for that kind of work. People on half time got three-quarter rations. If they were sick or too weak to work, they got half. On half rations you couldn't get well. You couldn't get back to work. You might stay alive. I was supposed to put people on half rations, people that were already sick. I was working full time, eight, ten hours sometimes, desk work, so I got full rations: I earned them. I earned them by making lists of who should starve. The man s light eyes looked ahead into the dry light. Like you said, I was to count people.--From Ursula Le Guin (1974) The Dispossessed, p. 407 (page-number are from a 2002 adobe e-reader edition)
This post is the fourth in an open-ended series on Le Guin's The Dispossessed (see here for pt 1; here for pt 2.; here for pt 3.).
It is commonly claimed that Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed offers a positive representation of a planet-wide anarchist society (on a planet Annares. This is no surprise because the narrative offers extensive details on the functioning of this society. In addition, Ursula Le Guin has herself invited this interpretation by adding a brief clarificatory note to one of her short stories, "The Day Before The Revolution." The story is about a day in the life of Odo, the intellectual visionary, the philosophical prophet, of Annares, where Odo's writing and her exemplary life function as the shared principles and touchstone of the anarchist program. This dedicatory note (recall) is "In memoriam Paul Goodman, 1911���1972" explicitly inserts the story into the history of anarchist theorizing mentioning ""early Taoist thought, and expounded by Shelley and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodman."*
In addition, the action of The Dispossessed, which centers on Shevek, is all about the tension (I almost wrote 'dialectic') between an ossified version of anarchism and anarchism as a perpetual work in progress. And so any flaws noted in Annares can with some charitably be interpreted as evidence of the need for the more dynamic understanding of anarchism "properly conceived," that "was a revolution, a permanent one, an ongoing process." (230) This Shevek attributes to what we may call true Odo-nism. And the narrative of The Dispossessed is itself plausibly understood as a narration of his growth from (recall) political "fool" (123) to this more mature understanding.
So far so good. And in what follows I do not want to deny that the representation of Anarres, a kind of Socratic political theory, is a major contribution to Anarchist thought. It is especially important because this is not an anarchism that turns its back on technology and goes back to nature: "they would not regress to pre-urban, pre-technological tribalism. They knew that their anarchism was the product of a very high civilization, of a complex diversified culture, of a stable economy and a highly industrialized technology that could maintain high production and rapid transportation of goods." (124) But in what follows I suggest that Le Guin herself offers hints that there are limitations to Shevek's character (development) which might suggest more fatal flaws in Annares. After all the subtitle of the book is "An Ambiguous Utopia."
But first a relatively small point. So, there are two important features of the political economy of Anarres. First, their economy consists of cooperatives or syndics which are centrally coordinated from the top-down. Now unlike the economies familiar from the Soviet Union and its allied states, this is not a state capitalism. Anarres rejects property and money. Second, the economy has no mechanism to exchange surplus in one sector (say energy in which it is abundant) for needs in another section (say food). The second feature is a consequence of a kind of self-imposed autarky and political rejection of the mother planet, Urras, from which the revolutionaries were (self) exiled. Jointly, these two features make the economy of Anarres rather fragile, especially against famines in which all kinds of transportational and logistical bottle necks develop and in which starvation is a real possibility. In fact, at one point, during the famine Shevek becomes a locally important coordinator who literally decides the rations which might mean life and death for his community (see, especially, p. 407 quoted above).
Now, it's pretty clear that one of the side-effects or perhaps part of Shevek's mission to Urras is, in fact, the opening up of exchange of a commerce in ideas between Anarres and Urras. (And once on Urras he discovers a wider Hainish universe the possibilities of which are expanded by Shevek's intellectual breakthroughs and revealed to us in the last few chapters.) So, there is a sense in which the novel suggests that a truer Anarchism is open to the world/universe. And, so, perhaps this suggest that the limitations on the second feature might be overcome.
However, spatial distance might make planetary exchanges of commodities too slow and too costly to prevent famines. And Shevek's own approach (recall) is to promote nobly communism of knowledge, not trade. So it is by no means obvious that joining the league of worlds would be decisive on this score, and does not solve the coordination problems that are a consequence of central planning.
So, since there is no sign that Shevek is willing to promote the introduction of markets to solve the coordination problems that beset Anarres (and turn it into a more anarcho-capitalist society), it is by no means obvious that these can be solved. As an aside, it is worth noting that the (Hainish) League of Worlds seems loosely modeled on Kantian ideas as presented in Perpetual Peace. And Kant did think that such a League would need to be composed of commercial, trading republics. Some other time, I return to the Hainish League.
The other limitation of Anarres is that for all its egalitarian ethos, it has not, in fact, eliminated patriarchy. What I am about to discuss has long held me up writing about The Dispossessed. Shevek quietly presupposes and leans on women's labor of his scientist partner Tevek, who does menial tasks for him (see especially pp 488-489 and here paging of his manuscript). More important, Shevek sexually assaults the sister of one of his hosts on Urras, Vea. While the alcohol induced assault is very troubling by itself, it's his reaction once sober after that is, perhaps, especially jarring. While he feels humiliated, he never recognizes his own assault for what it is -- rather, he represent Vea as having betrayed him (355) -- and he rejects feeling any "guilt" (356) or shame, and this crucial, nor does he seek any kind of atonement for it.
Now, that he rejects 'guilt' is no surprise because he has been taught to despise it. Guilt is associated with property, and in the consequentialist ethic of Anarres it's undoubtedly too backward-looking and and too reminiscent of the kind of religions they have rejected. One can admire (recall) the cultivated, anticipatory "sensitivity" or sympathy (or empathy) with the pains and "suffering" of others that regulates behavior and mutual aid (393) among these anarchists, while still noticing that the absence of guilt and genuine atonement prevents forms of accountability worth having. They have norms that banish people from society (sending them to asylums), but nothing that allows people to -(ahh) own up to their wrongs to their victims, or themselves.
And once one faces up to the reality of this sexual assault that Shevek simply sets aside, one notices that there is a structural undertone of always present violence on Anarres. Compared to the wars of the twentieth century, Anarres is quite pacific. But the book is literally book-ended by actual violence in chapter 1 and the threat of violence toward Shevek in the final chapter. And while Shevek was still a comrade in good standing back home on Anarres, we see him in an unprovoked fist-fight with his near-name sake Shevet for no other reason that the near nominal identity causes a lot of mix-ups. (Shevet is the aggressor.) And once impartial bystanders decide that it would be a 'fair fight' (65) nobody intervenes to stop the punching despite the fact that this is an organicist society with an abundance of internal norm-enforcing social control. And after the fight a girl gives her body to him.
Once one is willing to acknowledge that Anarres has more trouble than merely too much politics at the center, one sees that is very much a closed society of walls. This much Shevek himself diagnoses (with the help of his friends). But in so far as we are invited to reflect on the relentless forward looking ethic of Anarres, -- after he assaults Vea, Shevek wastes little time to engage in (a noble) political revolution -- we might well come to think that a society that is so incapable of registering harm done to each other may well be more rotten than just a certain amount of stasis in its cultural and social life.
Again, this is manifested in troubled gender relations. Part of the political conflict that we are shown between Shevek and his friends with the more establishment critics, is also represented symbolically between his mother Rulag and his friend Bedap. And the reader can't help but wonder if the intensity of the conflict between mother and son isn't fueled by their mutual earlier personal rejection in accord with the anti-family norms of Anarres. The claims of family are treated as instance of property on Anarres, but this means that forms of what we might call natural sympathy are systematically suppressed or discouraged.
And while one may well end up concluding that the anarchism of Anarres governed by true-Odonism in which a more robust openness to other perspectives may well be the best possible polity given the imperfections of human nature, Le Guin invites us to size up its true shortcomings carefully.+
*It's worth noting that in The Dawn of Everything, which will undoubtedly the most famous pro-anarchist tract of our times, David Graeber and David Wengrow mention Le Guin favorably on p.290 (although only quotes "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" explicitly).
+I thank my students who, in a period of five years in which I taught the book regularly, taught me to confront the implications of the sexual assault scene.
January 13, 2022
On Rammstein, MRIs and Being Real (long covid Diaries)
A month ago we went on a family holiday on a deserted island in the Indian ocean with a very tiny, quiet resort on it with huts overlooking the ocean. It was very quiet, and my family spent their time sailing and snorkeling. While I love swimming, I didn't feel ready to try my luck with an ocean. So, twice a day I went to the hut with a treadmill and started to do a gentle interval training. It was painful, but I enjoyed it. The rest of the day I would read and live-tweet some of my chapter summaries of books. Only at dinner would I notice any symptoms of covid with the minor buzz of other guests in the background and dinner conversation exhausting me. I would fall asleep early not bothered by the heat, and sleep long restful hours.
I was reminded of a book, The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction, by my graduate school dog-park buddy (and basketball competitor), Matthew Crawford (whose Shopcraft as Soulcraft was a genuine bestseller and briefly a cultural icon), in which he points out that in our age the very rich pay for quiet (as can be noticed in their airport lounges). Most of the few other guests at the resort were very bourgeois Suisse couples (bankers, insurance, etc.), sporty and pleased with the lack of noise while they enjoyed the ocean (and presumably each other). It was truly restful, and it was also delightful to be around my spouse and son while both were mellow. (It was our first holiday in two years except for a brief week-end in Corfu seventeen months ago.)
When I returned from the holiday, I went back to lap-swimming in the pool down the hill. And I quietly started to muse that if it weren't for my fatigue after social interactions I had turned the corner on covid. (For my official "covid diaries," see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; and here). Two weeks ago I went to Amsterdam for a MRI and a visit to my occupational therapist. The occupational therapist insisted that I try to to discipline myself and avoid social interactions for more than 25-30 minutes (including with my family). Of course, I had to experiment occasionally with longer interactions, but I should really try (now using her words) not to deplete energy. She recognized that returning to teaching in February would mean I would violate her instructions, but since I claimed I 'gain energy' from my undergraduates, and these were fairly unidirectional lecture courses (I promised her to make few jokes and leave less room for questions from the lecture hall), she resigned herself to it.
Now I know many academics really dislike social interactions, and I am myself known to be irritable, impatient, and unpleasant on occasion. And there is no doubt that I can be incredibly happy writing hours on end. But in general I love the social aspect of doing philosophy together, and hanging in cafe's and talking. And I love spending time with the undergraduates discussing the material and learning from their insights. And I love gossip. And after a few years of pandemic I really just want to watch crowds enjoying life.
I was musing about this when I arrived early at my MRI. Much to my amazement I was allowed to go thirty minutes ahead of schedule. After the MRI I had a minor panic attack that the nurse who administered it never asked me for my name (just my weight) and whether my wedding band was made of pure gold. I haven't heard the results yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if my results were mixed up with those of the lovely old man who was scanned after me.
The brain scan was pure horror. I have done them before, and I have never been too bothered by the claustrophobic set-up or the noise. (I had a MRI done of my lungs when I was first diagnosed with covid.) The claustrophobia still didn't bother me--I just closed my eyes. But even with ear-plugs and noise-canceling headphones, a brain scan is the way to kill off all the long haulers. Imagine your head exploding, and then adding TNT, while listening to Rammstein. It only lasted thirty minutes or so. But the variety and intensity of the noise stayed with me for a whole week. I was bedridden, insomniac, and with a weird nausea/headache. And while I am much better this week (more about that below), the optimism of a few weeks ago eliminated. The bitter irony is that I had arm-twisted my neurologist to put me in the scan. (I am back to swimming my laps daily.)
On Monday I had an important telephone meeting with an occupational health agency expert. According to the law, after one year this expert evaluates my dossier in light of a formal report of my occupational physician, documentation sent by me, and an employer's report. While I have another year on disability funded by my employer, this is the first moment a process that can lead to termination or a new career can be initiated. So, it's not just a routine conversation. I don't think I reveal any state secrets when I disclose that my Chair had not submitted her report. This told me that my department wasn't yet at the point where they would use my partial disability to get rid of my position and salary.
As an aside, but not irrelevant, luckily, the evals of my Fall course were stellar: students felt they had to work hard and were challenged, but they adored the course. (I did say I love my undergraduates, and it is returned.)* The only sign in the evals that my students noticed anything of my covid is that one complained that my jokes were real downers (usually people praise my jokes).
The conversation with the occupational expert got off on the wrong foot when I misunderstood her intention in her trying to get me to understand that based on my CV I was probably overstretched before I got covid. I thought she was insinuating that my covid was mostly a burn-out. My reaction was not wholly surprising because too many Dutch medical types have tried to push this line on me this past year. And I reminded her that while everyone in Dutch academy was overworked (because of structural lack of funding), I was in no mood for another physician trying to convince me that my situation would just heal itself if I took a step back. But we quickly clarified that what she was trying to say was that I should not expect to return to my former level of activity in my job. I assured her that there was no risk of that. I don't expect to get any research done while teaching, and for the moment I am withdrawing from all speaking engagements.
The rest of the meeting was anticlimactic. She said she trusted my occupational physician that I was likely to have a full recovery. And that as long as my department and I stayed within the guidelines of the occupational physician we should aim to keep me in my position. We would re-evaluate in four months. Later that day I received a lovely email from the Chair of my department that echoed these sentiments.
As I turned to preparing my syllabus for my enormous required, survey course -- 637 registered students -- I initiated a whirlwind of emails to settle logistics. Leaving aside pandemic uncertainty and the fact that we still have to do online testing, courses this size really and this prominent in the curriculum involve half a dozen stake-holders who all have their vision on what it should be. As the emails went back and forth, I mentally realized and accepted I would not get much scholarship done. It would be a prep week.
Two nights ago I awoke in the middle of the night from a complex nightmare. As I laid in bed restless, I wondered whether my irritability over the burn-out trope was perhaps blinding me to the truth; maybe I couldn't handle the workflow at work? But as my mind drifted into anxiety and I reflected more on the dream, I was terrified over my future: what if each class lecture would incapacitate me for two days (like my Fall seminars)? What if I really could never have a real, long conversation with my kid again? What if I could never attend a workshop again? What if my wife becomes miserable because she has lost her partner in crime? And so on, and so on.
I mentioned in some of posts at the end of last year that I understand myself as partially cognitively disabled. This limits my life, but it also puts enormous strains on others. My immediate colleagues have had to pick up some of the slack, and my family's life-style is hugely impacted. A lot of the changes can be folded into 'the pandemic', but some of the adjustments pertaining to me qua individual may well be structural for me, and my environment. If my class does incapacitate me I will have to think about a career switch. Not because my department will nudge me out, but because i shouldn't be in a job that makes be bedridden out of sight. And that is terrifying.
As regular readers know I have been influenced by (recall here; here; and here) Elizabeth Barnes' The Minority Body. And one lesson I took from it is that being alive just is living with constraints. The real political and psychological problem is that when you are disabled or impaired, our social environment is shaped for different bodies and agents. The adjustment to the absence of once familiar affordances which have become out of reach is painful and tiring. Yesterday, Matt Strohl called my attention to a beautiful essay by Francey Russell in The Boston Review. In it, she quotes Sidney Poitier that ���acting isn���t a game of ���pretend.��� It���s an exercise in being real.��� This made me see that each new role would be exhausting for actors. For me, being cognitively impaired is taking on a new role, and, if you allow me the inference, so an exercise in being real.
*Full disclosure, due to a bureaucratic mix-up my evals and those of U��ur Ayta�� were mixed up, but his evals were also clearly stellar.
December 9, 2021
Final Covid Diary Update of the Year: On Partial Cognitive Disability
I am taking my customary end of year blogging break, again. And I hope to return to near-daily blogging in January.
I have enjoyed and appreciated all the well wishes, my dear readers. (For my "covid diaries," see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; and here). It's a strange feature of my current disability that it is easier and more relaxing for me to write a blog post than to have a minor conversation in a caf�� or restaurant. Social interactions are exhausting, and if there is ambient noise or more than one interlocuter, I am likely to have headaches and bad sleep (and a kind of 'soft'-brain fog--in which my thoughts slow down and my phenomenal experience is not as rich as it ordinarily would be). Unfortunately, the side-effect of such interactions is reduced time and energy for blogging, and other writing. (Basically I have been unable to do research while I taught my small Fall course.)
My occupational therapist has convinced me to try to limit social interactions to no more than thirty minutes. And to plan plenty of rest between them. Her theory being that longer interactions just drain me of all energy. 'Energy' is the explanatory concept, the goal, and the ground of everything the occupational therapist says to me. (In Dutch, the occupational therapist is an 'ergo-therapist,' and in conversation with her, I have to prevent myself from using random passages from Aristotle's Ethics.) She basically compares my brain to a car battery that due to my current activity pattern is incapable of fully recharging and, so, fails to retrain itself post trauma. (She alternates comparing my brain to one that has suffered considerable trauma and one that is suffering from burn-out.)
As I have noted before (recall), the occupational therapist has induced a number of behavioral changes all of which amount to avoidance of multi-tasking, doing a better job of relaxing when I should be relaxing, and to give myself a chance to 'build up energy.' Luckily, I don't have to teach for about eight weeks, and I will also try to do more exercise along the way.
The most recent meeting with the occupational therapist annoyed me greatly. Basically, all the new exercises (and 'home-work') involve planning exercises. These are chapter 2 of the exercise-book I was given. It took me a while to figure out why I found it annoying. (The occupational therapist is a funny and empathic person.) But after some reflection, I realized it was because I felt I with my particular symptoms wasn't being treated, but rather I was a number being put through a pre-existing training program. Undoubtedly, the training program is useful, but while i have some cognitive impairments, inability to plan my life is not one of them.
As I said it took me a while to figure out my irritation. What triggered it was her considerable surprise that reading and writing is relaxing for me. Her surprise didn't bother, but the lack of adjustment of the training program does. In particular, she sent me a number of videos (which her patients appreciate greatly) even though I had explained to her earlier that zooms and videos are especially draining. Paying attention to another's reasoned argument or explication basically sets me back a day; whereas reading is a piece of cake.
All of this is in the category, minor troubles relative to the sorrows of humankind. But since I have been sick for a year now, and the pattern has recurred with several other health care providers (go read the covid diaries), I am more attuned to it. Basically nobody knows what my underlying problem really is, and nobody is willing to spend public money to do the kind of invasive testing to figure it out. The testing itself is unlikely to produce conclusive evidence of what's wrong with me, and it is unlikely it will produce a suggestion of how to treat me. And since hospital visits actually set me back days on end, the medical system sensibly hopes my body will cure itself eventually rather than drag me in for lots of tests.
Since this gets repeated with most folk like me -- i.e., long haulers without clear lung and/or heart problems --, we're also disappearing from the system. Nobody is counting how many of us there are, and how much work is being lost. Basically, GPs and and occupational physicians keep track of their own patients, and they know I am not alone; and they share best practices in whatsapp groups. Often we read the same pre-prints when I come to them with experimental treatments. Interestingly enough, the London covid clinic prescribed me heavy dosage of melatonin, and then my UK GP refused to prescribe it except in very small dosage. (This is actually funny because in Holland melatonin is an over the counter drug, but my Dutch GP expressed surprise that this would work at all for long haul.)
My Dutch neurologist told me he rarely sees patients with long haul. (Meanwhile, the waiting list for the neurologist in the London long haul clinic is over a half year now.) Since in the Dutch system, the costs of the first two years of (partial) medical leave are born by the employer and employee (I have have a pay cut alongside my reduction in work hours and responsibilities). And that means that the government will only start noticing us in the Spring of 2022, when the first generation of long haulers will be pushed partially into social security. And since the employer is initially responsible for finding fitting work for the employee, the government will only notice those who are completely disabled or those working for very small companies. So, the numbers, if any, won't start adding up until later in 2022 and 2023.
If I could handle social interactions, this would be the moment I would try to mobilize a Dutch patient group for long haulers. But the very idea of trying to fight the system, and to coordinate many despairing and angry patients, is not 'energy enhancing.' And so I hope that by planning well and conserving energy, I recover sufficiently so that I can keep a version of my job by the end of next year. The system, of course, finds my defeatist response very welcome.
I have come to describe myself as cognitively 'disabled' and 'impaired' (or 'handicapped'). I know that sounds final, and I don't believe it's final. But I have also noticed that 'sickness' doesn't convey my situation and what I need. I need others to accommodate themselves to my limits, and it means that I have to police these limits in a way that I am not used to at all. (It reminds me a bit of when I had to keep visitors away from my partner and son when he was new-born.) And I am also discerning that I have to police my own activities most. Obviously, this risks a spiral of social isolation; I am literally no fun to be around because I can't do much or engage in much. Yesterday, when I was in the office, I literally had to keep well-wishing and well-meaning colleagues from entering my office because I needed time to recover. And it is very difficult to be a partner and dad, when you have to do it in twenty-five minute installments.
The reason I use 'disability' is because when people encounter me they can't see anything wrong with me. And while I don't fit some of the stereotypes of cognitive disability either, at least with cognitive impairments, we're used to them not being wholly visible in one's countenance. (Sometimes people notice I am tired or green/gray.)
As I noted, I have also been diagnosed with partial hearing loss. This has nothing do with covid, it seems, and is potentially reversible. But it occurred to me that one reason why social interactions are so exhausting is that because of the hearing problems I have to work harder at hearing and processing what people say. (This is a good place for your favorite joke about ignoring what others say!)
In January, I'll do a post on how all of this has changed my approach to teaching. But I have gone on long enough, and I need some time away from as screen. It is the way.
December 6, 2021
The Dispossessed (Spoilers), Pt 3.: Utopia without Satire (on Le Guin and Borges)
Bedap���s eyes had got very small, like steel beads. ���Brother,��� he said, ���you are self-righteous. You always were. Look outside your own damned pure conscience for once! I come to you and whisper because I know I can trust you, damn you! Who else can I talk to? Do I want to end up like Tirin?���
���Like Tirin?��� Shevek was startled into raising his voice. Bedap hushed him with a gesture towards the wall. ���What���s wrong with Tirin? Where is he?���
���In the Asylum on Segvina Island.���
���In the Asylum?���
Bedap hunched his knees up to his chin and wrapped his arms around them, as he sat sideways on the chair. He spoke quietly now, with reluctance.
���Tirin wrote a play and put it on, the year after you left. It was funny���crazy���you know his kind of thing.��� Bedap ran a hand through his rough, sandy hair, loosening it from its queue. ���It could seem anti-Odonian, if you were stupid. A lot of people are stupid. There was a fuss. He got reprimanded. Public reprimand. I never saw one before. Everybody comes to your syndicate meeting and tells you off. It used to be how they cut a bossy gang foreman or manager down to size. Now they only use it to tell an individual to stop thinking for himself. It was bad. Tirin couldn���t take it. I think it really drove him a bit out of his mind. He felt everybody was against him, after that. He started talking too much���bitter talk. Not irrational, but always critical, always bitter. And he���d talk to anybody that way. Well, he finished at the Institute, qualified as a math instructor, and asked for a posting. He got one. To a road repair crew in Southsetting. He protested it as an error, but the Divlab computers repeated it. So he went.���
���Tir never worked outdoors the whole time I knew him,��� Shevek interrupted. ���Since he was ten. He always wangled desk jobs. Divlab was being fair.���
Bedap paid no attention. ���I don���t really know what happened down there. He wrote to me several times, and each time he���d been reposted. Always to physical labor, in little outpost communities. He wrote that he was quitting his posting and coming back to Northsetting to see me. He didn���t come. He stopped writing. I traced him through the Abbenay Labor Files, finally. They sent me a copy of his card, and the last entry was just, ���Therapy. Segvina Island.��� Therapy! Did Tirin murder somebody? Did he rape somebody? What do you get sent to the Asylum for, beside that?���
���You don���t get sent to the Asylum at all. You request posting to it.���
���Don���t feed me that crap,��� Bedap said with sudden rage. ���He never asked to be sent there! They drove him crazy and then sent him there. It���s Tirin I���m talking about, Tirin, do you remember him?���
���I knew him before you did. What do you think the Asylum is���a prison? It���s a refuge. If there are murderers and chronic work-quitters there, it���s because they asked to go there, where they���re not under pressure, and safe from retribution. But who are these people you keep talking about������they���? ���They��� drove him crazy, and so on. Are you trying to say that the whole social system is evil, that in fact ���they,��� Tirin���s persecutors, your enemies, ���they,��� are us���the social organism?���
���If you can dismiss Tirin from your conscience as a work-quitter, I don���t think I have anything else to say to you,��� Bedap replied, sitting hunched up on the chair. There was such plain and simple grief in his voice that Shevek���s righteous wrath was stopped short.--Ursula Le Guin (1974) The Dispossessed, Chapter 6, pp. 141-143 (in the British edition).
This post is the third in an open-ended series on Le Guin's The Dispossessed (see here for pt 1; here for pt 2.). Annares is an anarchist society without public laws, property, nor guilt. Relatively minor violations of local norms and practices are generally sanctioned by social criticism and ostracism. The exchange between Bedap and Shevek, the initially foolish hero of the story, reveals that some major violations of norms are medicalized; one is viewed as psychologically diseased if one murders, rapes, or systematically refuses to contribute work to society (a society -- it should be noted, in fairness -- that teeters on the edge of subsistence and otherwise is quite generous). Presumably the Asylum aims at rehabilitation. (In chapter 10, we hear the Asylum understands itself as a "refuge.") Bedap's suggestion is that those who show too much independence of thought are also nudged to the Asylum.
What makes Tirin's situation so interesting is that his free-thinking is expressed in terms of a satire. And it becomes clear through the narrative that Annares is unfamiliar with such comedy. In this respect Annares, a community devoted to sympathetic mutual aid, is not unalike to how Socrates legislates Kallipolis and, perhaps more pertinent, how J.L. Borges imagines (recall) Ibn Rushd's Muslim Spain (which also lacks satirical comedy). That Le Guin was very familiar with Borges' thought, and took it rather seriously, is suggested by her (1988) introduction to Borges' co-edited volume The Book of Fantasy, which focuses exclusively on Borges (without paying much attention to the two other editors) and the "honours" she thinks he is due, and scattered remarks in her non-fiction writing. Among the noteworthy claims of that introduction is that she treats fantasy and science fiction as a joint genre, each (to convey her thought rather reductively) devoted to making visible the moral questions of our age.
The arts are key to social life to the relatively isolated communities of Annares. And, in particular, the theatre is very important, "the Art." (Chapter 6; p. 131) But the syndics who put up art-works also have rather restrictive interpretations of what art should be shown. So, comedies do exist on Annares, but are not as central: ���They performed tragedies, semi-improvised comedies, mimes. ��� Rising out of and embodying the isolation and communality of the Anarresti spirit, the drama had attained extraordinary power and brilliance.��� (p. 131) So, satire is unknown.
My students and I had some initial difficulty in understanding why Tirin's play created such trouble for him in Annares. It looks rather innocent. Here is a brief, post-facto summary by an eye-witness (in chapter 10):
���Did you see the play he put on, the one that made trouble for him?���
���At the Summer Festival, after you left? Oh yes. I don���t remember it, that���s so long ago now. It was silly. Witty���Tirin was witty. But silly. It was about an Urrasti, that���s right. This Urrasti hides himself in a hydroponics tank on the Moon freighter, and breathes through a straw, and eats the plant roots. I told you it was silly! And so he gets himself smuggled onto Anarres. And then he runs around trying to buy things at depots, and trying to sell things to people, and saving gold nuggets till he���s holding so many he can���t move. So he has to sit where he is, and he builds a palace, and calls himself the Owner of Anarres. And there was an awfully funny scene where he and this woman want to copulate, and she���s just wide open and ready, but he can���t do it until he���s given her his gold nuggets first, to pay her. And she didn���t want them. That was funny, with her flopping down and waving her legs, and him launching himself onto her, and then he���d leap up like he���d been bitten, saying, ���I must not! It is not moral! It is not good business!��� Poor Tirin! He was so funny, and so alive.���
���He played the Urrasti?���
���Yes. He was marvelous.--chapter 10, p. 269
At first sight, Tirin is merely making fun of the money-obsessed Urrasti, drawing on the shared prejudices or ideology of the anarchists of Annares. These views are taught on Annares from a young age. In addition, Urrasti are not allowed to visit Annares. (Annares and Urras are each other's moons.) This is, in fact, part of the founding "Settlement" that governs the isolationist anarchist society (which is developed out of the refugees of the members of a failed revolution on Urrasti). They keep outside influences and people, which are seen as dangerously corrupting, out of Annares. This is achieved by limiting planetary entry to a few commodities that are exchanges with mining commodities that are useful to the much wealthier Urrasti societies.
So, Tirin's play is a fantasy about the troubles an Urrasti might find in adjusting to life on or trying to subvert life on Annares. And since the Urrasti is not presented in attractive fashion and is, in fact, held up to ridicule, it is at first odd that Tirin is sanctioned so badly for staging the play (and his life haunted by it), and that Shevek eventually decides he has to publish it independently despite social disapproval.
Now, eventually, we are informed that Shevek learns to understand Tirin as an "inventor-destroyer, the kind who's got turn everything upside down and inside out. A satirist, a man who praises through rage." (Chapter 10, p. 270.) This goes very much against the purpose of drama on Annares, which really frowns on (i) individuality in all the arts and tends to praise works that (ii) promote (without being shallow) uplifting harmony. (This is also seen in the treatment of choral music on Annares.)
So, let's take stock: in virtue of (i) and (ii) and (iii) representing immorality in satirical fashion Tirin's play is called "immoral" by some (270). Even in the narrative of The Dispossessed, it is recognized that calling an author immoral in virtue of (i-iii) is not an especially sophisticated response to the play. But despite the Urrasti being the but of the joke, there is an important feature of the play that is highly critical of Annares. While the satire seems to be primarily directed against the traditional capitalist or properterian enemy it also expresses a criticism of the isolation of Annares. As Shevek puts it, this satire also teaches, "what prisons are, and who builds them. Those who build walls are their own prisoners." Annaeres is simultaneously a great social project, and a prison.
Now, for us as readers with only partial and second hand access to the play, it's not entirely clear how this interpretation follows from what we have been shown. But it is not entirely unclear either: the local Annares women does not get satisfaction, and the interaction between the man and women is governed by mutual misunderstanding. And all of this is due to the fact that the Settlement has built a theoretical and empirical wall around Annares. To keep capitalism out, the locals also deliberately keep themselves uninformed and to avoid nearly all mutual exchange.* The outside world is a source of contamination--and needs to be quarantined out. (This point is actually made on the very first page of the book.)
And taken like this, Tirin's satire is not misunderstood at all by those who criticized and socially ostracized him. And while they may seem initially outlandishly vindictive and dangerously totalitarian to us, Tirin's audience accurately perceives that his ridiculous satire is taking aim at the foundational commitments of their society of mutual aid.+ (Notice that in the play, the Annares basically leave the Urrasti to his own devices.)
To close: one of the main questions that The Dispossessed makes us ask -- this is played out in a number of set-piece debates in chapter 12 -- is whether a society founded on the noble ideals of mutual aid and solidarity, can tolerate individual, intellectual commerce with the rest of the world (especially if that commerce is not governed by social utility) without risking its own survival by it. The question is, of course, not limited to such admirable societies. Le Guin's book offers no platitudes of reassurance or an answer to the question; each of us have to think it for ourselves with our communities.**
*This anticipates Jemisin's treatment in "The Ones Who Stay and Fight."
+In this sense they are very unalike to Ibn Rushd in Borges' story who lacks the semiotics to read the plays he encounters through traveler tales.
**I thank my students for reflection, especially Robin Kan, Oscar Hammarstedt, and Rudolf van Schaik
December 4, 2021
The Long Haul Glass is half full (knock on timber)
1. So a few weeks ago, I had my first meeting with an occupational therapist. I may have mentioned that I find her theories silly, but there is nothing wrong with her practical insights. She made me do five day of diaries (by thirty minute intervals), and I was shown that I multitask a lot. And that a lot of things count as multi-tasking which were not intuitively multitasking to me: like walking and talking, like walking and listening to music, cooking and listening to music, writing and listening to music, etc.
2. So, I have made a lot of relatively minor behavioral adjustments all in the spirit of reducing what I call soft multi-tasking. Including some adjustments designed to relax before going to sleep (e.g., turning off my phone 30 minutes before lights out; no watching of netflix/football (etc.) before I go to sleep, etc.). I sleep much better, especially if I manage to go to bed relatively early. (I still need melatonin, alas.)
3. To my amazement, my headaches, nausea, and most of my sudden bouts of fatigue have largely disappeared. (I'll get to the *MAJOR* exception below.) So, my quality of life has improved dramatically again because I am not really suffering much day to day. And in many ways I feel like I did near the end of July, when I was confident I would recover before long.
4. Some of my symptoms (dizziness, tinnitus, and ear problems) have been tackled by my (fantastic!) new ENT physician. These problems were all eliminated by her aggressive treatment. However, a hearing test on Thursday revealed that, in fact, I do have reduced hearing loss (something I had suspected all year), but in my right ear only. Extra testing revealed the problems are due to my eardrum and not any of the nerves or structures behind the eardrum. This is very good news because it suggests it's reversible and (presumably) unrelated to Covid. My ENT thinks it's due to my chronic sinusitis. (Something diagnosed about five or six years ago.) She has started me on a whole battery of tests to get to the bottom of the chronic sinusitis and to try treat it (so hopefully I have better hearing and better quality of life to hope for). These tests will be completed by the end of January, so this will be a major subtext going forward.
5. My Dutch GP (the junior partner of my longstanding GP) has become pro-active in helping me navigate the health options in Dutch context. She has invested time and energy to research different options and has coached me in dealing with recalcitrant specialists, and answering my questions. It really helps to have her in my corner. It also helps that the practice has a very good patient dossier system that allows for low key interaction with the GPs.
6. With some holiday and a month of no teaching coming up, I am optimistic about recovering more. This optimism is also due to the fact that with my ears recovered I can return to my swimming exercise, which is physically and psychologically a major boost.
Okay so much for the good news.
There is still bad news:
1. Social interactions still destroy me; I quickly get fatigued, headaches, and irritability after even minor conversations.
2. Since I mostly avoid social interactions, teaching and hospital/physician visits are the major trigger of these problems. Often adrenaline takes me through the actual class or the visit but the aftermath is brutal (fatigue, headaches, etc.). My occupational therapist claims she can help me with this, and our next meeting is all about strategies for improving my social endurance. (I will just ignore her theories.) So, hopefully she is as successful with this as she is with my multi-tasking issues.
3. All of this (1-2) has led my occupational physician to cut my teaching load (and my salary) for next semester again. (I agreed.) I am very sad not to teach my inaugural feminist philosophy class, but my large lecture course is shorter and easier for me (despite the gigantic enrollments--we're expecting over 600 students.) This will leave me more time to recover from teaching, and also to spend more time with my family.
4. Having said that, while the aftermath of social interaction is still brutal, it's also clear that I am recovering quicker than before. And that's clearly because now when I think I am relaxing, I am really doing a better job of actually relaxing.
5. I had to miss my son's 12th birthday. Because I am in no position to do quick return trips between London and Amsterdam. I shared in some of the fun through social media (which I also find taxing), and it's not the same thing.
7. I know a lot of you want to cheer me on (thank you), and kind of try to spin things positively on my behalf. Well, this week the glass is half full.
Happy Holidays!
December 3, 2021
The Dispossessed (Spoilers), Pt 2.: Inductive risk in State Capitalist plutocratic-oligarchic society
"I did it in ten decads. Well enough to read To���s Introduction. Oh, hell, you need a text to work on. Might as well be that. Here. Wait.��� He hunted through an overflowing drawer and finally achieved a book, a queer-looking book, bound in blue, without the Circle of Life on the cover. The title was stamped in gold letters and seemed to say Poilea Afio-ite, which didn���t make any sense, and the shapes of some of the letters were unfamiliar. Shevek stared at it, took it from Sabul, but did not open it. He was holding it, the thing he had wanted to see, the alien artifact, the message from another world.
He remembered the book Palat had shown him, the book of numbers.
���Come back when you can read that,��� Sabul growled.
Shevek turned to go. Sabul raised his growl: ���Keep those books with you! They���re not for general consumption.���
The young man paused, turned back, and said after a moment in his calm, rather diffident voice, ���I don���t understand.���
���Don���t let anybody else read them!���
Shevek made no response.
���All right��� Sabul turned away, scowling with what appeared to be an endemic, not a specific rage. Shevek left, carrying the dynamite carefully, with revulsion and devouring curiosity.--Ursula Le Guin (1974) The Dispossessed (chapter 4; p. 89 in the (1999) Millennium edition).
As regular readers know, ever since Joshua Miller introduced me to The Dispossessed, I have become an Ursula Le Guin fan-boi. I wrote about the book enthusiastically six years ago almost to the day (recall here--that counts as pt 1 of the present series). And I intended to return to it regularly. However, when I taught it the next time around, a class discussion about the sexual assault scene in chapter 7 made me realize I didn't understand the book. Normally, I use these digressions to think my way through to some clarity or higher order confusion, but, despite writing joyously about many of Le Guin's other works since, I was blocked on The Dispossessed, which I think of not just as a work of science fiction, but a major contribution to Socratic political theory (recall also here; this one on Thomas More; and here on Kant and Spinoza) in utopian and anarchist thought. (This post will illustrate that.) So now, I'd like to try again with a series of posts, including, eventually, a revisit the significance of that scene.
Okay, in the quoted passage above, our main protagonist, Shevek, a brilliant physicist, is introduced to a feature of what philosophers call 'inductive risk' (a now flourishing topic again thanks to Heather Douglas' revival of it). As I noted back in 2015 Shevek is politically very na��ve, "a fool," this includes the politics of the science. And part of the action of the book is us viewing his education in politics (as well as the politics of science). And while I would never claim you should primarily read the book in virtue of its many insights into the nature of the socially embedded intellectual mind, but it is a good reason to read the book. (Yes, I am a fan.)
As an aside, I am usually not one for insisting biography matters, but while Le Guin never completed her doctorate, she was the daughter of the influential anthropologist Alfred Louis Kroeber, the sister of the literature professor Karl Kroeber, and the spouse of the historian Charles Le Guin. And she used her keen powers of observation and analysis in her (gentle) satire and advocacy of the intellectual life (including the labor of spouses to make it possible).
What makes the passage notable is that Sabul, the director of the Sciences Institute, uses the inductive risk argument in the service of secrecy. That's not surprising; inductive risk does not entail secrecy, but it's always a live option in light of it. Yet, we realize rather quickly that in many ways it's a bogus argument because the interests that are being served are primarily his own careerist ones. For despite the absence of profit as a motive -- Annares is anarchist society without (private) property and commerce -- the Sciences Institute itself has become hierarchical in structure and a source of social benefits not the least prestige. And through his office and political maneuvering, Sabul controls gate-keeping rather severely (e.g., publication locally and access to information from and with international networks).
And the reason why the inductive risk argument works so well with Shevek is that the social responsibilities of science (and other practices) are very important in Annares, which teeters constantly on the edge of famine, and where all the social mores are organized around mutual aid and local control by local syndics. Part of Le Guin's wizardry in the book is that she simultaneously makes the potential oppressiveness of such little platoons local syndics highly visible and felt, while not destroying the ideal behind it. Like all important ideas that can be communicated to others, inductive risk can be abused. Of course, in this case it is a reflexive problem (it's the inductive risk of inductive risk). And it is striking that it can be abused so badly in a society where social consequences are taken so seriously. In lots of other contexts, the scientists themselves might well resist the idea that their work should be evaluated in light of social consequences--that's other people's responsibility and problem.
Interestingly enough, despite rejecting property, and embracing mutual aid, the scientists of Annares, the idealistic Shevek not excepted, crave credit/recognition for their scientific work. When Shevek is arm-twisted into sharing credit with his boss (Sabul), we see him experiencing misery. And he looks for ways to receive the credit he thinks he deserves. Sabul and Shevek end up bargaining (through barter and withholding labor/benefits) over credit. And it is one of his motives to challenge (and eventually leave) the Physics syndic. On first principles, one would have expected anonymous or collective publication -- so, either put all the names of the syndic on it or just the name of the syndic -- to be the norm in Annares. But Le Guin discerns, not implausible, that even when profit motive is eliminated by society, status and recognition are important pulls.
To be clear, when Le Guin turns to science's functioning in A-Io (on the planet Urras),--an excessively patriarchal-state-capitalist society [a critic calls it "plutocratic-oligarchic" at one point], which appears as a kind of a mirror-hybrid between the UK and US of the 1970s, but still highly familiar--profit and bureaucratic advancement are also not the only motive in science. When Atro, the doyen of science in Urras, and a champion of Shevek's theories, explains his motives he says:
���I hope you feel the same, my dear. I earnestly hope it. There���s a great deal that���s admirable, I���m sure, in your society, but it doesn���t teach you to discriminate���which is after all the best thing civilization teaches. I don���t want those damned aliens getting at you through your notions about brotherhood and mutualism and all that. They���ll spout you whole rivers of ���common humanity��� and ���leagues of all the worlds��� and so on, and I���d hate to see you swallow it. The law of existence is struggle���competition���elimination of the weak���a ruthless war for survival. And I want to see the best survive. The kind of humanity I know. The Cetians. You and I: Urras and Anarres. We���re ahead of them now, all those Hainish and Terrans and whatever else they call themselves, and we���ve got to stay ahead of them. They brought us the interstellar drive, but we���re making better interstellar ships now than they are. When you come to release your Theory, I earnestly hope you���ll think of your duty to your own people, your own kind. Of what loyalty means, and to whom it���s due.��� The easy tears of old age had sprung into Atro���s half-blind eyes. Shevek put his hand on the old man���s arm, reassuring, but he said nothing.
���They���ll get it, of course. Eventually. And they ought to. Scientific truth will out, you can���t hide the sun under a stone. But before they get it, I want them to pay for it! I want us to take our rightful place. I want respect; and that���s what you can win us. Transilience���if we���ve mastered transilience, their interstellar drive won���t amount to a hill of beans. It���s not money I want, you know. I want the superiority of Cetian science recognized, the superiority of the Cetian mind. If there has to be an interstellar civilization, then by God I don���t want my people to be low-caste members of it! We should come in like noblemen, with a great gift in our hands���that���s how it should be. Well, well, I get hot about it sometimes. By the way, how���s it going, your book?��� (119-120)
It's important that in the self-conception of Atro, science is in its social aspect fundamentally about prestige and recognition. In this respect he is not so different from the attitudes of Shevek.
But for Atro, it is a means to winning in a competition. In an important (1987) paper, Playfulness, "World"-Travelling, and Loving Perception, the feminist philsopher, Mar��a Lugones, noticed, correctly, that modern advocates of play (she names Johan Huizinga and Hans-Georg Gadamer) tend to think of play in terms of agonistic competition, that is winning, and in which competence (under uncertainty over the come) reigns supreme. And she, quite rightly, connects these ideas to imperialist outlook. Atro fits this agonistic schema very nicely.* (I actually think the alternative, loving play, also has a platonic origin in Plato's Laws, but about that some other time.)
In fact, Atro (a scion of an old noble family) rejects the profit motive (which is otherwise very important in his society). But prestige can also be used for ends that are quite political: international standing, and international competitive advantage. And while there are plenty of hints that others in Atro's society intend to make great profits from technological advantage, even derive military advantage, Atro is keen on gifting ideas to others recognizing, a norm once ubiquitous in the academy, that in gift-economy bearing great gifts is a source of great prestige (and power).
There is one more scene that bears on this. It occurs just after the assault scene (and Shevek's response to it) that is so troubling. And after it, Shevek's character changes course in significant. It's an introspective meditation by Shevek:
To be a physicist in A-Io was to serve not society, not mankind, not the truth, but the State.
On his first night in this room he had asked them, challenging and curious, ���What are you going to do with me?��� He knew now what they had done with him. Chifoilisk had told him the simple fact. They owned him. He had thought to bargain with them, a very na��ve anarchist���s notion. The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself. (Chapter 9, p. 225)
It's important to recognize (and this is explicit in the book), that in this respect, there is little difference between a communist state [which Chifoilisk serves], where "one [centralized] power structure controls all, the government, administration, police, army, education, laws, trades, manufactures [and with a] money economy.��� (p. 114) And wages are determined by this power structure. And a society (A-Io, akin to ours today) in which profit is pursued, but in which the state and interlocking companies and foundations fund research. The modern state is mercantile in character, and even in the absence of actual violence, it is always lurking in the background to those who refuse or resist its coinage. (This is, in fact, the point of chapter 9.)
Here foreseeable, inductive risk really means either that science is corrupted by letting the state's coinage rule it (that is, that science's intrinsic reward scheme is displaced by extrinsic ones), or that it serves to entrench state power (by becoming "an investment or a weapon" (p. 288)) at the expense of those in the margins of society or other societies. That is, the book very clearly (and rightly!) rejects the idea that the state's and its functionaries' interests coincide with the wider proper interests. And the hard-hitting message of The Dispossessed is that all of us in the academy are, in this respect, state functionaries with more or less greater self-awareness about this.
At the end of the book, Shevek decides that the best solution is free, universal open access; a true communism of knowledge (familiar, say, from the Stoics). But it's not wholly clear whether Le Guin endorses it; because she shows that for Shevek this for all his idealism, too, is partially transactional. He receives credit and a chance at return home (or freedom). And a moment's reflection suggests that international open access may strengthen the states and oligarchs, if they can control, and they have the means to do so, their state functionaries.
*Huizinga's views on imperialism are worth a second look.
December 1, 2021
Ol��f�����mi O. T����w�� on Rawls and Liberalism
Ol��f�����mi O. T����w��'s elegant and provocative review of Katrina Forrester's In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy (a book I have procrastinated on reading carefully) closes with the remark quoted above. A key point of the review is that "by redirecting us from both history and sociology and premising justice on abstract game theory, Rawls���s book and its liberal vision of justice ended up promoting a political philosophy that was ill-equipped for the era of sustained academic and popular attention to historical injustice." I am generally not a friend of the Rawlsian vision of liberalism, but I am curious about the claim because there are a series of papers that have tried to develop Rawls to fill the gap on the academic side (Janna Thompson here; and Erin Kelly here, both published in Ethics). That made me wonder whether T����w�� thinks such attempts fail intellectually or whether, and more interesting to me, he thinks such attempts are unsuited to informing and shaping the "popular attention" to the topic. I have long been struck by the fact that Rawls' Theory of Justice appeared at the turning point of the New Deal settlement, and when the culture's and political (ahh) zeitgeist moved against it, Since T����w�� has a book (which I also aspire to read) out/forthcoming on the topic consider this advertisement for it.
As an aside, when T����w�� describes Rawls' rise in biographical terms through the academy he does not mention one of the more remarkable features of it, that is, that Rawls had a quite noticeable speech impediment (something I encountered first hand in 1991 or 92). (I think this may be missing from Forrester's book.) In her remembrance of Rawls at the memorial servive, Christine Korsgaard leads with a touching story about this. The Guardian's obituary claims that "as a child, he was traumatised by the deaths of two brothers from infections they had contracted from him; Rawls later admitted that this tragedy had contributed to the development of a severe stutter, which afflicted him for the rest of his life." I mention this because the academy is not an especially easy place to function in with such a limitation. And it also would have undermined the effectiveness, alas, of a lot of more public facing political activities.
Be that as it may, the quoted passage uses Rawls as a stand-in for liberalism. In a certain sense this makes sense because from a theoretical point of view, in the Anglophone academy, Rawls is the only liberal game in town. But liberalism as a living political practice, institutionalized in constitutions and institutions, draws on sources that generally predate Rawls and have been capable of sustained creativity and re-invention. It is worth noting that when in the late 1970s Foucault turned to the question of the liberal art of government, Rawls has no place in his narrative: instead he focuses on eighteenth century sources, and (from the twentieth century) ordoliberalism, Walter Lippmann, Hayek, Lionel Robbins, and Chicago economics. (Foucault largely skips Keynes, who thought of himself as saving liberalism, and, more oddly -- given the list -- Popper.)*
The list of names in the previous paragraph hints at many polemics against the 'radical tendencies' of their day. For many those polemics were existential because they thought it possible that liberalism could collapse, and had collapsed in many places. Because Rawls is writing in the shadow of pax americana there is a complacency to his thought absent from others. For all his flaws (and there are many) Popper's Open Society and its Enemies, for example never bores (despite the lengthy and sometimes bizarre footnotes) because he takes these tendencies extremely seriously. And none of the characters I have just mentioned are interested in state of nature theorizing or even popular sovereignty, which many of these liberals associate with the dangers of totalitarianism and the dangerous afterlife of Rousseau's Social Contract. All of them try to imagine democracy in ways that would screen of such a doctrines.
I mention ordoliberalism, especially, in this context because in its foundational moment (recall here), as a politically potent force, on the ruins of Nazi Germany, it relatively quickly recognizes the principle of reparations for historical injustice. The Federal Republic of Germany has paid out to Israel and Jews (and some other victims) everywhere since. So, the idea that liberalism (sharing) in power is incapable of addressing historical injustice rests, I fear, on the Anglo-experience. (Of course, I don't deny that liberalism in power does a lot of evil, too.)
And if we go back a bit, to the nineteenth century, the most vital age of liberal politics, there is quite a bit of liberal complicity with racialized empire. But the most interesting liberal political characters of the age, Richard Cobden and John Bright, are implacable enemies of slavery (Bright especially), of militarism (including Britain's), and imperialism. (Interestingly enough, their names are generally only associated with free trade; but for them that was a moral and political crusade against militarism and poverty.) And it is interesting to me that philosophers happily teach and discuss Mill, warts and all, in the undergraduate curriculum, but ignore (recall) Cobden and Bright.+ And I don't think Cobden and Bright are somehow odd exceptions. They are drawing on what one may call the Adam Smith-Condorcet-Wilberforce heritage.
Noam Chomsky (not a liberal apologist), writing in 1970, in "Government in the Future," recognizes this heritage and articulates it through Wilhelm von Humboldt���s ���Limits of State Action,��� which he even treats as a kind of founder of libertarian and a certain species of anarchist thought or at least its most profound exemplar. And, crucially for present purposes Chomsky (correctly) opposes Von Humboldt to the state of nature tradition (especially Rousseau) and ideas of popular sovereignty. (In 1995 he links Smith and Von Humboldt.) Smith and Von Humboldt take state political violence (of Mercantilism) as their target.
I mention all of this in superficial form because there is liberal social theory and a liberal political philosophy that takes its own complicity with social evils seriously, and also has articulated responses to it. Nearly everyone mentioned here believed in relatively open borders in order to welcome refugees and immigrants, and instinctively rejected Rawls' "closed society." Many of my past digressions are invitations to the material mentioned above. (My friend Jacob T. Levy has been very inspirational on these issues, and his work is, perhaps, a better place to start.) I do not suggest that these responses would be compelling to the present radical tendencies and radical critics, but Rawls' shadow also blots out a lot of liberalism worth rediscovering if only to understand our recurring predicaments. Perhaps, some of you may wish to join me in rebuilding a theoretical liberalism worth having from the building blocks scattered throughout history.
*Foucault is also interested in radicalism/utilitarianism, but at some point that tradition turns illiberal.
+Hobson, who is well known to Marxists, also fits in this category. But he embraces racial superiority and so I distance myself from him despite the many interesting insights in his work. (Cobden is less a principled critic of settled colonialism, but often scathing about its practice.)
November 30, 2021
Orwell, Pynchon, Spinoza, and the stability of texts and records (Pt III)
[46] We lack, not only all these things, but also and especially, a phraseology of this language. For time, the devourer, has obliterated from the memory of men almost all the idioms and manners of speaking peculiar to the Hebrew nation. Therefore, we will not always be able, as we desire, to find out, with respect to each utterance, all the meanings it can admit according to linguistic usage. Many utterances will occur whose meaning will be very obscure, indeed, completely incomprehensible, even though they are expressed in well- known terms.
[47] In addition to the fact that we cannot have a complete history of the Hebrew language, there is the very nature and constitution of this language. So many ambiguities arise from this that it is impossible to devise a method which will teach you how to find out with certainty the true meaning of all the utterances of Scripture. For besides the causes of ambiguity common to all languages there are certain others in this language from which a great many ambiguities are born....
[65] These are all the difficulties I had undertaken to recount arising from this method of interpreting Scripture according to the history available to us. I consider them so great that I don���t hesitate to say this: in a great many places either we don���t know what Scripture really means or we���re just guessing about its meaning without any certainty.-- Spinoza, Theological Political, Treatise Chapter VII, translated by E. Curley.
This is the third and final post in a series on Orwell's 1984 inspired by Thomas Pynchon's (2003) "Introduction" to it (here is pt 1; pt 2). After this week's controversy (recall), it might seem cheeky that this piece is mediated via Spinoza. But careful readers of the second in the series will not be surprised (I hope). Okay, with that in place, let me turn to Orwell.
After Winston has been tortured, he comes arrives at three slogans, the third of which is: "GOD IS POWER." Now, on the face of it, this is an odd slogan in the context of 1984. For, first it seems religion and theology are altogether outlawed in Oceania, and this in fact only the second mention of 'God' in the book. What mysticism exists is itself (recall) funneled through the creation of Newspeak. Much earlier, God had been mentioned in the context of the Party's rewriting the poems of Kipling, in which 'God' could not be eliminated as a rhyme (with 'rod'--the subject matter is serious, but the scene is hilarious). Shortly after, writing "GOD IS POWER," Winston insists he is no believer.
The slogan itself echoes one of the claims of his torturer, who says, 'We are the priests of power... God is power.' And, in fact, he goes on to claim in one of the more philosophical passages in the book.
Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.
And in fact, Winston echoes this argument in the context of writing down the "GOD IS POWER" slogan.
Now, that God is power is a feature of Spinoza's a priori demonstration of God's existence (see, especially, E1P11S). And there is, in fact, more than a kind of superficial similarity between the de-individualized Party and Spinoza's conception of eternality. I don't mean to press the analogy too far because Spinoza's idealism (yes, I know very controversial) is not of the subjective kind. And while Spinoza's philosophy certainly risks turning the state into a new idol, he would reject many of the Party's techniques and positions.
This may all be a bit anachronistic, but it is worth recalling that Orwell certainly thought Swift the first great critic of totalitarianism (see his essay Orwell (1946) "Politics vs. Literature ��� An examination of Gulliver's travels.") And in a World-War II BBC program, Orwell treats Hobbes "and other 17th century writers" as original predictors of totalitarianisms. So, the connection is not entirely far-fetched.
In particular, in the Appendix to 1984, we are told by a narrator of the distant future that in Oceania, "And, in contrast to Pynchon, I claimed that key features of life in Oceania are modelled on a certain interpretation of the Old Testament. But this is also a problem.
For, from the first, famous sentence of 1984, we are also reminded that we have entered a universal with a certain kind of instability at its core. That the clocks strike "thirteen" is distinctly odd.* Odder still is that when Winston starts his diary, he quickly writes, ���To begin with he did not know with any certainty that this was 1984. It must be round about that date, since he was fairly sure that his age was thirty-nine, and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945, but it was never possible nowadays to pin down any date within a year or two." The theme is repeated throughout the novel.** This uncertainty about the date is especially odd because in his work, at the Ministry of Truth, which involves fabricating and retouching news-stories in the Times, he encounters the official date on the newspaper every day.
But, of course, that calendric reform coincides with a major political revolution is no surprise. It's happened before. So, the Party could have changed dates for convenience sake. And the fact that Winston is part of the process of permanent falsification (in the ordinary not Popperian sense) means he knows nothing he reads can be trusted. The "terrible" book by the traitor Emmanuel Goldstein ("The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism") turns out to be circulated and written by the Party so Winston's torturer claims. Can he be trusted, who knows?
In fact, and I hate to go meta-textual, but textual instability is even part of the title of Orwell's book, which is often spelled just '1984'; 'nineteen eighty-four' and 'Nineteen Eighty-Four.' And as Pynchon notes, the American edition was almost published without its appendix.
Now, first, Orwell's important political insight, anticipating (recall) Arendt, is that in true totalitarianism the center and near-center is often not just paranoid, but also has no better access to the truth of its own affairs than ordinary citizens or foreigners. In a system like that it cannot develop a true shadow book-keeping. And, as Orwell notes, this also makes collective planning so difficult and self-defeating.
Second, (recall) as Walter Lippmann (building on, as Nick Cowen reminded me, J.S. Mill) emphasized, reliable record-keeping by the state (of birth, death, property deeds, etc.) is one of the bedrocks of many species of modern liberty. Yes, anarchists everywhere and some Foucaultians will see in such legibility an immanent, would-be panopticon. (Pynchon's own writings are worth re-reading for reflection on this.) Even so, reliable record-keeping is the foundation of removing many forms of uncertainty and generating reliable expectations. And when there is little reason for doubt and suspicion about these records, the politics tends to be more temperate. Blessed are the times in which such record keeping can be taken for granted, and is available to all!
Third, I put the passages of Spinoza at the top of the post because in many ways we readers of 1984 are in the position that Spinoza attributes to the would-be-interpreter of Scriptures. In a way, the Appendix reinforces this point. For, it provides us with an interpretation of the rules of Newspeak that, while compelling, is clearly also post facto and may, in fact, serve it's own political ends. As I noted last week, Pynchon is surprisingly optimist in reading the Appendix as a sign of a restoration of sorts, whereas my two previous posts argue that this need not be so. And because Orwell deliberately does not inform us of the author of the Appendix and his/her intentions, we are pretty much in the same position as Spinoza implies about Scriptures, "we are completely ignorant of the authors (or, if you prefer, Writers) of many of the books, or else we have doubts about them." (TTP VII [58]).
Let me close. I do not mean to suggest that the severe textual and referential instability of and in 1984 reduces it to a kind of meaningless white noise. Spinoza address an objection like this in Chapter X, too:
[42] But perhaps someone will say that in this way I overthrow Scripture completely���for in this way everyone can suspect that it is faulty everywhere. But that would be wrong.
Something like this seems true of one's reading of 1984. But once one starts pressing on the details, one has to allow major insecurity about one's own judgments of it. Paradoxically, inducing such an experience into the attentive reader may well be one of its aims.
*I hasten to add: not to my Dutch students who are very familiar with 13hrs.
**One of my terrific students, Robin Kan, counted 23 occasions! Most of these signal temporal and calendric uncertainty.
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