Eric Schliesser's Blog, page 28

Covid's Incomplete Recovery

It's about three weeks ago that I view as a turning point in my not quite completed recovery from covid. (For earlier installments in the series, see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; and here).  Since then I lead a more active and social life. I walk about five miles a day. I try to write three days a week for about five to six hours a day on my quixotic Foucault and the liberal art of government project. At the end of each week, I am pleasantly surprised how much progress I have made. But I don't trust my own judgment yet whether this is professionally interesting or just a weird form of delusional auto-cognitive-therapy.

I am more pro-active in reaching out to family by phone. I am less noise sensitive than I had been most of the year. We do family dinners again, and I find that when other people put on music I don't run away anymore. Last week I went to my son's school play, and enjoyed most of it. While my reading is still light, I did referee two papers this past month.

A propos of nothing. I read Ursula Le Guin's early novels: Rocannon's World and Planet of Exile in reverse order. They are both part of the Hainish universe. Planet of Exile was a bit disappointing, although in a weird way reassuring that her genius and wisdom was not fully formed at once. In re-reading Rocannon's World, I could see when in my first reading I had quit. I am glad that I gave it a second chance: it's a beautiful homage to Tolkien, and simultaneously a powerful meditation on the what it's like to be in the service of empire in the name of science and humanity. Since I had recently read Mill's (1859) "Few Words on Nonintervention," (as part of my liberal art of government project), Le Guin's wisdom really shined for me.

So, at first sight I seem recovered. And I am enjoying the mental space that for the first time in several decades I am free from deadlines and other commitments. I especially enjoy the privilege to ignore emails. My university does not have sabbaticals, so I imagine this is the headspace I have always imagined sabbaticals to be like. Of course, in a sabbatical I would try to write and read much more and more intensely.

Most of the obvious symptoms of Covid have disappeared: I sleep much better. Even so, while I feel much improved and optimistic again, there are some signs that not all is well yet. First, thirty to forty-five minutes is my limit of multi-person zoom. (I can lengthen that a bit if I close my eyes and treat it like a radio-show.) At that point I start to fatigue and irritability creeps into my demeanor. Yesterday, I went to a delightful and small dinner-party (of five adults and two kids). After about an hour I started to fade.  This fatigue can slide into modest temporary headaches (although nothing like what I experienced earlier in the year).

Second, I still have weird memory issues where I seem to have missed parts of conversations. I mangle words, and I can't recall names of people and events. Because my life is so simple at the moment, and I am so visibly improving, it's not especially disconcerting. 

Meanwhile I am still waiting for my appointment at the long haul clinic. Given my ongoing symptoms the perspective if a neurologist might be useful, although the neurologists I know all caution me not to expect much.  Every week I check on cancelations, so far to no avail.

 

 

 

A Garden Tree

In the category com��die humaine:

 
































Today, I picked up some butter at my favorite cheese shop. Because I was carrying some books, my phone, and seduced by the chestnut honey from Catalonia, a big bottle of Catalonian chestnut honey, I decided to put the two slabs of butter in the deep side-pockets of my Bermuda-shorts. Mindful that I was likely to forget the butter, I decided to rush home so I could put them securely in the fridge.
As I crossed the High street, darting between moms and their strollers, I was suddenly stopped by a middle aged women who touched me on the arm. My first instinct was a slight panic that I must have forgotten my phone at the shop, followed by relief. My second thought was that it was most un-British to touch me (leave aside during a pandemic).
I belatedly realized that she was offering me an envelope and a bouquet of flowers to be dropped of at Gayton Road. (In the interest of privacy I won't mention the number, which was prime.) Once the request had registered, she asked me where I was going. I was so relieved that this had nothing to do with my phone, that I answered truthfully--all my instincts for self-preservation forgotten.
I looked at the bouquet. By Dutch standards it was unremarkable, even fairly small. But I knew that locally this would be expensive. The handwriting on the envelope was neat in a childish kind of way.
As we walked together, I finally asked the question I should have asked, 'why do you need me to deliver these flowers'; the lady -- who never introduced herself -- told me about a tree in her garden that had to be cut. I thought this sufficient explanation why she did not have time to walk up the road.
But as she kept walking alongside me, I said to her, 'so this is a peace offering?'
Her response was affirmative. Her accent would be described as non-descript (so what I would call middle class).
As I walked up the stairs to ring the door, I decided it would be a good idea to put on a face mask. As I turned around I saw the lady hiding just out of sight. For some reason I had to think of Humbert Humbert hiding behind the bushes, and I almost burst out laughing. Grateful for my mask that my grimace was hidden.
I asked the hiding lady whether I should direct the occupant's attention to her after the door was opened.
''Please, no' was the horrified response. I got a glimpse at the scars of the battle of wills over that much beloved garden tree. I quietly suspected that the bouquet might not meet the demands of atonement.
I rang the doorbell several times. But nobody opened.
I turned around, and much to my surprise the lady had left her hiding and was taking a picture of the scene. I asked if I should leave the envelope and flowers on the doorstep. (They would be safe.) But she asked them back.
After graciously thanking me she left. And I went home to put the slabs of butter in the fridge.

Feeling Covid Optimism

This is, I think, my sixteenth covid update (see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here; here; here; here; here). It's the first one I am writing with a sense of optimism about the possibility of full recovery. This past week, I have been more mobile, more energetic, more social, and more intellectual than at any time since the middle of December. And while each day I hit a moment in which I simply have to rest, that moment tends to be late in the day and passes. I still find that viplin music I used to enjoy sounds like scratching on blackboard, but I can now tolerate simple beats much better than a few months ago.

I realized that I was improving in the middle of a rather lengthy eye exam last Friday. After noticing that I was reading books without my eye-glasses on, but with one eye closed, my cognitive-scientist, vitreoretinal-surgeon better half had nudged me to the optometrists. The hypothesis that persuaded me to go was that better eye vision might facilitate my convalescence and aid my cognitive renewal, as I like to call it. She might it sound as if the theory has a solid foundation in the literature. Rather than doing my own review, I decided, mindful of my Nietzsche, that hope was better than no hope.

During the exam I reflected on the fact that that week I had spent quite some time on the phone with lawyers, accountants, and immigration specialists trying to sort out how to approach the impending final Brexit deadline (end of June). The experience itself was frustrating because it's clear that if one's territorial and life-style circumstances are even remotely hybrid and one's aspirations is to keep it that way, most of the credentialed folk actually have no idea how the rules should be applied to you (and, admittedly, may come to the conclusion the rules themselves are not yet sorted). But that I could spend so much time politely on the phone over several days without collapsing was good sign. 

At the optometrist I had the deal with a number of (very kind) people for up to three hours. By the end of it I was tired, and considerably poorer, but I realized that my fatigue was not that much worse than it would have been anyway. Then, that holiday week-end our son went away with a classmate's family. My wife and I had our first days of privacy in more than a year. Sleep and sun did their magic job! And while there were still moments of fatigue and irritability on my part, especially because at times the noise and bustle Camden's crowds overwhelmed me, we walked for miles, went to markets, and enjoyed a date in a sit-down restaurant.

One rather unfortunate side effect of my long haul covid, which I have been perhaps too oblique about in these digressions, was a disinterest in physical intimacy. I think this disinterest was partially a loss of libido, but also a fear of my own irritability and hypersensitivity around others. To be attentive to and vulnerable with another requires a minimum of receptivity and self-trust that I simply lacked for most of the time during my long haul.

Meanwhile, I have gotten a bit more serious about using this period to write a somewhat crazy book, The Liberal Art of Government: a Commentary on Foucault's Birth of Biopolitics, which I am developing from my series of digressions. My underlying intuition was (and still is) that I am not quite capable yet of developing philosophical work from scratch. I am, however, improving at editing what I have. (My initial drafts read like a stream of consciousness on prednisone (recall).) Initially I did this in 20 minute intervals, but these are being extended to ninety minutes.

I wouldn't claim I am capable of days-long writing weeks on end; I have to vary my activity throughout the day to avoid headaches. Even so, I am getting increasingly more critical with my existing drafts and that tells me some of my professional instincts are recovering. I am now circulating an introduction and two chapters, although these are still plenty disorganized and not quite at the level one would wish. (Part of the problem is intrinsic to the book I am conceiving because it does not fit any pre-existing disciplinary molds.)

The previous paragraph hints at the fact that recently I have had too much time to reflect on my past and future. Perhaps because my convalescence coincided with my fiftieth birthday I have come to reflect on my limitations and bad choices. Somewhat disappointingly, the only major conclusion I arrived at, whose importance I already realized for quite some time, and have successfully managed to implement thus far, is not to answer work emails at once. It's not a major step in self-improvement, but it pleases me greatly right now.

 

Covid Midterms

I interrupted the flow of my covid diaries (see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here; here; here; here; and here) because there was very little to add, and I wanted to use my 'writing time' for other intellectual activities. Three weeks later, progress is frustratingly slow, but there are some changes: my permanent muscle fatigue is gone. (Perhaps this is due to taking vitamins B1/B2 which was adviced by a fellow philosophical, long hauler. I can't prove causation, but I will happily continue with the pills.) I am less irritable around music and other people. We have had a few family meals now. I even went to the movies with my son the other day--Godzilla vs Kong is surprisingly moving and well done movie. After I was floored, but it was a joy to spend half a day with my son having fun; the first time in over five months!

I can spend about an half hour on zoom/phones before nausea and headaches set in. Sometimes I can stretch it a bit. For example, I didn't participate in the PhD defense of my brilliant student Lea Klarenbeek. But I very much enjoyed the proceedings on the webinar. To simplify: she used ameliorative analysis a la Haslanger and applied Anderson's ideas on relationality equality to the concept of integration. Crucially integration should not be viewed as a property of individuals, but of structures, societies, and groups with each other. (Her target is a kind of civic nationalist/communitarian discourse that rounds integration in Europe.) I could follow the discussion, but after I logged off I was floored. Yesterday we had parent teacher discussions on zoom with my son's teachers. After it was done I crawled into bed.

I still have periods of partial insomnia in clusters for a few days, but I also have days of fine sleep in a row. More important, I can read about four pages of philosophy in half hour increments a few times a day. If I go on too long I get nausea and headaches. So, I can read about 80-100 pages per week. (Kind of what I expect from our bachelor students.) Not satisfying, but at least stimulating.

I am unable to do creative intellectual work (unless one puts twitter in that category). But I can edit pre-existing material in thirty minute increments. Currently I am entertaining myself with the idea that I am writing a book on the Liberal Art of Government drawn from my digressions. The book will be a kind of commentary on Foucault Birth of Biopolitics. I have a draft of an introduction and a first chapter that I am circulating.

A new cognitive problem that I am aware of is that I suffer from strange memory loss. I don't recall conversations and I have trouble recalling names/places and other stuff that I ordinarily have at hand. I noticed it because my son was very surprised i had forgotten the details of a school trip (that's the kind of thing I get excited about). And he pointed out it was not the first time during the last few months. When I checked with my wife, she admitted that she had been wondering about my memory. But because I am otherwise so aware and present, she found it difficult to be sure. My occupational physician thinks some things don't imprint unless I am able to give it my full intention.

The NHS has shortened the amount of time for my second jab. So I will be fully vaccinated in a few weeks. Meanwhile, I have had a round of medical screening, and I have been triaged for one of the long haul special clinics. Unfortunately, they are experiencing "extremely high volumes" so it is unclear when I will be seen by a specialist.

Yesterday, my occupational physician took me through the roadmap ahead. Early in July she will make an official determination whether I can return to work in September. September is not just the start of new academic year, buy also, coincidentally, the moment my benefits will be (modestly, albeit structurally) lowered. We have also booked a date the end of July to make sure no correction is needed. She greatly tempered my expectations about what I can expect to be doing. She thought that lecturing might be possible, but when I said that I teach a (rather large) seminar style course in the Fall, she sighed kindly. 

September feels ages away, but after her sigh I was quite shaken. It didn't help that I spoke to a disciplinary colleague about his long haul recovery. He has benefitted greatly from rehab, but his underlying message was that while there is improvement he is learning to live with and accept his limitations. On some level I know that shows wisdom. 

In fact, while with due gratitude to my family (for their support), past unions and the welfare state (for my present financial support), and my colleagues (for their extra work), I view my long haul as an un-mitigated disaster. Even so, I have come to embrace one of my new routines: I have gotten used to not responding to emails at once. I especially have come to see the mental health benefits from not responding to work related emails at once. And while I find it frustrating that I cannot digress on the issues of the day, it's not an unmitigated disaster to focus on listening to others only.

I am not especially impatient day to day about my recovery. Since I suffer very little now, it's not at all unbearable. Because I have withdrawn from most commitments I do not feel much pressure. Part of me does not mind to give up my supervisory and managerial duties. While it is clear some of my colleagues have really had to do a lot of extra work because of my incapacitation (and some have let me know this in rather forthright manner--I love the Dutch!), I also feel things are organized enough that I am dispensable at work. But the conversation with my disciplinary colleague in light of my sweet sighing, occupational physician did rekindle the fear that I may never fully recover my intellectual or social skills. This fear sneaks up on me and occasionally sours my humor.

 

 

4 April 1979: Foucault on Civil Society (Ferguson vs Smith) (ep XL)

To simplify matters, I will take the most fundamental, almost statutory text regarding the characterization of civil society. This is Ferguson���s famous text, translated into French in 1783 with the title Essais sur l���histoire de la soci��t�� civile, and which is very close to Adam Smith���s Wealth of Nations, the word ���nation��� in Smith, moreover, having more or less the same meaning as civil society in Ferguson. We have here the political correlate, the correlate in terms of civil society, of what Adam Smith studied in purely economic terms. Ferguson���s civil society is actually the concrete, encompassing element within which the economic men Smith tried to study operate. I would like to pick out three or four essential characteristics of this civil society in Ferguson: first, civil society understood as an historical-natural constant; second, civil society as principle of spontaneous synthesis; third, civil society as permanent matrix of political power; and fourth, civil society as the motor element of history.--Michel Foucault, 4 April, 1979,  translated by Graham Burchell, Lecture 12, The Birth of Biopolitics, 298

Foucault had coupled Ferguson and Smith before in lecture 11. There they jointly illustrate the claim that according to eighteenth century doctrine, "not only must government not obstruct the interests of each, but it is impossible for the sovereign to have a point of view on the economic mechanism which totalizes every element and enables them to be combined artificially or voluntarily." (280)* Foucault then uses Ferguson's analysis of the relative success of the English colonies over the French in North America, to support the claim that independent citizens entrusted with their own interests (the English) can outcompete colonies that come with big designs (the French).

In lecture 12, Foucault reminds his audience that eighteenth century social theory (to simplify: prior to, say, Bentham) can't really combine homo oeconomicus with the age's moral-theological-juridical views of criminal (and political) subjects. These are incommensurable paradigms -- Foucault puts it like this: "that homo oeconomicus and the subject of right were therefore not superposable" (292) --, until Benthamite reformers (anticipated by Beccaria and Grouchy) thin out the criminal subject so he conforms to the utilitarian image of man.

Faced with the incommensurability (and some other assumptions about the limits of government knowledge), and prior to that radical move, there are three options: first, "the sovereign will be able to intervene everywhere except in the market." (293). Foucault does not associate any theorist or group with this position. Second, which looks like it, the sovereign remains in control of the market, in particular the preconditions necessary to its functioning, but rather than supervise it actively, it controls it theoretically or passively. It is said to be 'theoretical' because it needs data and evidence on the market's functioning and process in order to get its preconditions (taxes, tariffs, laws, etc.) right. This second position is associated with physiocrats, who are treated as kind of quasi-Ordo-liberals avant la lettre. 

As Foucault notes neither of these first two options is very attractive to the sovereign and so do not really ever get tried out. (It's notable Foucault skips Turgot's moment near power in 1774-1776). That's because neither option solves the problem of incommensurability. To the best of my knowledge Foucault's thesis is original. Instead, a different, third option is used, one that does allow the sovereign the exercise, as I noted before, a governmental technology (296), even if, or perhaps because, that technology (civil society) also helps constitute a new kind of sovereignty.

The way civil society solves this incommensurability is by being a the site of an enlarged interest or what came to be known as (enlightened) self-interest properly understood. Here self-interest is not egoism. (The underlying idea being that egoism is always selfish, but that there are forms of self-interest, like prudence, which may be moral.) Foucault, in summarizing Ferguson puts it like this: "there is a distinct set of non-egoist interests, a distinct interplay of non-egoist, disinterested interests which is much wider than egoism itself." (301) I'd have to check Ferguson, but this seems right.

For Smith, this disinterested interest is an effect of our nature. As he puts in the famous first sentence of TMS, "How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.��� That is, for Smith civil society is itself a site of  important, aesthetic experiences (assuming that 'the pleasure of seeing it' falls under aesthetics). The principle in our nature is sympathy, which makes the sight and mutual recognition of other people's passions pleasurable to us. Importantly, for Smith, as Levy and Peart have argued, sympathy is also a means toward seeing each other as equals. 

Crucially then, on Foucault's interpretation of Ferguson and Smith, civil society can accommodate, even be the grounds of existence of, economic agents without reducing their interests to a profit motive only. (301) The other crucial feature of civil society is that it grounds what we may call tribalism, faction, or community. It does so because in it there is free play of both sympathy and antipathy, which makes us form distinct groups sometimes based on shared interests or repugnancies other times based on shared language, values, religion, heritage, etc. As Foucault writes:

Civil society, Ferguson says, leads the individual to enlist ���on the side of one tribe or community.��� Civil society is not humanitarian but communitarian. And in fact we see civil society appear in the family, village, and corporation, and, of course, at higher levels, reaching that of the nation in Adam Smith���s sense, [in the sense given to it] at more or less the same time in France. The nation is precisely one of the major forms, [but] only one of the possible forms, of civil society. (302)

What's attractive about Foucault's interpretive framework is that community and political differentiation are a natural by-product of what we may call, 'Scottish social theory.'+ This is so, even though within Scottish social theory, humanity becomes (as Hanley, Debes, Taylor, and Abramson have argued) a key moral ideal.

But I think Foucault's framework is too attractive. For, I suspect Foucault is projecting backward a recently popular idea that the nations of nationalism are themselves a fruit of modernity. Let me explain my unease.

To the best of my knowledge Foucault is the first to suggest that a Smithian 'nation' just is what Ferguson calls 'civil society.' But for Smith 'nations' and 'society' are two distinct analytical categories. And within a nation there can be multiple societies, including different kinds of societies (this is especially so in Scotland with its contrast between Highlands and Lowlands.) And, as I have argued elsewhere, throughout WN when Smith focuses primarily on economic analysis, he writes about ���society;��� when he focuses on mores or political matters, he will speak of ���civilized society��� (e.g., WN 1.8.39, 97) or ���political society��� (1.8.36, 96). And 'civilized' is contrasted with 'savage' or 'barbarous.' (To be sure: for Smith progress to being civilized is good, but unlike many others in the age, he does not treat the civilized as morally superior to the barbarous.) 

Now, despite having 'nations' in the title of WN, Smith is not very interested in characterizing a nation. But it is pretty clear that for Smith nations can both transcend different ages (including the birth of civil society), and come to an end. With previous paragraphs in mind, I now treat the first two characteristics of civil society mentioned above, in turn. (The next two characteristics shall be treated in a follow up post.)

That civil society is a historical constant means (and now Foucault is paraphrasing Ferguson) that "the social bond has no pre-history...it is permanent and indispensable." (299) Following the critics of Hobbes, mankind is by nature a social animal embedded, we would say, in culture. By contrast, while it is true that, in general, Smith treats humans as social animals, it should be clear that on my reading of Smith on society, Smith does not think that civil society is a historical constant.

And, in fact, it is worth noting that right at the start of Wealth of Nations, Smith hints, when commenting on the propensity to "truck, barter, and exchange" that may not be an "original" principle "in human nature of which no further account can be given;" but, rather, and more "probable" is it the historical "consequence of the faculties of reason and speech." And in another work, on the origin of language, Smith offers an account of the development of the cognitive and linguistic building blocks of culture. So, this is an important difference between Ferguson and Smith.

This, and other details recounted in this post, make me suspect that Foucault did not read Smith as carefully as he read Ferguson (at least when preparing lectures 11-12). See also my note * below. (That Foucault treats Smith's analysis of the equivalent of civil society as being offered 'in purely economic terms' suggests that Foucault is drawing on a caricature.) Ironically, Smith's position anticipates Foucault's own: civil society is itself a product of development. And whereas Smith kind of anticipates Marx with a focus on material conditions, Foucault kind of echoes Hayek with his focus (as we have seen last times) on transactions (although relative to Hayek, Foucault wishes to denaturalize the spontaneous order).++

Second, "spontaneous synthesis means there is no explicit contract, no voluntary union, no renunciation of rights, and no delegation of natural rights to someone else; in short, there is no constitution of sovereignty by a sort of pact of subjection." (300) This characteristic is the shared debt of Ferguson and Smith to Hume. In addition, 'spontaneous synthesis' means that the happiness of the whole is constituted by the happiness of its parts understood as individuals and vice versa. This is indeed Ferguson's view. And it is important that even for a republican like Ferguson this is achieved by focusing on the "happiness of individuals" which "is the great end of civil society." (302, Foucault quoting Ferguson). It is also a plausible reading of Smith's position for whom the happiness of common labourers will ensure the flourishing of society. However, in some ways, Ferguson's version of this position is closer to Smith's teacher, Hutcheson (who is the common source), than Smith here. Because Smith sometimes implies that if one is in good health and knows that one is beloved, we will be happy regardless of the circumstances of larger society.**

 

 

 

 

*The quoted claim is indeed the view. But then Foucault goes on to say, "the invisible hand which spontaneously combines interests also prohibits any form of intervention and, even better, any form of
overarching gaze which would enable the economic process to be totalized." And this contains two odd mistakes: first, some intervention is permitted by Smith (and Ferguson). Second, the "invisible hand" (which goes unmentioned by Ferguson) is in Smith not at all about spontaneously combining interests. Back in 2013, I discussed this material here, at Newapps, which, retrospectively is episode XXXIX; so won't repeat now. 

+I am skipping a super interesting proto-Hegelian account of how according to Foucault, in Ferguson the development of economic life within civil society both draws people together and splits them apart into isolated and competitive units. (303) Again, for Smith is the competition among economic units is generally treated in terms of orders and classes. 

++When I discuss the third characteristic of civil society, we return to the connection with Hayek.

**Smith writes, ���the chief part of human happiness arises from the consciousness of being beloved��� (TMS 1.2.5.1, 41; see also TMS 3.1.7, 113; 3.5.8, 166; 6.2.1.19, 225; and elsewhere, ���because happiness and misery, which reside altogether in the mind, must necessarily depend more upon the healthful or unhealthful, the mutilated or entire state of the mind, than upon that of the body��� (WN 5.1.f.60, 787)

4 April 1979: Foucault on The Original Neoliberalism (ep XXXVIII)

What is civil society? Well, all in all, I think the notion and analysis of civil society, the set of objects or elements that are brought to light in the framework of this notion of civil society, amount to an attempt to answer the question I have just mentioned: how to govern, according to the rules of right, a space of sovereignty which for good or ill is inhabited by economic subjects? How can a reason, a rational principle be found for limiting, other than by right or by the domination of economic science, a governmental practice which must take responsibility for the heterogeneity of the economic and the juridical? Civil society is not a philosophical idea therefore. Civil society is, I believe, a concept of governmental technology, or rather, it is the correlate of a technology of government the rational measure of which must be juridically pegged to an economy understood as process of production and exchange. The problem of civil society is the juridical structure (��conomie juridique) of a governmentality pegged to the economic structure (��conomie ��conomique). And I think that civil society���which is very quickly called society, and which at the end of the eighteenth century is called the nation���makes a self-limitation possible for governmental practice and an art of government, for reflection on this art of government and so for a governmental technology; it makes possible a self-limitation which infringes neither economic laws nor the principles of right, and which infringes neither the requirement of governmental generality nor the need for an omnipresence of government. An omnipresent government, a government which nothing escapes, a government which conforms to the rules of right, and a government which nevertheless respects the specificity of the economy, will be a government that manages civil society, the nation, society, the social.--Michel Foucault, 4 April, 1979,  translated by Graham Burchell, Lecture 12, The Birth of Biopolitics, 295-296

In the final lecture, Foucault returns to the eighteenth century, and his main theme, the specificity of a liberal art of government. And he reminds his audience that this does not involve what they might antecedently to his lectures imagine: the liberal art of government neither involves the creation of a zone (the market) free of government interference ("sort of free port or free space in the general space of sovereignty" (293)); nor does it involve, as the Physiocrats propose, "a position of both passivity with regard to the intrinsic necessity of the economic process and, at the same time, of supervision and, as it were, checking, or rather of total and constant [scientific] verification of this process." (293) Rather, the liberal art of government will involve the management of a sphere, even an entity, that in some sense is in between government and rights bearing individuals and corporations (i.e., society); and, in other sense, is the general, but delimited common ground among government,  rights bearing individuals, corporations, and other associations (i.e., the nation).

While it is tempting to rush ahead to the end of the lecture to explore the relationship between civil society and nationalism, in order to understand the relationship between liberalism and naturalism, and to see how Foucault treats the theorists of civil society (Ferguson and Adam Smith), Foucault halts the flow of his argument, to make both a larger metaphysical point first as well as to remind his audience, as I noted, that the lecture-series itself is part of a much larger enterprise. And he, thereby invites his audience then (and later) to explore how his musings on the specifically liberal art of government related to much larger study of governmental technologies:

Civil society is not a primary and immediate reality; it is something which forms part of modern governmental technology. To say that it belongs to governmental technology does not mean that it is purely and simply its product or that it has no reality. Civil society is like madness and sexuality, what I call transactional realities (r��alit��s de transaction). That is to say, those transactional and transitional figures that we call civil society, madness, and so on, which, although they have not always existed are nonetheless real, are born precisely from the interplay of relations of power and everything which constantly eludes them, at the interface, so to speak, of governors and governed. Civil society, therefore, is an element of transactional reality in the history of governmental technologies, a transactional reality which seems to me to be absolutely correlative to the form of governmental technology we call liberalism, that is to say, a technology of government whose objective is its own self-limitation insofar as it is pegged to the specificity of economic processes. (297)

l want to make three main points about Foucault's position here. First, it is in some sense a mistake, albeit an understandable one, to treat Foucault as a straightforward social constructivist about transactional realities. That would be to say that civil society is merely a "product"--and Foucault explicitly denies that. For while civil society is in a certain sense a new effect of certain historically specific conditions, it is not constructed on a plan or by anybody in particular; nor is it merely (a la Searle) a set of self-affirming beliefs (even if it presupposes norms and commitment). Rather, civil society is both the byproduct of particular patterns of behavior (and omission) from the bottom up (as it advocates would claim) as well as co-constituted by (as it advocates may miss noticing) the existence of governmental practice that simultaneously, and historically conditioned, aims to shape, and is shaped by, market exchange(s) and a practice which is also a form of self-limitation.

From the perspective of metaphysical clarity, the previous paragraph is frustratingly vague. To the best of my knowledge Foucault never uses 'transactional realities' again. I think it is best to understand civil society as a kind of emergent property from different levels and orders of social reality. But it is also a robust property because once it emerges it gives rise to all set of other properties that reinforce it. 

Second, it is surprising that the ontological category Foucault uses 'transactional reality' itself linguistically echoes the particular social phenomenon (market exchange) to which civil society is pegged. Perhaps this awkwardness explains the reason why Foucault does not seem to use the term again, which, after all, is also used to describe social features (madness, sexuality, etc.) that are not themselves intrinsically connected to markets or exchange.

But it is also pretty clear why Foucault uses the term. For Foucault is trying to describe what Hayek called 'spontaneous order' while denying its 'naturalness'. In addition, Foucault is clear transactional realities exist, in part, to be subjects of (governmental) technique and this is something Hayek would generally deny (although ORDOs would accept). 

The previous two points are meant as elucidation (even if you, my dear reader, might feel  have clarified nothing). The final, third point is to note how narrow liberalism is for Foucault. It is constituted by a certain governmental technology that respects rights (or governs by 'rules of right,'), that is the rule of law, and is oriented toward market processes or the economy.* What's lacking entirely are the features associated with political liberalism (representative government, consent of the governed, free press/speech, freedom of religion, separation of powers, open borders, etc. This is especially surprising because as, I have noted (see also my post on the first lecture of birth of biopolitics) the liberal art of government (even the term) is rooted in the seventeenth century philosophy of John Locke, especially chapter 5 of Locke's Second Treatise. Of course, I don't deny this also involves a commitment to economic and population growth, cheap goods, trade etc. (as discerned by Toland).

The point is not just historical (what about Locke), but also philosophical. Is liberalism constituted narrowly -- as its Marxist critics often suggest, and certain libertarian advocates imply -- to a narrow defense of property and the gospel of growth -- or does it constitute a whole range of practices that are political, social, and even cultural? In fact, Foucault recognizes that a reader may well be wondering what happened to Locke  because he continues with the following, striking claim:

In Locke, for example, civil society is precisely a society characterized by a juridical-political structure. It is society, the set of individuals who are linked to each other through a juridical and political bond. In this sense, the notion of civil society is absolutely indistinguishable from political society. In Locke���s Second Treatise of Government, chapter 7 is entitled: ���Of Political or Civil Society.��� So, until then, civil society is always a society characterized by the existence of a juridical and political bond. It is from the second half of the eighteenth century, precisely at the time when the questions of political economy and of the governmentality of economic processes and subjects are being addressed, that the notion of civil society will change, if not totally, then at least in a significant way, and it will be thoroughly reorganized. (297-298)

To put this as a joke: in Foucault's historiography, the original neo-liberalism is the eighteenth century's move to depoliticize its conception of civil society. Foucault's reading of Locke is a bit curious, because the leitmotif of chapter 7 of the Second Treatise, which gives a stylized natural history from marriage/family, procreation, economic contracts, to the institution of the rule of laws and punishment as well as collective self-government is that all these institutions revolve around mutual consent and shared utility, that is, "mutual peace and security" and to be "guarded from harm, or injury." (etc.)** Rather than seeing mutual, voluntary consent as the ground of a shared liberal conception of civil society, and seeing the eighteenth century conceptions as a natural development of Locke's rather terse and stylized account, Foucault implies that from the vantage point of the seventeenth century, the eighteenth century conception of civil society represents, despite some continuity, a break. And this is all the more surprising because throughout his treatment of homo economicus in the Birth of Biopolitics, Foucault had insisted (recall lecture 11) that the eighteenth century conception was the man of (voluntary) exchange. So, with that in mind we're ready for the discussion of Ferguson and Smith, which Foucault implies, re-founded liberalism by making it self-aware about how (a re-conceptualized) civil society could be governed. 

 

 

*Obviously, one can conceive of a non-market economy, but in context it is clear Foucault is here treating market exchange primarily.

*Yes, I am skipping Locke's comments on family slaves, and dependents like children.

Covid Spring

On Sunday, April 18, I received my first AstraZeneca (Oxford) jab. (For my covid diaries, see here; here;  here; here;  here;  here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; and here.) After a day or so, I started to feel very crummy with terrible headaches, fatigue, and irritability. Thankfully no insomnia. This lasted about twelve days. This past week I have been much better, especially daytime. Starting around 5pm, I often feel tired and hungry. The fatigue is no surprise because unfortunately, the partial insomnia has returned. In addition, I find phone and zoom conversations beyond twenty minutes still very exhausting. So, I spent my days on twitter and reading science fiction (I really admired the mixture of satire and sensitivity in A Canticle for Leibowitz). 

On Wednesday, I decided to try to do some real work: to read and comment on a chapter by one of the advanced PhD students I co-supervise. Her topic is fresh, but the author she is working on very familiar to me. She is an excellent writer, so this seemed like a good test-case. Since I had read earlier versions of the material, I figured it would be a bit like returning to a familiar face. When I tried reading it in the morning I got nausea, and my brain was not processing what I was reading. I felt panic, doubting I could ever do salient academic work again. I was mystified anew about the fact that I can read fiction and social media, but not academic work. After fresh air and lunch, I tried again. And then I read the (four section) paper one section at a time in twenty to thirty minutes stints with rests (that is, time on Twitter) among them. For an impatient person like me this way of reading is not an enjoyable experience despite my pleasure at the PhD's obvious improvement. 

Even so, that evening, fortified with a cheese and honey platter, I wrote up comments on the paper. I offered some distinctions, and referred to existing literature. I also made comments about organization and presentation. Because I could sense onset of fatigue, I offered fewer nitpicky comments than I normally would. I was too tired to re-read. But since I had spent a whole day on a task that ordinarily would take me about 90 minutes, I sent the email with comments apologizing for not responding to the rest (and important part) of the PhD's letter.

During the last four months, I had done some work related activity, but most of these involved logistical stuff (organizing exams for my class; organizing a team of indexers for my monograph; sending out emails to keep an edited volume going, letters of recommendation, etc.); and while often it felt like work, I didn't think of any of these as substantive intellectual labor. I had once or twice tried to start a new paper (based on ideas I had worked out in past lectures and digressions), but each time I realized I was not up to it. So, my comments on her chapter did feel like a small victory. But I was too exhausted to savior it.

The next morning, before the PhD had confirmed receipt of my email, I decided to re-read my letter. I I noticed a few typos, and uncompleted thoughts, but on the whole it looked like comments adequate enough for the purpose of giving direction and encouragement. Heartened, I opened a new word file, and typed in a title of a paper I had long intended to write. I started my introduction which would be the outline of the main argument. After ninety minutes I stopped because of great hunger and a strange fatigue. (I ended up having lunch very early.) After lunch I realized I could not return to work; I finished Dan Simmons' Hyperion, wondering if I should read Keats next.

While I have pulled out of other events planned this Spring, earlier in the week I canceled a talk at LSE later this month. It was no surprise to anybody involved, but a little bit died inside me. This invite had originally been planned for Spring 2020, but then we postponed due to the pandemic. At the moment I am unsure if I can attend (even by Zoom) the defense of one of my students later in May. My last planned event for the year is in Durham in June; that seems ambitious, too. So I just alerted them to the possibility of me canceling on them, too.

It's easy to give in to despair; I am still unsure about cognitive recovery, but I end the week with the glass half full. Did comment on that chapter, after all. I lead a pain-free existence surrounded by the comforts of life. When the sun is out, I read outside in the park or on quiet street benches. (I can't tell you how annoyed I am that Spring has been so cold here.) While I am still walled off from many of Mill's higher pleasures (music, arts, conversation), I am not suffering most of the time. Dogs say hi to me at my street bench, sniffing my books, and enjoying my petting. 

My GP is fairly confident I should feel more or less recovered by the end of June (six months after my onset). Because this week is so much better than last, I believe her sufficiently such that I did start discussing my Fall teaching assignments with the teaching directors. 

My life's field of vision is still quite narrow. The other day my wife noticed that I was reading my sci fi book with one eye closed. (For years now I would read without glasses reinforcing my sense of nearsightedness.) Covid has been so all-consuming, that my first response was is this another side-effect of my viral encephalitis? My wife laughed and said, 'no it's ageing.' Then followed a by now familiar explanation about decaying eye muscles and focusing. I realized she had explained the mechanism to me before, a few years ago, on a country lane during a Summer hike leaving Alfriston behind; but rather than feeling melancholy, I was strangely relieved to be reminded of normal, age-related attrition. 

 

 

Covid Diaries; Spleen

It's been awful since I received my AstraZeneca vaccine ten days ago. (For my covid diaries, see here; here;  here; here;  here;  here;  here; here; here; here; here; and here) I have had new kinds of headaches and weird fatigue untriggered by any activity. In addition, I am also highly irritable and have excessive hunger. Luckily, my insomnia has stayed on the (melatonin aided) downward trajectory before the jab. 

My blood work results came in, and were uninformative. My GP has asked me to repeat it regularly. So, yesterday's big project was organizing the next appointment. Thankfully, the NHS's online systems are terrific, so it was less exercise than I feared.

I don't regret getting the vaccine, and maybe in a week or two this past week will seem just a blip in road to my recovery. But it's been tough because the week before the jab I had been clearly improving and I was in all respects better than I am now.
 
When I first grasped that I may have long haul covid, my biggest fear was that I may never recover the ability to do philosophy; that the brain fog would never lift fully and that certain kind of concentrated thought might stay out of reach forever. But I kind of assumed blithely that I would be able to return to a normal life with physical labor and ordinary social activity. 
 
I now realize that my assumption was groundless. What prompts that thought is, of course, the fear that my headaches, fatigue, and irritability stay. The onset of the former is highly unpredictable. (The latter is kind of predictable by-product of the former.) If the fatigue does not disappear I am incapable of retraining to rejoin the workforce with more manual labor. (The fatigue nudge me into bed regularly.) The headaches and irritability make social activity, including parenting, impossible. When my son is happy -- and so singing and humming -- I withdraw from the room. Meanwhile, I am steadily withdrawing from further engagements and commitments, including some that were a source of great inspiration. 
 
Yesterday, not entirely coincidentally, I discovered that my wonderful former colleague, Fred Beiser, is cited as an authority on the definition of Weltschmerz in Wikipedia. Part of the bitter joke for me is that I had somehow missed he had published a whole book on it, and now that I have time and interest to read it, I simply can't.
 
Yes, I am still reading sci fi with great joy, but I struggled with China Mi��ville's Embassytown because it subtly mixed narrative (which I can read fine) with abstract commentary (which I found challenging). I admired it, but I did not enjoy the effort it took me.
 
Anyway, while I love the sound and connotations of weltschmerz it is the wrong word to capture my current sadness. I suspect spleen, while wavering between the French and English usages, does better.
 
Just before I got the jab, I had kind of planned to write a paper one daily paragraph at a time. I still intend to try that. But I won't start until I have a headache free day again.  
 
Other people have warned me that the setbacks are the worst. I can affirm that: living without grounded hope for what to expect makes the-not-awful,-but-not-at-all-fine-present much worse. Because my symptoms make social interactions so difficult and unpleasant for all involved, I recognize that I am withdrawing from people and activities that might otherwise cheer me up. (Yes, it's another way of saying, I spent too much time on twitter.)
 
Part of the despair is that leaving aside financial concerns downstream, I really cannot imagine what to do with my life if the fatigue, headaches, and irritability keep recurring. Even the idea of volunteering seems utopian, if by necessity I spent so much of my day in bed.
 
So, the days pass. Because it is rather chilly outside I can't even spend a lot of time reading sci fi even when I feel up to it. It's been about four months now. My local GP -- who recovered from a year long haul covid ordeal -- believes that after six months, I should start noticing structural improvements. I want to believe her.  
 

Covid Diaries: hermeneutic self-care

On a beautiful Sunday evening I got my AstraZeneca (Oxford) jab at the Francis Crick Institute. They were running ahead of schedule, so they called me (on a foreign mobile phone-number!) to ask me to come in early. It was brilliantly organized; the crew was cheerful -- 'yes, I was ready to make history!' I responded --  and I was in and out of the building under fifteen minutes. Sometimes, I get a glimpse of why the the Brits adore their NHS.

Anticipating the moment six weeks ago, my wife had initiated the effort to get me -- a foreign citizen living abroad -- registered in the NHS through her GP. (Long story, but the bureaucratic hurdles to my family arrangements are the effect of Brexit.) It was not a very easy process, not the least because of my foreign phone-number. If I had been able to leave my bedroom, I would have gotten a local phone, but all the High street phone-stores were closed through lockdown anyway.

As it happened, just after I confirmed my booking for the jab, I met my local GP last Thursday for the first time. She was extremely empathetic and informative. She had also had suffered from long haul covid since March 2020, and had just gone back to work full time again after a year of struggles. (I suspected she still struggled with it because she was a bit scattered and very fatigued; she did not deny my observation.) She took her time with my story, referred me for blood-work and to a special long haul covid clinic to see a neurologist. She was adamant that I should not expect much medical help, but that she did expect my convalescence to be enhanced by proper diagnosis of my symptoms. It will help you craft your narrative. I noted quietly, based on a small sample, that while Dutch physicians love their new-age 'energy-levels,' the English are more into hermeneutic self-care. In her view, covid had induced a viral encephalitis in me. After six months you should see real improvement. A bit of mental calculation told me, I was probably near the end of my fourth month.

Maybe it was the emotional let-down of feeling heard, but the next day (after my visit to the local GP) I felt awful. It was a long day of fatigue and headaches. I was concerned because due to my wife's shift, I was alone with my son for three whole days. But Saturday I awoke after a restful sleep and then had my best 48 hours since mid December. (For my covid diaries, see here;  here;  here;  here;  here;  here;  here; here; here; here; and here.) We walked all over NW3 to farmer's markets, tennis, table-tennis, and other errands. When I got the jab, the superstitious part of me worried that I was messing with success. 

I was right to be worried. Monday I had a strange new headache. On Tuesday I had a strange new nausea; and on Wednesday I was intensely fatigued. While the blood-test on Tuesday was unavoidable, the whole experience was dispiriting: standing in long queues in a truly ugly building (the Royal Free), and a computer mishap that turned me into Eric Liesser. I very much regretted going to my dental hygienist yesterday (mercifully she turned off the radio for me). But postponing it every other week for the last few months, had felt like giving in to the microbes. I also had a sore arm, but it was not as bad as I had worried.

In order to cheer myself up, I tried reading the final lecture/chapter of Foucault's Birth of Biopolitics in order to see if I could still do philosophy and re-start these digressions properly. (I really do want to complete my series on the book this Spring.) It was not a wholly silly plan; I have been reading sci fi for two weeks now. And increasingly the reading has become less effort and pure fun. This has been good for my sanity; I love watching movies endlessly in the theatre, but at home I actually find it tiresome.  I now was almost at the 'being-sick is fun' part of my convalescence. 

Anyway, I have learned that there is a major difference between reading a book without much concentration immersed in a kind of flow and reading a book with concentration in order to, say, write about it. In the second, I am constantly taking mental notes (sometimes I scribble these in the margins) and I am in a perpetual silent conversation with the implied author about the work I am digesting. To be sure the flow is not absent in the second kind of reading, which I find very enjoyable and ordinarily (forgive me) energy enhancing, but it involves a further mental activity that I am clearly incapable of now. What's interesting to me -- switching briefly to auto-phenomenology of disease -- is that I find my hyper-engaged ordinary style of reading no less immersive than the kind of reading without much concentration now. 

As regular readers know, one of the side-effects of my covid (or the encephalitis) is a great deal of irritability when engaged with conversations with more than one person at a time (or having radio or music in the background during a conversation), and any zoom/phone conversations. It's pretty clear to me -- I am, after all, the editor of a volume on sympathy -- that my capacity to engage in even modest sympathetic activity has been greatly reduced. This is why I have compared myself recently to an Asperger's. I had not quite realized before that my manner of reading involved so much mental, dialogic activity.  It's a skill that presupposes a brain that I don't have at the moment.

Interestingly enough, and undoubtedly not a coincidence, a lot of the sci-fi novels I have been reading have been exploring the nature of such dialogic activity by positing brains with two or more minds. It's a nice mirror to all the plot-devices that explore the nature of networked intelligence (and AI). A brain with two minds also is a nice metaphor, thus, for reading and so these sci-fi space operas are engaged in a sly form of intertextuality.

It didn't help me, of course, that in violation of  all teaching manuals, Foucault introduces whole new special jargon in the final lecture! (This prevented me from reading the lecture merely at the surface in the way I am reading social media.) He gets away with it not because he is Foucault, but because he treats his lectures at the Coll��ge de France as serial in nature rather than as self-standing series. (There are cross-references among them.)* It's a bit unfair to say this (and given Derrida's criticism of Searle, ironic), but by the end of the 1970s, he is clearly also understanding himself as a franchise.

 

 

*Admittedly, it's also a rhetorical conceit to flatter your audience by treating them as if they have been with you as a kind of fellowship all along and have been taking excellent notes. 

The Half Full Glass of Long Haul Covid

A big thing happened: I can read books again! I haven't tried philosophy yet, but I have started to read complex sci-fi novels. I finished Seth Dickinson's The Monster Baru Cormorant, which I had abandoned when I got sick, in thirty minute installments. Then, on Monday I started Arkady Martine's A Desolation Called Peace, which I read more or less normally without developing headache or fatigue. I say 'more or less' because I didn't red them with pen in hand and so without my more customary half an eye on a possible Digression. That is to say, despite many temptations,* I didn't have the intense interior dialogues with them I would ordinarily have. (Yes, I need to scribble in the margins of a book in order to have my best interior conversations!)+ But I was fully immersed in the narrative. 

So compared to my unfolding long haul baseline (here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; and here) the glass is definitely half full. In addition some other non-trivial symptoms have been reduced in severity. I average now one lost day to headache per week. I even had a ten day stretch that made me hope it was completely gone, but that was premature. On average I sleep better; the proportion of good nights vs bad nights has become favorable. (The effects of melatonin are finally noticeable when I awake in the middle of the night; I now mostly fall back asleep.) And I am physically much more active. But this also brings me face to face with my body's real limitations now.

My son's day-camp was moved to a new location. It is 1,2 miles in each direction. The route there is down, the return is uphill. I do this twice a day. It's pure joy because I get to engage with my son as his dad again, and not just as somebody to avoid bothering. At no point am I out of breath or do my legs feel tired. But it does predictably generate the characteristic 'head fatigue' I have tried to describe before. It also creates the kind of fatigue I associate with the aftermath of day-long hikes, but without any endorphins or sense of achievement. So, in effect I still spend most of the day in bed (but instead of watching kung fu, I am reading again). The good news is that he goes back to school on Monday, and that is a third of the distance. 

In the previous paragraph I also hinted at another symptom that has not disappeared. I am still highly irritable in conversations with more than one person, and I get exhausted by phone conversations. So, dinners with my whole family are challenging. 

I have disliked most confident optimistic responses by people who tried to wish me well and encourage me. I know they came from a good place. But even so, I dislike being offered hope that is not sensitive to my particular circumstances (and ungrounded in solid evidence). For all I know the previous sentence might be a sign of clinical depression or resolute anti-religious aesthetic sensibility.  But the fact that I can read books again, and manifestly enjoy doing so, does inspire hope that I may recover some cognitive skills whose absence were grounds for quiet despair. Either way, in virtue of reading the solitude of my days has been alleviated because I have good company, again. 

 

 

*The title of Martine's book echoes a passage -- duly quoted at the start of the novel -- that has fascinated me, too (; here).

+Both books are second novels (in an unfolding series), and as it happens, they both cleverly thematize the complex relationship between interior dialogues and the reading of novels. (They also both involve strong female characters, who confront the nature of empire.)