31 January 2005
bad subject
Was interpellated at the airport today, whilst waiting in the final lounge bit to get a flight back from Dublin. 'Excuse me [hey you!], come with us.' Taken to a small room by two airport security ladies who rifled through all my stuff. 'You a student,' one of them said as she hauled out a copy of the Grundrisse and an ex-library copy of, ahem, Garaudy's The Turning-Point of Socialism. Wasn't quite sure it was a question, so said nothing. The patting-down was not unpleasant, but wasn't quite sure why I had to sign a piece of paper indicating that I had been thoroughly 'searched'. Nor why I acquiesced to doing so. Rakish silk scarf across my neck, I hoped that I had been selected on the basis of looking a bit like someone in Godard's La chinoise, but suspect it was more something to do with quotas.
the Dark Prince of Gnostic Nihilism and the Mild Prince of Italian Marxism are sitting in the flat watching Richard Pryor and that sketch about the monkey that tries to have sex with your ear. It's very cute.
28 January 2005
Been busy writing my report on Negri's trip to Iran and, er, building a bed (really, surprisingly difficult. Involves glue and 'dowls' and massive amounts of time). I need better tools than the kind of screwdrivers you find in crackers...
Been enjoying the cut and thrust of a discussion about Christianity/China/Badiou/any number of things at dread, walking.
In relation to this hopefully on-going debate, I would deny the idea that there's something 'pious' about Badiou - and that writing about St Paul (a relatively minor part of his corpus, all things considered) does not a rabid Christian make. If you think that all discussion of truth is necessarily prey to Nietzsche's criticisms of the 'life-deniers', you have to believe that there's something constitutively similar about priests and scientists (or mathematicians) - and that all concepts of truth are necessarily somehow predicated on believing in another world/some transcendent realm. I'll come back to this when the bed is built. Anyway, I couldn't possibly be a good Christian as my carpentry skills are shocking.
Been enjoying the cut and thrust of a discussion about Christianity/China/Badiou/any number of things at dread, walking.
In relation to this hopefully on-going debate, I would deny the idea that there's something 'pious' about Badiou - and that writing about St Paul (a relatively minor part of his corpus, all things considered) does not a rabid Christian make. If you think that all discussion of truth is necessarily prey to Nietzsche's criticisms of the 'life-deniers', you have to believe that there's something constitutively similar about priests and scientists (or mathematicians) - and that all concepts of truth are necessarily somehow predicated on believing in another world/some transcendent realm. I'll come back to this when the bed is built. Anyway, I couldn't possibly be a good Christian as my carpentry skills are shocking.
21 January 2005
history or structure?
Or neither? Hmmm? Trying very hard to piece together my chapter on the topic - indeed, my PhD is very old-fashioned, but cheery social movements and micropolitics have never been welcome in Infinite Thought towers, unlike the new arrival of a ridiculously tiny micromouse, which I spent an hour this morning trying to catch with a piece of feta in a glass (without success, sorry to say. Have a strong suspicion it will attempt to nibble my copy of Chris Ware's 'Quimby Mouse', though hopefully not my copy of Kant's first critique again, already abused by the teeth of fearsome Coventry rodents). The criticism of mice indeed!
Continuing the moaning, yesterday I was on a bus coming from London Bridge. Suddenly the bus seemed to slide to one side and made some alarming screeching noises. We all thought a tire had burst (well...me: 'was that a burst tire?' Quiet-and-non-willing-to-engage-passengers-looking-out-of-the-window: 'u-huh, maybe'). When the driver pulled over to have a look, it turned out that a large cardboard box filled with rubbish had attached itself to one of the front wheels, and had created a kind of inopportune and messy secondary braking-system.
Bloody rubbish. My whole street is full of it. When I used to live in the countryside, my eco-conscious, if slightly bored, family used to clean up our street once a year (big long country lane, plenty of secluded places to dump fridges, mattresses and rotting corpses). One year, my brother found a large black sack full of porn (mags and vids). Without telling ma and pa, the enterprising tyke started selling it all off at school, along with some poppers he'd bought at Glastonbury. Thus were my kith and kin corrupted by the illicit rubbish-dumping of strangers. And my brother's wicked desire to buy more drums.
Anyway, continuing the radio theme, the Mild Prince of Italian Marxism is on Irish radio here (the bit that says 'Myles Dungan reports on 'Communism' at the Project Arts Centre'), talking about Russian Cinema under communism. It's quite good, I think, especially as he's supposed to be a sociologist and not a film studies professor.
Back to Alfred Schmidt, author of such fine works as 'The Concept of Nature in Marx' and 'History and Structure: An Essay on Hegelian-Marxist and Structuralist Theories of History'.
Continuing the moaning, yesterday I was on a bus coming from London Bridge. Suddenly the bus seemed to slide to one side and made some alarming screeching noises. We all thought a tire had burst (well...me: 'was that a burst tire?' Quiet-and-non-willing-to-engage-passengers-looking-out-of-the-window: 'u-huh, maybe'). When the driver pulled over to have a look, it turned out that a large cardboard box filled with rubbish had attached itself to one of the front wheels, and had created a kind of inopportune and messy secondary braking-system.
Bloody rubbish. My whole street is full of it. When I used to live in the countryside, my eco-conscious, if slightly bored, family used to clean up our street once a year (big long country lane, plenty of secluded places to dump fridges, mattresses and rotting corpses). One year, my brother found a large black sack full of porn (mags and vids). Without telling ma and pa, the enterprising tyke started selling it all off at school, along with some poppers he'd bought at Glastonbury. Thus were my kith and kin corrupted by the illicit rubbish-dumping of strangers. And my brother's wicked desire to buy more drums.
Anyway, continuing the radio theme, the Mild Prince of Italian Marxism is on Irish radio here (the bit that says 'Myles Dungan reports on 'Communism' at the Project Arts Centre'), talking about Russian Cinema under communism. It's quite good, I think, especially as he's supposed to be a sociologist and not a film studies professor.
Back to Alfred Schmidt, author of such fine works as 'The Concept of Nature in Marx' and 'History and Structure: An Essay on Hegelian-Marxist and Structuralist Theories of History'.
18 January 2005
radio rage
I love Radio 3 more than most things, including food, but will they please cancel that truly terrible, unbelievably patronising, programme aimed at "young folk", Making Tracks - on about now, always comes on just when I've started concentrating on some work. Had to put Rammstein on instead, which'll certainly help with the reading). It has the most outdated theme music, which sounds like a baby crocodile running up and down a toy piano, and they keep SHOUTING about absolutely nothing, as if everyone under the age of 15 didn't actually have better hearing than their elders.
Actually, moaning about that has suddenly triggered in my mind a tidal wide of petty British resentments. If only I could write as well as Thomas Bernhard did about Austria...
Prams, for example. They currently infuriate me almost as much as people who cycle on the pavement and all cars. Where I live, the fake posh bit of Hackney, hundreds of rosy-faced, organic food-purchasing parents charge up and down the narrow pavements with ridiculously wide prams that look more like farm equipment than machines to carry newborn infants. A simple question: why don't you just carry your child? Having seen approximately no prams in Iran, where women in chador (absolutely impossible to keep straight, involves grasping it shut under your chin with at least one hand, or holding the two sides together in your mouth) not only carry their kid under one arm but also their shopping. If they can do it, why can't you? You should be fit enough with all that gym membership and healthy food, you big procreating pavement-stealers.
Wouldn't it also be better in other ways if you had your kid closer to you? Like inuits carrying their babies in fur-lined hoods (ok, so I saw that in Atanarjuat), mightn't you end up liking the little tyke a little bit more? (I do however realise this is not the main priority for middle-class parents, who seem to only like their children if they get twenty A-levels or grade 8 violin.) Prams do nothing but create demanding little ego-monsters, thrust out in front of their monied bearers, the first to see and whine about toys and sweets. Pram-pushers - you're not so civilized you can deny your monkey status! Think how warm you'd be with a small primate curled up in your hair! Furthermore, I'm sure if you try a bit you could work out a way for your kid to fall asleep comfortably on you as you walk about. Everyone will be happier this way, I swear, and we could even bring back the old Routemaster buses (which routinely drove off and left mothers behind, just as they'd put their kid-in-pram on board. Don't laugh).
Third complaint: why does no one use an apostrophe on 'let's' (as in 'let us') anymore? Was it cancelled in order to allow more 16-year-olds to pass their English GCSE?
I am a grumpy house-bound old man, oh yes, I am....
Actually, moaning about that has suddenly triggered in my mind a tidal wide of petty British resentments. If only I could write as well as Thomas Bernhard did about Austria...
Prams, for example. They currently infuriate me almost as much as people who cycle on the pavement and all cars. Where I live, the fake posh bit of Hackney, hundreds of rosy-faced, organic food-purchasing parents charge up and down the narrow pavements with ridiculously wide prams that look more like farm equipment than machines to carry newborn infants. A simple question: why don't you just carry your child? Having seen approximately no prams in Iran, where women in chador (absolutely impossible to keep straight, involves grasping it shut under your chin with at least one hand, or holding the two sides together in your mouth) not only carry their kid under one arm but also their shopping. If they can do it, why can't you? You should be fit enough with all that gym membership and healthy food, you big procreating pavement-stealers.
Wouldn't it also be better in other ways if you had your kid closer to you? Like inuits carrying their babies in fur-lined hoods (ok, so I saw that in Atanarjuat), mightn't you end up liking the little tyke a little bit more? (I do however realise this is not the main priority for middle-class parents, who seem to only like their children if they get twenty A-levels or grade 8 violin.) Prams do nothing but create demanding little ego-monsters, thrust out in front of their monied bearers, the first to see and whine about toys and sweets. Pram-pushers - you're not so civilized you can deny your monkey status! Think how warm you'd be with a small primate curled up in your hair! Furthermore, I'm sure if you try a bit you could work out a way for your kid to fall asleep comfortably on you as you walk about. Everyone will be happier this way, I swear, and we could even bring back the old Routemaster buses (which routinely drove off and left mothers behind, just as they'd put their kid-in-pram on board. Don't laugh).
Third complaint: why does no one use an apostrophe on 'let's' (as in 'let us') anymore? Was it cancelled in order to allow more 16-year-olds to pass their English GCSE?
I am a grumpy house-bound old man, oh yes, I am....
16 January 2005
In response to a few questions...
Murray asked me what the reaction has been in Tehran and Isfahan to the likely comeback of Rafsanjani. Well, certain commentators who roll up here from time to time will be able to say in much more detail how that situation rests. The only things I really gathered about this is that he says he'll only stand if he's going to win, and that most people think he's a corrupt crook who made all his money off the back of various national industries (he doesn't get called 'the pistachio king' for nothing). He might even be too old, if they pass a prospective law on the upper age limit of candidates. Every person I spoke to under the age of thirty told me they didn't vote last time and wouldn't the next (to be held in June). Not surprising, really, given that the Council of Guardians tend to block anyone they might vote for from standing. Mind you, a group of students I spoke to also told me that they'd be first to the front if America attacked, so the youth are hardly apathetic.....in fact, most politics emanates from the universities (incredibly competitive places based on the old French system).
Reza wants to see Baudrillard in Persepolis. Well, I know that Badiou might come to Tehran at some point this year, but I imagine that's not exactly what you're after. Virilio in Tehran might work, especially in one of those Paykan taxis....I think people like Rorty should stop going to Iran though. The paper of his he gave there last time was terrible: 'oh, well, Europe had the Enlightenment but you don't really need it, honestly. It's full of men with theories and maths and things. Just try and work towards some kind of secular state without all that sciencey stuff. Oh look, I happen to have a pre-fab democracy in my bag. What's that on the bottom? Oh, look, it says 'property of the USA''. Anyway, that wasn't very funny, but quite accurate.
Response to Anthony: Negri was Iran 'cos he'd been invited to speak about Spinoza and globalisation by various groups (Cultural Research Bureau, Centre for Dialogue Among Civilizations). He follows the odd grouping of Foucault, Habermas and Rorty (not to mention a bunch of American Kant scholars who were recently there) in visiting and giving lectures in Iran.
Check out the next issue of Radical Philosophy if you want a full report! If all goes to deadline plan here should be a report of the conference in there by myself and Ali A.
Reza wants to see Baudrillard in Persepolis. Well, I know that Badiou might come to Tehran at some point this year, but I imagine that's not exactly what you're after. Virilio in Tehran might work, especially in one of those Paykan taxis....I think people like Rorty should stop going to Iran though. The paper of his he gave there last time was terrible: 'oh, well, Europe had the Enlightenment but you don't really need it, honestly. It's full of men with theories and maths and things. Just try and work towards some kind of secular state without all that sciencey stuff. Oh look, I happen to have a pre-fab democracy in my bag. What's that on the bottom? Oh, look, it says 'property of the USA''. Anyway, that wasn't very funny, but quite accurate.
Response to Anthony: Negri was Iran 'cos he'd been invited to speak about Spinoza and globalisation by various groups (Cultural Research Bureau, Centre for Dialogue Among Civilizations). He follows the odd grouping of Foucault, Habermas and Rorty (not to mention a bunch of American Kant scholars who were recently there) in visiting and giving lectures in Iran.
Check out the next issue of Radical Philosophy if you want a full report! If all goes to deadline plan here should be a report of the conference in there by myself and Ali A.
Iran redux
Tied up in weird debates about Luther, Spinoza, St Paul and Communism.
Wish people I like weren't in hospital.
Trying not to get sick of sociality due to massive work guilt.
Response to Iran questions coming up, really.
Wish people I like weren't in hospital.
Trying not to get sick of sociality due to massive work guilt.
Response to Iran questions coming up, really.
12 January 2005
new scopo-phlix
ok, so he's not buying a carpet. But it's the man himself. Next to a mosque. He looked perfectly splendid in his hat, we all agreed.
The next lot are all from Belgrade. Some excellent graffiti.
Below was the poster that formed the backdrop to the post-Marxism conference. Produced by an anti-Marxist group pushing for reinstatement of rights for owners of properties prior to their communist redistribution, it was deemed an appropriate poster for our own conference. Especially as we forgot to make one.
This man stands outside the Centre for Cultural Decontamination where the conference was held.
Giving papers. I'm on the right, faffing about with my Sartre paper. As usual.
In other news, the man at the excellent charlotte street has been reading a lot of late Sartre and Jameson, and has some interesting things to say about them.
11 January 2005
Londonistan
No more headscarf, plus pubs.
Must be back in the mini-satan.
Conversation with Austin (with his new Saddam Hussein watch) in the pub: just how does one teach Spinoza? The attributes are out for starters, let alone mediate infinite modes and the third kind of knowledge. But immanence? That's ok, surely. Deus sive natura - not too hard, so long as you don't get all ecological about it, and have a good response to the student who asks you 'but, miss, does that mean that the Mississippi Fried Chicken across the road is, like, God?'
I reckoned it'd be best to teach him negatively: 'hey kids, you know how you think that God (those of you who don't want to kill him) is like some big guy in the sky? Yes? Well, I've got news for you! According to this weird excommunicated Jewish guy, he's not a big guy in the sky at all! He's one infinite substance, not outside nature, looking down upon it, but nature itself. And we can try and understand how it and we work, 'cos it's like made of laws! Brilliant.
Trying to work out why Negri's analysis of immaterial labour and Empire may not have all that much to say to a country like Iran (not that there are states exempt from Empire, but there are certainly places in which the state has a not insignificant role to play in the formation of any immediate political project). It's tricky.
Must be back in the mini-satan.
Conversation with Austin (with his new Saddam Hussein watch) in the pub: just how does one teach Spinoza? The attributes are out for starters, let alone mediate infinite modes and the third kind of knowledge. But immanence? That's ok, surely. Deus sive natura - not too hard, so long as you don't get all ecological about it, and have a good response to the student who asks you 'but, miss, does that mean that the Mississippi Fried Chicken across the road is, like, God?'
I reckoned it'd be best to teach him negatively: 'hey kids, you know how you think that God (those of you who don't want to kill him) is like some big guy in the sky? Yes? Well, I've got news for you! According to this weird excommunicated Jewish guy, he's not a big guy in the sky at all! He's one infinite substance, not outside nature, looking down upon it, but nature itself. And we can try and understand how it and we work, 'cos it's like made of laws! Brilliant.
Trying to work out why Negri's analysis of immaterial labour and Empire may not have all that much to say to a country like Iran (not that there are states exempt from Empire, but there are certainly places in which the state has a not insignificant role to play in the formation of any immediate political project). It's tricky.
08 January 2005
Isfahan
In one of Iran's most beautiful cities today...drinking tea, getting serious nosebleeds (altitude in parts is almost 2000m above sea level) hanging about the bazaar trying to help notorious Italian philosophers buy carpets, you know, ahem, an average day. Sorry to sound like a tourista, Ali and Morad, I know you get cross, but, you know, I really am. You're the proper internationalists, studying abroad and all that - I'm just a farm girl (!), what did I tell you...bebaxsid, etc.
We were going to fly from Tehran, but there was fog over Isfahan airport, allegedly (though it was strangely bright when we arrived by car several hours later - internal transport machinations completely opaque). I was relieved. Iran apparently bought up aging Russian Tupelov planes (complete with original pilots) a while ago. And parts are hard to find. Plane crashes in Iran are only slightly rarer than car crashes (in which 17,000 people die on average every year; 70,000 are injured. Driving around Tehran is an extremely anxiety-inducing experience). Luckily our driver is a Sufi with a moustache-comb, the calmest and funniest man I've ever met (Mullah jokes as we hurtle at 120km hour towards giant trucks with drivers who've been on the road for days. On crack. Or something).
Anyway, there'll be a grand post on Iran as soon as I get back - with photos and everything (perhaps even one of Negri buying a carpet. I know you'd like that).
Back to the library and teaching sulky kids about God soon, don't worry...
We were going to fly from Tehran, but there was fog over Isfahan airport, allegedly (though it was strangely bright when we arrived by car several hours later - internal transport machinations completely opaque). I was relieved. Iran apparently bought up aging Russian Tupelov planes (complete with original pilots) a while ago. And parts are hard to find. Plane crashes in Iran are only slightly rarer than car crashes (in which 17,000 people die on average every year; 70,000 are injured. Driving around Tehran is an extremely anxiety-inducing experience). Luckily our driver is a Sufi with a moustache-comb, the calmest and funniest man I've ever met (Mullah jokes as we hurtle at 120km hour towards giant trucks with drivers who've been on the road for days. On crack. Or something).
Anyway, there'll be a grand post on Iran as soon as I get back - with photos and everything (perhaps even one of Negri buying a carpet. I know you'd like that).
Back to the library and teaching sulky kids about God soon, don't worry...
03 January 2005
Tehran
After Eastern Europe, the Middle East. If I ever go to America I'm going to have to burn my passport and get a new one....but why would I want to go there anyway? Apparently it's full of angry men with rifles, and doughnuts.
Although it's not particularly cold in Iran, it's very stark, with the trees stripped bare. The parrots have become crows, and the pollution is so out of control that yesterday they had to close all the primary schools. I am getting terrible nosebleeds, but I think that's more due to the altitude and general propensity towards interminable rubbish health (give me consumption or give me death! ahem).
As I haven't really been outside much I can't possibly comment on how things stand here, politically or otherwise. But perhaps later.
Dinner tonight with a rather famous Italian political philosopher...
Although it's not particularly cold in Iran, it's very stark, with the trees stripped bare. The parrots have become crows, and the pollution is so out of control that yesterday they had to close all the primary schools. I am getting terrible nosebleeds, but I think that's more due to the altitude and general propensity towards interminable rubbish health (give me consumption or give me death! ahem).
As I haven't really been outside much I can't possibly comment on how things stand here, politically or otherwise. But perhaps later.
Dinner tonight with a rather famous Italian political philosopher...
02 January 2005
Serbia
After a very 'local' English Christmas, a trip to the ex-Yugoslavia to give a paper on Sartre (who else?) at a conference on post-Marxism in Belgrade. A strange city. We read the only tourist guide (published last year). It begins: 'Belgrade is historically the most destroyed city in Europe'. The orthodox churches have been rebuilt with modern materials, though the icons are peeling with age.
Many significant buildings still lie in NATO-bomb-shaped tatters, particularly on the entrance to the city (the ex-army headquarters, major ministries). But new money flows freely through the main pedestrianised streets, where monuments and dedications to the French glitter ostentatiously and ludicrously thin women (as style, not penury, dictates) stroll confidently from shop to shop. People smoke in bookshops.
Someone tells me the average income for a university professor is 200 Euros a month, but clothes are as expensive there as London, where incomes are ten times higher at least. Food and drink is cheap, of course: it's heavy, mostly meat and cheese. The typical wine - slatkovino - is sickly sweet, and tastes like a combination of watered down port, cheap wine and cherry brandy. It gives you an instant headache.
The conference was held at the anti-Milosevic 'Centre for Cultural Decontamination' in Belgrade (logo: two gas masks nuzzling together). Attendance: anarchists, communists, at least one spy, the intellectually wayward and post-marxists of all kinds. We make it on to Belgrade's Radio 2, and speakers get asked odd questions about the state of sociology and anti-intellectualism in the current climes. We wonder whether they're going to cut up the recordings and change the questions: 'So, what is your opinion of Milosevic?' 'Well (fuzz...pause), I...am (cut)...certain that (click) he was correct (high-pitched squeal) in his analysis of the needs of (click...buzz. Pause) Ser (whirring noise)...b...ia...'.
We go clubbing. We get there at 12.30pm, and even then it's too early (we note that Serbian nightlife runs on cheap ecstacy and chewing gum). It fills up. It gets packed. I try not to wonder where the fire exits are. People are intensely pale with angelic cheekbones, apart from the mafiosi-type men, who are gargantuan, shaven-headed, and all wear the same kind of black leather jacket. It's pretty hardcore, but they bring us lots of drinks 'cos we speak nice English and (they presume) we have lots of money. We probably do, relatively.
I get really ill on the flight back with Austrian Airlines (what's German for 'I'm sorry, I have soiled your pristine sick-bag'?). I think that Thomas Bernhard would have been proud of me, especially since I spend the hour or so at the stopover in Vienna airport scowling at the hard-faced bitchy Austrains who look at me askance (whassamatter, never seen a ill-looking English girl before?).
Incidentally, a fine quote from Bernhard: 'Of all medical practictioners, psychiatrists are the most incompetent, having a closer affinity to the sex killer than to their science.' (Wittgenstein's Nephew)
To work, what with the resolution to finish the PhD this year and all.
Many significant buildings still lie in NATO-bomb-shaped tatters, particularly on the entrance to the city (the ex-army headquarters, major ministries). But new money flows freely through the main pedestrianised streets, where monuments and dedications to the French glitter ostentatiously and ludicrously thin women (as style, not penury, dictates) stroll confidently from shop to shop. People smoke in bookshops.
Someone tells me the average income for a university professor is 200 Euros a month, but clothes are as expensive there as London, where incomes are ten times higher at least. Food and drink is cheap, of course: it's heavy, mostly meat and cheese. The typical wine - slatkovino - is sickly sweet, and tastes like a combination of watered down port, cheap wine and cherry brandy. It gives you an instant headache.
The conference was held at the anti-Milosevic 'Centre for Cultural Decontamination' in Belgrade (logo: two gas masks nuzzling together). Attendance: anarchists, communists, at least one spy, the intellectually wayward and post-marxists of all kinds. We make it on to Belgrade's Radio 2, and speakers get asked odd questions about the state of sociology and anti-intellectualism in the current climes. We wonder whether they're going to cut up the recordings and change the questions: 'So, what is your opinion of Milosevic?' 'Well (fuzz...pause), I...am (cut)...certain that (click) he was correct (high-pitched squeal) in his analysis of the needs of (click...buzz. Pause) Ser (whirring noise)...b...ia...'.
We go clubbing. We get there at 12.30pm, and even then it's too early (we note that Serbian nightlife runs on cheap ecstacy and chewing gum). It fills up. It gets packed. I try not to wonder where the fire exits are. People are intensely pale with angelic cheekbones, apart from the mafiosi-type men, who are gargantuan, shaven-headed, and all wear the same kind of black leather jacket. It's pretty hardcore, but they bring us lots of drinks 'cos we speak nice English and (they presume) we have lots of money. We probably do, relatively.
I get really ill on the flight back with Austrian Airlines (what's German for 'I'm sorry, I have soiled your pristine sick-bag'?). I think that Thomas Bernhard would have been proud of me, especially since I spend the hour or so at the stopover in Vienna airport scowling at the hard-faced bitchy Austrains who look at me askance (whassamatter, never seen a ill-looking English girl before?).
Incidentally, a fine quote from Bernhard: 'Of all medical practictioners, psychiatrists are the most incompetent, having a closer affinity to the sex killer than to their science.' (Wittgenstein's Nephew)
To work, what with the resolution to finish the PhD this year and all.
