philosophy

On Language

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 01:30:41 +0100

The ‘Illegal’ Trap in nytimes.com

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/28/the-illegal-trap/?smid=pl-share

This recent article on the term "illegal immigrant" got me thinking back to a discussion on Judith Butler in an MA class as well as my teaching of Huckleberry Finn in America. Language is a reflection of thought; it is creative expression filled with nuances, cultural relevance, knowledge, power, and more. Whether a word is harmful or positive (or the language of an entire book/film/essay/etc) the ideas will not go away when we censor them. In fact, the ignorance to the points will breed further misunderstanding and sometimes hatred. The N word is in Huckleberry Finn, so we must understand why and also look at how it has changed historically. The term "illegal" is not demeaning when applied to a people if one is trying to fight FOR their legality. However, the fight to rid a group of people from the word indeed shows their deep feelings of being forgotten both by their homelands and their host countries.

A serious misunderstanding has taken place. Calling the foundational status of a term into question does not censor the use of the term. It seems to me that to call something into question, to call into question its foundational status, is the beginning of the reinvigoration of that term. What can such terms mean, given that there is no consensus on their meaning? How can they be mobilized, given that there is no way that they can be grounded or justified in any kind of permanent way. What is the task for politics when it invariably must use terms, must use the language of universality, for instance, precisely when the conventional usages of the term do not include the radical democratic uses of the term one has in mind for the term?
Butler, Judith (Conference.) "Left Conservatism, II." in: Theory & Event. Vol.2, Issue 2, 1998.

A Letter from Mom

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 11:31:06 +0100

This one I received in the mail today starts with Hebrew and ends with French. "Oy vey" at the exasperation felt at the busy cadence of September; "moi" as a signature of intimate endearment.

Letter writing is something I learned from my mother. She forced us to write thank you notes and birthday notes endlessly as children, but as the repetition felt easier, I also found a love for the craft. She told me she corresponded frequently with her own father when she moved to Boston from Minnesota. At the time, the distance was made farther with the absence of internet and the price of long distance calling. But their letters allowed their relationship to endure. As we correspond from opposite sides of the globe, now Boston between Hong Kong, we do not merely stay in touch nor mark life events. We capture a raw feeling as we write in our favorite pens, on pretty notecards or humorous postcards, at the window or a local cafe...we each grow as we write, grow as we receive, read, and grow closer together all the while.

In this latest I have just received, three ideas for Affecting others emerged in my ensuing daydream on the 'cat couch' we keep by the window for this kind of thing.

1. Write a letter. I don't just mean an email, although those are nice. There is something about putting pen to paper that captures your handwriting, your personality, your mood. It shows you took the time to connect with this person. It is a creative product. What do you choose to write on? With what writing implement? Do you write in straight lines? Diagonals? Do you include something in your letter?

This particular letter also has three newspaper clippings inside (leading me to #2 and 3) and information from my American bank account. It is a multi-dimensional product! The notecard has Mary Cassatt's "Children Playing on the Beach" (1884) on the front. My mother is enjoying the chilly New England beach of September, this reminds me. She is leaving at 6 am on Sundays with my father to beach walk and make the most of the day. The pen is black, clear, handwriting is the perfect school cursive I know. The date is clearly marked, and a single movement of setting is both described and set off with a squiggly line. The three sides of the notecard are used. Where it stops, we pick up in phone or email conversation. Sometimes we even talk about the contents before they arrive in my hand (often, actually), but it doesn't matter. There is something new there when I read it on the couch.

2. Two topics occur in many of our correspondences: cooking and reading/writing. Of those two topics, two of our favorites are included in the newspaper clippings: Julia Child and Paul Auster. Paul Auster's new book is out! Yes! Only I have to wait a few weeks in Hong Kong. I could buy it on my kindle, yes, but an Auster I must have in the physical form, to keep on a bookshelf, to mark up with pen as I read.

Auster is in a book review of this new book, Winter Journal, but also mentioned in this article about the sort of Gertrude Stein abode (have you seen Midnight in Paris?) of Boston: A Masterpiece in Red Brick. It's an article about 9 Columbus Square that was owned, inhabited, and curated by William and Beverly Corbett for decades. They brought together artists like: Auster, Don DeLillo, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Seamus Heaney. They ate together, chatted, wrote in the salon. Wow. Can you imagine being invited to dinner at their home?

One of its frequent denizens says, "The house was an extension of Bill and Bev--garrulous, welcoming, nourishing, in every sense of the word...[it] was their instrument. It shaped them; they shaped it." I study domestic space (filmic apartments) in my dissertation, and I couldn't agree more with this statement in terms of the way a home can reflect an individual. Home can show creativity, mental breakdown, calmness, inspiration, particular interests, and much more.

So two ideas come from #2. First of all, make your home a reflection of yourself and shape your home into something that will breathe more life into your own individuality. Share it with your friends so they can experience this special part of you.

Secondly, cultivate a feeling of shared experience, either in your home or elsewhere. I often feel so busy, but these experiences are what living is about. I would like to make time for more of this encounters. Perhaps (after the dissertation is done) we can cultivate it in our own home, albeit on a much smaller scale of a Hong Kong sized apartment.

3. Julia Child. It would have been her 100th birthday on August 15 (2012). If you haven't yet seen Julie and Julia or read her memoir, you are missing a real treat. It's not just the French food...it's her magnificent story of perseverance, a love for a new culture, and even her strong reaction against the McCarthy era in the United States. If you get into it, also check out her book of letters to and from Avis and a new biography that is out: Dearie: the remarkable life of Julia Child.

I had a review of that book in this letter, but also a fascinating article: A dinner in honor of Julia. Ric Duarte got into Julia pretty much the same way I did. "My mother had a day care when I was 11 years old and I was too old for 'Sesame Street.' But after that, this bizarre woman with an odd voice would come on TV and cook French food. I thought, What is she doing? I started watching her every day." Well, my mother didn't have a day care, but I am five years older than my brother, so when he was still only allowed to watch Sesame Street, my sister and I were stuck as well (which really wasn't that bad). We got into Julia. I've got her cookbooks and DVD's--a mix of humor and fine French cooking. Even my French club of 17-year-olds enjoyed her shows and could follow her recipes.

So Mr. Duarte cooks a dinner in honor of Julia every year on her birthday. He cooks for his friends, bringing them together with 'good food and good wine.' It's a simple idea, but a touching one. It's one I just might try. Although this year I was in France on Julia's birthday...it was just as easy just to go to a local restaurant. Perhaps I will go for a Yule Log at Christmastime instead. If you haven't seen that episode, it's a classic! (The Jacques Pepin version is on youtube.com here. He did a lot of work with Julia and they even wrote a cookbook together.)

It's 7:30 p.m. My stomach is rumbling. Bon appetit!

Slavoj Zizek: "Save us from the saviours" (London Review of Books, June 7, 2012)

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 05:04:29 +0100

Zizek remains one of the most striking philosophical cultural studies writers of our times. Although I am still in the middle of his dense but invigorating Parallax View, I turn to his shorter essays that often appear in the London Review of Books or Harper's.

Here, Zizek looks at the Greek crisis, linking terrorism, economics, history, politics...as only he can do. Check out the article yourself. Consider it in political elections in the coming year. I will just post two quotes here:

"Some of [warriors against terror] love human dignity so much that they are ready to legalise torture to defend it."

"The Greeks are not passive victims: they are at war with the European economic establishment, and what they need is solidarity in their struggle, because it is our struggle too. Greece is not an exception. It is one of the main testing grounds for a new socio-economic model of potentially unlimited application: a depoliticised technocracy in which bankers and other experts are allowed to demolish democracy. By saving Greece from its so-called saviours, we also save Europe itself."

The question begs, when faced with choice, what do we save first: democracy, economy, freedom, culture, lives. Of course there is some reciprocal relationships going on here, but it is becoming too easy to put economy first and assume that this will pull the rest along with it.

Soderback, Fanny. “Julia Kristeva face aux féministes américaines,” L’Infini. ...

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 18:01:40 +0100

Short reaction to the article:

Dans cet article, Soderback place Julia Kristeva en face de Judith Butler et les féministes américaines pour parler comment le concept de maternité est vraiment différent entre les deux cotés. Pour Butler, d’être mère est d’être dans la forme biologique qui inhiber (empêcher?) la puissance d’un individuel. Il devient une charge.

Mais, pour Kristeva la maternité est quelque chose au même temps sémiotique et symbolique. Le mot/l’idée était créé avec la friction de la dialogue d’espace, temporalité, et religion. Quand le corps change pendant qu’une femme est enceinte, elle a de la chance d’être consciente d’une transformation qui correspond avec l’espace et le temps au même temps. C’est métaphysique et sa correspond avec la féminité qui veulent avoir l’expérience de changer comme ca (et pas d’avoir le phallus). Mais ça aide aussi la relation avec le père d’être en équilibre avec les deux sexes en société. La transformation aussi indique la spiritualité et c’est une symbole d’immortalité et pureté dans la religion Chrétien (la Virgin Marie). L’esprit conscient passe en dehors des expériences du monde. D’être mère est comprendre et réaliser une espoir d’infinitude.

Cet article a beaucoup de connections pour moi avec la concept de cristallisation de Deleuze. L’espace et temps sont fusionnés pour une image qui peut mettre quelqu’une dans la vie Virtuelle. C’est une espace d’ellipses (qui Kristeva indique aussi). Ça aussi m’intéresse dans le dialogue des immigrées dans l’espace domestique. Est-ce que la maternité joint les femmes indépendant des différences culturelles ? Si oui, comment avoir une dialogue entre elles ? Les films, peuvent ils joindre l’idée d’être mère et comment ca donne pas exactement de puissance mais d’émancipation d’une « être » ? A Kristeva, d’être mère et de libérer des choses reprîmes dans une individuelle.

Culture and the City as Object a

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 17:58:18 +0100

This was written as an exercise during a class at HKU's MALCS program on Sexuality, taught by Professor Anthony Siu.

Culture and The City as Object a

If one extends the definition of Lacan’s object a to abstraction, one may fuse multiple explanations of how to reach enlightenment. It brings together Freud’s concept of the death drive and its ensuing redefinition as the knowledge drive, Derrida’s différance or the general notion of dissonance, Buddhist interpretations of the enso, and mathematical properties of zero. Though Lacan describes object a as occupying a place in a person’s body, it need not be a tangible nor clearly definable thing. We may extend our use of this concept in studying ourselves and literature in the hope to find a way toward enlightenment as Joan Copjec does in “The Tomb of Perseverance: On Antigone.” Though we cannot reach enlightenment within our mortal lives, reaching enlightenment beyond mortality cannot be confused with a realization through death. Instead, we must circle something repeatedly during our lives, constantly getting closer to its core, but always remaining satisfyingly unsettled. When this object a we circle becomes the very space and culture in which we live, there is constant stimuli and anticipation for the next lap toward enlightenment.

I often hear my ex-patriot friends proclaim that they “could never really go back.” There is nothing wrong with home. On the contrary, visits home are some of the best times of year—seeing old friends, visiting familiar places, and feeling completely at ease. However, the idea of moving home is frightening. Even if home is Barcelona or Melbourne, the cities seem “boring” and their friends “just don’t understand” them anymore. Perhaps a fast-changing, multicultural city like New York, or especially Hong Kong, has an edge in drawing people home by allowing for frequent cultural and spatial change within the city. The cities are ideal for ex-patriots who seek change after leaving home without actually moving again.

In a recent Economist issue, an article entitled “Being Foreign” discusses the need for some artists to be engulfed in a foreign culture and city in order to effectively create. As example, one could examine the group of ex-patriot writers in Paris in the early twentieth century. Writers like James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald held both French culture and Paris itself as their object a’s. While there was some writing going on about Paris as a goal of understanding, such as Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, it was rather the effects of energy changes within each author that allowed for creative forces leading to some realization of immortality.

In order to explore how this functions, let us take Joyce as an example. After leaving Dublin, he never returned to his homeland. Perhaps he was afraid to upset the energy shifts he had achieved upon arrival on Europe’s mainland. Without going into specific biographical events, we can understand his rise as a literary genius through this physical act. Upon moving to Paris, Joyce is immediately immersed in French language and culture, along with the space of Paris itself. As he walks the streets, occupies cafés, reads local newspapers, listens to French radio, goes to art galleries, and observes fashions, he becomes closer and closer to understanding French culture and Paris. However, he will never be able to feel as if he is a part of the space nor will he ever speak French like a native. Joyce experiences dissonance as a vibration of his known space and culture in Dublin with those of Paris. The tension is the same as is described in Derrida’s “Différance” and also similar to the space between a veil and a woman that contains her identity in William Egginton’s “Sexual Differences and the Ethics of Duplicity.” The frictions between the known and the unknown create energy, mimicking physics’ definition of friction. As Joyce circles around Paris and French culture, he becomes closer and closer to an understanding. His circle becomes smaller and tighter, therefore twirling faster like a figure skater’s perfect spin. The feeling is euphoric. He seems to be driving toward nothingness in the intersection of cultures and spaces, namely in the form of the death drive. He consumes and creates energy at great speed and is therefore able to create art at the highest level possible. Therefore, the death drive becomes a knowledge drive as his work reveals more knowledge now not about Paris, but about Dublin. Joyce reaches deep into his being to form an understanding of his homeland like no one has before, creating Dubliners, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake to become one of the most read and talked about authors ever to live. Through the creation of these works, object a has lead to both a feeling of nothingness and complete understanding, and that understanding has explored the entire life cycle through literature. The shape of Joyce’s energetic circular motion also mimics the aesthetics and function of a Buddhist enso. The enso’s round brush stroke is the cycle of life, the moon, the sun, everything, and nothing all in one. It therefore links him with the enlightened Buddha, but can he become immortal?

It would be easy to assume that Joyce reaches a version of immortality through the texts he has created. They have endured to reach multiple printings and translations and may be found in nearly every library or bookstore. Some have placed Ulysses as the best book of all time. Is it a transferal of knowledge from Joyce to book to reader that allows him to live on? While this does allow his thoughts to be remembered and rediscovered, it is instead the act of creating these texts that gives Joyce some form of immortality. Let us take the mathematical concept of zero to understand. Copjec mentions zero in connection to object a as a beginning to a “series of signifiers” (260). Zero physically resembles both the circling motion of object a and the enso, while also taking different qualities than the numbers or signifiers that follow. When we divide any number by zero, we have an undefined answer that approaches infinity. Paris and French culture cannot divide Joyce into different beings based on his cultural identities; instead it divides his energy toward infinity. As he creates literature, his energy is spread nearly infinitely, which makes him nearly reach immortality.

Similarly, as a native Bostonian, my creative urge has been re-realized through both living in Hong Kong and with my French husband, Philippe. Hong Kong already contains a clash of cultures within itself and has a frequently changing spatial representation. I learn from what I see and hear in my journeys through the city. I also learn from Philippe’s cultural differences and experience it while speaking in French, attempting to fully capture its idiosyncrasies. I will never fully understand Hong Kong nor Philippe, but that is what makes discovering more about each of these object a’s a rewarding energetic experience. Perhaps there are too many factors at play right now: French, Chinese, Hong Kong, East meets West, and even a recent flat move and the re-starting of graduate studies. However, as I discover a circling motion around one aspect of all this dissonance, I may produce the creative energies needed to write and discover through my internally produced knowledge drive.

Works Discussed

“Being Foreign,” The Economist. 19 Dec. 2009-1 Jan. 2010: 99-101.

Copjec, Joan. “The Tomb of Perseverance: On Antigone,” Giving Grounds. Ed. Joan Copjec and Michael Sorkin. New York: Verso, 1999. Reproduced in University of Hong Kong CLIT 7010 Course Packet, 2010.

Derrida, Jacques. “Différance,” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, Inc., 1998. Print.

Egginton, William. “Sexual Difference and the Ethics of Duplicity,” Perversion and Ethics. Reproduced in University of Hong Kong CLIT 7010 Course Packet, 2010.

Derrida's Structural Survival

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 16:49:45 +0100

It is originary: life is survival.

—Jacques Derrida

As I interpret in my work on mise-en-abyme, we must not get lost in the abyss of life, but rather use structure and framing to climb out of an overwhelming reality that can otherwise turn into a black hole. The Affect of daily experiences maintains this structure and allows us to spread toward mortality.

Here are a couple of related articles that respond to Derrida's last interview and death:

http://www.humanityjournal.org/humanity-volume-1-issue-1/ethics-survival-democratic-approach-politics-life

http://www.scribd.com/doc/16511825/Butler-Judith-Derrida-on-Never-Having-Learned-How-to-Live

And my thesis on mise-en-abyme: http://hub.hku.hk/handle/10722/143282