by Michael Lopresto

Many people from all walks of life have been liberated by the phrase “social construction.” Most notably, those with gender identities that don't conform to traditional ideas, and those with behaviours that don't conform to traditional norms and values. In the former case, it's said that gender roles are wholly the product of socialisation, culture and education, whilst the labelling of nonconforming behaviours as “mad” is actually nothing more than the will of those in power trying to control behaviour and punish those they see as a threat to the status quo.

Indeed there's a venerable tradition in philosophy of saying that everything's socially constructed; with Michel Foucault and Judith Butler in the continental tradition, and an anti-metaphysical thread from Kant to the logical positivists to Quine and Goodman in the analytic tradition. Those with an anti-metaphysical bent often thought that philosophers were in a special place to examine and think about the world with their distinctly conceptual resources. The thought was that Plato was wrong to think that nature has joints, and that we can divide the world up in any way we want. We might think about the world as containing tigers or trees, things that form a distinct natural category, but that's actually a fact about our psychology than about how the world is independent of us. The common sense “naïve realism” of Aristotle says that there are things in themselves, and that science uncovers their real essences, but actually this is just a way of conveniently packaging our ideas and experiences. And this anti-metaphysical, anti-essentialist framework was put to good political use as well. Logical positivists such as Carnap and Schlick criticised metaphysical concepts such as wholes-as-distinct-from-parts as being nothing but metaphysical extravagance that couldn't be rigorously explicated, and therefore the very concept that underpinned the Nazi idea that the Volk was some distinct entity from collections of individual German people was complete nonsense.

Read more »

by Carl Pierer

Who the noble prize achieveth,
Good friend of a friend to be;
Who a lovely wife attaineth,
Join us in his jubilee!
Yes—he too who but one being
On this earth can call his own!
He who ne'er was able, weeping
Stealeth from this league alone!

—Friedrich Schiller, “Ode to Joy”

*

In “The Pervert's Guide to Ideology”, Slavoj Žižek draws the viewer's attention to the hollow, empty shell of the famous musical adaption of the ode to joy in Beethoven's Ninth. Commonly perceived to be a celebration of universal brotherhood, it has been used by various, starkly opposed political movements. While in Nazi Germany it was played at great public event, it was perceived as an almost communist song in the USSR and has now become the unofficial anthem of the European Union. He continuous to suggest that whenever a text claims to be rejoicing in the universal fraternity of humanity, it should be questioned who is meant by this. Is it really all of humanity or is there someone excluded? What are the conditions to shape the all-embracing league?

The Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos has an affinity for the presence of philosophical abysses in contemporary society. His films, absurd and highly satirical, yet at the same time deeply serious, are tremendously haunting. With great naturalness, he lets the familiar collide with the outlandish, thereby creating absurd frameworks. Such a background allows him to explore problems of identity, care and closeness and all the while caricature present society in elaborate metaphors. To take an example, “Alps” may illustrate this idea.

Read more »

by Charlie Huenemann

What would it be for life to have a “meaning”? What does it mean when people say life is meaningful? I’m not sure, so let’s start with smaller, more obviously meaningful things. Better yet, let’s start with some meaningless things. When Bob sits down to polish the steel junk he’s about to haul to the scrap heap, we can say his activity is meaningless: there’s no point to it. Similarly, when my students sit down to prepare for an exam that I have decided to cancel, their work is pointless and meaningless. When Sally writes a memo about the futility of writing memos, crafting her prose to limpid perfection, with the aim of deleting her anti-memo memo before anyone reads it, we should feel some degree of concern for her mental well-being. Meaningless things have no point to them – nothing is achieved, no purpose can be fathomed, and the work we dedicate to them is entirely wasted. Meaningful things, let’s presume, are just the opposite.

So, how about life as a whole – your whole life, and the lives of everyone? If we believe in a Grand Scheme of Things, some cosmic contest with an unambiguous finish line, then we might then see lives as meaningful. The history of philosophy is crammed full of such Grand Schemes, but we might call upon Leibniz to present one of the greatest ones. This world, said Leibniz, is the best of all possible worlds, the very best world a just and omniscient being could call into existence, and it is made the best by all of the things people do, when taken as a whole. All finite things strive toward greater and greater perfections of being, and the world over time turns into something that is worthy of divine selection. If we embrace the Leibnizian scheme, we feel the pressure of bringing all our actions and thoughts to the highest reaches of moral and metaphysical perfection. Everything is meaningful, because everything contributes to the end God set for creation.

This is one thrillingly grand notion of cosmic meaningfulness – but hardly anyone now believes it. Most of us accept that the universe has not come about for the purpose of achieving anything. Cosmologists tell us that it’s something of a puzzle why there should be anything at all, and many of them are driven to the conclusion that there must be an infinity of possible universes, most of them boring beyond any description, and a scant few of them including such noteworthy features as matter. They come to this conclusion precisely to avoid the conclusion our universe has anything to brag about. Our universe is the way it is because some universe had to be, and it’s consequently no surprise that we – as evolved, intelligent beings – would find ourselves in one of those rare universes in which something relatively interesting has happened.

What does our universe try to achieve? Well, if anything, it seems to enjoy growing entropy – that is, it tries to shed itself of any order. Our universe would love nothing more than to become a thin, bland soup, and verdicts seem to go back and forth about whether it’s likely to succeed in this modest goal. The more fundamental point, of course, is that the universe itself does not really care one way or another about its own success. It just does whatever its laws tell it to do, and the laws, so far as we comprehend them, do not aim toward any special, purposeful end.

Read more »

by Mathangi Krishnamurthy

Somewhere in Japan, on offer for the throwaway price of a thousand yen, is a good night's cuddle. Somewhere in Seattle and elsewhere in Oregon, the price of an expensive meal will offer you the benefits of touch; hugging, cuddling, and spooning. Somewhere on a street corner, someone is standing around with a board that says “Free Hugs”.

Intimacy, otherwise sparse, is now available, sometimes freely and sometimes not. Theorists of the 21st century speak of the phenomenon called affective labor wherein even emotion is brought under the purview of capitalist modes of valuation and exchange. This is a matter of both lament and orientation. One is nostalgic for her grandmother who offered food and love in abundant measure, while being aware that all of it was provided through backbreaking, undervalued and underpaid, gendered labor.

Having lived in the US for close to a decade, I am intensely familiar with the enunciations of such affective labor. Cashiers who ask you how you are doing with such abundant cheer, even as they do not necessarily care to hear the answer, are part of this labor complex. Also inhabiting this phenomenon are bartenders; men and women, who must both produce unique personalities, as well as subsume them in the service of listening to your life story. In return, one plays the game. One declares to the cashier that life could be better, but isn't bad, and one produces for the bartender, a confession hopefully more interesting than the last. In turn is generated the counter effect of a hermetic sealing off from affective atmospheres. Modes of survival seem to depend upon avoiding all but the most perfunctory forms of structured intimacy, thereby retaining all control. In such a milieu, the form of loneliness produced is piercing, and singular. It creates an appreciation and tolerance for being alone, along with an inability to be anything but, compounded by a deep desire for the one true companion that will dispel this state of being. The myth that therefore sustains this affective dissonance and deprivation is that of the love story.

Read more »

by Hari Balasubramanian

This piece is framed as a 'conversation' but it is really a conversation or debate between two voices/perspectives in my own head (here's a similar piece from last year).

__

“There's a lot of talk these days about 'staying in the present moment', 'being mindful', etc. I find it all quite puzzling. Because it doesn't matter what is going on or what I am thinking, I am always in the present – isn't that the case?”

“Well, I find myself usually thinking of the past or projecting future scenarios…”

“Sure – that's true for me too. But isn't it true that thinking of the past or the future also happens the present? A memory of the past is somehow retrieved now in our mental space and we say we are thinking of the past. The screen on which the past unfolds or the future is projected is always the present.”

“You can get very technical about it if you like. The idea of being present is simply to clear your mind of unnecessary and – on many occasions – troublesome thoughts which keep taking you on needless mental journeys.”

“Okay – then what remains when your mind is clear of thoughts?”

“I guess you experience sensory stimuli going on right now – you feel how cold the wind is, or how red that piece of cloth is, how bitter the coffee is and so on.”

“And why are these sensory perceptions more special than thoughts of the past or future? Isn't the feeling that the coffee is bitter a kind of thought too – you taste the coffee and something in your mind, some kind of past knowledge or memory, learned or ingrained, but which is still thought, informs you that it is bitter.”

“At least it is more immediate…”

“Yes, but the present is already the past by the time you label something. Thought is always one step behind whatever is unfolding…”

Read more »

by Sarah Firisen

The week before last I changed the sheets on my bed. Stripped the fitted sheet, the pillow cases, bundled it all up in my arms and threw it in the washing machine and turned it on (I’m lucky enough to have a washer/dryer in my apartment in NYC). About 3 minutes went by, maybe 4. I suddenly felt that something was wrong, something was missing, I looked on the kitchen counter, on the coffee table, ran into the bedroom and looked on my bedside table, but the sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach told me what I already knew; I ran to the washer, opened up the top, reached inside, felt around and there it was, my iPhone. The sheets weren’t soaked, but they were pretty wet, a decent amount of water was already in the washer. I knew the drill from when my daughter had dropped her phone in the toilet, but in the panic of the moment there were steps I forgot or overlooked. Luckily I had bulked ordered Arborio rice (I like risotto) and so quickly dumped 3 bags worth into a bowl. Took the phone out of its case, which in this circumstance had probably done more harm than good, trapping the water nicely. Put the phone in the rice, put the bowl in a warm dry spot as dictated by the various guides to such things I found on the internet, which luckily I could still access via my laptop and prayed. My daughter scolded me – “and you know, you have to wait at least 72 hours!!” Her concern was hardly selfless; the plan was that when I was eligible to upgrade in just over 6 weeks, she’d get my old phone to replace her almost totally defunct iPhone 5.

Those 72 hours were hell. I have no house phone, so no way to call anyone and even if I did, I don’t know anyone’s phone numbers except my aunt and uncle in England because they’ve had the same phone number since I was 7 and my ex-husband who’s had his mobile number at least 10 years.

I do everything on my phone: banking, airline check-ins (I fly a lot) and boarding passes, pay my rent, stay in touch with loved ones, read the New York Times and the New Yorker, read books, and listen to music. Without it, I’m ashamed to say I was bereft. I couldn’t work out because I really need to listen to music to motivate me and I had no way to do that. Could only communicate with friends and family through email and Facebook from my laptop which left me rather housebound. And there are some personal details at the intersection of personal hygiene and technology that I can’t even bring myself to report with greater clarity. Suffice it to say, I was lost. It was a very long 3 days. Actually more like 2 ½ because I cracked around 11am Monday morning, took it out of the rice and tried to turn it on.

Read more »

by Akim Reinhardt

Last month, my second academic book was published by the University of Nebraska Press. It is entitled Welcome to the Oglala Nation: A Documentary Reader in Oglala Lakota Political History.

The publisher's website for the book is here.

The book reconsiders the history of the Oglala Lakota people, the largest branch of an Indigenous nation commonly known as the Sioux.

The word “Sioux” is a French corruption of a 17th century Anishinaabe (Chippewa or Ojibwa) name for the people who call themselves either Dakotas or Lakotas. Whether one says “Dakota” or “Lakota” depends on which dialect of that language one is speaking or associated with; one of the main differences between the Dakota and Lakota dialects is the pronunciation of the letter D, which Lakota speakers pronounce as an L.

Of the seven Lakota-speaking groups, the largest are the Oglalas. From among the ranks of 19th century Oglala political leaders are some of the most famous Indigenous names in American history, including Tašuŋka Witko (Crazy Horse) and Maĥpia Luta (Red Cloud).

Pine Ridge Reservation, in the southwestern corner of South Dakota, has been home to the Oglala Oyate (nation) since the 1870s; prior to that the Lakota empire spread over much of the northern Great Plains. Pine Ridge Reservation It is also where Ĉaŋkpe Opi (Wounded Knee) is located, site of both a brutal U.S. Army massacre of approximately 200 Indigenous people in 1890 and an occupation by Oglalas and their supporters from the American Indian Movement (AIM) which was laid siege to by the federal government in 1973.

My first academic book, published in 2007, was a study of Oglala politics on Pine Ridge during the mid-20th century. This new book offers a more comprehensive political history of the Oglala Oyate.

Read more »

October
.

when the night chorus ends
its cricketed whine
(gone overnight when first frost came)
a new silence blends with pitch of pine
and barks of trees
………………………… what remains
when heat departs and dark descends
is a resonate wake of love in heads
of echo memories that will too
be shed
.

Jim Culleny
9/8/15

by Leanne Ogasawara

Not far from Amman, located just outside the city of Salt is the shrine of the Old Testament Prophet Joshua. It is a simple building containing nothing but a tomb. But what a tomb it is; for at about ten meters long, it makes quite an impression!

Indeed, ever since visiting the Tomb of Joshua, I've come to feel that all saints' tombs of saints should be super-sized like that.

It's not just saints either. Throughout Asia, one can follow the trail of the gigantic footprints of the Buddha (“Buddhapada”). These were the first “relics” of the religion before the rise of Greco-Buddhist art. From Japan to Sri Lanka, these monumental footprints abound and some are the size of a bathtub!

It is, you have to admit, somehow pleasing to see the great stature of these saints and sages reflected in their great physical size….a kind of inner greatness reflected in their after-impressions….

This larger-than-life quality is just one of the myriad of things I like about GK Chesterton. Not one to be outdone in anything, the prolific British writer had a massive final resting place. Like the prophet Joshua, his gigantic coffin was so huge that they simply couldn't get it down the stairs and out of his house for the funeral! Chesterton was, it seems, enormously fat. But as this wonderful old article in the Atlantic has it, this shows you how levity meets gravity– for he was in many ways a man of Biblical proportions!

Speaking of which, have you heard the Catholic church has opened an investigation into a possible case for his canonization?

Read more »

by Matt McKenna

If Ridley Scott's The Martian is a science fiction story about stranded astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) struggling to survive on Mars until he can be rescued by his crew, CNN's recent Democratic primary debate is a political science fiction story about presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton (Hillary Clinton) surviving in the primary until she can be rescued by her fellow Democrats. Both the film and the debate were lengthy and exposition-laden affairs in which the audience was expected to be less excited about the content of the protagonist's speech and more excited that they were speaking at all. For example, it didn't matter what scientific flimflam came out of Watney's mouth, it just need to represent cocksure smart-guy talk well enough to impress the audience and elicit a laugh. Likewise, it didn't matter what political flimflam came out of Clinton's mouth, it just needed to represent mainstream liberal values well enough to impress the audience and elicit sycophantic rapturous applause. That said, if you were marooned on a desert planet in desperate need for entertainment, you could do worse than The Martian or even the debate. If you could only watch one, however, The Martian is the clear winner–at least it openly advertises itself as fiction.

Read more »

by Bill Benzon

What about television? The movies? Or, even, heaven forefend! the book? But then, what is a mind that it can be wrecked, or not?

The brain we know about, and what rots it. Cancer rots the brain. So do drugs of the wrong kind, and there are lots of wrong kinds, though there’s some dispute on specific drugs. But the mind, it’s not at all clear that the mind is the sort of thing that can rot, at least not literally. Metaphorically, sure.

But why would I even entertain the idea – and that’s all I’m doing, entertaining it – that the internets have wrecked my mind? Well, for one thing, I’m a mature adult and for several years now I’ve spent several hours a day, every day, not only working at my computer – which, in some uses is no more than a glorified typewriter – my cruising the web. And I rarely read an article all the way through. I’ll read a couple of sentences, maybe a few paragraphs, and then move on. In some cases I’ll link the article to my Facebook page or even cut, paste, and comment a post to my home blog, New Savanna.

And then I’m back on the prowl, checking out my Facebook friends, seeing how many hits I’ve gotten at Flickr, how’s the conversation over there at Crooked Timber?, any useful stuff at 3 Quarks Daily?, what’s the gossip on JCList? And so it goes. For hours. Everyday.

And you can’t even write a proper sentence! What kind of sentence is that: “For hours”? Where’s the verb? The subject?

Chill, dude. That’s not a sentence. It’s a mind fart.

Mind fart!? What kind of language is that for an intellectual publication like 3QD!

Dude, 3QD is on the internets, yo!

Read more »

by Eric Byrd

Three Wogs (1973) is Alexander Theroux's first novel – the fruit of a Fulbright year in London, and a National Book Award nominee. It is the work of a verbal sorcerer and deep-seeing satirist unafraid of prolixity or obscurity in the pursuit of a complex effect: the grotesque real, the situations in which social aversions reveal erotic fears and fantasies. Theroux's three stories are set in liminal or subterranean spaces – “the depths where horror and pleasure coincide,” said Leiris.

1. The theater where the Sinophobe and refugee-tormenter Mrs. Proby goes to be deliciously alarmed before giant projected scenes of Fu Manchu's lubricious villainy:

The theatre, with its smell of weak lilac and cheap caporal, was the perfect hush in soft red lights that Mrs. Proby loved: funereal, anonymous, the nethermost retreat where the tired, amorous, and lonesome could sleep or fondle or expatiate in ones or twos or threes, far from the madding crowd and unbothered in the reliquary of pure imagination.

Read more »

by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

Ludwig Wittgenstein apparently once claimed that “a serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.” It's not clear what might have led Wittgenstein to say such a thing. Indeed, it seems an absurd suggestion. Philosophy is largely an explanatory enterprise, and, as we all know, there's no worse fate for a joke than for it to require explanation. However, it is clear that jokes can provide an occasion for philosophical reflection. Even though we do not need an explanation of a good joke in order to find it funny, we nonetheless may have reason to look for an explanation of the fact that it is funny.

The distinction between explaining a joke and explaining what is funny about a joke is subtle enough to seem bogus. Yet surely there is a difference between having to explain a joke in order to make the case that it is funny and offering an explanation of what is funny about a joke that is already acknowledged to be so. The former project is, as we've already mentioned, a joke killer; a joke that needs to be explained in order that one might find it funny is arguably no joke at all. But the latter project of explaining why we find a particular joke funny can be elucidating. For one thing, it calls attention to the varied phenomena of humor, including the puzzling features of language and communication that are often put on explicit display in a good joke. Perhaps eventually such explanations may be helpful in drawing important distinctions between, say, comedy and cruelty, or satire and defamation.

The recent passing of Yogi Berra has rightly occasioned reflection on his famous quizzical remarks that are now widely known as “Yogisms.” What is interesting about Yogisms is that they're clearly funny, but it is not clear why. On the one hand, several look like simple conceptual errors. For example, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it,” “Pair up in threes,” and “Baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical” seem simply to misunderstand what forks, pairs, and halves are. On the other hand, others appear to be flat tautologies. Consider: “I knew the record would stand until it was broken” and “You wouldn't have won if we'd beaten you.” In the cases of both of these kinds, the comedy lies in a kind of unthinking tendency to malapropism. Had Yogi said only one such thing, there likely would be no humor in it; one would simply claim that he had on some occasion misspoken, or said something silly, and be done with it. It is Yogi's proneness to certain kinds of conceptual infelicity – his record of erring – that makes these slip-ups distinctively amusing.

But other Yogisms are more intriguing, and, importantly, these are his more widely-known sayings. Consider the most famous Yogism of all: “It ain't over till it's over.” On its face, it looks like another simple tautology. Yet it isn't. What's going on?

Read more »