Time regained

I bought Le temps retrouvé (1999) a few months ago, but I haven't watched it until now. To begin with, I was quite worried about how a film based on Proust's Time Regained might turn out. It's not the kind of book in which A happens, then B, which leads up to C, ending with climax D. Proust wrote about memory, about self-deception, and how these two intertwine. How we gain a perspective on the way we deceive ourselves, and how this changes how we remember things. His book evolves around the protagonist's changing understanding of himself and of other people, but these changes are not described by means of linear storytelling. Rather, the book unravels a world of details, characters (hundreds of them!), smells, associations - and it is among this myriad of impressions that the reader gets a glimpse of the protagonist. This is not Hollywood material, to be sure.

I knew next to nothing about Raoul Ruiz, who directed the film. I've heard he's often considered a surrealist, but what that means nowadays, I'm not really sure. The film keeps the "loose" (from one perspective) associative style of the books. Marcel Proust remembers things on his deathbed, and the film consists of a weave of memories, knit together by small transitions in the images. A door leads to a new landscape, a different scenery evolves in a mirror, etc. I guess that might cover the "surrealist" part, and, for me, it was the part of the film that I was less impressed by. The transitions did work, sometimes, but many times I got a sense of construction (something I never thought about when reading Proust).

Some of the scenes were absolutely stunning. In one scene, Saint-Loup (the protagonist's close friend) and Marcel are dining. Saint-Loup chows down his food and brags about the virtues of the French army. We watch him eating and bragging for several minutes, and the scene is painful and funny at the same time. "God, that was good meat!" In other scenes, the protagonist is simply walking around; at parties, numbly, seemlingly slightly amused, listening the créme de la créme's chit-chat about relatives and .... more relatives.

In Proust's book, we get a quite clear picture about the protagonist. It is his own image of himself that is put in question by his confrontations with his memories and with other characters. In the film, the protagonist is a much hazier character. Given the book's sense of subjectivity expressed by a narrative from the protagonist's - however deceitful - point of view, subjectivity is, in the film, transformed into the gaze of the protagonist; the things he focuses upon, the things he does not see. But I guess this is something about which I could say a lot more were I to watch the film again - and I really think I will.

It was also interesting to see that the film stayed true to the book in the sense that the multitude of characters causes confusion for the reader/viewer. The book and the film are swarming with people, but the means of evoking a sense of crowdiness (in mind & physical space) were, of course, quite different.

A sinner's tale

Yesterday, at noon, I heard a knock on my door. I dragged myself up. It took a while for me to get there, on crutches, that is. Two elderly ladies were standing at the door. "Gosh, what happened to you?", they exclaimed, eying my bandaged, purple foot. "We've come to invite you to a party, a celebration of the death of Christ", the other lady said. "But we realize you can't make it, but we'll give you this, anyway", she said, and handed over a brouchure, from which the bloody head of Christ was gazing up at me. The face on the brochure, somehow, reminded me of Captain Haddock. The ladies were Jehovah's witnesses. As I retired to my room, I though about how they must think of me as a great sinner.

The brochure is clearly inspired by trailers for Hollywood movies ("Passion of the Christ"). "NOBODY has shown GREATER LOVE", "WHO showed this love, and HOW?", "You're welcome to find out, the answers to these URGENT QUESTIONS will be SETTLED." "How does the death of Jesus affect YOU? Why do we call his death the greatest proof of love? Are you among JESUS' FRIENDS?"

"YOU are ALSO invited to join us at our special Bible lecture: 'WHO is competent to be in charge of HUMANITY?'"

(Jehovah's witnesses also have a homepage! Yeah it's... http://www.watchtower.org/)

Ricochets - the ghost of our love

I was introduced to Ricochets when I saw them live at Roskilde one summer a few years ago. The concert was great. The audience went crazy; people threw beer pints at each other and sang along with the lyrics. After that, I bought The ghost of our love. I return to it now and then, and I haven't got tired of it yet. If the music and lyrics were just a tad bit different, I am sure I would hate it. I would reject it as the worst and most sentimental kind of machismo self-pity combined with a traditional approach to rock. Well, the lyrics do express self-pity, but somehow the excessive way these dark tales are told makes me less prone to, you know, react with disgust. And, true, the music is quite traditional. But I don't care - the record is fucking brilliant. It's one of the very few straightforward rock n' roll albums I actually like.

risky business

I've learned something today: I should stay clear of business.

Two years ago, I was working in a weird place and we had to show up at a lot of pointless seminars, packed with boring people. There was a lot of opportunistic and/or technical management theory, of which I understood very little, but I still disliked it very much. After one of these horrendous seminars, we were all going on a small cruise (initiated by pink, sweet drinks). It sucked. I hurt my foot when jumping down from the boat and then I had to make civilized conversation for the rest of the night even though the pain was quite unbearable. During a few months, my mobility relied on a pair of crutches.
This morning, I was late for some silly presentation at a business ethics course I never should have attended in the first place (see previous post). Suddenly, I tripped over something, and found myself lying on the ground. I stood up, the foot was hurting quite a bit, but I didn't think about that. I endured the first presentations, but after that I was subdued by pains and went to see a doctor instead. Which was a good thing. My foot is now covered with plaster. I feel like a mummy.

On the plus side, I didn't have to make a stupid presentation today, in which I would have, seriously! - been blabbering on about irrationality and rationality, the stupidity of men and the futility of revolting against the Laws of Economics.

But that is poor consolation. Admittedly, I am the clumsiest creature on Earth.

whazzup, Gösta?

Gösta's paws

Turku

Lights shine upon Turku & Gösta eats the best junk food man has ever created. Gösta, belly of the beast.

Somewhere among those cords, there's a thought. The thougth ain't Gösta's.

Rain & lights.

sexism of the day

"Hey, you guys..."
"Not all of us are guys..."
"Har Har Har"

Then "the guys" carried on discussing how irrational consumers are & how fantastically Rational economic theory is, and how it is such a shame that people don't live up to the rigor of economic theory in their ordinary lives.

Well, it's a shame, boys!

(((())))

I have a sore back. I can't bend forward and that means I cannot even read. Goddamn. I should finish The Human Condition soon. I'm puzzled by it. Some of her distinctions are interesting (that between 'work' and 'labor', for example), but I still have the feeling that they are somehow off the mark. I like Arendt's style, though. The book is very clearly written (I expected something much more like Heidegger).
Instead of working, I am lying in bed, gazing into a patch of sunlight on the wall, listening to Fake books by Lali puna (shit, it's great) and thinking about pointless things such as what I'm gonna have for dinner and why I haven't talked to a particular friend for a long time.
Today I've learnt how to write an academic CV. What is considered a great accomplishment, and what is not. Most of what I've done fits into the "not" section. I've lost almost all interest in going to conferences, for example. It's on occasions like this that I'm wondering what the hell I am doing in this "business". But don't get me wrong, it's good that we (doctoral students) are offered practical information about how to write CV:s and that kind of stuff.
I need to read stuff and think about stuff. Have something to say.
I want to complain and complain.

Morphine

Morphine was a band that traded guitars for bass guitars and sax. Damn, it works. Their songs are groovy & catchy alternative rock gems that haven't lost anything in terms of originality and a sense of "I haven't heard this type of music elsewhere". During the 90's, the band delivered several great albums. One of my favorites is Cure for pain (1993). The title of the album probably refers to drugs and several of the songs include lyrics in which it is not clear whether the singer, Mark Sandman, talks about lovers or drugs (he died on-stage. Overdose). The sound is straightforward and the songs conjure an irresistable gush of life (however drug-induced...). Check out "All wrong" or "I'm free now". Morphine's third album, Yes, is also a fine proof of their skills.

The legacy of Morphine is, I think, honoured by spiky blues rock acts such as The Gossip and The BellRays. I also want to mention Norwegian band Ricochets, who represents almost the same kind of straightforward yet not boring type of rock n' roll outburst that Morphine was an embodiment of.

dr. P.

This week, I met an acquaintance of mine that I haven't seen in quite a few years. He's been living in the woods, alone, in a cave in the ground. When I first saw him, I didn't recognize him; he now looks like a monk. (My sight is really bad, so things like that happen all the time, people greet and I have no idea who they are, but that's not the point now.) I am not proud of my immediate reaction that day. Looking at him from a distance, I was a bit afraid but I didn't know why I felt that way. When I realized who he was, I was no longer scared. He's a nice guy, very open, and I do admire his life, even though it would be (or would it?) impossible for me to live that way myself. But reflecting on this, I tend to go astray. I become too self-involved, too self-aware. "What is possible for me?" Soon I realize that my reflections on possibilities amount to nothing. It's just a self-loathing, intellectual excercise in which I come up whith one example after another of how big a brat I really am. These thoughts don't change anything. That doesn't take away how meeting him changed something, how I learn things by talking to him. My immediate reactions also taught me something about myself. It is not fun to realize what an asshole one is. But, again, it is hard not to aberr from what I really learn. As a matter of fact, it's surprisingly easy to despise oneself. But self-loathing is static, it's the cynical, weary "well, this is who I am...". Despise and grandeour tend to go hand in hand: "at least I am able to despise myself!" Nitzsche: "Whoever despises himself still respects himself as one who despises."
When I started talking to my friend, all these thoughts disappeared.

Solanas - again

S was kind enough to give me a copy of the introduction of a new edition of The SCUM Manifesto, written by Avital Ronell. Ronell situates Solanas in a Nitzschean tradition. Not only do they have philosophizing with a hammer in common, Solanas is also employing the figure of "reversal of all values" that we are familiar with in Nietzsche's writings. For Solanas, this reversal concerns "male" and "female". Males try to uphold a picture of themselves as strong, independent and intellectual, but in reality males are, Solanas writes, projecting unto females the characteristics that are true of themselves: corporeality, dependence and weakness. But the reversal does not end in a simple standing-on-its-head. If it would come to that, she would be stuck in the same male language & form of life that she is criticizing. Ronell highlight the endless chain of projections that Solanas talks about, and in this endless chain, there is no end ("our gendered identities"), there is just more shit. Ronell writes:

"Here the goal is set not mereley on subversion. Her relation to the enemy will prove more subversive than subversion because the invasion which Solanas envisions involves secret strikes, consistently covert actions - invasions on the order of microbial assault: 'SCUM will always be furtive, sneaky, underhanded (although SCUM murders will always be known as such)'." (Introduction to SCUM Manifesto, Verso books, 2004, p. 28)

Paraphrasing Peter Winch (his excellent essay, "Can We Understand Ourselves"), one could say that the world depicted by Solanas is not a seamless weave, even though what she wants us to see is a form of life that is centred around our attempts to prove that we are something that we are not.

Were the mission of Ronell's introduction to make the manifesto intellectually respectable by comparing Solanas to Big Philosophers like Nietzsche and Derrida, then I'd be suspicious of it. But I think that is not what she is up to (at least not all the time). She takes the text seriously and develops some ways of approaching it. She presents unexpected angles and horizons. I do, however, agree with the New Statesman reviewer that Ronell's appeal to biography, "Solanas' miserable life", gives rise to many questions. What function are the biographical remarks to have? Do we need them for understanding the text?

One of Ronell's interesting remarks is about how the title of the book, SCUM manifesto, has usually been understood as "a society for cutting up men", the "cutting up" being understood to refer to literal violence. She suggests another possibility; "cutting up" also means "montage". If so, the manifesto is a montage, a re-arrangement of the familiar, our common ways of thinking about gender. A montage or collage functions as an injection of new ways of seeing.

idolizing wednesday: Marine girls

Marine girls were an obscure, Brittish indie pop group in the early eighties. Pre-Everything but the girl Tracey Thorn at her best. Everything they did is not great, but several songs stand out ("On my mind", among others). Most of all, I like the band's rough, timeless sound. Marine Girls were like a DIY version of the Shangri-Las (they deserve their own entry).

PS: Googling for this picture was not so fun. "Marine girls"... Girls in tiny costumes. (One pic was labelled "girls with guns"... OMG.)

Ludwigian obscurantism

In 1937, Wittgenstein wrote:

"The light work sheds is a beautiful light, which, however, only shines with real beauty if it is illuminated by yet another light."

(From Vermischte Bemerkungen (Culture and Value)).

This is a beautiful formulation - but I have almost no clue what it means. The beauty of work is to be seen in relation to other forms of beauty? Well - what would it mean to say that work itself is important, beautiful (etc.)? No matter what forms of work that are performed? Maybe that's the point. (Btw: Wittgenstein visited the Soviet Union in the late thirties, but he returned quite soon...) Perhaps he is talking about the work of a philosopher.

"I had a dream about this place."

Remember that scene from Mulholland Dr.? It's one of the scariest things I've ever watched on film. Recollection, foreboding and dread. Two men sit in a café and one of them talks about a dream he's had. In the dream, he is at Winkie's, it's half day, half night. He looks at his friend across the room. He goes on talking about something terrible he saw in the dream. It's something in the back yard. The two men walk out to see if it's still there. They walk slowly round the corner. It feels like an endless walk. The spooky sunlight. And there it is...

Morning recordings

Every once in a while, I trawl the net for good music. It takes some effort, and most of what I find is either boring or rubbish. But I also come upon some (for me) unexpected, never-heard-of gems. A while ago, I randomly downloaded an album by Morning recordings called The Welcome Kinetic. Even though I've never been too much of a chamber pop fan (Belle & Sebastian is good if I don't listen to it too often), I would still use that concept to describe their dynamic, floating music. We're talking about beautifully orchestrated pop and post-rock that never feels over the top or too lush or too laid-back. "Elegance" might not strike you as a virtue when it comes to pop music, but I must confess that this album is elegant in a spaced-out, eerie kind of way. Most of the songs contain vibraphones, and it is these sounds that build the backbone of the music. Some songs are vocal. The vocals remind me of a lot of things, ranging from Broadcast, Parker & Lily, Panda bear to early Beach Boys. Musically, the albums makes me think of The Sea & Cake, Lambchop and The Gentleman losers. And some old movie soundtracks.

I like this album because it contains so many influences without sounding like the type of music that tries to draw on different sources because that is what cool music "should" do. It's not inward-looking, nerdy eclecticism. The atmosphere of the album displays a sense of warmth I think I come across all-too seldomly.

The other finding of this week is Karate. I've only heard one album so far, but I hope the others are just as great. Compared to Morning recordings, Karate is much edgier. But some of the instrumental interludes could be said to have something in common with the other band. A hint of jazz. Groove.

There will be blood

There will be blood starts off with almost 20 minutes of silence. We learn how the main character, Daniel Plainview, abandons silver mining for the oil industry. He meets a young man who tells him that his family could easily be fooled to sell their land, under which oil is flowing. Presenting himself as a familyman, a little boy at his side, the rest of the villagers are gulled into making leases for a far more timid price than what it is really worth, taking into account the possibilities of oil findings. The character of Plainview could easily be a pastische of greed and general contempt for humanity. Towards the end of the film, I really had some doubts about the dramatic turns of the story and the way the film repeatingly presented Plainview's actions of greed in different settings. The ending, however, convinced me that the story is not so much about a morally corrupt individual, but the film is, rather, an allegory of (American) capitalism, a form of economic (albeit human) exploitation, exemplified in the interaction between Plainview and the other characters. Some reviewers have bemoaned the very dominating role of Plainview and the lack of illustrations of the nexus of capitalist institutions. But it is, I think, wrong to see the viable alternatives as "a presentation of social history" OR "individual psychology". In that way, There will be blood is a challenging film. Almost any scene in the film can be, or so it appeared to me, read on a more general, metaphorical level. I won't indulge in puny interpretations here, but I doubt that it is a mere happenstance that Plainview's kid is deafened in the accident on the derrick.

In an industry ruled by self-made men and the American dream, There will be blood is a rare phenomenon. I tried to come up with some Hollywood productions that deals with the subject of capitalism, but I can't recall any films like that from the last twenty years. Except for American Psycho (but is that Hollywood?). I haven't watched Syriana. Any suggestions?

Dog day afternoon

When I started watching Dog Day Afternoon (Lumet/1975) my expectations were low. I took a deep breath and awaited a long and boring movie about machismo bank robbers. But from the initial minutes onwards, I was totally enthralled by the story and the way it was told. The plot is very simple. Three robbers walk into a bank and they all seem to think that the job will be done in a few moments. One of the robbers, confessing it being unable for him to get through with the robbery, deserts the others while the remaining duo find themselves trapped inside the bank as a horde of police officers gather outside. Sonny, a character pinpointed by Al Pacino with grace and humor, is the brain behind the events and he negotiates with the police about how to resolve the hostage situation so that nobody gets hurt.

While these events are all quite conventional elements of the genre, there is much in the film that offers a much more unique take on the subject. The film contains, I soon found out, many interesting comments about political movements active in the beginning of the 70's. As the police gathers outside the bank, a bustling, roaring crowd turns up as well. The crowd displays their contempt for the police, which, for them, represents the illegitimate violence in the same way as did the war in Vietnam.

Violence is treated in a far more realistic way than what is usually the case. In this film, the mere presence of a gun creates tension and fear. When violence actually takes place, the effect is immediate and brutal.

The motive of the robbery is soon revealed. Sonny needs money to fund a sex change operation for his lover. This theme is well worked out, and I was very impressed by the critical stance of the film (even though I was slightly worried that I tended to think along the lines of the film being "before its time"). The two lovers were simply portrayed as two people who are seen as outcasts by the surrounding society. The gentle performance of Pacino in this context was great.

From a more historical point of view; it was interesting to see that "the gay movement" was depicted as a strong societal movement. In an amusing scene, the other robberer, a gloomy character called Sal, is agonized because TV reporters claim them being "two homosexual bank robbers". Sonny tries to pacify him by telling him it's no big deal, but Sal keeps nagging about it in scene after scene. This scene is no exception; many moments in the film provide for a quiet sense of humour. Jokes about swear-words among the bank tellers, the stern, ridiculous face of a police officer, the nervous demenour of Sonny's not-so-brainy-partner Sal. (The Swedish translation of the title of the film is, btw, En satans eftermiddag - good choice!)

Dog day afternoon even surpasses my other favorite hostage-theme movie -Albino alligator (1996).

idolizing wednesday: Valerie Solanas

A witty, sarcastic, insightful and important book, The SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas is one of the texts that have had a great impact on my thinking. It is not a book eager to please and it is not a book that is easy to digest. It doesn't contain blueprints for anything, yet the message is clear. This world is fucked up, because we fucked it up.


In the preface of Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche writes that an attempt to understand his philosophy, his aphoristic style, can be compared to the rumination of cows. "Of course, in order to practice this style of reading as an art, one thing is above all essential—something that today has been thoroughly forgotten (and so it will require still more time before my writings are “readable”)—something for which one almost needs to be a cow, at any rate not a modern man—rumination." I think this can be said of The SCUM Manifesto as well. You need a good stomach.


Solanas' text is packed with disclosure. It is written from the perspective of rage and this is an essential aspect to keep in mind when reading it.
On a general level it can be said that some things are revealed only from a perspective of anger or rage. It is unclear what it would mean to fight for justice if injustices and cruelty would never anger us. The concept of "injustice" and "cruelty" are related to particular responses, but this is not a psychological point about human inclinations. (There is a huge discussion about this in post-wittgensteinian philosophy, but I won't go into that now.)
It's Ok for some to be angry, for others - less so.

Glorified male anger. "Angry young men". Testosterone. Males waging their just, lonesome wars (accompanied by a squaking guitar, a car, a dog or a bottle of Jack Daniel's.) Male anger and the dark secrets of Humanity. Existentialism.
Feminist anger is reduced to female hysteria. Silly PMS women who don't know their place in the world yet. (They will learn, or will be forced to learn.) Have you considered a visit at the psychiatrist's, dear? There are pills for those hormones, babe. Why don't you sit down at the negotiation table instead, be a man, be a consultant! Why don't you write a tract in the footsteps of Rawls, disentagling the conceptual links between justice and liberalism? Or write a love story, a simple love story. A little empathy, becoming for each woman. Why don't you calm down? Don't be so aggressive. A hobby would be good for you. Or a boyfriend.

gösta explores his roots

Feminism, power and powerlessness

Feminist theory and gendered power: background

Power is a tricky concept, in that it tends to get muddled in abstractions. S has pointed out to me how common it is among feminist thinkers to employ a totalitarian concept of power in descriptions of "partriarchy", so that all human relations are described as power relations and so that patriarchal power seem to be inevitable, omnipresent and without alternative. A system of power inscribed in language ("male", "female"). We cannot escape language (according to this post-structuralist picture), but we can, at best, try to get around the Law by means of an act of parody or a process of re-thinking. Employed in this way, the concept of power appears both cynical and strangely forceless. It seems to loose its specificity; the way we talk about "power" to describe a particular type of situation from a particular point of view.

I have to admit I have no idea whatsoever what "re-thinking" is supposed to mean. I don't understand in what way feminist writers have placed their hopes in "re-thinking". (Braidotti is one writer who takes a liking to this concept.) Perhaps I have to read more in order to understand it.

Even so, this picture of inescapable power has important connections with many experiences of gendered power. I've been trying to think of examples from my own life of having encountered situations that allow descriptions in terms of impersonal, gendered power. A few years ago, I worked at a research institute. I was assigned a project in which I was to conduct interviews with people working in the maritime industry. I knew next to nothing about most of the technical things that were brought up by the interviewees. There was talk about a lot of computer programs the function of which I had no clue about. Most of the time I felt that I asked questions that, to them, were either strange or obviously stupid. The guys I talked to had been working in the same place for many years. I absolutely detested these situations, because they transformed me into, not only a person unfamiliar with the maritime industry, but also a woman. A Woman who is expected to express "her" lack of knowledge in a joking, pleasant, apologetic manner, so that "she" can move on to ask yet another silly question about social relations at the workplace.

Shopping clothes. No matter which department I settle for, I get ugly looks. "What the hell are you doing here?" After two minutes of desperate wandering, I am on the verge of an outburst of obscenities. Catch-22. (There are exceptions; once, a dead-pan clerk offered me valuable advice of how to buy myself a nice suit. He didn't smirk, and I was thankful for that. Then I got mad for being "thankful".)

In situations like these I feel awkwardly helpless. No matter what I do, I will be seen as a female (or male, in some cases) creature and my actions will be understood in the light of what people think it means to be that creature.

I have no wish to impersonate a particular sex or gender. I want to be a cyborg.

Generality and power

To some extent, there is a level of impersonality at play in gendered power. When a bureaucrat has overstepped the boundaries of her job, we talk about an excess of arbitrary power. Gendered power seems to be an altogether different form of "power" It is not necessarily the type of power a person excercises in order to reach some specific goal. Gendered power seems to contain an element of generality or, more to the point, an appeal to generality. Even if there is some story of self-gratification lurking behind oppression in terms of gender, the forms this oppression takes seem intelligible independently of the personal agenda of the oppressive parties.

The point is perhaps that it is usually unclear who is the oppressive party. Gendered power is often personified (i.e. we blame somebody, a specific person, for excersicing it), but it also has to be understood in other, more general, ways and it is here that it gets strangely complicated.

It's easier to start reflecting on power from the point of view of powerlessness. When a person experiences a state of powerlessness she does not necessarily desire to be granted more power. Sometimes I simply wish that the entire situation would change; that the perspective of power (gender) would cease to be relevant. In the interview situation referred to above, I did not hope that the situation would improve by power being allocated to a different person (i.e. me). I just wanted to do my job, without being seen as an embodiment of the Female Researcher.

The powerlessness related to oppression in terms of gender can hardly be understood solely on the basis of evil oppressors. But if that is so, in relation to what am I feeling powerless? T brought up the following, good example. He recalled that he was once involved in a team-work excercise at school. His teacher exclaimed, after noticing the group-formations: "Oh, so you ended up with the girls!" T hadn't even thought about his team-mates as girls until she mentioned it. The perspective of gender was introduced to him from the outside. But of course he knew what the teacher meant, the perspective she introduced to him was already familiar. Here, for example, it makes sense to say that he felt helpless in relation to a perspective but this doesn't, I suppose, remove the feeling of helplessness from the concrete situations and the persons who introduce a perspective.

The generality I have in mind does, of course, not eradicate personal responsibility. "Why did you do it?" The force of the "you" is not alleviated or toned down if the centrality of an impersonal intelligibiilty is emphasized. If we want to say something about something as being an instance of gendered power, we have to see it from the point of view of the intelligibility - however evil - of gendered talk and concepts.

Butler's often used notion of "being hailed" illuminates something of what it means that one is viewed as a gendered being. One turns into something, a Woman, a Man, a Queer, by being addressed as something. (This point is quite specific, it cannot be applied to anything. I haven't said anything about "identity", nor do I want to.) Gendered power often takes the form of a transferred gaze, one looks at oneself with the eyes of the oppressive system. In the interview situation I've been talking about, I really came to experience myself as a silly, female researcher who asks shallow questions about things I know nothing about. I was infuriated to be seen as a woman, but it was difficult to escape the perspective I was confronted with - the reactions of another person. But the difficulty seems to have nothing to do with a metaphysical contraint, of language or something else. The difficulty is a moral difficuly.

I don't know how to go on from here, I can't think clearly about it.

Jelinek's Lust

I am reading Elfriede Jelinek at the moment. Lust, a novel published in 1989, is a relentless disclosure of a state of power and powerlessness that turns us into walking clichés, the mere skeletons of human beings. In her book, power and powerlessness are impersonal aspects of the world - the world of capitalism, a world in which everything is a commodity, be it nature, sex, food or something else. All relations are described as impersonal, characterized by greed and domination. In the characters of the book, power and powerlessness are intertwined. The oppressor is the oppressed from a different point of view. The book contains no story in the traditional sense of the word and it also lacks dialogue. Descriptions of persons are kept bluntly minimal.

Lust is a rambling account of the (pseudo-)relation between The Direktor, a factory owner, and his wife. There are also paralell stories, but these are simply different takes on the same nexus of power. The Direktor's attitudes towards his workers and his attitude towards his wife are portrayed in very similar ways.

Jelinek wages her war with dry puns, word-play and repetition. One of the positive aspects about the style of the book is that it, by reducing people to "types", does not lend itself to psychologistic readings. By psychologistic readings I am thinking about the explanatory schemes of "personal characteristics". The reader is introduced to a perspective from which it is not possible to see actions as expressive of persons. Everything is ambiguous, everything is crude. "Lust", the title of the book, is probably to be understood ironically. In the world of brutal capitalism, there can be no lust, no joy, and no love.

This said, I do have some problems with the way Jelinek imagines a world in which everything is reduced to power and violence. It's as if she does not allow for any alternatives, and this makes it difficult to know how to read the book. (The difference between political books and books who simply present the dystopia of the modern world.) But I appreciate that she acknowledges how gendered power is related to other forms of power and that we must start with very fundamental questions about what kind of world we live in if we are to get clearer about this.

(-------------------)

The most interesting thing that happened to me this week was that I scalded my hand with a hot, hot mug of coffee. Then I dragged myself to the library, where my sins were absolved for the amount of 9 euros. But the librarian is very nice, so that's OK.

My life is nothing but stunning grandour.

Sentimental bullshit or My ode to a life of leisure or Why I am bound to disappoint my Boss, whoever that is

Have you ever felt that there are particular days in your life that are set apart from the humdrum drizzle of habits, work and leisure? I thought about this today. Waking up, the dreadful memory of one too many shots of tequila hammering in my entire bodily system, I watched the sunlight and the eerie light outside. I went over to J's place, and S2 joined us for coffee. We sat languidly at a café, quietly talking about daily affairs and practical matters. The hangover was bad, but not overwhelmingly so. We walked around for some time, and then bumped into P, with whom we enjoyed another session of tea and good talk. I walked around for one more hour, attending to some business. When I headed home, I noticed how terribly cold it was. I watched the end of Mystery train, but it wasn't anything to write home about, really. Started to watch another movie, Birdcage Inn. Just as half-lame as the other. Nothing of significance happened today, but it was a good day. Hanging around with people with no particular immediate intentions or plans for the day, no rush. A gentle atmosphere. A day in between everything else.

I am beginning to think this entry is just an expression of how imbued I am in an ideology of work, according to which almost anything one pursues in one's life is a form of work. Aimed at results, being limited to certain conventions of "a normal procedure". The worry about "productivity". Leisure is OK, if it is devoted to edifying activities. Am I advocating the ideal of the oblomovian life? No. I simply wish that dreadful and bored half-activity would not make up such a large portion in my life.

These thoughts are partly inspired by a book I am reading, The Ideology of Work by P.D. Anthony. The book is both a historical description of different ideas about the role of work in our lives and a critical reflection on the idea that work is the central part of human relations.

Worst film ever seen

Garbriel Garcia Marquez is, I reckon, a popular writer. I read one of his books many years ago and I finally realized I don't like literature that in any way belong under the heading of "an epic novel". "Family chronicle" - even worse. Unknowingly, tonight I went to watch a movie based on a Marquez novel. Cronaca di una morte annunciata by Francesco Rosi. At first, I was slightly impressed by the beautiful scenery and I started to think this might actually be a good movie. Rupert Everett, all right then. The film set out to elicit the finest, most delicate emotions in it's viewers by telling the story of a bunch of tragic, stone-faced men and their quest for honor and romance (A bunch of women, moving around like shadows or ghosts: looked at, raped, "loved"). At least two orchestras emphasizing the tragedy of it all - the oh-so-human-whatever.
This was bad, bad, bad. I take back everything I've ever said about you, Mel. Braveheart was, after all, er, a quite brilliant film - in comparison.

Remembrance of things past nr. 1: Anslagstavlan

During my childhood, state television broadcasting was intermittantly interrupted by an assemblage of information films produced by various public authorities. Swedish viewers were warned about the harmful effects of alcohol, about the importance of wearing a life jacket when at sea and, in addition to this, we were provided with information about various laws, of which the ordinary citizen needs to be aware in her day-to-day life. The content was presented in a slightly amusing, but still very admonitory way. I present to you: anslagstavlan!
I don't watch Swedish TV that often anymore, but I wonder whether this form of state paternalism still exists. Maybe it does.

"But When Are You Going To Get A Proper Job?"

Hanging out with philosophers usually implies some talk about people's (non-philosophers') strange ideas about philosophy and what it is like to be a philosophy student. Two days ago, my friends & I were procrastinating in a bar. It was fairly late. A girl sat down at our table and started talking about the perilous life of students who have been so unwise as to have devoted themselves to the humanities. She talked to us about her husband who is writing his master's thesis in history. He realized he didn't want to be a historian after all and that his education will not guarantee him a job anyway. He realized electrical installations was his thing. The gist of the story was that students of the humanities are more likely to end up regretting their choices than others. We all thought that her "words of warning" were outrageously rude.

Every time I meet my bourgeoise relatives they ask me what I intend to do after I finish my Ph.D. Well, I tell them, I will work on it for many more years and I haven't really got any concrete plans for the future. After that I am inclined to describe my current situation so that it will appear to be a job, and not an education. I am really pissed off that it's so hard for them to acknowledge the toil of a Ph.D as work. And it is almost like this: by emphasizing that something is a job, work, one is proving the "properness" or "usefulness" of something. Crazy. Symptomatically, my relatives tend to react positively when they hear that I am doing some teaching. "Being a teacher" almost resembles a proper, bourgeoise job. What is a proper job, for them? A fat paycheck, a respectable title. It's a job that one can talk about in a way that makes it clear for everyone what one is doing. A job that can be talked about normally, in the same uninvolved, disinterested and non-personal way my relatives talk about everything else.

When I tell people that I am a student of philosophy the most common reaction is a reserved "Oh..." and perhaps "That must be difficult." Very few ask questions about what philosophy is. (Perhaps most think that philosophy is about defining the meaning of life...) If one is challenged to try to say something, it is not easy to elucidate what are the characterizing traits of philosophy. "Philosophy is not an empirical science because it's concern is conceptual problems." Does that sound interesting? No? Heh. The difficulty here is that a discussion about what philosophy is will necessarily be a philosophical discussion. If the person one is talking to is not interested in this kind of exchange, then it is really hard to say anything about what philosophy is.

When I was in high school, I was quite convinced that philosophy solves the deepest questions, the most difficult questions, about reality and existence. In philosophy we are, I thought, taking a stand in essential debates - "Is there a God?", "What is the relation between the soul and the body", and, indeed, "what is the meaning of life". It was this attitude that I was equipped with upon heading for the Philosophy Department at uni. Even though I was vaguely intrigued by the Wittgensteinian approach to philosophy at our place, I soon found myself frustrated. Wittgenstein, and his followers, say so little. I constantly felt that these philosophers ended the philosophical investigations where they should begin. We end up with nothing, I complained. My prime interest during this period was, and I am not kidding, solipsism. Oh well, the sturm-und-drang of youth. It took me quite a few years to realize that philosophical investigations will not lead to any discoveries.

But I should not make fun of these pictures of philosophy and this trouble with the nature of philosophy. Questions about what a philosophical investigation is don't go away. Such questions are a part of what it is to do philosophy. When I am struggling to get clear about the topic of my thesis, I have to be asking myself: what kind of question is this? Is it, really, a philosophical question or is it something else (psychology, sociology)? When one is embarking upon tackling a new philosophical question one will be confronted with the nature of philosophical question afresh.

"The law of supply and demand"

Price-gouging is a term used to point out over-pricing of goods, e.g. in the state of an emergency (like the hurrican in New Orleans a few years ago) in which some suppliers are tempted to take advantage of the situation by charging high prices for essential goods. In some parts of the US, price-gouging is a crime.

This guy argues that price-gouging is, in fact, a good thing. According to his argument, those who really need a specific scarce good (be it food, petrol or something else?), will also be willing to pay a high price for it. "The station owner is actually doing his customers a favor by charging a high price because he stays open much longer to sell all his limited gas to those who most in need." He explains that suppliers are motivated to keep providing the goods, despite the costs, if the prices are kept high enough. "Those in need will pay". The world of pure economics. The law of supply and demand is actually considered as the one and only thing of importance in the practices of buying and selling things. Of course there is no easy solutions here (in a situation of non-emergency, I have mixed feelings about Americans complaining about high petrol prices), but the picture of the customer in this guy's text is hopelessly naive.

"Both economic theory and several thousand years of historical experience clearly demonstrate uncontrolled prices and markets provide more goods and services to those who really need or desire them far better than attempts at government control."

Hm.