sophiaserpentia | Entries tagged with philosophy of language

Entertainment is factory-made these days, and the best we can hope for out of it is the occasional glimmer of meaning. This week

cowgrrl and I went to see "X-Men: First Class" and agreed it may well be the best superhero movie yet made. That praise may be fainter than it sounds, considering that the genre exists primarily as an excuse to give us elaborate CGI action scenes featuring muscular men and svelte women wearing skintight costumes. This movie, at least, makes a coherent statement about oppression and the mistreatment of minorities (and even at that level, its treatment of this issue is problematic).

The movie, though, is a retelling of a story that's already been told, and as such the story could not have deviated on any of the major details. And so we're left with nonsense such as Angel Salvatore deciding on a lark to join with the scary bad guys who just broke into a CIA compound and killed every last non-mutant in the building. Why? Well, because she was a bad guy in the comic books, of course.

This isn't storytelling; it's ritual re-enactment of an established myth. By the end of the movie, things have to be in their proper place, the world must have its established and familiar shape.

There's more I could say about the movie, but it would take me off the topic I originally set out to write about. Consider, also, that 2013 will be the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who. There, too, we have a franchise straining under the weight of its continuity - an especially tricky continuity in this case centered on one single character, and which spreads out across time and space and even into multiple universes. (Multiple universes/timelines is a trick that has been used in numerous long-term continuities to enable writers to keep telling stories - DC and Marvel comics, Doctor Who, Star Trek, you name it.) Lately attention has turned to "reboots" as a way of keeping alive just a while longer the viability of an established intellectual property.

We can cast this net even wider and include video games, which no one even really pretends is an artistic medium, but which is also stuck in an established-franchise rut. As David Wong writes,

Everybody complains about sequels and reboots in Hollywood, but holy shit, it's nothing compared to what we have in gaming right now. For instance, each of the Big Three game console makers took the stage at E3 to show off their biggest games of the upcoming year. Microsoft led off with the aforementioned Modern Warfare 3, which is really Call of Duty 8 (game makers like to switch up the sequel titles so the digits don't get ridiculous). Next was Tomb Raider 10 (rebooted as Tomb Raider). Then we had Mass Effect 3, and Ghost Recon 11 (titled Ghost Recon: Future Soldier). This was followed by Gears of War 3, Forza 4 and Fable 4 (called Fable: The Journey).

So, just how much blood can you squeeze from a stone? The "why" is obvious. Creating a new genre franchise is extremely difficult and risky (when development of a movie or video game costs hundreds of millions of dollars, how much of a risk would *you* take on an unproven concept?), whereas the established stories are a safe bet -- the established fans will turn out, will keep watching, will keep buying, even if they complain bitterly about the most recent content. But as a continuity continues, the more iconic it becomes, and from there, and the less likely it becomes that you'll be able to wring a meaningful, original message out of it.

I confess I am undecided on how I feel about the bowdlerizing of Huckleberry Finn. Part of me feels like, if the one thing preventing people from being able to progress in and appreciate the work is the frequent and casual use of a word now considered highly unacceptable, maybe it's not really all that bad to publish an edition that omits it. (I'm not sure "slave" is quite an appropriate substitute, though...) Plus, it's not as if copies of the work in its original form will spontaneously cease to exist.

OTOH, it's not just any word in question. It's a word which is a symbol of the most horrific aspect of American history, and the America of the present.

OTOOH, while editorial decisions to alter works of fiction are made every day, this is an American classic we're talking about; it's not exactly holy scripture, but we shouldn't go changing it without serious reflection.

Says Professor Sam Quinn on his decision to stop teaching the book:

[T]rying to lecture about its literary merits takes a back seat when I see how African American students (I’m talking about teenage sophomores, taking the class for core credit) are reacting to the iterations of THAT WORD. The problem is that Twain doesn’t distinguish between those who are using the word in a "kindly" manner (we could probably assume that this is the only word for black people that Huck has ever heard) and those who are using it an an epithet. Used indiscriminately in these ways, it just makes everyone in a classroom uncomfortable.

For the record, in another comment Professor Quinn says he does not support the bowdlerized version; he'd rather leave the work as-is, he's just going to stop teaching it. And he has a point: leaving the work as-is certainly preserves the evidence it provides of America's hideous legacy of racism.

Americans in general have a reflexive resistance to the idea of something offensive and objectionable being removed. On the whole I think that's entirely healthy and appropriate. Most of us are well aware that it's a bit hypocritical to object to specific words that everyone uses or fleeting images of nudity (we've all seen naked people), while raising no objection to disturbing or even traumatic themes or treatments. We simply on the whole have no respect for timidness in the face of life's smelly details.

But this word is not simply a fleeting expletive. Whenever it comes up in discussion I'm reminded of what

novapsyche pointed out once about comedian Richard Pryor's comments about why he stopped liberally using the n-word in his stand-up routine. He said his intent had been to disarm the word, to make it less powerful, to reduce the amount of pain it causes black people, but then he learned that white people were mimicking his usage and citing him as proof that the word was acceptable to use in an offhand way, thereby causing harm to black people.

I guess the lesson here is that unraveling racism is like pulling out an arrow. Do it the wrong way, and you increase the injury.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about what I've been naively calling iconic imagination. By this I mean the ways in which a story or narrative is broken up into bits which are conceptually iconic -- by which I mean they are immediately recognizable, are guaranteed to provoke a specific emotional response, and are meaningful. (My understanding of meaning is probably a bit controversial. There are other kinds of meaning, which I think are more shallow as they relate to the mechanics of language, such as the truth value and reference. I am much more concerned with the intent or reason behind an utterance.)

In the past I would have perhaps called them archetypes, but I think archetypes are special-case instances of iconic imagination. Archetypes are notable multi-faceted icons.

For a thorough education on what I mean by iconic imagination, spend a few hours on the TV Tropes site. Here you can see that a trope, which is an example of what I'm calling an icon, is a pattern that crops up in many different kinds of storytelling. And they vary widely in scope, from major character types to silly throwaway moments.

There's a lot of directions this has been taking me. For example, genre fiction vs. literary fiction. Genre fiction employs a lot of iconic imagination and so it's much easier to read (and to write). There's a sense among critics and academics that genre fiction is "lazy" because of this. Another way of phrasing this question is to ask whether or not the degree to which a work is iconic affects how artistic the work is.

Here I take art to be aesthetic reflection, or in other words a statement of some sort about harmonic proportion or beauty or the lack thereof. So I'll say naively that art does not come from iconic imagination.

Iconic works are "accessible" or "melodramatic." They appeal to our sense of play and fun. Art, on the other hand, moves in the other direction; it is contemplated solemnly or is considered "serious." It is not enjoyed, it is "appreciated."

I came to this by thinking about games, and game design, and child's play, and the question of what makes a game fun. Roger Ebert stepped into the fray not long ago when he wrote that video games will never be art. Insofar as games are necessarily iconic (in reaching for possible exceptions I came up with Nomic) I get what he's saying, though I'm not entirely convinced I agree. The difficulty may be that the human response to something iconic may preclude serious aesthetic reflection on it. So an iconic work which also has what would otherwise be recognized as artistic values is not typically appreciated artistically.

ETA: changing the "vs." in the title to "and," because I think the end result of all this is that iconic and artistic imagination are not necessarily opposites, though we act as if they are.

ETA 2: I tagged this "culture industry" because I do think the culture industry relies on iconic imagination in churning out its products. Products of the culture industry are often criticized as "derivative" which makes me realize that one of the effects of art on culture is the creation of new icons. This is potentially significant.

One of the reasons I haven't been posting as much over the last couple of years is a dawning awareness of the general futility of words.

I've also, as I was saying to R* last night, developed a strong aversion to being lectured by people 15-20 years younger than me. I want to just say, though it is bad form, "Do you think you are the first person to recite these ideas at me?" It's 'bad form' because ideas are supposed to be replied to with ideas. That's the 'free marketplace of ideas,' right?

But there's so little point to playing the idea game because words are so often nothing more than a verbal soundtrack people play while committing acts which may or may not bear any resemblance to the ideas they are promoting.

And, it is highly discouraging how few people seem capable of really grokking this point. Especially when it comes to politicians. There are a lot of words about how politicians are lying scumbags but people will always refuse to accept this about their favorite politician. I hate to break it to you, but yes, even your favorite politician is a lying selfish scumbag.

So, what does matter to me? Experiences and actions. Tell me what you've seen and experienced. Show me what you've done and what you are doing. Those are the things I can trust, and which have real impact on the world.

The people of Lesbos want gay women to stop calling themselves Lesbians.

Yes, i can illustrate the problem by imagining a Big Gay Sketch in my mind's eye: a man on a flight from Athens tells a US Customs Agent that he's a Lesbian; hilarity ensues. Gee, how funny.

The use of the term to refer to homosexual women dates to the Victorian era. It was, like so many other Victorian terms, a euphemism designed to hide what could not be talked about. It was adopted alongside the now archaic term sapphist; both refer to Sappho, the ancient resident of Lesbos who wrote love poems to women.

It is not the only geographic name which has been appropriated to describe women who live as partners; see for example the term "Boston marriage," which dates to roughly the same time period. (Hmm, someone on my friend's list wrote about this term in the last week, but i don't remember who, sorry.)

Since the political lesbian movement of the 1970's, the term "lesbian" has been cemented in our cultural consciousness, so much so that the term "gay" has come in many contexts to be seen as exclusively referring to men. But, just as 'transwoman' is not a real word but a composite term made of a norm + a modifier, 'gay woman' is not a real word; but neither is 'lesbian,' being an appropriated geographical term (still being used by the people who live there today) and is more of a moralistic erasure. It is more like the heteronormative imposition of a big "CENSORED" bar than a word itself. It is another example of the dominant culture using language as a weapon to deny identity; and we queer folk have made do with the modifiers and erasures given us, but we have yet to have actual words for who it is that we are.

The goal of meta-neo-inquiry is to answer, as well as possible, the question: "What is going on here, and what is the most just way to respond?"

Response is an indispensable element because meta-neo- ethics demands more emphasis on right action than on right words or right belief. It's not what you say or feel, it's what you do that matters. I can forgive errant words if your actions put you on the side of conscience.

A lot of the time the answer is pretty straightforward. Someone is beating up someone else; the most just way to respond is to stop the fight and find out why it started. Someone stole someone else's car; the most just way to respond is to recover the car and return it to its owner.

Sometimes though the answer is not straightforward at all, often because the truth has been occluded.

Discourse tends to be dominated by those in power; and so where conscience leads us into opposition with the power paradigm (on those fronts where the people in power are committing injustices and warping the cultural discourse to legitimize or cover it up), discourse itself becomes territory to be fought over.

Dissidents are kept off-balance by having even their very language pulled out from under them like a rug. One generation of dissidents comes up with a way to vocalize what is happening to them and what is wrong with their condition; it's an organic process which starts with art and fashion, or other kinds of consciousness raising. Political changes are demanded, and a few concessions are made. But by the time the next generation comes along, when it comes time to pass on this knowledge, all of the groovy terms and images they came up with to communicate their dissent have been misappropriated and commodified by the power paradigm. They've been rendered useless; their meaning has decayed.

It is fair to ask, of every text you encounter, what is the author's agenda? As time passes it becomes harder and harder to answer this question, because one's agenda in writing a text is a response to the culture to which she belongs. Cultures change but texts tend not to. So any text older than, say, 40 or 50 years, can easily be subverted by the power paradigm and people can be educated to read it a certain way; afterwards, one requires a specialized awareness of historical context to have any hope of recreating the original agenda of any text, especially if the text had any degree of subversiveness to it.

My contention is that this line of inquiry will demonstrate that many spontaneous movements over the centuries -- whether political, religious, philosophical, or artistic -- can be demonstrated to have their origin in subversion against the injustice of the power paradigm. The products of a "culture industry" established by the power paradigm itself tend not to endure because they carry remarkably little meaning to begin with, and most of us carry an innate recognition of that even if our consciousness has not been raised.

A while ago i offered "a meta-neo-marxian semiotic principle" but left sorta fuzzily undefined what i meant really by "meta-neo-Marxian." What i wrote then, was:

"Neo" because we have progressed quite a bit in the last 150 years, in understanding the sociology of oppression and the intricacies of economics, and "meta" because i am not a subscriber to a philosophy, but merely a critic whose views are inspired by the trajectory which Marx played a role in laying out.

It dawned on me yesterday that i have to take this to its logical conclusion. I have to. And so, i offer for your consideration, meta-neo-. I will define this more fully in a moment, but for now i will leave it sorta fuzzily undefined and let you ponder what i mean by it.

I make no claims to originality or uniqueness. In fact i hope there are a million other people out there with similar but not exactly identical ideas.

Meta-neo- is not a philosophy. One does not become a subscriber or an adherent to meta-neo-, but merely perhaps, i dunno, a listener. Meta-neo- is an affinity, not an identity. I'm sick and tired of identity politics ruining my friendships and threatening my relationships and demolishing my political coalitions and causing me to lose sleep.

Let's throw all this crap out the window: "You're not 'X' enough." "You're not a true 'X'." "I want to do W, but if i do, i'm not an 'X' anymore and my X friends will reject me." "I'm not X, but i'm Y, let's call this the 'XY' coalition." "Hey, i'm a 'Z,' you left me out."

Meta-neo- is analogue, not digital. There's no "Meta-neo- vs. non-meta-neo-." You can be a little meta-neo-, you can be a lot meta-neo-, your affinity with meta-neo- can vary from subject to subject or even from mood to mood or day to day.

The prime directive of meta-neo- is simple: When it becomes widely recognized that there is a need for a meta-neo-meta-neo-, those who pay any attention to it at all are urged to declare it dead and come up with something else.

Still need me to define meta-neo- or should we just leave it there and run with it?

A while back, someone on my friend's list linked to an essay about art as misappropriation. I don't think it was linked approvingly, but the concept has stuck in the back of my mind, something to digest.

Then not long ago i read about the iconic image of Che Guevara as now appears on tee-shirts and numerous other commercial products. I don't know as much as i should about Che, but i think i have already well expounded on my views that anyone who uses violence is no revolutionary at all but is a part of the system. Anyway, this bit stood out in my mind, a quote from Trisha Ziff, who has organized an exhibition on the Che icon.

"There is a theory that an image can only exist for a certain amount of time before capitalism appropriates it. But capitalism only wants to appropriate images if they retain some sense of danger."

Hmm, i have to back up a little. I call my views "meta-neo-Marxian." "Neo" because we have progressed quite a bit in the last 150 years, in understanding the sociology of oppression and the intricacies of economics, and "meta" because i am not a subscriber to a philosophy, but merely a critic whose views are inspired by the trajectory which Marx played a role in laying out.

I view our situation as less a matter of "capitalism vs. socialism" and more a matter of me-centered world-parsing vs. us-centered world-parsing. I take this view because (a) the same problems preceded capitalism and have also tended to plague socialist societies and (b) i believe a truly just and merciful society could function compassionately with almost any economic or political arrangement.

So let me re-write that quote into a version that more closely matches my current views:

"There is a theory that a subversive image can only exist for a certain amount of time before the power paradigm strips it of meaning and makes it a commodity."

For the political-socialist, the image of Che is a commodity in that it is a valuable emotional push-button; and for the political-capitalist, the image of Che is a commodity because it sells tee-shirts. Neither point of view is really interested in exploring the meaning of Che's life, words, and actions.

Now, for the principle i promised in the title of this post. To wit:

Images and text will lose their meaning over time, in part because meaning is anathema to the power paradigm.

The surest way to strip an image of meaning is to give it a dollar value or to use it as an emblem of demagoguery. But the principle works in other ways. Part of this is because each generation tends to create its own kinds of meaning, and so young people do not react in the same way to a creative work as earlier generations of people did.

I thought about this while reading recently about a Monet painting which was vandalized. Frankly, i found i could care less; some old painting who's time has come and gone was damaged. But i realize that the painting meant something to its creator; it meant something to the creator's contemporaries; and it means various things to various people today. Do those meanings resemble one another?

Who could do such a thing as vandalize a Monet? Someone to whom the work of art had little or no meaning. (Or, alternately, someone to whom the act of destruction meant more than the painting itself -- but... well, i have to reign in the scope of this somehow.)

But what is the meaning of a work of art? What is meaning? Without waxing too philosophical - i want to intentionally leave this a little fuzzy - i think of meaning as the reaction one has when contemplating something. But, additionally, the genuine meaning of a creative work is primarily that reaction which is intended to be provoked by the work's creator. I emphasized that because there are theories of criticism which argue the opposite - that meaning is supplied by the observer of a creative work. Such theories can, in my opinion, be demonstrated to be apologetics for the power paradigm.

One way to reduce the meaning of an object is to directly misappropriate it - to use the phrase or image to advance a different agenda and then to use your superior numbers or budget to simply drown out all incidence of the original usage. A radical movement of any import can expect to see this happen to their language, and as a result the dissenters of each generation are pretty much on their own. Another way to reduce the meaning of an object is to surround it with approved, dissent-sanitized replicas: the culture industry.

However, it is not just subversive meaning which is distrusted by the power paradigm - ultimately, it is all meaning that is unreliable. Meaning is capricious, meaning is unquantifiable, meaning is unmarketable and unprofitable. Even meaning which has nothing to do with politics can inspire someone to question the status quo. This includes faith. "Spirituality," as i mean it when i use it in my journal, is a process of misappropriation by which the words used by people of faith and conscience to describe their experience is sanitized of any politically radical content in ways that turn it into icon-worship. In other words, "spirituality" (as defined by me) is the attempt to destroy meaning and faith and replace it with a religion industry.

Originally published at Monstrous Regiment. You can comment here or there.

I’ve written a bit in the last few months about affinity politics and how it differs from identity politics. This morning i was thinking about the language we use and how it affects the way we think about identity, affinity, and “who” or “what” people are.

Take the term “LGBTIQQ:” Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Questioning, and Queer. This term has grown like a snowball because of attempts by activists to grow a coalition from scratch. It started out as “Gay and Lesbian,” which (anyone alive during the 1970’s can tell you) was not always an obvious alliance. The other terms were added as the coalition grew, in recognition of affinity between various groups, and to prevent re-invention of the wheel with regards to addressing similar political needs.

But the term feels unwieldy now because the community is changing its approach from identity politics to coalition of affinity. If we want to be more inclusive, we can’t just keep tacking letters on (how about a P for polyamorous and a K for kinky too?). Yet if more people join the movement, they deserve to be recognized somehow. (At the same time, a danger here is that the needs of some of us could be lost in the wash — see Marti’s posts on the Transadvocate main page for insight about this.)

The difference between affinity and identity could be compared to the difference between analog and digital. “Analog” looks at the world and sees continuous spectra; “digital” breaks the world down into discrete, distinct units. “Digital” makes it possible to condense information, but a lot of information is lost in the process.

The human brain looks for shortcuts. It prefers digital over analog because categories make it possible to make decisions and draw conclusions without having to juggle a lot of possibly irrelevant information. But when we do this to a person, we write over a lot of who that person is, and draw a lot of conclusions, possibly incorrect, about what they are like or what they think based on just a small amount of knowledge about them.

Our brains learn to break people down in a very digital way: “man” vs. “woman,” “gay” vs. “bi” vs. “straight:” distinct categories which we speak of as attributes that a person “is.” This leaves no room for contrary information (”How can he be ‘gay’ if he’s dating a woman?”) and it leaves no room for change (”You’re dating a man? I thought you were a lesbian.”)

We meet someone and then file away in our brain that this person “is a gay man” or a “is a straight woman.” And then whenever we think about that person we pull whatever thoughts go along with “gay man” or “straight woman” and, accurate or not, apply those thoughts to that person and even write them as expectations of that person. We also treat these people according to the rules and dictates of society, many of which depend on this categorization of people.

Earlier forms of the liberation movement have reacted to this treatment by questioning the stereotypes without questioning the identity. Affinity coalition is the next obvious step: questioning the discreteness of identity. It’s helpful to be able to describe where we are in our lives right now without having to be saddled with an identity forever and ever; a lot of these things change. Indeed, liberation depends on the loosening of categories just as much as it depends on the loosening of categorical expectation.

A few people around me have taken to describing themselves using numbers along the Kinsey spectrum rather than say they are “gay,” “lesbian,” “bi,” “straight,” “pansexual,” or what have you. And they might say, “At this point in my life i am a Kinsey 3, but when i just entered adulthood i was a pretty firm Kinsey 0.” Being able to express this variance-over-life is important because it helps to reduce the chance that someone will assign us to one category for life (and then have to deal with dissonance when we change). I’ve also heard the word “spectrum” being used to refer loosely to categories of people: for example, “female spectrum” as a term loosely referring to anyone who feels they are anywhere on the female side of totally androgynous.

I think this is a step in the right direction, but i wonder if terms like “spectrum” aren’t inherently dualistic. We often think of a spectrum as a range going from A to B, and so i wonder if it’s still too easy to fall into dualistic or digital thinking.

To this end i pondered a number of other possible terms, which do not necessarily imply linearity: cluster, community, constellation, galaxy, nebula, orbit, set, sphere, universe, web. Another factor is, if i use the term outside this journal, someone would have to intuitively know what i mean; this rules out some of the terms above.

I think i like “galaxy.” If i were to say “the MTF galaxy” versus “the MTF spectrum,” you’d know roughly what i meant.

Marti of Transadvocate posted yesterday about certain perennial topics of discord in and around the trans community. This is worthy of deep contemplation because, as i've mentioned before, the terminology we transfolk choose to use for ourselves, versus the terminology which has been foisted upon us, is a question about which we need to have sustained discourse.

I hadn't seen the terms "women born transsexual" (WBT) or "Harry Benjamin Syndrome" (HBS) before. They are interesting.

The idea behind renaming "Gender Dysphoric Disorder" as "Harry Benjamin Syndrome" is to recast transsexualism as an endocrine disorder rather than as a psychological disorder. I'm not unsympathetic, but this is not representative of transfolk in general. Not all of us seek or want hormonal or surgical therapy, not all of us want our gender identity to be medicalized in the first place. It also presupposes a questionable bio-psychological causality. I think there may be some usefulness to the term HBS but it is not an interchangeable replacement for gender dysphoria.

At first glance i thought the term WBT was a direct response to the term "womyn born womyn" used by some to distinguish women judged as female at birth from gallae. But when i googled it, i didn't see any discussion of this matter at all, nor was it raised in Suzan Cooke's essay in which she mentioned why she and her partner coined the term. So i deduce that the purpose of the term is to downplay the "trans," to counter the dominant culture's gaze, which wants to see only the procedures and paraphernalia of our transition, to focus instead on the way transfolk see ourselves.

Using emphasis to demonstrate more clearly the meaning of the term, then, a "woman born transsexual" is a woman who happens to have been born transsexual. For a person who sees herself as inherently female but otherwise defined by society because of, essentially, an unfortunate birth defect, this might be an appropriate term.

To be honest i'm not sure how i feel about this term. On the one hand i approve of the term's basic goal, as tending towards expressing more clearly than "transwoman" how we see ourselves. See, the world sees us as "trans" first and woman... well, usually never, but if ever, then definitely not first.

Secondly, i know MTF transfolk who would not really fit this depiction, because they have taken the identification of "trans" as part of their identity. So on the basis of that alone, the term "woman born transsexual" can never be a blanket replacement for "transwoman" and could even be divisive.

But there is a second, somewhat savage, dimension of divisiveness here. Only some gallae have any chance of actually being seen as women first: those who pass. For transfolk being able to pass can be a ticket away from the numerous limitations we face for the crime of being trans. Think, for example, of light-skinned black people who have 'passed for white' and the opportunities they gained by doing so. Opportunities they should have had in the first place, of course. Not that being a woman in a misogynistic culture is necessarily great shakes, but, judging by some of these stats from 1999, in some ways it sure beats being a tranny.

So when Suzan Cooke says "goodbye to being transgender" she comes across as having a nasty overtone, and it is plain as day that she has never checked her own privilege. She writes as if any galla can easily assimilate into society as a woman:

Because most of us assimilate as members of the sex that we have been reassigned to and are loathe to make spectacles of ourselves few stand up to contradict the politicos who claim to represent us. ... The transgender community is like a cult that pounds extremely negative messages into the heads of people treated for TS/HBS. Its fear mongering aims to convince post-sex reassignment surgery people to stay in the transgender ghetto rather than assimilate in to the world of members of their new sex.

It's a nice gig if you can get it, Suzan. I can definitely sympathize with wanting to escape the traps and stigmata heaped on transfolk (ETA: and let me be clear on this, i have no disapproval for people who go "stealth"), but not all of us have the luxury, even after surgery and hormones. Having the luxury of moving beyond into the relative utopia of passing, she doesn't see the need for trans advocacy.

IOW she's saying that anyone who doesn't pass can go to hell. And her term WBT can be seen as reflective of this attitude.

Suzan is right to want to escape the negativity, since none of us deserve it. She is right to want to escape from the way the culture sees transfolk, because it does not define her any more accurately than it defines any of us. But she is wrong to blame the transgender community for it; this is just old-fashioned victim blaming. The negativity comes from the rest of society -- the people who beat us, preach against us, kick us out of our houses, and fire us. If she is ever found out, she will be no better than the rest of us "trannies," and i hope she keeps that in mind in the future when she contemplates trans activism.

Yesterday, a gunman at the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, identified by the police as student Cho Seung-Hui, shot 32 people dead and injured many others before killing himself.

I've seen this described in numerous places as a "tragedy." I do not personally believe that "tragedy" is an appropriate word to describe this. Nor would i approve of "calamity," "catastrophe," or "disaster."

Atrocity, yes. Monstrous, cruel, heinous, vicious, villainous, ruthless, brutal, bloodthirsty, yes.

But my objection to words like "tragedy" is that this serves to bury the fact that this was an intentional act, an act of deliberate and malicious harm of one human being against others. Words like "tragedy", "calamity," "catastrophe" and "disaster" all imply the workings of fate, or accident, or the gods, or evil stars, or some other great external overwhelming force -- not a human being. They imply that what we need is catharsis and closure, not examination and scrutiny. In fact i'm already seeing hostility towards those who might ask why this happened, as if it is not our place to wonder.

I think what causes this reaction is that events like this traumatize us, and our first instinct as survivors is to appease, to not stir trouble.

Violence is not caused by a great external overwhelming force, not even violence on an unimaginable scale. It is caused by something that we (most of us) have the power and will to overcome. Examining violence with the goal of understanding it and lessening it will not bring on the wrath of the gods; it is something we must do. And there is no better time than the present, because there is violence right now, everywhere, in your community, in mine.

This isn't to pick on anyone in particular, FWIW. It's the media that sets the tone for things like this, and they are plastering the word "tragedy" all over the place.

Once upon a time, i was a conservative Christian. I turned away from this during my early teens, when i began to realize that certain of my beliefs simply could not be reconciled with logic, science, reality, and my personal experience.

During my years as a non-Christian, as i explored many different approaches to spirituality i never stopped feeling like a spiritual refugee, and so when i learned about Gnostic and liberal Christianity i began to think maybe i had found a way to come home, spiritually speaking.

Liberal theology is rooted in an approach to scripture at odds with the fundamentalist belief that the Bible is literally true, infallible, and designed as a timeless guide to life, belief, and morality. It has nothing to do with liberal politics, though many liberal Christians are also liberal politically.

Finally, a kind of Christianity i could sink my teeth into!

But after years of exploration in the realm of liberal theology, i find i still cannot reconcile Christianity, this time with economics, ethics, philosophy, justice, and again my personal experience.

Christianity is based on the idea that humans are separated from God in some profound way. The conservative Christians talk about "original sin" and "sin nature" which passes from father to offspring. In the Calvinist formulation, people are inherently "totally depraved," utterly incapable of embracing good and worthy by default of eternal damnation.

The problem with this belief is that it is damagingly divisive. Someone who is "lost in sin" is too easy to see as less than fully human, less than fully capable, worthy of pity or rejection. It is too easy to justify to oneself participating in the mistreatment of people who are called by one's leaders less than fully human; and history bears out the problems this has allowed.

Liberal Christians understand how divisive this belief has been and rejects its overt forms. But most of the liberal theology i've encountered does not, in the end, truly reject it -- because they still rely on Christ for some sort of salvation.

Spong, for example, proposed we understand humanity as "incomplete," still a work in progress. Other liberal theologians describe us as in need of healing from without, in need of divine guidance or leadership.

In the past, i looked to the idea of soteria as "healing" or self-improvement in the hopes of understanding Christian doctrine in a non-divisive way. This approach can only work if and only if healing is seen as voluntary, as something we seek if we recognize a need for change in ourselves. It should never be seen as something which all of us must undertake -- because then it becomes, in turn, an "us vs. them," a question of "who is seeking healing and who isn't?"

But the idea of Christ as an envoy from God, or a reflection within humankind of the divine presence, makes it impossible to think of healing as something voluntary -- because Christ, as the perfect human, the ideal to which we are to aspire, is a yardstick by which we will always come up short.

The fundamentalists see Christ as God in human form. Liberal theologians are likely to see Christ as a metaphor for human potential, or the divine presence in an understandable form; or they see Jesus as an extraordinary person, someone of immense charisma who moved socio-political mountains and taught people a lot about tolerance and love and co-operation.

I was striken then very hard by the observation of Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza that perhaps the proper way to view the early Christian movement is not one that starts and ends with Jesus, a single extraordinary individual, a man who saves us all by leading the way to a bright new world, but as a broad and diverse social movement to which many people contributed with their bravery and their witness. In this view, Jesus is simply a person who became, for a time, the movement's chief galvanizer and spokesperson.

To take a galvanizing figure and make him a figure of worship or emulation and to make him the central focus of theological inquiry takes the emphasis from where it must be (justice and compassion). The idea of Christ is therefore misappropriation; it diverts inquiry from the hard questions of justice and ethics and spins us in a whirlpool of philosophical auto-eroticism. (ETA: Alright, i know that's harsh. But immersion in a quasi-Marxian-inspired point of view has made it difficult for me to see anything that does not immediately contribute to justice as a potential contributor to the status quo, by taking our energy away from the important areas of focus. I've always been accused of being too serious for my own good.)

Is there any way to preserve the idea of Christ and maintain a focus on justice and compassion? I eagerly sought one. The best i could come up with is the idea that Christ is something which those who follow the Christian path are called upon to become or to embody when we they confronted with a person in need or an ethical dilemma.

But if that's the way it works, then phrasing it in terms of "Christ" or "savior" is distraction -- or worse, because the loaded cultural values of these terms means that phrasing discourse about acting justly or compassionately in this way makes us forever in danger of being diverted away from ethics and onto the distraction of Christology. It's safer just to say, "We have to be just and compassionate with one another," than to bring a religious term into it that risks diversion.

This leads to another concern i had, which is that once you apply a word to something for ease of description, people take the word and run with it as a label, and use it in a normative way to distinguish between one thing and another. Similarly, any kind of organization formed by people of one generation to solve the problems they face becomes a rigidified edifice which tends to cause problems in future generations.

In other words, anything resembling "systematic" theology or philosophy -- the attempt to coalesce one's worldview into a concise set of concepts -- puts us in danger of creating fodder for the perpetuation or justification of injustice.

That's a damn drastic thing to say, i know: but i've expounded several times in recent months on why i have concluded that there is no way any ideology can be "the answer" to human ills. This is a thunderous insight that continues to reverberate throughout my brain and shake down wall after wall. It's a threatening idea to anyone who has a pet ideology, and i even sometimes find myself resisting it. But if there is anything that has been shown to be true by the witness of human experience, it is this.

Here's an interesting continuation from yesterday's theme on the tone of scientific rhetoric. Following is the abstract of "A Proposal to Classify Happiness as a Psychiatric Disorder" (thanks to

chaoticerotic for the link).

It is proposed that happiness be classified as psychiatric disorder and be included in the future editions of the major diagnostic manuals under the name Major Affective Disorder: Pleasant Type. In a review of relevant literature, it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system. One possible objection to this proposal remains -- that happiness is not negatively valued. However, this objection is dismissed as scientifically irrelevant.

If you read this, you will note that it is more or less as rigorous and well-cited an argument as we might expect to encounter in academic writing (although it does contain typos).

It reminded me right away of Dextera Domini: The Declaration on the Pastoral Care of Left-Handed Persons, which was in turn a spoof, and more, of another sort of rhetoric, in this case Catholic theological argument.

These are more than merely spoofs; they teach us a lot about the direction of modern thought and the consequences of fostering "detached rhetoric" as a favorable mode of communication. In the first case, we have an examination of the way common aspects of human experience have been seen as pathologies to be corrected. In the second case we have a theological examination, complete with nuanced scriptural citations, of the sinfulness of being left-handed (a parody of similar arguments offered against homosexuality).

This brave new world teaches us that anything stated in a rational tone, with proper citations and rhetorical style (arguments offered and objections anticipated), deserves to be taken seriously. The underlying idea is that ideas can and should be examined in a vacuum, a so-called "free marketplace," weighed against counterproposals in an environment completely divorced from their real-world implications. Every idea, no matter how repugnant, deserves to be calmly and rationally examined, debated, and discussed. If an idea is truly without merit, it will prove to be such after dispassionate examination.

This comes by way of reaction, of course, against the kind of argumentation which has given us much grief in the past: appeals to emotion, to common sense, to tradition, to "truthiness." Modern rhetoric is an attempt to escape the pitfalls of the past, and the cycles of oppression and discord that they have sowed. It also comes from a justifiable fear of simply going along with any given culture's rejection of certain ideas or principles as unworthy of examination: this is, after all, a means by which prejudice has been defended and perpetuated.

I've written before, briefly, about the use of rationalization as a way of discrediting the statements of feminists and cultural critics. A large part of this, of course, is the misappropriation and subversion of playing-field-leveling measures by those who wish to maintain an un-level playing field. Since the tone of detached "objective" scientific discourse was adopted in an attempt to counter the damage caused by demagoguery and superstitition, it was found necessary for this style to be subverted to the cause of promoting injustice. And so it has: modern evil is even more banal than ever before, offering in detached and well-cited argument why black people are inferior to whites and women are less capable than men.

By bringing up the context of oppression and by employing depictions of personal experiences, critics and feminists are not playing by the rules of rhetoric. In turn, they do not feel obliged to play by these rules because they argue that these rules were chosen for memetic proliferation because they make it easier to defend the social-stratification status quo, by rendering invisible the experience of oppression. For oppression to stand, the people who are subject to it must be unaware of it; therefore any tool that promotes isolation is deemed valuable to those who have privilege in an oppressive society -- the same people who are likely to write the laws and ideologies, and who have the power to decide what is and is not acceptable discourse.

Consider my previous thoughts on the way one generation's solution to a problem becomes the basis for a new problem facing the next generation. We certainly don't want to move backwards and empower demagoguery and fanaticism. What is the way forward?

Rational debate should be tempered with a higher degree of context-awareness. I concur with Wander and Jaehne (thanks to

tyrsalvia for this link [PDF]) that experts have to be more aware of the effects their ideas and proposals have on people, and that we have to be always aware of the way the economics of academia has guided the course of academic discourse. We cannot successfully divorce ideas from their implications, or idea-makers from their need to eat, sleep, and live in secure comfort.

What we are seeing here at work is a dualistic scheme, rather like the idea that there is a dualism of brain and mind, only of idea and context. Once again, in another context, dualism proves to be inherently dehumanizing and offers itself to the service of defending unjust status quos.

Current Music: Tori Amos "Crucify"

I don't know if any of you out there have the same automatic internal reaction as i do when i see articles or essays that talk about a scientist's funding or other potential biases. My immediate reaction is to want to reject any such concern as "ad hominem" and therefore irrelevant to discourse about whatever matter is at hand. So, this may really only be targeted at an audience of one (me).

A while back

lady_babalon linked to this news story about a researcher who examined the funding sources of scholars and clinicians who developed the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM).

( Read more... )

Here's a study describing some of the ways researchers finagle the bounds and methods of their research in order to tweak results so that they are favorable to the pharmaceutical companies funding their research.

Objective To investigate whether funding of drug studies by the pharmaceutical industry is associated with outcomes that are favourable to the funder and whether the methods of trials funded by pharmaceutical companies differ from the methods in trials with other sources of support.

... Conclusion Systematic bias favours products which are made by the company funding the research. Explanations include the selection of an inappropriate comparator to the product being investigated and publication bias.

Add to this a study which "reveals" (as if none of us could have possibly known) that FDA panelists who have financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry are more likely to vote to approve drugs:

( Read more... )

As an interesting aside, see an article here which tries to slant this to show that there is no conflict-of-interest in FDA drug-approval votes: "The study finds that the removal of all of those advisory committee members [with dubious funding] would not have reversed the results of any of the votes at meetings between 2001 and 2004, although their removal could have made some decisions less favorable."

One is inclined to wonder how we might correct for the warping effect of big pharma as an 800-lb gorilla in the medical field. Something that big and influential is bound to force people consider their careers and personal well-being when making decisions like this, even if they do not receive direct funding from the pharma companies.

When contemplating things like this a piece of my brain shouts, "That's an ad hominem argument!" I've been trained to overlook, as much as possible, any personal information about a person making an argument and look at the merits of the argument itself. And according to the survey linked above, the merits of the research papers themselves do reveal, upon close examination, the obvious favorable tweakings in methodology.

But the public doesn't get to examine the methodology of any given study. Usually results are just presented in the media as holy proclamations. "Scientists say blah-de-blah-blah in a new report to be published today in the Journal of Very Respectable We Assure You Science." The average American may be vaguely aware of the steps in the scientific method, but unless she has been a scholar of science she is generally not hip to the subtle ways in which methodology can be tweaked to bring results in line with expectations.

And let's take this a step further and see who it is who is alleging bias in pharmaceutical research -- mostly it is people with the organization Public Citizen, who themselves can be justifiably accused of potential bias! It never ends.

Allegations of bias in science become even more explosive when you consider various research offered to support fundamentalist agenda items. The tone of sciencific speech can be adopted even by people as thoroughly discredited as anti-gay "researcher" Paul Cameron, and the media will play along, especially if it is operated by people favorable to the agenda at hand.

The idea of personal bias in researchers is like scientific kryptonite. Science is understood as a form of inquiry that allows people to pursue knowledge removed from economic, institutional, and ideological pressures. Supposedly bias is detected during the peer review process. Therefore, people are supposedly taken out of the equation, and results stand on their own as proclamations which have the blessing of an entire community, therefore carrying more weight than the simple assertions of a few individuals.

But if the reviewing peers are biased too, what then? What if "common sense" itself is biased?

We want to pretend that bias does not exist in science, or if it does, that it is rare. If bias can be sneaked into the proclamations of science, the "scientific mystique" might be undermined. Therefore it's easier to just dismiss any kind of talk about a researcher's funding or background as trivial and over-personal. Doing so belies the reality that science falls into ruts called paradigms, which in large part reflect the biases of culture and "common sense," which in turn is shaped by oppression.

Current Music: The Cure "All Cats Are Grey"

The term "oppression" has a specific meaning in feminist/critical/radical usage, and i want to write about it at length because i want to be sure that anyone who discusses society and culture in my journal is aware that this is the perspective that i hold.

Technically, the word refers to subjugation by cruelty. The most obvious image of oppression is that perpetrated by an army of invaders who take over a nation and who impose their laws, their culture, and their wishes by force or threat of force. The oppressed are exploited -- they are enslaved, or are forced to work under conditions in which their remuneration is unfair, or they are denied access to employment. They are discriminated against, harassed, insulted, singled out for abuse simply for being of the subjugated nationality. Some of the oppressed are singled out as 'examples,' beaten and humiliated in ways that send a signal across the entire oppressed community that they could be next. Institutions and legal codes are created which give the conquerors preference in social, cultural, and economic affairs; the conquerors thus have documents, procudures, and institutions which 'legitimize' the discrimination, abuse, and exploitation of the subjected people.

The subjected people are told that they are immoral, inferior, less than human, disgusting, unclean. Their history and culture is erased -- their books burned, their statues smashed, their temples pillaged. They are forcibly isolated from one another, and are not allowed to talk about the ways in which they are oppressed. Their land is taken, and subjugated people are frequently forced to live on less desirable land set aside for their use. The subjugated people are not allowed to use their language, but must speak instead the language of the conquerers.

The feminist/critical perspective argues that there are kinds of oppression that did not involve an invasion, but they are no less than a subjugation of one group of people by another. This kind of oppression is harder to see because cultural norms and definitions of legitimacy and normality which presume oppression have been accepted for generations if not millenia. It is hidden behind a veil of language, stereotypical presumptions, and ideology which make oppression seem 'normal' and 'legitimate'; but behind the veil is a pervasive pattern of exploitation, discrimination, and abuse involving every single element that i described above.

As expressed by Marx and Engels, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle." Modern critical theory takes the idea of class struggle beyond economics to include cultural struggle, recognizing that these forms of social stratification and dominance are intertwined.

When oppression has been successful, the subjected people have been robbed even of awareness of who they are and why the way they are treated in society is unfair. They have no forum for speaking to one another, comparing notes, raising awareness of the big picture. They are trained to play a part in the machine of oppression and are rewarded when they do so. They are so unaware of the larger patterns that they do not even have words or concepts that will help them to see why the status quo is wrong. Whatever awareness they do have comes with the awareness also that if they object or rebel they will be on their own as they are bitterly insulted, abused, slandered, 'made an example of'. Also, many different layers of oppression are interwoven in society, so most of us have some degrees of entitlement and some degrees of oppression.

I have to distinguish here between oppression, which is a ubiquitous pattern, and discrimination, abuse, and exploitation, which refer to individual or interpersonal events. If a person excludes someone else because of the color of their skin, or because of their religion, and so on, that is an act of discrimination. If a person charges someone a higher interest rate than normal because of the zip code where they live, that is an act of exploitation.

Discrimination, abuse, and exploitation can occur in ways counter to the ubiquitous pattern of oppression. For example, i, as a queer person, might make a discriminatory comment about straight people. (I try to avoid doing so, but i'm far from perfect.) But here's the important point, and it is where i seem to encounter the most resistance in discussions here on this matter: there is no "reverse oppression." My comments in that case would not constitute "reverse oppression" of heterosexuals. At the end of the day, a heterosexual has rights, privileges, and entitlements in this society that i do not have; the discussion between us does not take place on even ground.

My discriminatory comment might be wrong, but it is not the ethical equal of oppression against me. I am frequently told that my remarks put me at risk of being just as much a monster as the people who oppress me. But, see, this comment implies the non-existence of oppression.

Oppression, as described above, means that ideological and institutional codes have been stacked against you. You are defined by law, by religion, by common sense, by business practice, as someone who is odd, inferior, outside the norm, immoral, medically disordered.

[Poll #621813]

A lot of difference in opinion and understanding comes down to a difference in style of interpreting the way words, labels, and concepts hold meaning. There's a generally "soft" or "fuzzy" way, and there's a "hard" way.

The "soft/fuzzy" way means that a word, concept, idea, label, points to a perceived pattern or persistence. It is meant as a loosely-descriptive term to illustrate how we think a thing we perceive fits into the way the world works.

The "hard" way means that a word, concept, idea, label, not only points to perceived patterns, but when applied to something concrete, is assumed to tells us things about the referent that we didn't know before.

In other words, in the "soft" way of using a word, the word does not affect our perception of the object. We do not expect the object to fit the mold of the word, label, concept exactly. So discovering that the word does not apply in every aspect of its meaning does not automatically disqualify the word as a term of reference for it. In contrast, the "hard" way of using a word involves a kind of inflexibility towards things we have yet to learn about the referent.

This is kinda abstract and imprecise, so let me get specific. Take, for example, the word "heterosexual." In the "hard" sense of the word, this refers to people who never, ever have any sexual interest in people of the same sex. In the "soft" sense, it gives us a general idea about a person's preferences, life, and actions, but does not stop applying if the person reveals that he once had an 'interesting' weekend.

This distinction can extend out to interpreting statements in general. A number of the debates i've had regarding religion, and specifically the interpretation of scripture, come down to differences in word-use style. I tend to read statements in more of a "soft" or "fuzzy" way. Some of the people with whom i've debated religion use a "hard" style. Here's an example:

[John 14:6] Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
[7] If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him."

The "hard" style sees a clear statement of inclusion and exclusion here. And this is how many or most of us are taught to read scripture -- because the "hard" style insists that words have precise meanings and therefore we should expect precision from statements. A "soft" style does not necessarily see this passage as being about inclusion or exclusion, but rather, as illustrative instruction.

I write "wo/men" in this way in order not only to indicate the instability in the meaning of the term but also to signal that when I say wo/men I also mean to include subordinated men. ... My way of writing wo/men seeks to underscore not only the ambiguous character of the term "wo/man or wo/men" but also to retain the expression "wo/men" as a political category. Since this designation is often read as referring to white women only, my unorthodox writing of the term seeks to draw to the attention of readers that those kyriarchal structures which determine wo/men's lives and status also impact the lives and status of men of subordinated race, classes, countries, and religions, albeit in different ways. The expression "wo/men" must therefore be understood as inclusive rather than as an exclusive universalized gender term. Jesus and the Politics of Interpretation, pp. 4-5, footnote.

Whereas in the 1970's feminist theorists used as key analytic categories androcentrism/gender (=male-female dualism) and patriarchy (=the domination of the father/male over women) and distinguished between sex and gender roles, such a dualistic gender approach has been seriously questioned by other feminist theorists who are pointing to the multiplicative structures of domination determining most wo/men's lives. In order to theorize structures of domination in antiquity and the multiplicative intersection of gender, race, class, and ethnicity in modernity I have sought to articulate a social feminist heuristic model that replaces the notion of patriarchy/patriarchalism with the neologism of kyriarchy as a key analytic category. ...

"Kyriarchy" means the domination of the lord, slave master, husband, the elite freeborn educated and propertied man over all wo/men and subaltern men. It is to be distinguished from kyriocentrism, which has the ideological function of naturalizing and legitimating not just gender but all forms of domination. Kyriarchal relations of domination are built on elite gender, race, class, and imperial domination as well as wo/men's dependency, subordination, and obedience -- or wo/men's second-class citizenship. ibid, p. 95

real_philosophy lately there has been a lot of give-and-take on a priori, a posteriori, synthetic, and analytic statements. In college I was fascinated enough by philosophy of language to take a course on the subject.

However, I can't muster any excitement for it now. Besides, the monistic perspective makes that whole argument seem like just a bunch of wanking. Without an underlying assumption of dualism the distinction between a priori and a posteriori is weak.

And also, didn't Quine put all of that to rest anyway?

[Poll #347553]

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The Serpent's Wisdom

Eat of this fruit; your eyes shall be opened, and you will be as Gods.

Entries tagged with philosophy of language

just how much blood can you squeeze out of an entertainment franchise?

that word

iconic and artistic imagination

some words on the general futility of words

hmm, now here's an interesting one.

meta-neo-inquiry, part one

meta-neo-

for consideration, a meta-neo-marxian semiotic principle

affinity language

transsexual self-definition and passing privilege

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idea/context dualism

the scientific mystique

on the meaning of oppression

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"Hard" vs. "Soft" language

a few notes on feminist language from E. Shuessler Fiorenza

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December 2021

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