Cut-Throat's Pre-emptive Round Up of 2015

Work, independent research and life has made writing here tricky and, I fear with the new year nearing, my posting will only get more sporadic. January-February time is doctoral funding season and work has already begun with my supervisor on my own applications; accordingly I figured that it was worthwhile doing a pre-emptive round up in case I don't have time for it come hectic December. Perhaps I could have pushed this back another month or so but then again this may make for a good ear-marking of the 2000 view milestone that I just hit: I have no idea whether 2000 views in the first 8 months is good or bad in terms of blogs but it feels sufficiently significant.

Procedurally, the process for this post will involve picking one fiction and one non-fiction book alongside one album to stage as particular highlights of the year. None of these works came out in 2015 but they are nonetheless the highlight of my own personal exploration in culture this year. So, moving beyond the fanfare...

Fiction Pick of the Year

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

Welsh, for a long time, has sat on the shelf in my mind labelled "must get round to him someday" and it was a pleasure to finally read him. Trainspotting is a landmark of contemporary Scottish culture which is one of the reasons I wanted to read it: when I lived in Sweden there were a surprising number of people with a strange interest in it; though generally they had seen the film rather than waded through the Scottish accent that characterises the prose. I get the feeling that their fascination was spawned by a morbid curiosity as to how a culture could produce and love a work so notoriously self-loathing.

However, the reputation that Welsh has garnered makes the actual content of the book all the more surprising. In places it is strikingly human and demonstrates a sympathy and keen eye for the foibles, roots and pathologies of its characters. Renton, the narrator focused on in the film but who is one of many in the book, has a clear rebellious streak that occasionally bleeds over into a churlish teenage nihilism but even at his worst has interesting things to say. It's a rather trite cliche but the film really isn't as good as the book; or at least it isn't as in depth. There are startlingly jarring moments such as the feminist-esque parable "The Elusive Mr Hunt" which show a more careful eye for social interaction than that which was allowed onto the silver-screen. I enjoyed it thoroughly and it has thrown my previous perceptions of the author.

Non-Fiction Pick of the Year

The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth

For the past couple of months I have been experimenting more and more with writing guides; this one is far more of a style book than it is a grammar guide. As Forsyth points out, good grammar isn't necessarily always good writing. Academically, Steven Pinker's "The Sense of Style" - itself a brilliant use of descriptive linguistics to create a field manual in good, readable grammar - has probably been more helpful but The Elements of Eloquence is just so much more fun.

The emphasis is very much on having fun with the English language, its rhythms, sounds and various effects. It may not have clued me in on how to perfect my past and present tenses or navigate the various pratfalls of plurals but it certainly re-ignited the fire in my belly for constructing some good memorable prose.  

Album Pick of the Year

Knowledge is Power by Akala

 I have remarked on this blog a number of times about my quest to search out and enjoy new music this year. In light of such talk I think it's only fair to include an album of the year in my round up. One particular genre, which has lead me to reconsider poetry, is hip-hop. I started watching battle rap about a year and a half ago and was blown away at, sexism and homophobia aside, just how witty a lot the rappers were. 

Akala however, I found through the Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle: Boyle invited Akala on to a programme of his in order to talk about racism in the U.K. As you might have guessed Akala is a "conscientious rapper" with a lot his themes and lyrics drawing from the speeches and writings of Malcom X. In particular he has a desire to speak truth to the powerless rather than wasting his breath on the powerful. In this album his focus seems to be on inspiring working class youth, particularly non-white working class youth, to engage in political, social and personal activities that benefit themselves and their communities rather than the owners of capital. Interestingly Akala interprets the role of the modern conscious MC through the tradition of the African Griot, a curator of cultural knowledge, and this no doubt feeds into his role as part of the hip-hop Shakespeare company. I could go on and on, but both the depth of his subject matter and his lyricism when discussing it has made this album a real stand out.

Closing Remarks

As remarked in the title and introduction this is a pre-emptive list. It is only as definitive in so far as I don't update it later in the year, though much of my work will be focused on political philosophy for the next few months and I don't anticipate reading much fiction anytime soon.

"The Utopia of Rules" by David Graeber: First Thoughts on Reading

David Graeber has two distinct strengths: an ability to overturn common intuitions about everyday institutions and an extraordinarily affable rhetorical style. This book trades out on the latter in order to produce something a little more conceptually in depth. Accordingly, the book's primary thrusts are explicitly anarchist, heavy in theory and come with a social theory orientation that may make the books content too niche for Graeber's usual audience. Yet despite the denser prose The Utopia of Rules is a success that displays trenchant thoughtfulness on the topic of bureaucracy; to be clear, I'm not certain whether he's correct all of the time but he certainly is interesting.


Graeber's reason for writing a book on such a dull subject is given by the way of a hypothesises for why right wing movements often sequester the anti-establishment ticket in the face of left wing opposition. Graeber's contention is that left wing movements rarely produce a critique of bureaucracy, despite leftism being, according to Graeber, an anti-bureaucratic project. Such a reading of modern politics stands in stark contrast to more orthodox understandings of the topic. Since the soviet era onwards, political economy has often been thought of in terms of competing left wing desires for social justice and right wing desires for freedom. The respective drawbacks being either the brutality of right wing policy or the stifling bureaucracy of left wing institutions.

Advancing Graeber's account of leftism while overturning the above dichotomy he notes that bureaucracy has infested almost all organisations (not just the governmental) and that the roots and realities of bureaucracy run contrary to leftist ideals (humanism, pacifism, equality etc). Further development of this account sees Graeber make use of feminist theory. The feminist reading being that the function of bureaucracy is to provide tools for the powerful to monitor and control their subjects and that those in power generally do not need to understand their subordinates as said subordinates are often at the mercy of those in power. Ergo, the reason so much of our paperwork and protocol bears no resemblance to reality is that it is often in service to a power pre-occupied with controlling rather than assisting or understanding.

Graeber argues that alongside an avalanche of pointless paperwork, bureaucracy presents other more pernicious problems for the human race. In particular, it denies humans the possibility of organic social progress thereby crushing our libratory potential. It is when the lawyers turn up that a social movements death knell is properly wrung. In short, integrating social movements into a bureaucracy provides the people in charge with the ability to subsume anti-authoritarian movements; this little trick cajoles the group into conforming to the legal constraints of the very system that they intend to fight. For instance, a group of politically motivated squatters may successfully defend themselves from eviction and get the local council to grant them legal protection. But this legal protection requires the squatters to be integrated into a number of bureaucratic systems (such as regulatory housing bodies, land registries) which quickly force a hierarchy of signatories onto the squatters - both negating their anti-hierarchical modus operandi and leaving them at the behest of local governments and banks.

These restrictive outcomes of expanding bureaucracy are sometimes intended. Graeber makes note of figures such as George Gilder and Newt Gingrich: people who bureaucratised research projects with the aim of restricting the radical potential latent in the emergent technologies of yore. It is sections like these that leave me desiring  a more forward and visible referencing style. I'm sure there is plenty of truth to what Graeber says but these more conspiratorial sections would benefit from references being cited and discussed in the body of the text rather than just tacked on as annotations. 

 

It is not all doom and gloom however, Graeber, as promised in the book's blurb, offers up an explanation for why we secretly love bureaucracy. Articulating the idea that within bureaucracy is the romantic promise of a world operating by principles of impartiality and reason he concedes that there is something worth salvaging here. Graeber further emphasises that this utopian vision can be pursued without abandoning anarchist living arrangements. The often cited, and just as frequently misunderstood,  essay "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" is raised in aid of such a discussion.

It's hard for me to dislike almost anything that Graeber does. The neutral tone that he presents his arguments in and its infusion with his general warmth and good humour makes him a fantastic champion for anarchism: a movement often associated with dour nihilism. Finding myself soothed by the quality of his presentation I now question whether I can honestly critique him. To my star struck eyes this book is intelligent, comprehensive and novel: easily worth the money spent and time passed book in hand. My only real criticism is that in the aforementioned sections where "who did what" takes precedence over abstract social theory he risks sounding off like Noam Chomsky- allow me to elaborate. Chomsky, as a political writer, provides his audience with a horrifying vision of contemporary politics. His downfall is making of bold claims about U.S. foreign policy while supporting them with references that are rarely explicitly discussed in the text. Graeber teeters close to falling into the same trap of having his work appear a mite less credible than it would have been if he had discussed his sources more openly.

In fairness this book hasn't really garnered the hype that it deserves. The blurb of the book is dotted with quotes in praise of Graeber's earlier work Debt and this is generally not a good sign. I often hesitate to purchase books marketed in this way, taking it as an indication that this is the authors "problem child". Perhaps this is what has put others off the book but then again the subject matter is ostensibly boring which would make for a more likely explanation. Regardless an interesting, if niche, read. 

Huxley's Brave New World: A Hedonist's Response

"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
 
- John the Savage repudiating Mustapha Mond in Brave New World.


There is common comparison made between Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984. One that remarks that while Orwell described the authoritarianism of his time, Huxley predicted the "soft-power" at work today. Read in this way the core theme of Brave New World is similar to that of emanicpatory writers like Rousseau: humans are frequently complicit in their own enslavement. This comparison suffers however from a certain level of western-centrism and misses some of the finer details of the dystopia which Huxley created.


Firstly, and a similar point is levelled by Nadya Tolokonnikova against Slavoj Zizek, the notion that modern capitalism controls its subjects through pleasure ignores the sweat-house labour and dictatorial right wing governments that have arguably played a big role in shaping modern global capitalism. Secondly, in Brave New World there is no evidence that humanity willingly gave up its Bibles or poetry; such things are banned and an inescapable system of social conditioning is required to force these artefacts of ancient pleasure into obsolescence. The depravity of the new world's citizens is artificial it is not an organic product of Huxley's subjects and their desires. As a hedonist of sorts,  while I could cry that Huxley's society is the product of authoritarianism and not pleasure seeking humans, that would do Brave New World a dis-service: the book did give me cause to reflect on hedonism and the relationship between pleasure and authenticity.


 The first thing that struck me as of particular philosophical interest was "Soma". Soma is the fictional drug taken by the new world's inhabitants and it functions as a very trenchant iteration of Nozick's experience machine. Unlike Nozick's original machine, soma requires very little in terms of metaphysical "jump": one could liken it to heroin without the side effects. Furthermore soma highlights the escapist tendencies of Brave New World's inhabitants. By taking soma the characters leave the reality which they ostensibly cannot deal with and submit themselves to a realm of pleasure inaccessible to more sober minds. This idea of "pleasure as escapism" may present some problems for a hedonistic outlook and raises questions about the dialectic between "fake pleasure" and "real pleasure".  Are there pleasures that fail to be valuable because they have no relation to objects outside of the subjects experience? Are mind altering substances providing fake happiness or real happiness?  Is a drunk happy to see you or do they merely think that they are in a welcoming mood?


Currently, I see little reason to make a hard distinction between the pleasures that are accrued through synthetic chemical manipulation, such as alcohol or soma based pleasures, and the organic chemical manipulations achieved through sugar, salt or a caressing touch. Furthermore if the thing that scares us about Soma is that it "merely creates pleasure" then what is that missing ingredient that allows us to be satisfied even if we are not enjoying ourselves? Pain? The outlook of John the Savage is rather reminiscent of Seneca: the roman philosopher who believed that suffering and tribulation should be cherished as a source of meaning in an otherwise empty life.

I can empathise with the Senecan position: life would become very boring if one was absolved of all tragedy. This I do not think is necessarily a problem for hedonists as the hedonic treadmill ensures that we will never run out of tribulations to give purpose to our growth. It may be that the reason we want struggle is that it gives context to our successes. We want struggle and heartbreak not because we don't value pleasure but because struggle and heartbreak make our pleasure worthwhile. 

My response to those who raise up Huxley's Brave New World as a warning against hedonism is that its citizens are not really committed hedonists. They are cattle who have been forcefully deprived of a range of pleasures, primarily intellectual ones, and conditioned to accept passivity as a state of enduring desirability.

When it comes to the relationship between pleasure and eudemonia what Brave New World articulates is a critique of lazy infantilization posing as the good life. As I have argued before, empty gluttonous carnality is not the same thing as an ethical and well-disciplined regime of hedonism.