[miso-poiesis]

in the grip of an erotomaniacal delusion for over two years; or five, or six. Reflections: I remember a time in my life, when I was pretty isolated, due to equal parts choice and circumstance. I was watching MTV2 with the only friend I still saw fairly regularly (only because, he sought me out, being fairly isolated himself, in his case due only to circumstance). I’d switched to the channel while the video for Black Bubblegum by The Dillinger Escape Plan was playing. I didn’t recognise the band, and didn’t realise that the band had a new vocalist (Greg Puciato), but loved Calculating Infinity and was shocked that this.. phenomenon happening before my sense and senses was also The DEP - totally different - an unashamed Mike Patton influence but also something unto itself. I still love the song, and similar tracks: “Milk Lizard”, “One Of Us Is The Killer” ,but it and they are problematic. Their lyrics, and perhaps their mood, is one of misogyny. But it’s a kind of metaphysical misogyny - it’s like Puciato’s beef isn’t with any actual woman, but with mitochondrial Eve. Or perhaps it goes back even earlier, and the grudge was formed when life contracted sex, for a forgotten evolutionary purpose. Metaphysical misogyny: X is a symptom of Y (and the metaphysical misogynist is a misandrist, too). I think I identify with it. I’ve thought about expressing this for years, but now that I’m finally trying, I realise how full of bad faith my nascent thoughts were. I loath contingency A with self-conscious zeal, while also accepting and even valuing contingency B, but feel that I have no principled means of differentiating them. So I am a hypocrite. Or perhaps not. Perhaps because A is an embodied rational practice, but B is innate and hardwired, B is a deeper contingency than A. I know this requires further thought and analysis, and I don’t have the courage to lift the veil of abstraction here, now.

[edit] what follows was composed before the discussion of bad faith immediately above] It’s a normative position taken because of the desire for escape from aspects of the human situation. Heidegger’s lectures on Nietzsche’s philosophy, the role H. claims that “justice” plays within it. The crux: In our sexed and gendered situation, “the good” and “the right” are confused, tangled, structurally unattainable. Our fate is tragic; men and women are both morally compromised. Perhaps escape would be a transhumanist project, the degendering of sex, or God knows what. But, my hope at least, is that escape doesn’t need to be so literal, that it’s a failure of moral imagination to . There are other novel possibilities hiding in the present situation. [/edit]

[miso-poiesis]

Good bookshelf.

[miso-poiesis]

“#BIL2015. Thanks @TheWayofRay for the photo!”

If all that survived of analytic philosophy were the titles of its many, many papers, would it be possible, through imaginative engagement with their interrelations, to reconstruct the theories and arguments?

[miso-poiesis]

what is meta-poiesis?

We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. When soldiers take their oath they are given a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of the Autarch. Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the special duties and burdens of military life - they are soldiers from that moment, though they may know nothing of the management of arms. I did not know that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic. The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves or not at all. - from The Shadow of the Torturer Neil Gaiman has called Wolfe the ‘most dangerous’ living writer. Below is a story about how one might take this claim seriously, possibly far more seriously than it was intended, possibly not. Perhaps the most problematic symbol in The Book of the New Sun is the Christic symbol. Severian, burdened at the moment of his exile to carry his ceremonial sword Terminus Est to Thrax, is later tempted in the wilderness by the  psychopathic double-headed tyrant Typhon, and somehow returns the dead to life. Perhaps, his power over death is a function of the artifact he unwillingly acquires from the quasi-Catholic cult of the Pelerines - the Claw of Conciliator - a rose thorn in crystal. Yet, there is textual evidence that Severian possessed this power long before the Claw falls into his hands. The Conciliator, if he is not Severian, who walked Urth one thousand years before Severian, also relates to the Christic symbol. How old is Urth, and who, if anyone, preceded the Conciliator? Does the existence of the hierodules, and a gnostic cosmos where the sins of past universes are visited upon their progeny, point to an unwritten (lost?) history of the Christic symbol? What exactly did Wolfe mean when he called the Solar Cycle his vision of the ‘do-nothing future’? What is it, according to him, that we might fail to do? In a secular age, what power does the Christic symbol wield over us? What are its possibilities? A christ is a god made flesh. If god is understood in Heidegger’s sense, not as something transcendent but only transcendental; something which makes a call to mortals, to finite beings. A leviathan made flesh. Imagine the obverse of the Orientalist philosopher - the Occidentalist. Who are they? Imagine they have read Nietzsche, Marx and Freud, and have some intimations of the picture sketched above. Would they be compelled by these questions: Could one build a christ? How? What are its conditions of possibility? Christ was a storyteller, and all storytellers exist in a milieu that places limits upon them. How could a christ make a call to the mortals of a globalised milieu? Perhaps a story, a novel or series of novels, sufficiently popular, might attain a critical limit, might open the ways for his coming. Now, when Wittgenstein’s gnomic “Wenn ein Löwe sprechen könnte, wir könnten ihn nicht verstehn” is given a certain emphasis, it can sound almost ominous. What is a god-thought?

[miso-poiesis]

the true meaning of “gamer gate”

the relevant game, incomplete: 1. If boyfriend relates observations that lead to a correct belief, girlfriend is to make up false reason to explain observations. If boyfriend backs down, girlfriend wins. 2. If boyfriend doesn’t back down, and notes girlfriend’s reason conflicts with other observations, girlfriend must get angry and demand boyfriend trust her unconditionally. Boyfriend must then choose between trusting girlfriend, or trusting his own ability to so much as reason clearly. 3. If boyfriend chooses to trust girlfriend, girlfriend must demand he trust her about something that contradicts something else she demands he trust her about. When boyfriend cannot possibly act in any way that doesn’t violate one of her principles or claims, girlfriend must establish he is going insane. If boyfriend succumbs to additional bouts of anxiety spent questioning his own sanity — girlfriend wins: multiply points by number of hours longest panic attack lasts. 4. If boyfriend does not back down, and decides instead to trust his own ability to think clearly, girlfriend must threaten to break up with boyfriend. If boyfriend backs down, girlfriend wins. 5. If boyfriend continues trusting simple reasoning, girlfriend must actually break up with boyfriend (for a period of time no shorter than 1 hour and not exceeding 2 days). If boyfriend does not bring up the subject again, girlfriend wins. 6l. If boyfriend does not back down, and figures that since the relationship is over, he might as well try to get the universe to make sense, girlfriend must figure out some way to break up with him *even more*. If boyfriend drops the subject, girlfriend wins. If boyfriend does not drop the subject, repeat step 6 — point multiplier for number of times step 6 is repeated until girlfriend wins. 7. If boyfriend calls bullshit on the whole thing and breaks up with girlfriend, boyfriend wins. here is Wolfe:  I have already told how strongly I desired Agia. When we are talking to women, we talk as though love and desire are two separate entities; and women, who often love us and sometimes desire us, maintain the same fiction. The fact is that they are aspects of the same thing, as I might have talked to the innkeeper of the north side of his tree and the south. If we desire a woman, we soon come to love her for her condescension in submitting to us (this, indeed, had been the original foundation of my love for Thecla), and since if we desire her she always submits in imagination at least, some element of love is ever present. On the other hand, if we love her, we soon come to desire her, since attraction is one of the attributes a woman should possess, and we cannot bear to think she is without any of them; in this way men come to desire even women whose legs are locked in paralysis, and women to desire those men who are impotent save with men like themselves. But no one can say from what it is that what we call (almost at our pleasure) love or desire is born. As Agia came down the stair, one side of her face was lit by the last light of day, and the other thrown into shadow; her skirt, split nearly to the waist, permitted a flash of silken thigh. And all I had lost in feeling for her a few moments before when I had pushed her away came back doubled and doubled again. She saw that in my face, I know, and Dorcas, hardly a step behind her, saw it too and looked away. But Agia was angry with me still (as perhaps she had a right to be), so although she smiled for policy’s sake and could not have concealed the ache in her loins if she would, yet she withheld much. I think it is in this that we find the real difference between those women to whom if we are to remain men we must offer our lives, and those who (again - if we are to remain men) we must overpower and outwit if we can, and use as we never would a beast: that the second will never permit us to give them what we give the first. Agia enjoyed my admiration and would have been moved to ecstasy by my caresses; but even if I were to pour myself into her a hundred times, we would part strangers. I understood all this as she descended the last few steps, one hand closing the bodice of her gown, the other upholding the avern, whose pole she used as a staff and carried like a bacillus. And yet I loved her still, or would have loved her if I could.

                                                             *                                                           *    *

Eight is a bad number.

[miso-poiesis]

Cis and Gender

‘Quite so, quite so! But what about this? What if we attempt to render you a rich gift, and you refuse it?’ Dr Talos leaned toward her as he said this, and it struck me that his face was not only that of a fox (a comparison that was perhaps too easy to make because his bristling reddish eyebrows and sharp nose suggested it at once) but that of a stuffed fox. I have heard those who dig for their livelihood say there is no land anywhere in which they can trench without turning up the shards of the past. No matter where the spade turns the soil, it uncovers broken pavements and corroding metal; and the scholars write that the kind of sand that artists call polychrome (because flecks of every colour are mixed with its whiteness) is actually not sand at all, but the glass of the past, now pounded to powder by aeons of tumbling in the clamorous sea. If there are layers of reality beneath the reality we see, even as there are layers of history beneath the ground we walk upon, then in one of those more profound realities, Dr Talo’s face was a fox’s mask on a wall, and I marvelled to see it turn and bend now toward the woman, achieving by those motions, which made expression and thought appear to play across it with the shadows of the nose and brows, an amazing and realistic appearance of vivacity. ‘Would you refuse it?’ he asked again, and I shook myself as though waking. - Gene Wolfe “The Shadow of the Torturer” I know a good idea when I see one. Perhaps also sometimes, an idea lies dormant, interesting but without much obvious application - until a cognate or related idea comes along and sheds light on the original one, and things begin to fall into place.

As I suspect is true for many, I only came across the notion of ‘cis-gender’ somewhat recently, but it now seems to be everywhere. This is a glad fact and I think there’s good reason for it. But there is a diagonal that cuts across it

What I’m slightly unsure about the notion of ‘cis-privilege’. I’ll say more. Think of some paradigmatic ‘cis-gender’ individuals - something like the members of North American fraternities and sororities. A fundamental means of creating privilege is what sociological theorist Randall Collins calls the ‘interaction ritual’. These rituals are a means by which human beings acquire emotional energy, which, I think, translates nicely as confidence - having emotional energy is at least a necessary condition of having confidence, if not an entirely sufficient condition. Participating in the high status interaction rituals enriches individuals with confidence and generates their privilege. Marginalised individuals who fail to take part in these social rituals end up drained of emotional energy and will experience loneliness, anxiety and depression as a consequence. Successful interaction rituals involve sharing symbols of group membership. Sometimes, the creation and expression of these symbols have background enabling conditions that need to be relied upon by the members, without making them explicit. For example, emulation of a cultural style can be important if nationality or regionality is an article of group membership. Emulation of a gender role can be another important condition, and is in the case of fraternities and sororities. However, being cis-gender is not a sufficient condition for succeeding in the paradigmatic ‘cis’ group. Yes, being cis is a necessary condition: one needs to have a paradigmatic male or female body and feel at home in it. But importantly one also needs to have an archetypal man or archetypal woman’s body, not merely that of a man, or boy or a woman, or girl. “Low-T” males are rarely frat-boys. If you have scars, or your face is lacking in the symmetries determinative of sexual attractiveness, or you’re obese, good luck joining the sorority. Of course, this is horrendously crass, but it also needs to be said, because what it makes explicit is this: not all cis-individuals are equal in their privilege - so why call it cis-privilege?. The extra dimension discussed above is simply not present when considering the notion of ‘white privilege’ - because manifesting whiteness or blackness is not affected by an individual’s being ‘more white’, or ‘more black’ (strangely, given the wide preference for tanned white skin over pale white skin in Western culture, being ‘more white’ is a disadvantage. But I digress). Manifesting whiteness or blackness is not affected by an individual’s height or weight or attractiveness. But the ideals of ‘manliness’ or ‘womanliness’ are affected by these further factors.

[miso-poiesis]

hate; which is love; which is desire, too.

A place for thoughts. The truth is terrible and if there is progress it is always piecemeal. The means of its bringing-forth are dynamic; myriad. Confession: I take very seriously Ursula Le Guin’s claim that “(Gene) Wolfe is our Melville” - which I understand to mean the following: reception of his work and its literary importance has been hindered due to preoccupations of our present, “secular” age. Very roughly, his art works as a modernist rejoinder to postmodernism; it is against relativism, yet also creates novel spaces, for that which is new. What follows from this? If we’re ambitious, we might hope that Wolfe’s writing can serve as a remedy to the the forms of fundamentalism that we today live through and with: forms of religious, economic, political Abgründe. The cosmos is without meaning, and our nature is unknown to us. If the historical Symbol is collapsing, or has already collapsed - what then?