Blog #2 Nietzsche

The honest divine truth behind the intellectual which derives them as other than then non intellectual is the natural tendency to steer clear of “wearing the masks worn by most, which consists of lying, cheating, speaking behind the backs of others, keeping up appearances, living in borrowed finery, the drapery of convention”. The intensity of the description of human nature sounds way more harsh than the actuality of what he describes, all these horrific sounding things are completely normal-and really necessary in order to function in society without being labeled “crazy” “rude” “standoffish” etc. The extent to which people play into these roles is contingent on the environment as well as their own relationship with themselves. This leads to Nietzsche’s next point, of the individuals wishes to preserve himself on relation to other individuals, “in the state of nature he mostly used thus intellect for concealment and dissimulation; however because of necessity and boredom also lead men to want to live in societies and herds, they need a peace treaty”. Therefore these masks and compromises within ones “self” to co exist with other “self’s” there is an unspoken peace treaty of agreeing to disagree without letting the other know they do not agree. Ironic. What if the fake agreement-really meant these individuals agreed in the first place? And, because they were conditioned to think a certain way because of unspoken rules-it lead them to put on one of these masks for no reason. Confusing myself with my own point, in this the point Nietzsche was making to begin with? “Everything which distinguishes human beings from animals on this ability to sublimate sensuous metaphors into a schema, in other words, to dissolve an image into concept” IE human beings feel emotion toward their actions, which are generated from want and need, rather than acting out of primal necessity of needing only.

When speaking of the waking human being from Greek Mythology this hits-“the artisan who dreams 12 hours he is king is as happy as the king who dreams 12 hours he is an artisan” (who sleeps 12 hours?) But the point is human beings are happy to live in their dream world or as my mom, bf and grandma love to tell me “lala land”. To enchant oneself with happiness is a human trait-and what is wrong with being happy?

The intellectual’s ability to work on the same task as labors with a different approach than their usual dull-spirited attitude of servitude does not maker them less of a man, at all. To be happy with the job, given the exact same tools and feel content is a beautiful thing.

For a change of pace and to help focus our exam review, please follow the following prompt for Blog Post #5, due Tuesday 10/27:

Put yourself in my shoes and write a plausible essay question for the exam. Then put your own shoes back on and answer it. Some suggestions:

1. The question should require one to marshal evidence from more than one writer we’ve read.
2. Ideally, the question should require an argument to answer it. So it should not ask for description or regurgitation, but for taking a position on something.
3. The question should need a substantial response to adequately deal with it: maybe 1000 words, on the long end of our usual blog posts.

Have fun with it!

As you know, there is a midterm for this class.  It is, however, a bit eccentric: I’ve scheduled it to coincide with a day that I’m missing, so it’s a takehome essay exam that you will have 24 hrs to complete and submit via email.  The exam will be open-book, open-note, and it will require you to think rather than regurgitate.  I will scale it to take about 90 mins on average (though of course you’re free to take more time), since I want to limit your time expenditure to what you would be doing if the exam were in-class.  A few more detailed guidelines:

FORMAT: short answer + long essay

I will give you five questions that can be answered in a longish paragraph.  These will look an awful lot like the study questions I’ve posted on the blog (hint, hint).  There will be some choice as well: perhaps seven questions of which to choose five.

I will also give a few longer essay topics, of which you will choose one.  These will be meatier and ask you to make connections across texts.  The best essays will be at least a few paragraphs in length, have an argument, and use evidence from the texts to support that argument.

TIME BUDGET/SCORING:

The short answers will require about 6 mins each (for 30 mins all together) and will earn up to 8 points each (45 points in total)

The essay will require about 60 mins and will earn up to 55 points.

LOGISTICS:

I will post the exam on the course blog by 10am on Friday, 10/30.  You will email it to me by 10am on Saturday, 10/31 (spooky, I know).  You will write the essay on MS Word or Google Docs or whatever word processor, and send it as an attachment or link to [email protected].  It is your responsibility to make time/space to have a working computer and internet connection over the course of the 24 hours to make this happen.  Given the many resources the College offers in terms of library laptop loans, computer labs, etc., not to mention the tens of thousands of free wifi hotspots around the city, I won’t accept any “the dog ate my email” excuses.  I will check my email on 10/31 and immediately contact you via email if there’s a problem.  If you don’t hear from me, rest assured that I got your exam.

HOW TO STUDY:

The first priority is to make sure you’ve caught up on your reading.  Anything we will have read by Tuesday, 10/27 is fair game.  Second, you should review all notes you’ve taken in class, since I often track the study questions posted on the blog rather closely in leading discussions.  Third, you should test yourself by attempting to answer the aforementioned questions.  Finally, try to think about broader themes that link texts together, since that’s what I’ll be thinking about when I draft the questions for the long essay.

Althusser’s work “Ideology and ISAs” strongly hints to me a Marxist concern with movements of physical bodies. This is undoubtedly in line with Marx’s rejection of Hegel and Feuerbach, who for him dwelled too deeply in a world where Ideas occupy a certain privileged territory (such that from them arise physical realities), and also is touched on lightly when Althusser briefly engages with Aristotle, shirking the full potential of his ideas, but conceding that he gives some credence to “matter in its ‘physical’ modality”.

What I read from Althusser here is an assertion of how physical bodies (flesh and bone humans) articulated by social conditions (their daily “jobs” and acts of consumption) have the ability both to be constitutive of Ideology and, in equal turn, constituted by it. We are offered a jocular example by Pascal, who inverts a conception of a religious ritual, writing that one must “Kneel down, move your lips in prayer, and you will believe.”

A broad tradition of philosophical writing would hardly believe that thoughts sprout from actions, as opposed to the other way around. This particular idea, to consider it more loosely, is also one that young children are taught by their parents, who repeat the catechism of “Think before you act”—not that this is bad advice.

But if we buy Pascal, and similarly Althusser, it is hard to deny that habits in physical reality very seriously engender corresponding mental notions; these notions often give symbiotic life back to our habits, providing the comfort of Rationale and Reason for the seemingly sense impulses that guide our bodies through action.

When we engage Marxist vocabulary words of Practice and Ritual, it elucidates the quiet truth that even the most minute things humans do—the handshake is a good example here—can be chased up to reveal certain routines that make up systems whose functioning has become normalized. Some decades ago, where a white American sat on the bus everyday was part of a larger coded system of human relationships that explicitly denoted the subordination of black people. When you are avoiding the empty subway car because you suspect that there is a homeless person within it, you are not merely acting viscerally but also OK’ing (whether this guilt falls on you in full is up to you) the result of decades of racist housing policies. When you cross the street when the light is red, you are displaying an awareness of, how even though you are aware that Law permeates society, how law on the books is not always equivalent to law in the world. When you get a flu shot, you are consenting to the epistemological basis of the farcical Scientific Method and the lie of Medicine (just kidding). By spiking your Mohawk in the morning after getting dressed for school, you exhibit how thin the line is between conformity and deviance. By going to school, you are taking the carrot of meritocratic Education and drilling yourself in punctuality so that, to paraphrase Marx, you return to the office every morning at 9 on the dot.

To think like this is not too far a stone throw away from Marx, for whom the daily toil of human bodies is the point of departure for ascribing a complex world of both social topology and mental states.

The soldier for whom killing is no small issue does not only think that killing for a moral cause is normal. The soldier also goosesteps, loudly enunciates Hoo-rahs. The sonic and kinetic elements of the act are necessary for the Ideology to be concrete. Subjection is not merely “brainwashing”, mental conditioning—it is Theater.

At the beginning of the semester, we read “The Rise of English” by Terry Eagleton. In this essay we learn how literature replaced religion as the source of truth, values and ideals that nurtures the society and keep it stable during the 19^th century. It is a very interesting concept that I would like to discuss from the perspective of Marx and Gramsci’s theories. Literature is described as a positively influential phenomenon. Yet I would like to see literature from a darker perspective. Like religion, literature is an ideology used by the ruling class to keep the working class under control.

Religion, like many other disciplines, is an ideology (used by the clergy). But “literature, in the meaning of the word we have inherited, is an ideology” (Eagleton 44). To further expand this statement, literature expresses truths and values that plant deep in human unconsciousness. Yet, Marx and Engels definition of ideology can be used to describe literature. Marx and Engels described ideology as following: “If in all ideology men, and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura…” (Marx and Engels 656). In other words, ideology is a set of beliefs that are a distorted or inverted image of the real world. Ideologies do not represent the world as it is but represent it as certain individuals perceive it. Since ideologies are strongly held beliefs, they can be used to control the lives of people. Literature is an ideology, and thus, it can be used for this purpose as it represent. From a Marxist perspective, literature does not represent the real world; it just gives society a distorted representation of the world that allows the ruling class.

But an ideology does not manifest in the society by itself neither does literature. There are individuals who are in charge of applying ideologies. According to Antonio Gramsci, these individuals are called “intellectuals.” Intellectuals “must have the capacity to be an organiser of society in general…because of the need to create the conditions most favourable to the expansion of their own class” (Gramsci 1002). These individuals are members of the ruling class and they are in charge of establishing the ideology and creating the education system and job positions in a society for the benefit of their own class. Gramsci talks about traditional intellectual who come from preceding economic systems. One example of this traditional intellectuals is the clergy. They had a monopoly in society that comes from centuries of history.

However, the power of the clergy started to fail during the 19^th century. In his essay, Eagleton says that “immensely powerful ideological form,” religion, was no longer accepted by the hearts of the people due to political and social changes and literature was wining the hearts of people. It means that non-ecclesiastic intellectuals were using literature as the ideology that keeps the society in the hands of the ruling class since religion was failing to do so.  This intellectuals can be “organic,” which means they were created in the society’s current economic system, or they can be traditional intellectuals. But regardless of their origins, this intellectuals are writers whose creation, literature, is an ideological form that adapts to the changes of the society since the 19^th century. Therefore, it has given the working class a distorted perception of the world. It keeps then hoping of a promising future, and consequently, doing what the ruling class wants.

In Franz Fanon’s essay “The Fact of Blackness” he addresses the ontological issues that arise when discussing “blackness”. For the theorist “blackness” is not a self-created identity, but one that is imposed upon black people. For Fanon “blackness” are not only what is psychically seen or the outer appearance, but also blackness as a social uniform which functions on the larger scale of society to oppress and alienate the black man. Fanon expresses the idea that as a result of not being seen through your individual identity in society, but rather being seen through a specifically molded perspective of a black individual, this derives the deeper ontological issue that deals with the essence of black. For Fanon existing as a third-person, understands that there are three different ways his identity is viewed. Fanon states, “In the white world the man of color encounters difficulties in the development of his bodily schema. Consciousness of the body is solely a negating activity. It is a third-person consciousness. The body is surrounded by an atmosphere of certain uncertainty” (3). Fan explains the notion of “third-person consciousness” as the action of self-awareness in our action and us. Through this self-awareness we are able to see ourselves through the eyes of others and the process of othering begins which is an alienating experience for the black man to see himself through the eyes of a white man. In the same way W.E.B. Du Bois describes that identity is divided into several categories. As a theoretical tool, double consciousness reveals the psycho-social divisions in American society and based on the individual allows for a complete understanding of those divisions. For Du Bois, the concept of double consciousness is characterized by two particular and distinct signifiers; the first is ‘second sight’ – the inherent duality of African American identity and vision. The second, and more problematic signifier, is that of existing ‘behind the veil’ and this may be defined as the limitations of seeing and being seen unclearly. Du Bois makes the claim that double consciousness denies African Americans the opportunity to embrace a their true self identity and rather, the individual is characterized by two categories, as a American and a Negro, thus they are subjected to see themselves through the eyes of others and therefore unable to reconcile their two identities. Fanon uses Philosopher, John Paul Sartre’s theory of existentialism, which emphasizes the existence of the individual as free responsible agents determining their own development through free will.

Blog 4

The production of power is ensured by the material means in which the “laborer” gains from their labor. The power at hand is the wage in which they provide the labor for. The person behind the power of the wage is not the wage earner, but the person in charge of the reproduction. Doesn’t seem fair that the person who is not physically enduring the tediousness of the labor (in order to create “their” commodity). The wage earner has no say in these wages-they are set be people who ar. The people in charge of dictating the wage come up an amount will the intentions of making as much with spending the least. Therefore, the conditions and amount provided to those earning these wages is more times than not unfair and much less than they deserve. There are few things at stake, in the regulator of the wage must take consider in determining this wage earners life style. Ironic how someone who is born into the luxury of dictating the lifestyle of others without having to lift a finger and therefore have an understanding of what this person is entitled to. Instead the controller and distributor of the wage-earned by the commodity which is provided by and therefore completely controlled by the hands of the laborer. Who is the real person in power here? Down not seem to point in the direction of the one providing the physical, “man power” in the line of production of the commodity granting the ones in charge the money that feeds their power.

The reproduction of skills of labor power is provided by the capitalist regime through on the spot training upon arrival to the jobsite. Through a senior co-worker and an employee handbook. But prior to their arrival those destined to work in the laboring field learn other useful skills like those of high-class backgrounds. In addition to their studies in math, science, language etc. they are taught to obey and follow order. This is the most useful skill acquired by the labor worker in the capitalist education system. “The reproduction of labor power requires not only a reproduction of skills, but also at the same time a reproduction of its submission to the rules of the established order” (1337).

According to Althusser the study of ideology consists of two main things. One, is it is a reflection of the last resort of history’s of social formations and the class struggles which develop in them (1348). He claims ideology has no history since it is based on the, “now” which cannot be studied in general terms, since there is no “general” only absolute and only absolutely right NOW. The German Ideology is-that the concept is an enigma, dream manufactured by those with power and it involved the alienation of those who are the laborers. Althusser agrees that ideology does not have a history of its own and the history is the class struggle between the haves and have not’s, as read in the communist manifesto. Ideology is a Representation of the Imaginary Relationship of Individuals to their Real Conditions of Existence.

The material existence of Ideology, is someone’s representation in the world based on what they have to show-ie a nice house, car, clothes, kids in good schools etc. This image can often reflect a version of the individual and what they think society expects from them. Material wealth is an imaginary relation to the conditions of their existence. Someone may be driving a brand new car, with rims, tints and a very loud sound system. Meanwhile they have a quarter tank of gas and thousands of loans to pay off.

The same applies to the educated, sometimes over-educated individuals-whether or not they are truly passionate about what is is they are studying or they are continuing their education to prove to whomever they are educated and desirable.

For a capitalist state to have control over its people and their labor they have to use the repressive and ideological state apparatuses. Althusser describes the state as a “machine of repression” and  cites violence as the major distinction between the repressive state apparatuses and the ideological state apparatuses. The RSA mode of coercion is through violence and gives several examples of RSA’s including the government, army, police and prisons. This violence is enacted through repression, sometimes physical repression, in prisons for example. I would also say fear is biggest part of this violence. Fear of breaking laws or going against these institutions ideologies and the possible consequences is what represses and keeps citizens docile. Although, these institutions are considered somewhat independent from each other, for Althusser, they work together as one in the RSA. This is a major difference from the ISA which exists in pluralities. I’m still a little confused about this. I’m assuming that despite the police, army, or government being distinctive institutions they all push the same ideas using violence. Also, the ISAs, on the surface, may not be pushing the same ideology.

The ISA exerts control with the use of ideologies and exists in many different realms. For example, the family, the church, schools, trade unions, and culture. The ISA is practiced in private domain and RSA in public. This made sense, since the ISAs involve quite intimate parts of a persons life and is part of how they define themselves. RSAs work best with distance and being seen as the more powerful force. These ISAs seem to operate through fear too. Fear of disappointing your family or God, fear of being an outsider of within your culture or union. Althusser does explain there is no purely ideological apparatus. Schools and churches also use violence to functions, including expulsions and punishments. Within RSAs ideology works second to violence and is presented through the supposed values of these institutions. I had a class where we discussed ideology and how the entire Declaration of Independence is just a document filled with rhetorical ideologies. Even during movements like Black Lives Matter, tons of people come out in staunch support of the police, emphasizing their values. Even when people go against RSAs it’s always a matter of them not upholding the values they were created to uphold. For Althusser, that’s the whole point of these apparatuses, they aren’t meant to serve the larger state but the dominate power, the hegemony. In order for the ruling class to keep their power they must control first the ISAs and then the RSA. He uses this argument to explain how education is now the dominate ISA which reminded me of the earlier Eagleton we did, where he documented how when the church lost its power this control was sought through literature

Antonio Gramsci expands and elaborates on the intellectual within society, its omnipresence, and its utility within a Marxist conception history. He makes the bold assertion, which defies common sense, if you’ve got any, that everyone is an intellectual. However, he discerns two types of intellectuals that are in existence: organic and traditional. The former is the product of every social group that comes into existence with an essential function according to their relation to the means of production (1138). Gramsci terms them “intellectuals” because they craft, for that social group, a reality precipitate of its economic, social, and political functions, while fortifying the group’s homogeneity (1138). Each social group has an intellectual function, whether it be the knight’s craft of war or the cobbler’s craft of shoe-making. Traditional intellectuals are those usually invoked by connotation: wiry glasses, disheveled hair, and a trenchant glare transfixed on the ether. Deemed beyond social function, these intellectuals profit from a lineage of close relation to the dominant social groups (1139). Ecclesiastics are exemplary of traditional intellectuals that have enjoyed such historical vitality, first with the aristocrats then with the bourgeoisie, that they are able to present themselves as “autonomous and independent of the dominant social group” and, therefore, from their material origins (1139).  In reality, according to Marxists, each man (and woman) contributes and sustains a peculiar ideology. This is true for everyone, in some way shape or form, beyond their professional capacity. Gramsci states this eloquently: “homo faber cannot be seperated from homo sapiens” (1140).

Alright, now that Gramsci has made everyone feel special, the term intellectual has lost its denotative function in the Marxist dialogue. However, Gramsci has effectually shifted the paradigm from intellectual/non-intellectual to organic intellectual/traditional intellectual. The latter allows him to explore the use of intellectuals within the hegemonic superstructure (1142). Traditional intellectuals, conferred with an “objectivity” of ideology, have two hegemonic functions. They are responsible for the ideological confirmation of the dominant social group’s agenda for society that is supported by the spontaneous consent of the masses, which is caused by a historically conditioned prestige. They are also responsible for the apparatus of state coercive power that is ready to stymie those crises during which masses do not consent to the dominant group’s prestige. Their first function operates within the private sphere of society (1142). By way of illustration, philosophers, in liberal societies, uphold the sanctity of private property that thus legitimates the power dynamic of bourgeois hegemony.  Their second function is derivative of their first function; however, it manifest itself in the public sphere (1142). By way of illustration, philosophers, assuming the sanctity of private property, establish a conception of justice that enforces the inalienability of property. An ethical system is then constructed surrounding these ideas of property and justice. A bourgeois state apparatus is thus condoned to draft laws that punish impingement of those liberal principles. Nineteenth-century labor met the brutal and blunt edge of this “justice” during strikes. Police would bash heads and bruise bodies to enforce liberal society’s notion of public peace.

In his essay, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”, Louis Althusser explores how citizens are controlled by their “State” for the purpose of producing and reproducing of labor power. Althusser states that there are two main types of “apparatus” of the State that are used to keep citizens in check: the “repressive state apparatus” and the “ideological state apparatuses”. While both apparatuses are implemented for the same intended ends, their methods and structure are quite different.

The repressive state apparatus mainly consists of the police, the courts, prisons, the federal government, and the army – essentially any entity that controls citizens through the use of force, to even the possible extent of violence. Althusser states, “the (Repressive) State Apparatus functions massively and predominantly by repression (including physical repression), while function secondarily by ideology,” (1342). The repressive state apparatus does not exist merely to enforce for the sake of enforcing, but rather to instill the values and ideology of the State onto its citizens. Meanwhile, the ideological state apparatuses are, “a certain number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institutions,” (1341). These institutions include the school, the church, the typical family etc. – institutions whose prime function is to essentially brainwash citizens into adopting the State’s ideology. Contrasting from the repressive state apparatus, the ideological state apparatuses, “function massively and predominantly by ideology, but they also function secondarily by repression,” (1342). As a result, citizens become submissive not through violence, but by avoiding scorn and humiliation.

There are many other differences between the repressive state apparatus and the ideological state apparatuses. First, while there is only one repressive state apparatus, there are many ideological state apparatuses, which spread across many facets of culture. This is because “ideological” is more in sync with the culture of citizens – schools teach students what and how to think (otherwise known as “know-how”), while churches preach to the masses what to believe in. Ultimately, the two forms of apparatus bleed together by controlling citizens through fear. Repressive state apparatuses such as the police and the army force citizens into submitting to the State’s ideology through the threat of violence; likewise, an ideological state apparatus such as the Church (Althusser notes it as the most prominent one) will induce fear into citizens through threat of ostracism. More so, the repressive state apparatus belongs to the “public domain” (1341), which makes sense when considering that the repressive state apparatus is the State itself. By contrast, the ideological state apparatuses belong to the “private domain” (1342), which essentially includes the churches, schools, and trade unions.