Spivakian Sensibilities - I

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, as we all know, is one of the world's foremost literary theorists today. And that would be enough to sum up her profile in toto!

Well, although my tryst with Spivak started with her high-renowned and hugely impactful essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” my admiration for Spivak came about only when I read quite a complicating text of hers, as part of my doctoral research.

It’s titled, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward A History of The Vanishing Present, with around 450 pages to its magnificence.

It’s so so profound a critique of transnational globalization, and she begins by charting her way from colonial discourse studies to transnational cultural studies in such a scholarly way!

Although the book is by far  the clearest statement ever, to date, of Spivak's own relationship to postcolonial theory, well, reading through even a page of the Critique of Postcolonial Reason, I must admit was a herculean challenge of sorts.

To take Oliver Goldsmith to my rescue and tweaking his much-fancied lines a little, I should confess that, while ploughing my way through each paragraph of this highly nuanced, yet delightful read, it was that, ‘the more I gazed, the more my wonder grew!’

Yes! I tried yet again, this time with a cuppa in hand, to read: on the lines, through the lines, above the lines, under the lines, into the lines, but I still felt a huge void in my reading tactic, or rather, reading strategy, of Spivak’s mind-boggling sensibilities put up on a platter in this wonderful book on a Critique of Postcolonial Reason!

How true was Ruskin! How impactful are his grand and mighty lines contained within ‘Sesame and Lilies’! It so reminds you of Spivak!

Indeed, to Ruskin,

All the higher circles of human intelligence are, to those beneath, only momentarily and partially open.

We may, by good fortune, obtain a glimpse of a great poet, and hear the sound of his voice; We may, by good fortune, obtain a glimpse of a great poet, and hear the sound of his voice;  or snatch, once or twice in our lives, the privilege of throwing a bouquet in the path of a Princess!

_And yet these momentary chances we covet; and spend our years, and passions, and powers in pursuit of little more than these! There is a society continually open to us, of people who will talk to us as long as we like,—talk to us in the best words they can choose, and of the things nearest their hearts._ And this society, because it is so numerous and so gentle, and can be kept waiting round us all day long,—kings and statesmen lingering patiently, not to grant audience, but to gain it!

How trueee!

Well, it’s so complicating for anyone who hasn’t learnt the art of ‘crawling before walking’ on Spivak!

As simple as that!

And yes, I had to master a ‘toddler’s crawl’ on Spivak, before I could even attempt ‘walking’ my way on her!

Is the Holocaust an 'Indispensable Ideological Weapon'?

Gaza: An Inquest into its Martyrdom by Norman G. Finkelstein (NGF) is a meticulously researched inquest into Gaza’s martyrdom. Thanks a million to Prof. Rasheeda for introducing this book to us all @ Readers’ Rendezvous!

One of the most densely populated places in the world, the Gaza Strip is populated with more than two-thirds of refugees, and more than half are under eighteen years of age. But, since 2004, Israel has launched eight devastating operations against Gaza’s largely defenceless populace, and a subsequent illegal blockade too.

NGF’s magnum opus is ‘both a monument to Gaza’s martyrs and an act of resistance against the forgetfulness of history’.

Well, I first came upon Norman G. Finkelstein (NGF) when one of my wards did her research on Holocaust Literature.

She introduced to me a wonder-read of sorts, or should I say, a shocker of sorts from NGF, titled, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering where NGF argues that the American Jewish establishment has pretty much exploited the memory of the Nazi Holocaust for political and financial gain, as well as to further the interests of Israel, and hence, this "Holocaust industry" according to NGF, has hugely corrupted Jewish culture and the authentic memory of the Holocaust.

NGF argues that "'The Holocaust' is an ideological representation of the Nazi holocaust".

There’s much of a Chomskian echo in him, with a similar deliberate blacking-out of his thoughts and reads in mainstream US media, especially by the New York Times!

Interestingly, NG Finkelstein himself notes that the first hardback edition had been a considerable hit in several European countries and many languages, but had been largely ignored in the United States!

NGF also snides the New York Times, a US newspaper with worldwide influence and readership, as the main promotional vehicle of the "Holocaust industry!" and hence it has avoided any news on this sensational read of sorts!

Not One of Them in Place: Modern Poetry and Jewish American Identity is yet another lovely read.

The soo delightful and lovable introduction to this book, running to twelve pages, written by the author NGF himself on "The Traditions of Jewish American Poetry" is a delightful insight into Jewish American poetry, and at the same time an indictment of the double standards or the often conflicting standards that American anthologists have brought to bear on the problem of selecting poetry that goes into canon formation.

It helps us understand how an anthology can reflect, expand, or redirect a period's canon; what literary and social principles regulated the poetry canon at different points in American history; and how those principles have changed over the years, due to ‘vested’ political interests!

And, in a devastating new postscript to this best-selling book, on Holocaust Industry, Norman G. Finkelstein documents yet a few more shockers of the first quarters!

Ideology

Ideology | John Storey

Ideology is a crucial concept in the study of popular culture.

Graeme Turner calls it ‘the most important conceptual category in cultural studies’.

James Carey has even suggested that ‘British cultural studies could be described just as easily and perhaps more accurately as ideological studies’.

Like culture, ideology has many competing meanings.

An understanding of this concept is often complicated by the fact that in much cultural analysis the concept is used interchangeably with culture itself, and especially popular culture.

The fact that ideology has been used to refer to the same conceptual terrain as culture and popular culture makes it an important term in any understanding of the nature of popular culture.

What follows is a brief discussion of just five of the many ways of understanding ideology.

We will consider only those meanings that have a bearing on the study of popular culture.

First, ideology can refer to a systematic body of ideas articulated by a particular group of people.

For example, we could speak of ‘professional ideology’ to refer to the ideas which inform the practices of particular professional groups.

We could also speak of the ‘ideology of the Labour Party’.

Here we would be referring to the collection of political, economic and social ideas that inform the aspirations and activities of the Party.

A second definition suggests a certain masking, distortion, or concealment. Ideology is used here to indicate how some texts and practices present distorted images of reality.

They produce what is sometimes called ‘false consciousness’. Such distortions, it is argued, work in the interests of the powerful against the interests of the powerless.

Using this definition, we might speak of capitalist ideology. What would be intimated by this usage would be the way in which ideology conceals the reality of domination from those in power: the dominant class do not see themselves as exploiters or oppressors.

Popular Culture!

Popular culture | John Storey

There are various ways to define popular culture.

I intend to sketch out six definitions of popular culture that in their different, general ways, inform the study of popular culture.

But first a few words about the term ‘popular’.

Williams suggests four current meanings:

‘well liked by many people’;

‘inferior kinds of work’;

‘work deliberately setting out to win favour with the people’;

‘culture actually made by the people for themselves’.

Clearly, then, any definition of popular culture will bring into play a complex combination of the different meanings of the term ‘culture’ with the different meanings of the term ‘popular’.

An obvious starting point in any attempt to define popular culture is to say that popular culture is simply culture that is widely favoured or well liked by many people.

We could examine sales of books, sales of CDs and DVDs. We could also examine attendance records at concerts, sporting events, and festivals. We could also scrutinize market research figures on audience preferences for different television programmes.

Such counting would undoubtedly tell us a great deal. The difficulty might prove to be that, paradoxically, it tells us too much. Unless we can agree on a figure over which something becomes popular culture, and below which it is just culture, we might find that widely favoured or well liked by many people included so much as to be virtually useless as a conceptual definition of popular culture.

Despite this problem, what is clear is that any definition of popular culture must include a quantitative dimension. The ‘popular’ of popular culture would seem to demand it.

A second way of defining popular culture is to suggest that it is the culture that is left over after we have decided what is high culture.

Culture - A Few Definitions!

Culture | John Storey

In order to define popular culture we first need to define the term ‘culture’.

Raymond Williams (1983) calls culture ‘one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language’. Williams suggests three broad definitions.

First, culture can be used to refer to ‘a general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development’.

We could, for example, speak about the cultural development of Western Europe and be referring only to intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic factors – great philosophers, great artists and great poets.

This would be a perfectly understandable formulation.

A second use of the word ‘culture’ might be to suggest ‘a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period or a group’.

Using this definition, if we speak of the cultural development of Western Europe, we would have in mind not just intellectual and aesthetic factors, but the development of, for example, literacy, holidays, sport, religious festivals.

Finally, Williams suggests that culture can be used to refer to ‘the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity’.

In other words, culture here means the texts and practices whose principal function is to signify, to produce or to be the occasion for the production of meaning.

Culture in this third definition is synonymous with what structuralists and post-structuralists call ‘signifying practices’.

The 'What might have beens' of life...

It’s something contrary to the facts! Or Counter to the facts!

Something that develops on you, especially when you sport wonderful imaginative thoughts early on in childhood! Something that syncs well with a person with a literary bent of mind! :-)

It’s called the counterfactual imagination!

What T. S. Eliot calls the ‘what might have beens’ of life.

When you ask yourself, “What if?" or "If I had only..." when you think about how things could have turned out differently.

What Leibniz would term as the infinite number of alternate worlds available for those with a wonderful imaginative capability on them.

Although there are theories that talk about the Counterfactual as an escapist mode for those seeking to flee from the harshness of reality, current theories have also suggested that a strong counterfactual imagination could act as a great beneficial behavioral regulator!

Well, now, with a wonderful book that’s got such a delightful exclusive take on the Counterfactual, it’s only meet to man up to the powerful potential that’s privy to the counterfactual.

This book is by Ruth Byrne, and it’s titled, The Counterfactual Imagination

So here goes some wonderful tippie snippies from the book for y’all -

Martin Luther King Jr. almost died when he was stabbed in 1958. A decade later he made the following remarks during a speech:

The tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta. . . . It came out in the New York Times the next morning that if I had merely sneezed I would have died. . . .

And I want to say tonight, I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn’t sneeze.

Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1960 when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters. . . .

If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been here in 1963 when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama aroused the conscience of this nation and brought into being the Civil Rights bill. . .

If I had sneezed I wouldn’t have had the chance later that year in August to try to tell America about a dream that I had had. . . . I’m so happy that I didn’t sneeze.

His reflections highlight the impact that something as insignificant and ordinary as a sneeze could have had on the course of civil rights in American history. King’s remarks are particularly poignant given that he was assassinated the next day. He was thirty-nine years old when he died.

Who can say what would have happened if he had lived longer?

This book is about how people imagine alternatives to reality.

Bourdieu on 'Linguistic utterances' vis-a-vis 'linguistic habitus'

Much has been written, and said, and discussed, and researched, on the language – power nexus on and off academia!

Thiong’o waxes eloquent on it in his Decolonising the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature,

Gauri Viswanathan points out the pitpalls of the voluntary cultural assimilation perpetrated on the colonized under the guise of language, in her Masks of Conquest!

Ismail Talib, John McLeod, Elleke Boehmer among a host of other critics have explicated this nexus between language and power as connected with one’s history, politics, culture and thereby one’s identity itself.

In this regard, yet another impactful read that speaks to this unholy nexus between language and power happens to be from the legendary Pierre Bourdieu!

In this powerful read titled, Language and Symbolic Power, Bourdieu puts forth the proposition that, linguistic utterances or expressions can be understood as the product of the relation between a “linguistic market” and a “linguistic habitus.”  

Bourdieu critiques the linguistic theories of Saussure and Chomsky and the theory of speech-acts elaborated by Austin, and argues that, language should be viewed not only as a means of communication but also as a medium of power through which individuals pursue their own interests and display their practical competence.

Bourdieu’s critique of social institutions are very impactful, and they help us see through the various layers of power embedded in each aspect of our ‘culture’!

To Bourdieu, the major role of the education system is cultural reproduction. This is the reproduction of the culture of the dominant classes. These groups have the power to impose meanings and to impose them as legitimate. They are able to define their own culture as worthy of being sought and possessed and to establish it as the basis for knowledge in the education system. However, there is no way of showing that they are any better or worse than other subcultures in society.

The wonderful introduction to the book by John B Thompson is a treat in itself. He has divided the book into three parts, devoting considerable attention to each; viz., Language in Linguistic Exchanges, Symbolic Power and Political Field!

The introduction is an invaluable source of guidance to research scholars who are working on language.

So im just giving a few excerpts gleamed from off the introduction for y’all –

Here goes -

As competent speakers we are aware of the many ways in which linguistic exchanges can express relations of power.

We are sensitive to the variations in accent, intonation and vocabulary which reflect different positions in the social hierarchy.

We are aware that individuals speak with differing degrees of authority, that words are loaded with unequal weights, depending on who utters them and how they are said, such that some words uttered in certain circumstances have a force and a conviction that they would not have elsewhere.

We are experts in the innumerable and subtle strategies by which words can be used as instruments of coercion and constraint, as tools of intimidation and abuse, as signs of politeness, condescension and contempt.

Lyotard says, 'Be vigilant!' Tim Wu says 'Aye'!

The Attention Merchants: 
The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

By | Tim Wu

First things first!

How futuristic a vision, and how exact a proposition Lyotard paints about today’s society, way way back, even in the year 1979! How alarmingly, the prognostication of this profound postmodern thinker Lyotard has come to fruition full circle, with the increased “attention and focused detail” to our personal data by the so-called ‘attention merchants’.

So let’s first check out a few excerpts from Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition [1979], before we go into Tim Wu’s read!

1. The Field: Knowledge in Computerised Societies

It is common knowledge that the miniaturisation and commercialisation of machines is already changing the way in which learning is acquired, classified, made available, and exploited. It is reasonable to suppose that the proliferation of information-processing machines is having, and will continue to have, as much of an effect on the circulation of learning as did advancements in human circulation (transportation systems) and later, in the circulation of sounds and visual images (the media).

Knowledge ceases to be an end in itself, it loses its “use-value.”

It is widely accepted that knowledge has become the principle force of production over the last few decades, this has already had a noticeable effect on the composition of the work force of the most highly developed countries and constitutes the major bottleneck for the developing countries.Nevertheless, it has strong credibility, and in that sense our choice of this hypothesis is not arbitrary. It has been described extensively by the experts and is already guiding certain decisions by the governmental agencies and private firms most directly concerned, such as those managing the telecommunications industry. To some extent, then, it is already a part of observable reality.

Now over to Tim Wu

In this Tim Wu's profound read titled, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads, he talks about these dangerous ‘attention merchants’ who are on a journey – a journey to stealing our data!

He euphemistically words it as 'attention-economics,' chartered by 'Attention Merchants' who have made it their business to get into your business. Well, Tim Wu is also the originator of the term "net neutrality."

Reproducing here, the blurb to the book!

In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of advertising enticements, branding efforts, sponsored social media, commercials and other efforts to harvest our attention.

Over the last century, few times or spaces have remained uncultivated by the "attention merchants," contributing to the distracted, unfocused tenor of our times.

Tim Wu argues that this is not simply the byproduct of recent inventions but the end result of more than a century's growth and expansion in the industries that feed on human attention.

From the pre-Madison Avenue birth of advertising to TV's golden age to our present age of radically individualized choices, the business model of "attention merchants" has always been the same.

The 'Datafication' of our Lives...

The power of serendipity is soo delightfully fascinating!

I thank Prof. Rasheeda Madani for yet another delightful recommend, something that’s in sync with Tim Wu’s ‘attention merchants’.

[Well, ma’m is a delightful bibliophile of the first quarters, and she has got her own lovely blog on books and travel HERE.]

The read is aptly titled, The Efficiency Paradox: What Big Data Can’t Do by Edward Tenner.

Tenner’s take on harnessing the real power of efficiency is something worth emulating!

His subtitle to the book, “What Big Data Can’t Do” is quite intriguing, prompting me to give out a book, that’s so quite a study in contrast, titled, Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think!

This I found quite in sync with Tim Wu’s read on the ‘attention merchants’.

Interestingly, the authors themselves agree much with what Tenner has got to say on the efficiency and reliability of data!

With their Kindle e-book readers, for example, Amazon.com has the ability to tabulate which sections of books are most highlighted, where readers tend to stop reading, and which themes prompt the most user engagement. But since these answers don’t do anything for their long-term business goals, the data just sits there.

Similarly, Google Flu Trends cannot distinguish with certainty, people who have the flu from people who are just searching about it. Google may tune “its predictions on hundreds of millions of mathematical modelling exercises using billion of data points”, but volume is not enough. What matters is the nature of the data points and Google has apples mixed with oranges.

At the same time, there are convergences and divergences too that abound! Here goes the review from Ian Pindar, for y’all -

Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think

This informative introduction to the datafication of our lives looks at the benefits of big data in medicine, science and beyond!

Thanks to the internet, social networking, smartphones and credit cards, more data is being collected and stored about us than ever before – a level of surveillance the Stasi could only dream about, say Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier in this informative introduction to the "datafication" of our lives.

Big data analysis gives big business a competitive edge (all those Amazon recommendations), but governments have invested heavily in it, too.

The risks to privacy and freedom are obvious, but the authors carefully accentuate the positive, which could relate well with Tenner’s efficiency paradox, and to Tim Wu’s ‘attention merchants’ so very much!

'The struggle of Man against Power as the struggle of Memory against Forgetting!'

Thanks to Dr. Kunhammad’s [HoD, English, Kannur University] delightful recommend from Zizek: The Sublime Object of Ideology!

Moreover, he also calls him, ‘The Philosopher of the Counter-intuitive Insight!’ How true!

Thought of presenting a similar read on a similar vein, from Milan Kundera.

Well, by a stroke of sweet coincidence, both Slavoj Zizek and Milan Kundera come from the same part of Europe, both experienced the impact of communism, and both have a spontaneous penchant for comedy.

The convergences stop right there. From here on, divergences galore! But that’s not gonna be my take on this post!

It’s on Kundera’s wonder-read of sorts, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting!

It’s such a wonderful take on totalitarianism, tyranny, establishmentarianism, struggle of memory – individual, collective, national, personal memories, how history is constructed et al et al et al!!!

So here goes the review from Michael D Sollars for y’all –

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

By MILAN KUNDERA (1978)

Set in postwar Czechoslovakia in the aftermath of the Stalinist purges of World War II, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is “a novel in the form of variations” that explores how totalitarianism affects individual and collective, national and personal, memories.

Milan Kundera traces the interrelated lives of a handful of characters who are each trying to recover or banish poignant memories.

Much of the novel is based on Kundera’s own knowledge of totalitarianism; following the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Kundera lost his teaching post at the Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, saw his books removed from the shelves of public libraries, and was banned from publishing in his homeland.

Divided into seven parts, the first section of the novel follows Mirek, a once-celebrated researcher who has been forced to leave his job and is surrounded by undercover agents.

The character observes that “the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

Yet throughout the novel, Kundera demonstrates that historical revision occurs not only at a national level but in private, everyday life as well.

Kundera alternates between presenting characters’ interior monologues and the narrator’s reflections on philosophical and theoretical questions that arise, including:

What constitutes history? Where do memories adhere and how are they recovered?

Laughter and Forgetting, like Kundera’s later novels, investigates dichotomies such as weight and lightness; public and private; mind and body; and boundless love and litost (a Czech word meaning “a state of torment caused by a sudden insight into one’s own miserable self”) to uncover the origins of these oppositions.