Rhizome 1/6/15
in which I throw down my intellectual mac for one Deborah Gibson by flirting/responding to her responses to rhizome 1/3/15: facebook.com/groups/6757450 … up_comment
(type 1/3/15 into search:
“I KNEW you were flirting with me!”
Yes, but I flirt primarily for the sake of art. The male obsession with winning over a woman, perhaps more than anything, has been a primary driver of our cultural evolution. Still, knowing you primarily for your mind (AHH!!! AHH!!! AHH!!! Flirt alert! Flirt alert! (you warrant being treated like a peer as well:
“Thinking about complexity: “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.” (Attributed on Facebook to Albert Einstein). Whether it is Einstein or not, it is a proposition to consider one’s life by.”
Truly words of wisdom, whoever said it. One of things that has always haunted my process (being as focused on thinkers like Deleuze and Zizek as I am (is the sense that you have to weary of theoretical over-reach. This is not to take the position satirized by Barthes in Mythologies:
“I do not understand, therefore, you are ignorant!”
But you have to look at the imperative inherently involved in theory: that of selling itself as well as trying to explain how “things hang together.” And it’s kind of hard to sell saying the same old thing. This, naturally, would tend to compel theorists towards intellectual constructions that are more subtle and complex than they really need to be.
This is not to say that such theories should be automatically rejected. How could you if you don’t understand them or, at the very least, empathize with them? At the same time, you sometimes have to defer to Ockham’s Razor (that is without having any real commitment to it. This is because while there is a trickledown effect between theory and normal human reality and action, there is also a kind of disconnect. I’m working here with the popular notion that theory tends to follow praxis or as I like to say it:
“Ideologies do nothing; people, on the other hand, do.”
To refer it back to your point: we are sometimes susceptible to complexity for what, ultimately, serves as little more than a surface effect.
“Life (politically and economically driven) seems to have become horribly complex and there is some sense in which even dissent becomes built into and absorbed by capitalist interests thus increasing the need for complex thinking just to maintain a dissenting position.”
How could I not flirt with you when we are so like minded? To further your point, we need only look at the function that such people as Jon Stewart, John Oliver, and Bill Maher serve within Capitalist hegemony. First I would point out that there is no question in my mind concerning the intellectual integrity of all three. Given some of the profound points they add to the discourse, it is clear that they are sincere in their dissent. The problem is not with them. The problem lies in the fallback they provide in terms of the Capitalist system. If we, under the Capitalist system we work under, were to make the claim that we are not as free as we’re told we are, the defenders of Capitalism can always say:
“How can you say that? I mean look at the anti-Capitalist points that Jon Stewart, John Oliver, and Bill Maher are making.”
What this argument fails to recognize is that free expression is only a means to an end: that of actually changing things. And that is what makes Capitalism such a diabolical form of oppression in that it is an autocratic power system that has gotten so confident in itself that it can easily tolerate dissent with no fear of being overthrown.
I mean it: be afraid; be very afraid.