Podcast: High Theory

Fort / Da

by webwitchUncategorizedLeave a Comment on Fort / Da

In this episode, Kim talks with Saronik about the game “Fort / Da” — a game played by Sigmund Freud’s grandson in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, (which you can borrow from the amazing Internet Archive).

Our cover image comes from another text on Internet Archive, in the Medical Heritage Library’s collection: Die Suggestion und ihre Heilwirkung, written by Hippolyte Bernheim and Sigmund Freud in 1888. The image appears on page 330.

TRANSCRIPT

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

freud, baby, object, mother, economic, game, play, repetitive, relationship, recognize, episode, melanie klein, capitalism, routines, fridays, question, podcast, talk, recreate, long

Kim

In this episode I, Kim, talk with Saronik about Fort/Da. Okay, so what the heck is Fort/Da?

Saronik 

It’s a concept that Freud developed in his book Beyond the Pleasure Principle which comes out in 1922. And it’s after World War One, there’s an economic depression, not unlike presently, and Freud is, I don’t know if he’s unemployed or something, but apparently he has a lot of free time on his hands.

Kim

Freud always has a lot of free time on his hands…

Saronik 

I mean, otherwise, yes, you’re right who even comes up with all of these wild things if one is always employed. So Fort/Da is a game that Freud’s grandson is playing. So here’s the scene: Freud is watching his grandson play in some wood paneled room with a warm afternoon light. And Freud is played by Ben Kingsley and his grandson is played by, like, a picturesque baby. And I quote, “This good little boy, however, had an occasional disturbing habit of taking any small objects he would get hold of and throwing them away from him into a corner under the bed and so on so that hunting for his toys and picking them up was often quite a business. And he did this as he did this, as he gave vent to a loud long drawn out ‘ooooh’ accompanied by an expression of interest and satisfaction.” Like this is so Freud because he says, so this is his grandson and he says, he’s a good little boy, however, with an occasional disturbing habit, which is, like, basically how he sees the world. The child, he says, “ooooh” and then Freud says, “Well, this is this ‘ooooh’ is not actually ‘ooooh,’ but actually the German word for it, which means gone.”

Kim

Yeah, there must be something lost in the translation there because “oooh” sounds nothing like Fort/Da to me.

Saronik  

But I think this is like in the long tradition of parents and grandparents thinking that babies are really intelligent.

Kim

Yes.

Saronik 

So I completely forgive Freud for this even though I don’t have kids. And then, so basically, the baby will throw the object out of sight and then, like, yank it back into presence by pulling on the string attached to it. And then Freud says, you know, alternatively, he could have, like, dragged the object behind pretending it’s a car or something. And in that case, like the object would have been in constant presence. But he doesn’t do that because he’s not exactly interested in the object per se. He’s interested in the game of disappearance and return.

Kim

So hold on. So Fort/Da is just peekaboo played by a little boy.

Saronik  

Yeah, but like, I think the baby has control here. Like it’s not like your parent has a spoonful of carrots and going peekaboo right because they want you to eat that spoonful of carrots. And it’s, like, the baby has control. Right. Okay. So that is quite a ramble about what Fort/Da is.

Kim

That’s excellent. So the next question I have for you is how do I use Fort/Da, how do I play this game in my life?

Saronik  

I don’t analyze myself or my friends if I can help it, but I think I have used the general idea pretty often, like the dawning realization that I’m not interested in the object but the game. I think it has helped me get out of a pretty terrible relationship at one point.

Kim

Fair enough… I think that’s what psychoanalysis is supposed to do, right?

Saronik  

it simplified. So I think Melanie Klein has an interesting interpretation of this episode. Melanie Klein is, you know, famous, Austrian psychoanalyst and a pioneer of child psychoanalysis. And she said, like, through the repetitive act, the baby tries to repair its originary relationship with the mother. So the baby acknowledges her own part in the destruction of that relationship and this is sort of like an act to restore the first symbolic order in, you know, the order of her first relationship with the mother and she’s trying to recreate it like she’s, she’s trying to recreate it through the symbolic economy of the game.

Kim

Okay. Yeah, I think I see it, but what Freud says is, the baby tries, the baby does this to compensate for the absence of the mother.

Saronik 

Yes. But like, it does, and then like, I think he… in Beyond the Pleasure Principle he does have a larger, like, when he’s talking about the mind, he also talks about it in economic terms in many ways. I mean, by economic I mean, like, the economy of signs as it were, and yeah.

Kim

He uses that word, though, doesn’t he? Economic? 

Saronik  

I think that’s actually a great segue to what I think your next question is…

Kim

I still don’t know how I use the Fort/Da game, but I think that’s just because I’m not a baby. Okay. Returning to this question of economics, and the economy of the psyche, how is the Fort/Da game going to save the world?

Saronik  

I don’t know. But this is a useful grammar and this is a useful analog to have because, you know, especially like where we are right now, I think I’m much more present in social media than you are, but you must remember that when the pandemic began, social media was sort of cluttered with advice about how we should keep up, how we should keep maintaining our routines, you know, we should retain whatever semblance we can of the repetitive acts of our everyday life in unusual times. And we, given what routines and we like the comfort of the reputation as we try to put back together, you know, the symbolic order of the world. That was, except it’s fake. So what I mean is like, capitalism is like a cruel mother. 

Kim

Who’s left.

Saronik

Who we must rid ourselves of.

Kim

No, that’s great. So capitalism is the mother who’s gone away.

Saronik  

Capitalism is the mother who says–Okay, let me rephrase what I mean is, like, in this case, a relationship with the mother is like, not a useful one. And repetitive acts which try to recreate our lives of the world that was, it’s a game that we use to comfort ourselves and make ourselves feel that even if everything is not as it was, but everything could be as it was–I can totally hear Freud turning in his grave and…

Kim

No, I totally think that’s an excellent interpretation.

Saronik 

I think like for now, I think we can recognize the game for what it is, like we can look beyond the immediacy of the object and then recognize the repetitive acts that we are doing that we do.

Kim

But so my question for you is, can we still play the game? Or like, should we not?

Saronik  

I think we are playing the game. I think at this moment, like…

Kim

Or maybe we can’t not play the game.

Saronik  

Yeah, at this moment we can’t not play the game. But I think a good first step is recognizing that we are playing the game, yeah. Like, a good first step is to look beyond the object and to grow up because as babies being coddled by capitalism, we do not recognize the game for what it is and as grown-ups we should. That’s pretty wild…

Kim

It’s pretty great though!

Tagged : / / / / / / /

Afropessimism

by webwitchUncategorizedLeave a Comment on Afropessimism

Saronik talks with Diane Enobabor about Afropessimism and Afrofuturism.

Diane is a Ph.D. student at The Graduate Center at CUNY. She studies Black Geographies, social movements, borders, critical theory and migration.

Reading List
Diane’s recent article “A Call for Mourning: How To Adapt to Our American Ruins”
Frank B. Wilderson III, Afropessimism. Norton, 2020.
Afro-pessimism: An Introduction. Racked & Dispatched, 2017.
Available online for free.

TRANSCRIPT

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

afro, pessimism, political, spectacle, whiteness, people, theory, pessimist, anti blackness, black, call, understand, support, orienting, pushes, forces, movement, phrase

Saronik

So today I’m talking to my friend Diane about Afropessimism. But before we get into it, I’m going to ask Diane to introduce herself and her work. 

Diane

Hi, I’m Diane. I’m currently a graduate student at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. I study Black geographies, and I’m also doing critical migration studies, critical border theory, things like that.

Saronik  

That is brilliant and I can imagine that right now you must be very, very busy trying to sort of think through the moment that we’re going through, but I’m going to ask my first question, which is, what the heck is Afropessimism?

Diane

It’s such a great question to ask, especially right now, in a movement when people are, you know, trying to synthesize what’s happening. Many writers have been contributing to what is considered an Afropessimist spot, but what I’ve kind of consumed is that you know, Afropessimism complicates and organizes us to understand Black subjectivity within an anti-Black world, it stretches out our minds to the depths of what it can mean to deny one person’s humanity, but it also pushes us to consider what humanity should or could be.

Saronik  

Right so because this is, like, our format is shortness and so if you have to, if you had to express the generative aspects of Afropessimism in like, one sentence, what would that sentence be?

Diane

Yeah, Afropessimism lets us really understand how fucked up Black life could be on this planet. And I feel that you know, and maybe this is because I’m like, a low-key nihilist

Saronik 

So difficult not the be a low-key nihilist right now…

Diane

Not highkey, though, cause I’m positive and I have Black joy. But I think that, who knows, in a year from now we’ll see what people say. But some of the spectacle of the movement right has forced people to kind of reconsider what people really said that they were going to do or what they meant when they said that they supported Black Lives Matter. And that, the kind of disappointment from seeing the spectacle and not seeing the results that we know can kind of ensure healthy Black life has caused for people I think to kind of go back and reread some of this theory to kind of understand why these limitations or blocks–mind blocks–are existing terms of people orienting themselves to want to support Black liberation.

Saronik  

Yeah, and like we’ve been having the conversation about, you know, performative wokeness. And it can be very disheartening to realize on a granular, granular level and also like, if it hits you like a lightning bolt to what extent this is, you know, surface and to what extent the, it would take even like a step further in order to sort of actuate the kind of support that you claim to you know, give 

Diane

Definitely.

Saronik

I guess this is not a bad time to ask my second question, which is, how do we use Afropessimism to ask the question very, very sort of, in a situated way, is that how does this movement faced with both hostility from one side and a kind of performative, but not actual support from another side? How do we, how do we or how does the movement use Afropessimism?

Diane

I think Afropessimism forces us to think through the spectacle and look at pattern so as we, you know, the country garnered itself around George Floyd and, you know, people were rightly in on and shock. An Afropessimism would say, “Okay, well, did this 12 years ago with Trayvon Martin and we did this in 2001, with Amadou Diallo, and we’ve done this at the end of Reconstruction.” And so it’s, it’s this these continuities, and thinking through what the spectacle actually does for the psyche, the psychological effects of how we relate to whiteness, whether as racialized people or if you’re racialized as white, so it also forces us to go beyond the political and ask further questions as to why we’re orienting ourselves around the spectacle. Why are we shocked? Why are we not shocked?

Saronik  

Yeah, can I just, because you, you said a phrase that really opens up so many things, which is “beyond the political.”

Diane

Yeah.

Saronik

And the, you know, very simply put right now, you know, we are living in a moment where it is, it is our bane but also it’s, it’s necessary, that the political feeds into everything, 

Diane

Definitely.

Saronik

You know, our imaginary is beyond, as you said, is difficult to imagine for want of a better phrase, but so I just want to ask you about what areas you would chart in that realm beyond the political.

Diane

Yeah, I think it all oriented stuff back to the political definitely, but at what extent right, so what Afropessimism also does is it asks us to think through not only the legitimacy of political political action, right, so you know, looking at the Democrats and say, “Well, what the fuck, like, you guys are giving us Joe Biden. Why are you giving us Joe Biden right now?” Like that doesn’t seem like the answer. But it also allows us to think through okay, what is the true trajectory of this, this political project? Where did it stem from? And for the Afropessimist, it goes all the way back to, you know, real political moments in the US where race became the common language to articulate other political problems, whether if it was class based, not to say that they’re not, they don’t intersect, but to say that, like, for example, when you had immigrant groups coming to us in the mid-1800s, race became a way to mitigate those conversations, of how these new people can be integrated into the white structure, which Afropessimism also reminds us that whiteness is also ever changing and is a process and through that process, comes new forms of anti-Blackness. that processing of anti-Blackness is meant to reify whiteness.

Saronik

Yeah, and, like, you know, I read the article that you wrote called “A Call for Mourning” and I really like this sentence. You said, “We are part of a society that is always crumbling and acts like we cannot see the rubble. The Rastas call it Babylon, the capitalists call it the free market, we are in spiritual warfare. We are in spiritual warfare.” And that I think that was a real opening up because there is a sudden collapsing of everything right now into the political, but at the same time, you know, not least for sort of self-preservation and to borrow a phrase from capitalism, self-care. Just to sort of preface my next question with the article that you wrote, which we will be linking in the show notes. How does Afropessimism save the world?

Diane

Afropessimism saves the world by us asking us if this is the world we really want. So it kind of, it makes us reconsider what this world is and it pushes us to think about how we actually create a new world. We all can live in.

Saronik  

And also, I know that you didn’t want to link it, but if you don’t have an objection, I also want to sort of get a sense of what your understanding then is about the you know, Venn diagram between Afropessimism and Afrofuturism because you’re talking about futures right now, So…

Diane

Yeah, Afrofuturism is a cultural practice, it’s an art practice that I believe can be informed by Afropessimism. The ma–magic isn’t the best word–but…

Saronik

We can use the word “magic.” 

Diane

Magic, okay. Well, the magic of Afrofuturism is that the opening goes beyond Earth, the temporalities which we can play with in Afropessimism, the temporalities in Afrofuturism are indefinite. So what that does for us is it gives us new scales toward how we think about liberation. It pushes us to think about the past. It gives us space to mourn the past, gives us space to feel comfortable about who we are in the present. But It really allows us to have joy in what the future will bring. I think that Afropessimism, people get really thrown off by the title right, Afropessimism. Well, they’re pessimistic, they don’t care. What I think instead, what Afropessimism asks us to do is to really, really expand how we think about the current and Afrofuturism is like, let’s expand the current for sure. But also, let’s hope and let’s dream. And both are necessary. Both are necessary. Because if you can’t figure out your current you can’t dream for the future.

Saronik 

Yes, absolutely. If you have to–I keep giving you ultimatums, I’m so sorry. 

Diane

I love them. 

Saronik

But if you had to, you know, in the in the last minute that we have, if you had to create a very, very short reading list, what would go on that

Diane

So there was this really great reader that came out. It’s called Afropessimism: An Introduction, and it came out by Racked and Dispatched. They’re a low-key, small press, and they did this wonderful collection of different texts from Afropessimists. I think that’s the way in for sure. Even before Frank Wilderson’s new book, Afropessimism.

Saronik 

Brilliant, that was really short and sweet. Thank you so much, Diane. 

Diane

Thank you

Tagged : / / / /

Critique

by webwitchUncategorizedLeave a Comment on Critique

In this episode Kim and Saronik discuss Bruno Latour’s essay, “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30 (Winter 2004): 225-248.

Image source:
M. Platen, The New Curative Treatment of Disease: Handbook of Hygienic Rules of Life, Health Culture, and the Cure of Ailments Without the Aid of Drugs… London : Bong & Co., 1893, p. 668

TRANSCRIPT

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

critique, latour, engendering, essay, podcast, problem, pleasure, question, politics, talks, conspiracy theory, theory, write, reading, phosphors, object, diagrams, distinct pleasure, steam, antagonism

Saronik 

So Kim, what are we talking about today?

Kim

So in this episode we’re talking about Bruno Latour’s essay, “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam.” Because he asked a question in the title, we’re going to change our format a little bit so we can ask his question, too.

Saronik  

Yeah, that’s right. So we are basically handing over the organizational bits to Latour himself. Okay, so my first question is, what is critique?

Kim 

What the heck is critique?

Saronik  

I was being respectful too quickly, but I guess I shouldn’t be…

Kim

Well, I realized when we were thinking about how to ask these questions that “critique” is in our intro.

Saronik  

That’s very true. And, according to Latour, a critique needs saving.

Kim

Or does it?

Saronik

Or does it?

Kim

Maybe it should be thrown in the dustbin of history…

Saronik  

So what the heck is critique, Kim?

Kim

It’s a good question, and I don’t think that anyone really knows the answer.

Saronik  

Right, right. Okay, so I’m just gonna, yeah, I feel like we owe it to our listeners to sort of at least try to give, at least try to define critique in one sentence.

Kim

Okay. For sure. Critique is reading with politics.

Saronik

That is brilliant. Critique is reading with politics. But I think, and also something that Latour says, we begin with the impulse of reading with politics but in that process, we sort of set ourselves in a relationship of opposition or antagonism with the object of our study, and then we just get so much fun out of the fault finding, it’s just, and this is something that Latour also said, that there is a is a very distinct pleasure in this practice. And I completely agree with him on this. Because I felt it. I have felt that pleasure. And it’s not a, it’s not always a thing because…

Kim

Yeah, I mean, it’s the pleasure of intellectual performance. It’s the pleasure of being the wittiest guest at the dinner party.

Saronik  

Well yes, but the thing is, like, you know, there’s also that classical Socratic pleasure of, you know, the pleasure that you find Socrates embodying in Plato’s dialogues, which is yes, being the wittiest guest in the, in the dinner party, but also, I don’t know, like, it’s also the pleasure of engendering an ethos.

Kim

Yeah, but it’s connected to the politics question, right?

Saronik  

Absolutely, yes. So you know, when I say engendering an ethos, it’s also engendering the polis, and that in itself is, yes, it’s and as you succinctly put it, it’s reading with politics

Kim

Yeah, but then I think, I think it’s also the problem, right? So like, his example with the climate change deniers, the thing that he sees the problem with it is that other people are reading with the wrong kind of politics. Yeah.

Saronik  

Yeah, which is I mean, I think we can do a segue here.

Kim

Yeah, totally. Which it’s my turn to ask. 

Saronik

Right. It’s your turn to ask. 

Kim

Yes. So then, now that we have something of a working definition of critique, has critique run out of steam?

Saronik  

I think Latour says that to some degree it has or at least, it has run out of steam in the sense that it has lost or some of its sort of foundational roots have lost credibility. 

Kim

Okay. 

Saronik

This is, I mean, we should sort of historically contextualize the essay itself. This is written in the wake of 9/11. 

Kim

Yeah. 

Saronik

It, it sort bases its analytic on 9/11. And one of the things that are happening is that it’s, it’s sort of, there’s an efflorescence of conspiracy theories after 9/11 and Latour is writing in response to that, and does he actually say that, what is the difference between critique and conspiracy theory?

Kim

He talks about conspiracy theories. Yeah, actually. But actually, this is not my favorite point in his argument, because–

Saronik

What is your favorite point?

Kim

My favorite point is the bit where he talks about the sort of, well, where he talks about the rhetorical structure of the way critical arguments work. 

Saronik

That’s the end with the diagrams. 

Kim

Yeah, although I hate those diagrams, but I think…

Saronik  

Those diagrams look like I mean, that they were, like, made in the 90s with, like…

Kim

I think they were made in Word…

Saronik

Yeah, with Wordart. Yes, exactly, with Wordart. I loved Wordart as a teenager.

Kim

But oh, actually, wait, my really my favorite, favorite point in this essay is the one where he is, like, philosophers… where is it… let me let me read it to you because it’s so good: “The problem with philosophers is that because their jobs are so hard, they drink a lot of coffee and thus use in their arguments and inordinate quantity of pots, mugs, and jugs to which sometimes they might add an occasional rock.”

Saronik  

I love how very famous scholars, I think they arrive at a certain point in their career, when they deliberately try to write in a colloquial vein, and it’s, it’s really cute. Although, you know, pots, mugs, and jugs–I think I see this as a reference to classicism. Because if you, I think, if you look at sort of Hellenistic philosophy, there’s a lot of reference to pottery which, which goes to show that, how much our present institutions or  institutional philosophy is still very Classicist and sort of…

Kim

Yeah, but his point, the point that he is making there is not just, like, a silly one, but, but that as he says in the next line, “the objects of philosophers are never complicated enough,” which is, which is one mode of trying to move away from the Classicism of the academy, to say instead of simplifying things to their Platonic ideals, we should be dealing with the complexities of the world that modernity has generated.

Saronik  

Yeah, and you know, towards beginning he says, when he talks about science studies and what happens, what happens after there has been such a long traditional scholarship which says, well, scientific fact is socially constructed and, you know, that again, like, that is something that we are, that is a problem that we are facing head on right now with COVID. 

Kim

Yeah. 

Saronik

But the thing is, and this is something I think the essay does respond to, is, like, there is a difference between you saying scientific fact is socially constructed and someone saying Fauci doesn’t know shit, COVID isn’t real. You know, that’s, that’s where we draw the line between conspiracy theory and a critical overture.

Kim

Yeah, but, so I think, and this is where I disagree with Latour, and maybe it’s a good point for the next question.

Saronik  

Which I will ask you, which is how will, or will critique save the world?

Kim

Yeah, so has critique run out of steam, and will it save the world? So here’s why, here’s where I disagree with Latour: the way to solve this problem is by drawing some sort of line and saying no, this is the real, like, at this point, we have hit the real because I don’t think that solves any problems. And in fact, I am not 100% sure that there is a real.

Saronik

Okay. 

Kim

Or at least that there is reality that is not one that we have made. We have made the world that we live in to such an extraordinary extent that recourses to nature as a grounds for fact or truth is really arbitrary.

Saronik  

Well, we can end on a nebulous note.

Kim

Ohhh… yeah, yeah. Say goodbye. Okay.

Saronik

Yeah…

Tagged : / / / / / /

Unreliable Narrator

by webwitchUncategorizedLeave a Comment on Unreliable Narrator

Saronik asks Chad about narrators in fiction, and life, who cannot be trusted – their quirks, productive unreliabilities, their effect on present politics, the works! We talk around Wayne C. Booth’s The Rhetoric of Fiction.

Chad Hegelmeyer is a postdoc in English at NYU. His current project is sunbathing while reading Hannah Arendt. The Capybara stands, proudly, in place of Chad.

TRANSCRIPT

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

narrator, unreliable narrator, read, author, unreliable, irony, implied, humbert, text, story, narration, form, question, tricky, norms, people, worldview, literary, literature, chad

Saronik  00:50

So we are here today with Chad Hegelmeyer, and Chad is going to tell us all about the unreliable narrator. But before that, we want to hear from Chad about Chad.

Chad 01:00

Yeah. I am Chad Hegelmeyer. I recently graduated from the PhD. program at NYU in English and I’m going to be starting as a postdoc there in September. My field is 20th-century and contemporary American literature. And my dissertation was about fact-checking in literature. So we might see some ways in which this, the topic of the unreliable narrator, is somewhat related to the idea of fact-checking.

Saronik  01:29

Yeah, I mean, so we have talked about your work previously. And for people who are listening, Chad and I, we shared an office space at one time, so… 

Chad

Yes. 

Saronik

Brilliant. I’m just gonna jump right ahead and ask you: what the heck is an unreliable narrator?

Chad 01:48

Yeah. So actually, when I was talking to Kim, about being a guest on your great show, I wasn’t even sure if an unreliable narrator would be a good topic because it’s not really a “high theory” term, although it is definitely a literary theoretical term. But it’s also one of those terms that I think a lot of people think they know what it means. It seems obvious that it’s just a narrator that you don’t trust, but it’s actually a little more, like, subtly complicated than that. So…

Saronik  02:14

I mean, it is a really sort of a, when I grade my students papers it is a really popular idea even amongst my students, they see unreliable narrators as something that they can bank on sort of.

Chad 02:27

Yeah, I found that to be the case, too. It’s like actually one of those popularized literary terms, right? But yeah, it has this quite specific meaning and even though it seems like a concept that must have existed in literature, maybe since the beginning of time, as a term it wasn’t coined until 1961 in the US, so it has this, like, specific history in literary criticism as well that we can get into. But so, like, to give a really basic definition, an unreliable narrator, what it originally meant was a narrator whose perspective or worldview is implied by the text to diverge from the author’s. So the unreliable narrator is one that the texts wants us to read as wrong in some way, whether that’s factually wrong or morally wrong or philosophically wrong, and the standard by which we judge the wrongness or unreliability of the narrator, is by what we as readers perceive to be the author’s worldview, values, or norms based on the text that we’re reading.

Saronik  03:27

Right. So you have, like, you create, like, the very easy equation between, like an equation of authenticity between author and text.

Chad

Right.

Saronik

So it’s sort of it’s, like, it fits, that this was thought of in the 60s. I think I would say that no, that’s bullshit.

Chad 03:52

Yeah, I mean, it’s this moment after–we don’t have to get too far into this–but it’s this moment after New Criticism when people are thinking more rhetorically about literary texts. And so they’re becoming, you know, we start getting these conversations about the death of the author and implied authors and things like that. So, so, so yeah, I mean, one of the reasons that the unreliable narrator is a really tricky topic or concept is that it relies on this idea of an implied author, which we can get into more in a second.

Saronik  04:23

Sorry, I mean, I distracted you so can you just give us the coinage now?

Chad 04:27

Yeah, yeah, let’s jump into it. So um, it’s coined by Wayne C. Booth in his 1961 book, The Rhetoric of Fiction. And, I mean, one–so before we jump into this, do, like, should we define “narrator” a little bit? I think even “narrator” it’s, like…

Saronik  04:48

[???], sit down and figure out what the narrator is.

Chad 04:52

I mean, I’ll–I can do this very quickly, because you know, even the narrator can be a tricky concept. We don’t want to get it too tricky since we’re going to get tricky with the unreliable unreliability part in a second. I think that the easiest way of distinguishing or of defining a narrator is to go back to Plato and, like, the classical distinction between two modes of representation, drama and narrative. So it’s the difference between directly showing a story and indirectly telling or reporting a story. So in drama, you know, you have, like, you think of a play or a movie, you have figures that you’re watching act out the story, but in the narrative, someone is telling you that story. It’s coming from one person, that person is the source or mediator of the story. And that is the narrator right? The figure or the instance within the text that is the source and mediator of the story. So Gerard Genette, the famous narratologist will say that the narrator is the answer to the question, Who speaks or who is speaking when I read this text?

Saronik  05:51

I don’t remember teaching the concept of the narrator in this way, but this sort of dramaturgical explanation really helps. I’m going to ask you my next question, because I think that will help you sort of sink your teeth into the unreliability bit, which is: how do we use an unreliable narrator?

Chad 06:10

Yes. So this is sort of a tricky question for the unreliable narrator because I think that it’s such a specifically literary concept, right? So you’re only really going to use it when you’re reading literature. But it’s interesting because Wayne Booth does sort of describe the unreliable narrator as both a feature of a text and a kind of mode of reading that it prompts or that it insights. This is what he says–this is reading from his book, The Rhetoric of Fiction, “for lack of better terms, I have called a narrator reliable when he speaks for or acts in accordance with the norms of the work, which is to say the implied author’s norms are unreliable when he does not.” So we use the unreliable narrator when we try to make distinctions between what the narrator is telling us and what we presumed to be norms or values of the author as implied by the text itself.

Saronik  07:06

Right, I mean, yes, it originates in the criticism, but obviously has sort of massive, massive repercussions in rhetoric writ large. 

Chad

Yes. 

Saronik

And so yeah, I mean, if we can sort of pivot towards that…

Chad 07:21

For sure. I mean, so a key feature of–a key rhetorical feature–of the unreliable narrator is irony. So Booth has this really fascinating passage where he describes the point of the unreliable narrator being to help the reader and the implied author collude against the narrator. So I’ll just read what he says because it’s great: “Irony is always in part a device for excluding, as well as for including, and those who are included those who happen to have the necessary information to grasp the irony cannot but derive at least a part of their pleasure from a sense that others are excluded. In the irony with which we are concerned the speaker is himself the butt of the ironic point”–the speaker being the narrator– “the author and reader are secretly in collusion behind the narrator’s back agreeing upon the standard by which he has found wanting.” So it’s a pleasurable thing supposedly according to Booth where we judge the narrator, with the author where we’re in the know where we’re sort of in the same position as the author with respect to this unknowing, or fallible or unreliable narrator.

Saronik  08:29

This is, like, this is really interesting. We just like this sort of idea of agreement or consensus between author and reader in order to sort of scapegoat the narrator. And that is something or sort of the maneuvering that way in order to produce irony is something that is sort of the mainstay of much of Twitter right now. 

Chad 8:53

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so, I do want to make an important distinction here, because, you know, it’s kind of tempting to say that, you know, for instance, like Donald Trump is an unreliable narrator or, you know, someone else that we’re politically suspicious of is an unreliable narrator. But that’s not really the case, right? It’s not the case, or rather I should just say, like, Donald Trump is just someone whose speech we can’t trust, right? Which is different from an unreliable narrator, which is the assumption of a narrator who expresses beliefs or professes things that you actually do not, right? So in a way, it’s a bit like an extended form of sarcasm, where you’re adopting this mask that says the opposite of what you actually, yourself, believe to be the case.

Saronik  09:34

Yeah. So my last question is–and I’m really, really excited about what your answer to this question is–how will the unreliable narrator save the world? I bet you’ve never been asked this question before.

Chad 09:50

No, I definitely haven’t. I mean, I think my first inclination is to say it won’t. I mean, I think there’s even a question about whether the unreliable narrator is actually making the world a worse place, right? Like, one thing we could ask ourselves is whether the pleasure we gained from colluding with the implied author against the narrator is an ethical one, or, like, one that we should be partaking in, you know, but I think it is a way to explore or to have access to certain viewpoints or worldviews that might be really difficult to assess and judge and access otherwise, so I mean, using Lolita as a good example, Humbert Humbert, for anyone who hasn’t read Lolita, Humbert Humbert is the narrator and he is a pedophile who serially rapes a young girl over the course of like a year in the novel. And it’s awful because it’s written from his point of view and he claims many times that this is basically, like, you know, a straightforward love story. And it’s even more disturbing because the way Nabokov writes Humbert Humbert narration, it’s sometimes genuinely beautiful, insightful, and profound. And of course at the same time, it’s horrifying, monstrous, and despicable. So, I think an example like this can show the ways in which unreliable narration goes to some of the mysteries of cognition and awareness, you know, like how can a person know or understand one thing so well and be so wrong about something else? And it also addresses lots of questions about, like, to what extent or whether we can pull apart aesthetic form and ideological content. I think it also gets to the heart of this desire for there to be some kind of, like, moral judgment in our narration and stories. I think we live in an age now where we kind of don’t want our stories to have, like, these overt or obvious moral dimensions, but we also do, right? I think that the unreliable narrator gets particularly tricky in moments where people feel like there are multiple claims on reality, right? Where, like, reality feels fragmented or difficult to understand. And there seems to be these like competing understandings of what’s going on. Because in those cases, you can get unreliable narrators where like some people read straightforwardly and literally and other people read an unreliable narrator, right? I mean, this seems to be going, this seems to be what’s going on when, you know, two people read a Breitbart article and one goes away horrified and one goes away being like, yeah, that was the truth, and historical moments like that. I think it’s true that the unreliable narrative becomes a very tricky, tricky form of satire, right, or irony to employ. Often–not always, but often–extreme forms of unreliable narration are meant to shock readers, right? So you know, think of Humbert Humbert in Lolita, or even for a slightly more recent example, the narrator Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, who’s an extreme sadist. And we’re not supposed to read that book as like a fun romp through torture and cannibalism, right? We’re supposed to read it as, like, horrifying and disturbing. So I think in moments of extreme political or social divisiveness, you do sort of need a more extreme or more blatant form of unreliable narration If you want it to be read if you want to guarantee that it’s read that way. Yeah, it’s a subtle technique, right? And so when subtlety is not really the moment like it is right now in our political culture, it can be difficult to employ.

Saronik  13:25

Okay, thank you so much Chad. Thank you. for talking to us about the unreliable narrator. 

Chad

Of course. Thank you for having me.

Kim 13:34

And thank you for listening to High Theory.

Saronik  13:38

If you like our podcast, please review and subscribe on Spotify, iTunes, Patreon or wherever you get your podcast fix. You can also find us at high theory.net

Kim 13:49

Eoghan Quinn composes our theme music and Kim Adams and Saronik Bosu edit our audio. We hope you have a highly theoretical day.

Tagged : / / / / /

Dogs

by webwitchUncategorizedLeave a Comment on Dogs

In this episode, Kim finds out that Saronik gets a little weird when it comes to dogs. We talk about Donna J. Haraway’s book The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. 

Haraway studies methods (and practitioners) of agility training in order to try and figure out what these praxes that bring together nature and culture, by means of which humans relate with species they have evolved with. 

Saronik is waiting to meet Miles, Kim’s amazing Newfie. Below, you can see him with Toby. 

He met Toby on two occasions a year apart, at the same cafe in Bushwick, completely by accident. 

TRANSCRIPT

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

dogs, species, companion, relationship, theory, essay, interspecies, human, constitutive, tropes, boxes, manifesto, calls, high, narcissism, partners, composes, harrowing, save

Kim

This episode, I am talking with Saronik about dogs.

Saronik  

That is correct. I am so excited I’ve been literally dreaming about this episode. 

Kim

Excellent.

Saronik

I’m not kidding. 

Kim

This seems like a very silly question to ask. But since it’s our standard question, what the heck is a dog?

Saronik  

Oh, I thought you were gonna ask what the heck are dogs in theory?

Kim

I wanna know what a dog is, first.

Saronik

I do not know what a dog is. That’s a question that I’ve sought the answer for and failed with good reason, I think. But I think–so I love dogs, which is an understatement, but we don’t have time for the actual statement. And I’m also one of those people who didn’t grow up having a dog and I think, like, we are a special subset within the group of dog lovers, like, people who didn’t grow up with a dog. I think we are, like, a special subset because I think there’s a kind of, like, sweet desperation to our love. And so I think the dog or, like, the love of a dog is the best thing to take us out of ourselves and undermine our narcissism. So it sucks that we often use them for narcissistic purposes. Today’s theoretical dogs are also, like, very real dogs and are from this essay called “The Companion Species Manifesto” by Donna Haraway, which is from 2003. And Donna Haraway, her famous essay, of course, is “The Cyborg Manifesto” and she’s a professor emeritus at UC Santa Cruz and also, okay, also shout out to the magical Elaine Friedgood. We have both been taught by her. So we both know the magic. But the shout out is because I first read this essay for one of her courses. So I’m going to, like, quote a lot of things today because I really like her language. And so she says, “dogs are about the inescapable, contradictory story of relationships, constitutive relationships in which none of the partners pre-exists the relating and the relating is never done once and for all,” and I think that is so sweet.

Kim

Wait, whoa, you’ve gotta parse that. What the heck does that mean?

Saronik  

Because I think it means that, like…

Kim

Can you read it again? 

Saronik 

Yes. So she says, “dogs are about the inescapable contradictory story of relationships, constitutive relationships in which none of the partners pre-exist through relating, and the relating is never done once and for all.” So I think what she means is, like, I think the best lesson to take from this would be, like, we might think that you know, we as humans exist prior to the dog, but the kind of people we are without dogs, we don’t exist as those people independent of the dog. 

Kim

Okay.

Saronik

So, so I think, to put it even more simply, which is basically what we should do, is that dogs change us in ways that we don’t always account for.

Kim

Do you mean individual dogs or like, domestication of dogs in human history?

Saronik  

I think, I think both. And she, yeah. So in the essay, she sort of, she’s very clear about the fact that, I think, she’s talking about both, okay. And so, I think, so the human dog dyad, or the human dog relationship, I think she thinks of it as this sort of unique coming together of instinct and training. And she uses this sort of composite word “natureculture,” like one word–natureculture–for it, and so I think, like, what’s very clearly apparent in the human-dog relationship can be said of other companion species as well, you know, species, including humans who have sort of evolved together. 

Kim

Okay. 

Saronik

And so we have developed our languages and physiology and figurations of companionship based on these relationships, and she says, us beings are “prehensile opportunistic ready to yoke unlikely partners into something new, something symbiogenitic, co-constitutive companion species and co-evolution are the rule, not the exception. Flesh and figure are not far apart. Tropes are what make us want to look and need to listen for surprises that get us out of inherited boxes.” Yeah, which is a ton of things. I know. 

Kim

That one’s gonna be pressing too, but wait I have, I have a more fundamental question before you go by companion species. Do you mean or does she mean that, like, does she mean social animals in the sense that, like, humans are a species in which there is companionship? What does she mean?

Saronik  

No, no, no, she means between species.

Kim

Okay. 

Saronik

Yeah. And she, the idea of companion species is larger than dogs, but I think we can think of dogs both as sort of emblematic and also. Like, it’s the most it’s the one relationship that is in front of us in a very, like there’s a lot of attention already on it. So it’s easier to study I guess.

Kim

Are you a companion species with the birds outside your window?

Saronik 

I got the third-degree grilling! Yes, I would hope that they consider me as a companion species, although they don’t really care about my existence. I definitely care a lot about their existence, but yeah.

Kim

I think they care about you, too. Maybe that’s why they’re singing for

Saronik  

That is true. They do sing a lot outside this window

Kim 

Okay, anyway, so let’s get back to that quote. Can you read it again?

Saronik  

Yes. “Us beings are prehensile opportunistic beings ready to yoke unlikely partners into something new, something symbiogenetic, flesh and figure are not far apart. Tropes are what make us want to look and need to listen for surprises that get us out of our inherited boxes.” I think one I am not going to claim that I, like, absolutely understand this, but I think what she means is that there’s a certain kind of immediacy and sort of tangibility to the actual real relationship between human and dog. But, like, dogs also sort of permeate our language; they are the source of many of our metaphors and tropes. The figural aspects of the dog is sort of useful in understanding how far they have contributed to our evolution as a species.

Kim

Okay, so then perhaps this is a good point for me to ask my next question. 

Saronik

Yes. 

Kim

Which is, how do I use dogs in theory?

Saronik  

I think it’s a way to sort of de instrumentalize on like, de-accessorize dogs and acknowledge that we evolve vis-a-vis them and as we evolve vis-a-vis all companion species. And we can definitely, sort of, in a very real sense, we can use dogs in theory to fight horrible breeding practices. And I think Haraway channels a lot of the rhetoric that rescue programs use. The sort of underlying tenet of the breeding program is that the dog from inception to death is nothing but an object for your use in that case. But in the sense of like rescue programs, you are basically, you know, affording a certain kind of respect to the species and you are helping them as opposed to sort of creating them just for your use, I think. We have created this being for our predominantly aesthetic use, which has biological problems that are of our own creation. And that is just horrendous. Okay, so…

Kim

How will the theory dogs save the world?

Saronik  

Theory dogs. Yeah, I mean, I’m so glad you didn’t ask “how will dogs save the world” because that’s a rhetorical question. So, I think, so Haraway argues against the idea, she says that this sort of very popular idea that dogs love us unconditionally is actually like a pernicious idea. And she calls it again– it’s, like, a bombshell of a phrase– 

Kim

Yeah. 

Saronik

She calls it “the neurosis of caninophiliac narcissism.”

Kim

The neurosis of caninophiliac narcissism.

Saronik  

Because she says that, when we say that dogs love us unconditionally, it sort of absolves us of some kind of interspecies responsibility. 

Kim

Okay.

Saronik

And she says, I quote, “The dog’s value and life does not depend on the human’s perception but the dog’s often,” which I think is very, very true. And sorry, what was your… what was the question?

Kim

How will the theory dogs save the world?

Saronik  

Yes. Can I just, like, I’m just gonna sum up everything I’m feeling right now in one sentence. I think the way we think about dogs should help us resist our tendency and, like, this almost, like, irresistible tendency to collapse or reduce the world onto the human. I think the least likely, sort of animal or species that we can think of in this respect is the dog because the dog is the most humanized of species. So I think that’s what ‘s the brilliance of Haraway’s intervention, which is that she is sort of creating a split between this very easy equation that we have between us and dogs and sort of, sort of, like giving us pause to think about it. 

Kim

Okay. So, how will dogs save the world? 

Saronik

How will dogs save the world? 

Kim

Yeah. 

Saronik

Because, well, I mean, a world without dogs is not really worth living in. So they save the world by existing.

Kim

So that’s it for our episode on dogs. We hope that you recognize the interspecies relationship between you and every dog in the world. And if you have one, scratch it behind the ears.

Aura

by UncategorizedLeave a Comment on Aura

In this episode Saronik asks Kim about the aura.

The idea comes from Walter Benjamin’s 1935 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”

Besides the central text, the episode references Benjamin’s 1940 essay, “On the Concept of History” in which the Angel of History appears. We also talk about Oscar Wilde’s 1891 essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.” And make a passing mention of the British artist Banksy.

The image is a photograph that Kim took of a painting of peaches in an art museum in Amsterdam. She forgets artist and title of the painting, and would welcome reminders from listeners.

TRANSCRIPT

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

aura, art, mona lisa, theory, reading, text, marxists, answer, mourning, culture, circulating, camera, reproduction, diminished, foundations, podcast, fixating, high, question

Saronik  

In this episode, I, Saronik, talk to Kim about the aura. Okay, question number one: What the heck is the aura?

Kim 

The aura is what is lost when you reproduce a piece of art. 

Saronik

Right.

Kim

Like when you copy it. So, like, when you take a photograph of the Mona Lisa, the difference between your photograph on your iPhone and the Mona Lisa, the gap between those two things is the aura.

Saronik 

That is brilliantly put. My next question is, How do I use the aura in my life? Give me an example.

Kim 

So you go to the Louvre and take your iPhone, take a picture of the Mona Lisa and you’re like, that’s not nearly as good as the real one.

Saronik 

You know, what I’ve heard is, like, I’ve heard, like, people are always surprised by how small it is. Like, it’s way like, tinier than you would expect. Like because we are sort of fixating on the Mona Lisa example. 

Kim

Yeah, well, but that’s actually one of the things Benjamin says. Interestingly so, like, he’s talking about the, like, the camera as his specific example, too, as to, like, the technology in question rather than the art and one of the sort of functions of the mechanical aperture of the camera’s eye is that it, it can see things that no human eye can see. So it sees things in different proportions. So it zooms things in, it can take small pictures like little tiny corners or whatever things that you would never see. And because we’re so used to seeing the Mona Lisa in reproduction, where it is, like, expanded or made to appear larger than it is, then we think it’s larger than it is.

Saronik  

That sounds legit. And also like, I don’t know, I mean, I think did I begin the Mona Lisa example or did you? Anyway, anyway, I think we should move on. My third and final question of the day is, how will the aura save the world?

Kim 

Do you want the real serious answer to this question?

Saronik  

I want the real completely like the scarily serious shit

Kim 

The like obvious answer is, well I mean, come on fuck off Benjamin, it won’t. But the, like, real, like, theory bro answer or like at least the like the answer that Benjamin gives is that, well, so there are two possible readings of the text. I mean, there are as many possible readings of the text as there are readers. But there are two sort of mainline interpretations of the text and they’re both supported by the text. One of them, Benjamin’s kind of, like, mourning the loss of the aura. So, in “The Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” the aura is diminished. So, because we see all these photographs of the Mona Lisa circulating all the time, the Mona Lisa‘s aura is diminished. But actually somewhat amusingly, the Mona Lisa is enlarged in our imaginations, as we have discussed. But we can think of Benjamin and–in a way Marxism–is a project that is really culturally conservative in a lot of ways, or at least Marxists are often very culturally conservative people. And there’s this pole towards the past that, like, we can feel Benjamin mourning the loss of the aura, but the, like, straight ahead, canonical, whatever revolutionary Marxist reading of the text would be that Benjamin celebrates the loss of the aura, because the loss of the aura is what’s going to democratize art.

Saronik 

Right. I was really interested in what you said about, like, Marxists being culturally conservative and you know who, like, I feel, like, people who are not out and out Marxists when they try to sort of do Marxism, they are more interesting sometimes. And, the text that I’m thinking of is “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” by Oscar Wilde. And he has like a really interesting take on, like, art in a socialist world, which is like, like in a socialist utopia, he would vary eradication of monitoring responsibility in kind of a different glory for….

Kim 

Totally, but I think we have lost Benjamin. 

Saronik

okay, let’s go back. 

Kim

So how will the aura…

Saronik  

How will the aura save the world? And you said that there are two readings, and one of them, which, if I’m guessing correctly, you think is the sort of more accurate one, is that he does mourn the death of the aura while at the same time suggesting that there is a democratization of art that’s happening.

Kim 

Yeah, like, like I think that you know, the correct reading is that both are going on. But the like, if we’re going to use the aura to save the world, it will be the aura will bring about the coming revolution by democratizing art, basically, by taking art out of the sort of palaces of the elite or the you know, museums and institutions of the bourgeoisie and bringing it into the sphere of the proletariat. So it will, like, the aura will save us by dying, basically.

Saronik 

Yeah. I think it’s sort of like the apotheosis of this idea is when Banksy paintings are sold in auction houses.

Kim 

Yeah, I don’t know I, like, but I think the weird thing is that the art system or capitalism–which are the same–have both sort of they’ve somehow managed to, like, swallow art again. Like Benjamin’s answer is not, like, his reading of the scenario is actually not quite correct, right? So he imagines that the camera the invention of photography, the widespread reproduction of images, lithography, all of that stuff, newspapers, circulation, circulating images, all of this sort of visual culture of the 19th-century and the early 20th-century is is what’s going to is going to sort of shake the foundations of culture. This would be the cultural Marxist reading in that the shaking of the foundations of the culture, sort of also simultaneously will shake the foundations of the society as a whole and about the revolution. But I think his assumption that technology, specifically the technology of the camera, generally the technology of mass production, applied this fear of culture. the idea that that will do that, that that will accomplish that aim is actually ultimately flawed. Like, it doesn’t fucking work. History doesn’t bear it out. 

Saronik 

Yes. I mean, that that’s true, but I think you know, we’ve gotten some slack because he is not a prophet. 

Kim

But he fucking thinks he is, man! all that shit about the angel and the messianic times, the weak messianic…

Saronik 

Oh I love it, it is one of my favorite things in the world because it is so high. Anyway, I think…

Kim 

This is probably the end. Thank you.

Tagged : / / / / / / / /

Teaser 1

by webwitchUncategorizedLeave a Comment on Teaser 1

Welcome to High Theory!

High Theory is a podcast in which we get high on the substance of theory.  And we ask the three standard questions, to each other, and our guests.  We invite you to listen and learn, and think critically!

This podcast comes at difficult ideas from the academy with irreverence. Wikipedia says that “critical theory” is “the reflective assessment and critique of society and culture in order to reveal and challenge power structures,” which suggests a rather serious subject, but we think theory is hardly dense and somber and sober.  In these times, we need to love, and finding the buzz of curiosity and delight in critical thinking, we want to bring that joy to you.  

We aim to distill some solid points from our ramblings. We are looking at theory differently, and making pretty wild connections. Like maybe having and loving a dog will make you a better activist. Or hating on Humbert Humbert might help you sift through fake news. If you have an idea you would like us to talk about, let us know!

You can subscribe on Spotify, iTunes, Patreon, or wherever you get your podcast fix. You can also find us right here at hightheory.net.

Tagged : / / / / / /
css.php