Here's an interesting story. A SUNY Buffalo academic wrote various bits of false information on Wikipedia, some easier to fact-check than others. Guess how long it took before the information was corrected?
Take a guess ... then read the article to find out if you were right.
Friday, October 27, 2006
What makes the Internet different from traditional tri-media?
- No single entity owns it; no single entity controls it. There are no programming managers or station owners to decide what gets "aired" and what doesn't. And it eludes censorship more than any other medium.
- Related to the previous point, the amount of "airtime" is infinite. Infinite viewpoints. Infinite voices. A teenager's blog can exist side by side with BBC News.
- More conducive to interaction and discussion. (Compare any bulletin board with any phone-in radio or TV show.) In some ways it allows for more discussion than even face-to-face meetings, because it transcends geographic limitations (more than all other media as well), and people don't even have to be in the same time zone.
- It'll only get cheaper and more accessible, while TV spots are only getting more expensive. In major cities in the Philippines, it now only costs P15 for an hour of high-speed broadband Internet use in an Internet cafe, and that price is only going to go down.
- The number of people that access tri-media is going down. The number of people using the Internet is going up. The most recent McCann study shows that urban Philippine teenagers don't read newspapers or watch traditional TV as much anymore; they get both their news and entertainment from the Internet.
- While it is currently limited by mobility (up until now you still need to be in front of a computer to use the Internet), as the technology improves, it will only become more mobile.
Of course it has it's limits. For the most part, it's only available where the necessary infrastructure (electricity, for example) is available. But similar limitations affect traditional tri-media as well.
===================
Introduction
My husband is one of the country's experts on Internet marketing; he is also one of the founders and the current GM of the most successful Internet bulletin board in the country, that also happens to be the most succesful non-news Philippine website. He is, in addition, in charge of ad sales for the Filipinos' favorite social networking site.
Both of us are fascinated with but realistic about the possibilities that the Internet provides. As an economics graduate who is very much interested in culture, he's been spending the last five years or so observing and analyzing how the Internet is gradually transforming the marketplace. As a political philosopher who is also very much interested in culture, I've been wondering what effect the Internet might also have on our public spaces.
The Marketplace
My husband, of course, has already accumulated lot of data about how the Internet has already been transforming the marketplace. Neither of us think that the Internet is going to make brick-and-mortar stores obsolete any time soon (as some people have exaggerated). However, the way that commerce on the Internet works does seem to be somewhat different from the way it works in the brick-and-mortar world. Instead of only buying the most popular, the most marketed, the most advertised goods online, people appear to take a relatively more active role in purchasing and looking also for books that might not necessarily be on the bestseller list, looking also for films or video that did not have the same multi-million marketing budget that Hollywood films had (a phenomenon that has launched an interesting debate about "The Long Tail", the shift from mass markets to niche markets--a view that I think is a little extreme in some respects but quite insightful). Instead of being taken just by the flashiest ads, consumers use the Internet to look for information and reviews about the computer, the car, the gadget, or the cellphone that they're interested in. And in that way, more power is put into the hands of the consumers; the most famous story is of how a defect in a Pentium chip was discovered by a consumer, how information about the defect was spread through the Internet, and about how this forced Intel to launch the first mass recall of computer chips in the history. Ethically-minded consumers in the UK visit Ethiscore to find out information that will not be voluntarily provided by companies: how they do in terms of fair trade, animal welfare, and environmental responsibility.
The stories abound, and most of you are probably familiar with them. One of the most viewed You Tube videos are home made videos made by a pair of Japanese teenagers in their college dorm. You Tube itself and Google before it, are stories of how the little person with limited resources can become a major player in the Internet marketplace. And then of course, there is my favorite story of all, the story of Open Source. (Mozilla rules!)
This is not to say that the Internet is a magical balm for the problems of the market. But to brush aside the very real changes in the marketplace that the Internet is introducing would be foolish.
Public Space
Which leads to my own question, regarding the Internet and public space. There are quite a lot of problems with viewing the Internet in this light, because, first of all, it is not one space, but a multiplicity of spaces where people congregate among other users with similar interests. For the most part, then, the Internet is actually a multiplicity of largely private spaces: a small group here of online friends who read one another's blogs, a small group there of World of Warcraft fanatics who frequent the same bulletin board, and so forth ....
But there are a few phenomena that I want to think about which I think point to the possibilities of how the Internet might affect our public spaces.
One is the rise of the public blogger. A few weeks ago, a book was published of the collected blog entries of "Batjay", a rather popular blogger who writes about his experiences being an overseas Filipino, first in Singapore, now in the United States. Several months ago, the Philippine Star introduced their new regular columnist, "Sassy Lawyer", a lawyer and mother who was "discovered" through her popular blog where she comments on news and public affairs. Both Batjay and Sassy Lawyer became popular bloggers not because of any social network of powerful people, nor because of any extraordinary educational credentials, but simply because, for whatever reason, people liked their blogs. More and more people linked to them from their own blogs. And then finally, the publishers of books and newspapers took notice. The rise of public bloggers is an interesting phenomena which is very different from the way that pundits ordinarily become public thinkers in the traditional tri-media.
There are other interesting phenomena as well, such as the increase of eyewitness accounts to newsworthy events. Just twenty years ago, when a big event happened--a bomb blast, for example--news organizations would send a single journalist to the site and the entire event would be reported from his perspective and the perspective of the few people that he had the chance to interview. Today, when a bomb goes off, what happens is you have hundreds of people directly affected by the bomb blast, all living within its locality, typing on their blogs their own eyewitness accounts, uploading their own videos to You Tube, uploading their own photos to Flickr. The news reports that do come out on official news websites are no longer dependent on the journalists who managed to make the trip to the site, but they draw also from accounts of bloggers, You Tube and Flickr users.
And there's more that I have yet to think about.
Again, I don't think that any of this spells the end of the newspaper or of the television news organization. But I think that there is something about the logistics of the Internet that does have some real impact on our public spaces.
(And if I may just add, I think that the whole radical postmodern deconstructionist reading of how the Internet is going to destroy the meaning of the "self" is just a little ... well ... silly. Gaya ng sinabi ni Padre Ferriols sa isang panayam, ang tao ay maaaring magpanggap kahit nasa harapan mo na siya. Even on the Internet, one isn't completely "disembodied." And deceptive portrayals of the self are a decision that a person makes whether he is sitting in front of you or communicating with you via YM; such deception is not a direct product of being in a "noncorporeal" universe.)
- Related to the previous point, the amount of "airtime" is infinite. Infinite viewpoints. Infinite voices. A teenager's blog can exist side by side with BBC News.
- More conducive to interaction and discussion. (Compare any bulletin board with any phone-in radio or TV show.) In some ways it allows for more discussion than even face-to-face meetings, because it transcends geographic limitations (more than all other media as well), and people don't even have to be in the same time zone.
- It'll only get cheaper and more accessible, while TV spots are only getting more expensive. In major cities in the Philippines, it now only costs P15 for an hour of high-speed broadband Internet use in an Internet cafe, and that price is only going to go down.
- The number of people that access tri-media is going down. The number of people using the Internet is going up. The most recent McCann study shows that urban Philippine teenagers don't read newspapers or watch traditional TV as much anymore; they get both their news and entertainment from the Internet.
- While it is currently limited by mobility (up until now you still need to be in front of a computer to use the Internet), as the technology improves, it will only become more mobile.
Of course it has it's limits. For the most part, it's only available where the necessary infrastructure (electricity, for example) is available. But similar limitations affect traditional tri-media as well.
===================
Introduction
My husband is one of the country's experts on Internet marketing; he is also one of the founders and the current GM of the most successful Internet bulletin board in the country, that also happens to be the most succesful non-news Philippine website. He is, in addition, in charge of ad sales for the Filipinos' favorite social networking site.
Both of us are fascinated with but realistic about the possibilities that the Internet provides. As an economics graduate who is very much interested in culture, he's been spending the last five years or so observing and analyzing how the Internet is gradually transforming the marketplace. As a political philosopher who is also very much interested in culture, I've been wondering what effect the Internet might also have on our public spaces.
The Marketplace
My husband, of course, has already accumulated lot of data about how the Internet has already been transforming the marketplace. Neither of us think that the Internet is going to make brick-and-mortar stores obsolete any time soon (as some people have exaggerated). However, the way that commerce on the Internet works does seem to be somewhat different from the way it works in the brick-and-mortar world. Instead of only buying the most popular, the most marketed, the most advertised goods online, people appear to take a relatively more active role in purchasing and looking also for books that might not necessarily be on the bestseller list, looking also for films or video that did not have the same multi-million marketing budget that Hollywood films had (a phenomenon that has launched an interesting debate about "The Long Tail", the shift from mass markets to niche markets--a view that I think is a little extreme in some respects but quite insightful). Instead of being taken just by the flashiest ads, consumers use the Internet to look for information and reviews about the computer, the car, the gadget, or the cellphone that they're interested in. And in that way, more power is put into the hands of the consumers; the most famous story is of how a defect in a Pentium chip was discovered by a consumer, how information about the defect was spread through the Internet, and about how this forced Intel to launch the first mass recall of computer chips in the history. Ethically-minded consumers in the UK visit Ethiscore to find out information that will not be voluntarily provided by companies: how they do in terms of fair trade, animal welfare, and environmental responsibility.
The stories abound, and most of you are probably familiar with them. One of the most viewed You Tube videos are home made videos made by a pair of Japanese teenagers in their college dorm. You Tube itself and Google before it, are stories of how the little person with limited resources can become a major player in the Internet marketplace. And then of course, there is my favorite story of all, the story of Open Source. (Mozilla rules!)
This is not to say that the Internet is a magical balm for the problems of the market. But to brush aside the very real changes in the marketplace that the Internet is introducing would be foolish.
Public Space
Which leads to my own question, regarding the Internet and public space. There are quite a lot of problems with viewing the Internet in this light, because, first of all, it is not one space, but a multiplicity of spaces where people congregate among other users with similar interests. For the most part, then, the Internet is actually a multiplicity of largely private spaces: a small group here of online friends who read one another's blogs, a small group there of World of Warcraft fanatics who frequent the same bulletin board, and so forth ....
But there are a few phenomena that I want to think about which I think point to the possibilities of how the Internet might affect our public spaces.
One is the rise of the public blogger. A few weeks ago, a book was published of the collected blog entries of "Batjay", a rather popular blogger who writes about his experiences being an overseas Filipino, first in Singapore, now in the United States. Several months ago, the Philippine Star introduced their new regular columnist, "Sassy Lawyer", a lawyer and mother who was "discovered" through her popular blog where she comments on news and public affairs. Both Batjay and Sassy Lawyer became popular bloggers not because of any social network of powerful people, nor because of any extraordinary educational credentials, but simply because, for whatever reason, people liked their blogs. More and more people linked to them from their own blogs. And then finally, the publishers of books and newspapers took notice. The rise of public bloggers is an interesting phenomena which is very different from the way that pundits ordinarily become public thinkers in the traditional tri-media.
There are other interesting phenomena as well, such as the increase of eyewitness accounts to newsworthy events. Just twenty years ago, when a big event happened--a bomb blast, for example--news organizations would send a single journalist to the site and the entire event would be reported from his perspective and the perspective of the few people that he had the chance to interview. Today, when a bomb goes off, what happens is you have hundreds of people directly affected by the bomb blast, all living within its locality, typing on their blogs their own eyewitness accounts, uploading their own videos to You Tube, uploading their own photos to Flickr. The news reports that do come out on official news websites are no longer dependent on the journalists who managed to make the trip to the site, but they draw also from accounts of bloggers, You Tube and Flickr users.
And there's more that I have yet to think about.
Again, I don't think that any of this spells the end of the newspaper or of the television news organization. But I think that there is something about the logistics of the Internet that does have some real impact on our public spaces.
(And if I may just add, I think that the whole radical postmodern deconstructionist reading of how the Internet is going to destroy the meaning of the "self" is just a little ... well ... silly. Gaya ng sinabi ni Padre Ferriols sa isang panayam, ang tao ay maaaring magpanggap kahit nasa harapan mo na siya. Even on the Internet, one isn't completely "disembodied." And deceptive portrayals of the self are a decision that a person makes whether he is sitting in front of you or communicating with you via YM; such deception is not a direct product of being in a "noncorporeal" universe.)
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Shopping.
If I were to teach history to undergrads, I'd teach classes by focusing on the development of one mundane item--like a class entitled "The History of Philippine Footwear," for example--and use that as a take-off point to discuss the changes in society through the centuries.
And that's why i really enjoy articles like this one entitled, The Invention of Shopping. It would be interesting to do a study like this in the Philippines.
I watched a Deutsche Welle program that was very similar: its hook was the competition in more and more German cities between the giant supermarket and the small neighborhood grocer's store. From there, it explored how economic changes in Germany in the last two centuries had affected grocery-shopping habits in the country.
Interesting, 'di ba?
And that's why i really enjoy articles like this one entitled, The Invention of Shopping. It would be interesting to do a study like this in the Philippines.
I watched a Deutsche Welle program that was very similar: its hook was the competition in more and more German cities between the giant supermarket and the small neighborhood grocer's store. From there, it explored how economic changes in Germany in the last two centuries had affected grocery-shopping habits in the country.
Interesting, 'di ba?
Otto, Rational and Nonrational
I got myself into a little discussion about Otto's "rational" and "nonrational" categories.
I really love handling PH 103. I realized that during oral exams.
I really love handling PH 103. I realized that during oral exams.
"Capital," 2
More disjointed, uninformed questions to betray my ignorance of Bourdieu. :)
It's a good thing that the Internet has some primary sources, as some of my questions in my earlier post seem to be answered in some of Bourdieu's essays, as well as in some secondary texts.
First of all, Bourdieu appears to use the term "capital" when referring to culture and society, not as a metaphor, but really "capital as capital," and that the "logic" of capital applies across the board. Moreover, he appears to say that cultural and social capital do emerge from economic capital.
On the one hand, I see how this might be helpful from the perspective of wanting to measure or empirically quantify cultural and social capital (assuming it's possible). I find it useful in the way that Bourdieu describes how one form of capital can be transformed into another form of capital (such as in the way someone spends money to educate himself and then uses that education to earn more money).
But I also wonder if problems might arise when culture and society are seen in this way. As I alluded to in my previous post, economic resources are finite, storable, and disposable. It does not appear to be completely accurate to describe cultural and social capital in the same way.
Case in point: the notion of "surplus." If we were to follow Marxist analysis (Bourdieu seems to be a neo-Marxist), surplus of economic capital is what allows exploitation to emerge.
This appears to be problematic whether one agrees and disagrees with Marx's initial premise. First, if we agree with Bourdieu's neo-Marxism it would seem that the weakness of the word "capital" when used to describe culture and society is that we cannot describe a "surplus." In classical Marx, the meaning of "surplus" is clear--it is the extra labor that a worker produces to raise capital for the capitalist. Coming from a classical Marxist perspective, then, there is a clear basis for what can be constituted as "exploitative" or "unjust." It appears to become problematic, however, when we talk about social and cultural capital, as there appears to be no measure for "surplus" in those realms. (Cf. Comments made in this paper.)
Now, if we disagree with the Marxist premise to begin with, then a second question emerges: economic capital can be quantifiably measured in terms of "more" and "less." Can the same be said, however, for social and cultural capital, and can we place the same on a hierarchy? Are we to immediately assume, for example, that the social and cultural capital that emerges from those with more economic capital is "higher" or "more" than the social and cultural capital that emerges from those with less economic capital? While that does often seem to be the case, is it really always necessarily so? Or does Bourdieu have a more relative view of culture and society, wherein different situations demand different kinds of cultural capital not lined up in a neat hierarchy(for example, being a wealthy Australian won't do much for me if I want to do business in, say, rural China, unless I learn to integrate myself better into rural Chinese society). (Cf. Comments made in this paper.) Leland mentioned that Bourdieu speaks of different fields where different groups are dominant and are dominated, but if that is the case, then it certainly does not correspond to a single hierarchy, in which case the flaws of using the term "capital" emerge.
I also have a question regarding Bourdieu's views regarding the transmission of cultural capital. I'm not sure how to articulate the question, but while reading Forms of Capital the picture of the "technological generation gap" emerged in my mind. Just ten years ago, video games were seen as a waste of time, animation was seen as "unserious," and the last thing that a parent would want his/her child to do would be to spend all his time playing video games. Today, in many societies, that has changed. In South Korea, video game has emerged as a "sport," and professional video gamers are wealthy celebrities. Children who spend all their time doodling and fiddling with Photoshop rather than reading books are not punished for their lack of focus, but encouraged to pursue very lucrative respectable careers in animation. In many ways, it is the youth that has changed the landscape to which their elders had been accustomed. Today, it is children who are teaching their parents how to be computer-savvy.
I suppose my question in relation to the above case is twofold: first, how much does the specific content of cultural capital change and become more or less valuable? Secondly, does Bourdieu talk about the transmission of cultural capital being "two-way"; for example, not just from parent to child, but also from child to parent?
Anyway, sumasakit ang ulo ko dahil maliit lang ang tanghalian ko kanina, kaya magpapahinga muna ako, bago ko ipagpatuloy ang pag-compute ng mga marka.
It's a good thing that the Internet has some primary sources, as some of my questions in my earlier post seem to be answered in some of Bourdieu's essays, as well as in some secondary texts.
First of all, Bourdieu appears to use the term "capital" when referring to culture and society, not as a metaphor, but really "capital as capital," and that the "logic" of capital applies across the board. Moreover, he appears to say that cultural and social capital do emerge from economic capital.
On the one hand, I see how this might be helpful from the perspective of wanting to measure or empirically quantify cultural and social capital (assuming it's possible). I find it useful in the way that Bourdieu describes how one form of capital can be transformed into another form of capital (such as in the way someone spends money to educate himself and then uses that education to earn more money).
But I also wonder if problems might arise when culture and society are seen in this way. As I alluded to in my previous post, economic resources are finite, storable, and disposable. It does not appear to be completely accurate to describe cultural and social capital in the same way.
Case in point: the notion of "surplus." If we were to follow Marxist analysis (Bourdieu seems to be a neo-Marxist), surplus of economic capital is what allows exploitation to emerge.
This appears to be problematic whether one agrees and disagrees with Marx's initial premise. First, if we agree with Bourdieu's neo-Marxism it would seem that the weakness of the word "capital" when used to describe culture and society is that we cannot describe a "surplus." In classical Marx, the meaning of "surplus" is clear--it is the extra labor that a worker produces to raise capital for the capitalist. Coming from a classical Marxist perspective, then, there is a clear basis for what can be constituted as "exploitative" or "unjust." It appears to become problematic, however, when we talk about social and cultural capital, as there appears to be no measure for "surplus" in those realms. (Cf. Comments made in this paper.)
Now, if we disagree with the Marxist premise to begin with, then a second question emerges: economic capital can be quantifiably measured in terms of "more" and "less." Can the same be said, however, for social and cultural capital, and can we place the same on a hierarchy? Are we to immediately assume, for example, that the social and cultural capital that emerges from those with more economic capital is "higher" or "more" than the social and cultural capital that emerges from those with less economic capital? While that does often seem to be the case, is it really always necessarily so? Or does Bourdieu have a more relative view of culture and society, wherein different situations demand different kinds of cultural capital not lined up in a neat hierarchy(for example, being a wealthy Australian won't do much for me if I want to do business in, say, rural China, unless I learn to integrate myself better into rural Chinese society). (Cf. Comments made in this paper.) Leland mentioned that Bourdieu speaks of different fields where different groups are dominant and are dominated, but if that is the case, then it certainly does not correspond to a single hierarchy, in which case the flaws of using the term "capital" emerge.
I also have a question regarding Bourdieu's views regarding the transmission of cultural capital. I'm not sure how to articulate the question, but while reading Forms of Capital the picture of the "technological generation gap" emerged in my mind. Just ten years ago, video games were seen as a waste of time, animation was seen as "unserious," and the last thing that a parent would want his/her child to do would be to spend all his time playing video games. Today, in many societies, that has changed. In South Korea, video game has emerged as a "sport," and professional video gamers are wealthy celebrities. Children who spend all their time doodling and fiddling with Photoshop rather than reading books are not punished for their lack of focus, but encouraged to pursue very lucrative respectable careers in animation. In many ways, it is the youth that has changed the landscape to which their elders had been accustomed. Today, it is children who are teaching their parents how to be computer-savvy.
I suppose my question in relation to the above case is twofold: first, how much does the specific content of cultural capital change and become more or less valuable? Secondly, does Bourdieu talk about the transmission of cultural capital being "two-way"; for example, not just from parent to child, but also from child to parent?
Anyway, sumasakit ang ulo ko dahil maliit lang ang tanghalian ko kanina, kaya magpapahinga muna ako, bago ko ipagpatuloy ang pag-compute ng mga marka.
Planned projects (all Arendt-related)
- Something on Arendt's critique of the consumer society/waste society. I'm fascinated that Arendt was so prophetic about this. And again, I find it interesting how Arendt directs a common criticism against two seemingly opposite ideologies: in Origins of Totalitarianism, she had done it with fascism and communism; in The Human Condition she did it with capitalism and communism.
- Storytelling, still. A continuation of what I've already written. This time I may include a comment on her biography-writing.
- The parvenu/pariah distinction.
- Political judgment. I've been planning this for a few years, but I just can't get around to re-reading Kant. Aargh.
*And aside from all this writing, maybe I should suggest to my colleagues that we teach an undergraduate elective on conceptions of power. We could do Foucault, Arendt, Nietzsche ....
"Capital"
So in between computing final grades for my various classes, I've been reading up a little more on Bourdieu, guided by Leland's comments to my previous post. Today, I read up a little more on the different forms of capital. I wonder why Bourdieu chooses to use that term--"capital"--when discussing the non-economic elements of one's habitus, such as cultural and social capital, and I wonder what the merits of using this analogy are.
Forgive me for jumping in immediately with an Arendtian comparison, but since I know Arendt more than I know any other thinker, it's really the only point of reference I can begin with. One of the central and most original features of Arendt's thought is her distinction between "work" and "action." She used the term "work" to refer to the human's activity on the material, tangible world that fabricates durable objects (such as when a carpenter makes a table or an artist paints a painting). She uses the term "action" to refer to humans' activity among one another (such as discussion or debate). (A third category is "labor" which refers to the human's activity for the purpose of biological survival.) The confusion of the categories of "work" and "action," she says, has sometimes, in the past, been fatal. When human history--that is, the stories of human action--is seen as a "work," as an object to be fabricated, then several presumptions are made: history is then something seen as something that can be "shaped" through an act of violence (in the same way that a carpenter must do violence to a tree in order to turn it into a table), and history is seen as something that can be "finished." The consequences of such a view of history is clear: a Utopian vision that must be "engineered" where humans are mere cogs in a machine to create that vision. Humans are seen as machines whose behavior can be predicted absolutely and controlled. Thus, the grand totalitarianexperiments disasters of the first half of the 20th century (parallels of which are still visible today). This is at the heart of Arendt's analysis of totalitarianism.
[Of course there are difficulties with the rigidity of Arendt's categories. Newspapers, for example, are products of work, because they are reified texts, but they are also where discussion and debate--action--take place. What, then, do we do with Arendt's categories in reference to such examples?]
So does all this have anything to do with Bourdieu? I don't know yet. Maybe not, heheh! :) But I wonder what the effects are of using language that sees culture, and social networks as "capital." Does Bourdieu emphasize that unlike economic capital, social networks and linguistic symbols cannot be "possessed,"' cannot be stored and depleted, and cannot be produced in an objective sense (cf. the section entitled "Forms of Capital" in this Wikipedia entry)? And if he doesn't, is there important merit in not making that distinction, and in maintaining the parallel among cultural, social and economic capital? Or does it, insofar as Bourdieu's thought is concerned, not even really matter? Am I merely unnecessarily quibbling with semantics?
Of course, maybe the question is larger than that, in that Bourdieu is a sociologist and Arendt is a philosopher (and a postmodern one at that), so they are speaking from two different sets of presumptions to begin with. Is it correct to assume that as a sociologist, Bourdieu has to speak with the presumption of predictable human behavior and action reified in artifacts? Whereas as a 20th century normative philosopher, Arendt has to begin from the recognition of the free individual human person. If this is the case, then maybe I'm making something out of nothing, and the only reason for his choice of words proceeds from the necessary presumptions of his discipline.
Forgive me for jumping in immediately with an Arendtian comparison, but since I know Arendt more than I know any other thinker, it's really the only point of reference I can begin with. One of the central and most original features of Arendt's thought is her distinction between "work" and "action." She used the term "work" to refer to the human's activity on the material, tangible world that fabricates durable objects (such as when a carpenter makes a table or an artist paints a painting). She uses the term "action" to refer to humans' activity among one another (such as discussion or debate). (A third category is "labor" which refers to the human's activity for the purpose of biological survival.) The confusion of the categories of "work" and "action," she says, has sometimes, in the past, been fatal. When human history--that is, the stories of human action--is seen as a "work," as an object to be fabricated, then several presumptions are made: history is then something seen as something that can be "shaped" through an act of violence (in the same way that a carpenter must do violence to a tree in order to turn it into a table), and history is seen as something that can be "finished." The consequences of such a view of history is clear: a Utopian vision that must be "engineered" where humans are mere cogs in a machine to create that vision. Humans are seen as machines whose behavior can be predicted absolutely and controlled. Thus, the grand totalitarian
[Of course there are difficulties with the rigidity of Arendt's categories. Newspapers, for example, are products of work, because they are reified texts, but they are also where discussion and debate--action--take place. What, then, do we do with Arendt's categories in reference to such examples?]
So does all this have anything to do with Bourdieu? I don't know yet. Maybe not, heheh! :) But I wonder what the effects are of using language that sees culture, and social networks as "capital." Does Bourdieu emphasize that unlike economic capital, social networks and linguistic symbols cannot be "possessed,"' cannot be stored and depleted, and cannot be produced in an objective sense (cf. the section entitled "Forms of Capital" in this Wikipedia entry)? And if he doesn't, is there important merit in not making that distinction, and in maintaining the parallel among cultural, social and economic capital? Or does it, insofar as Bourdieu's thought is concerned, not even really matter? Am I merely unnecessarily quibbling with semantics?
Of course, maybe the question is larger than that, in that Bourdieu is a sociologist and Arendt is a philosopher (and a postmodern one at that), so they are speaking from two different sets of presumptions to begin with. Is it correct to assume that as a sociologist, Bourdieu has to speak with the presumption of predictable human behavior and action reified in artifacts? Whereas as a 20th century normative philosopher, Arendt has to begin from the recognition of the free individual human person. If this is the case, then maybe I'm making something out of nothing, and the only reason for his choice of words proceeds from the necessary presumptions of his discipline.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Anti-essentialist political/social philosophy
The most popular post-Heideggerian philosopher in the department is Emmanuel Levinas. I do think that Levinas' language of totality and infinity is very helpful. And I have no complaints about Levinas as a philosopher of the human person.
The reason why I myself never pursued Levinas as much as some of my colleagues have is because I was not content with just a philosophy of the human person. Marx translated his philosophy of the human person into a political philosophy, and it was imperative for me to find a philosopher who did the same. And this was how I discovered Arendt.
The health of a political philosophy depends on a thinker's philosophy of the human person. I realized this vaguely when I was studying Marx. For my undergraduate paper on Marx, I did something that surprised even myself. For many years, I had been reading Marx's political and economic philosophy on my own, outside of class. But when I had to finally submit a paper on him, I didn't turn to any of his later works; instead, I went to the heart of Marx--his philosophy of the human person--and that is what I wrote about. That writing experience startled me. Inasmuch as Marx's historical analysis had fascinated me, his philosophy of the human person disappointed me with its narrow conception of the human.
Only now, in hindsight, do I realize how important that discovery was. The causes of all my disillusionment with Marx in succeeding years, as I moved into graduate studies, could be traced back to the narrowness of his conception of the human. Marx, for all his intelligence, was a materialist, through and through. (Perhaps it was my faith--I mean, my religious faith--that was the final line of defense against Marx.) My infatuation with Marx turned into a sense of betrayal as it began to dawn on me that Marx's faults were not merely the sorry shortcomings of an ivory tower scholar, but had directly translated into the mass murder of millions of people throughout the world in nations that had exalted him as their messiah. Many Filipino pundits want to brush over that fact, that Marx's mistakes led to totalitarianism. But the reality is there for all to see, and it happened not just once or twice but over and over again. Again, I repeat what I said in a previous post: The author is not, should not be dead, in philosophy. Every philosopher writes out of a unique historical context, and the validity and strength of his/her arguments spring from that unique historical context. Philosophy is meaningless without history. (Later, I was astounded with Arendt's brave assertion of a parallelism between two ideologies that, at the time of her writing, seemed diametrically opposed to each other: Fascism and Communism.)
Discovering Arendt was like having the shuttered windows of my mind finally opened to the brightness of the sun. So many of the questions that had been simmering throughout my college life suddenly found articulation and insight in Arendt's work. I devoured The Human Condition like I had no other book in my undergraduate years, and I pencilled in exclamation point after exclamation point in the margins of her work. I was floored, flabbergasted, amazed.
Nobody could accuse Arendt of writing ahistorically. She wrote from her heart, from her experience, from her observations, from her marriage, from her love affair. She wrote reacting to the Nazism that had sought to annihiliate her Jewishness; she wrote as a German who had been displaced from her home; she wrote as a political prisoner; she wrote as the wife of a Communist philosopher; she wrote as the lover of the most brilliant mind of the 20th century who ironically could not see what was wrong with Hitlerism; she wrote as a journalist watching Eichmann's facial expressions; she wrote as friend and colleague of Benjamin and Jaspers and Auden.
And she wrote with a philosophy of the human person that I agree with. She wrote understanding humans' Weltanschauung, but believing strongly in humans' freedom. What makes as humans, and not animals, she said, is that we can begin things entirely anew. We are unpredictable, never tied to the behavior of the past. But at any moment, we can initiate something that has never been seen before. It is this initiation that allows us to promise, and that allows us to forgive. It is this natality that makes our history not one unbroken account by a meta-author, but a fabric of millions of interwoven stories, each unique and valuable.
And--perhaps the most feminine thing about her, in comparison with all the noisy, ranting masculine thinkers of the 19th and 20th century--she believed in the sacredness of life. Of each individual life. She believed in the value of each unique story. She spoke of infancy, of babies. She wrote biographies, not just of famous men, but of a dispossessed woman, a parvenu and pariah. She believed that the dispossessed, the marginalized, the small, the meek had stories just as valuable--possibly even more valuable--in the fabric of stories that form our history.
"It's ideas that change the world," a colleague of mine said many years ago. I agree to a certain extent, if we understand, by "ideas," not just the systematic ideas of foundationalist thinkers, but the Weltanschauung, the language, the principles, and yes, the individual stories.
The reason why I myself never pursued Levinas as much as some of my colleagues have is because I was not content with just a philosophy of the human person. Marx translated his philosophy of the human person into a political philosophy, and it was imperative for me to find a philosopher who did the same. And this was how I discovered Arendt.
The health of a political philosophy depends on a thinker's philosophy of the human person. I realized this vaguely when I was studying Marx. For my undergraduate paper on Marx, I did something that surprised even myself. For many years, I had been reading Marx's political and economic philosophy on my own, outside of class. But when I had to finally submit a paper on him, I didn't turn to any of his later works; instead, I went to the heart of Marx--his philosophy of the human person--and that is what I wrote about. That writing experience startled me. Inasmuch as Marx's historical analysis had fascinated me, his philosophy of the human person disappointed me with its narrow conception of the human.
Only now, in hindsight, do I realize how important that discovery was. The causes of all my disillusionment with Marx in succeeding years, as I moved into graduate studies, could be traced back to the narrowness of his conception of the human. Marx, for all his intelligence, was a materialist, through and through. (Perhaps it was my faith--I mean, my religious faith--that was the final line of defense against Marx.) My infatuation with Marx turned into a sense of betrayal as it began to dawn on me that Marx's faults were not merely the sorry shortcomings of an ivory tower scholar, but had directly translated into the mass murder of millions of people throughout the world in nations that had exalted him as their messiah. Many Filipino pundits want to brush over that fact, that Marx's mistakes led to totalitarianism. But the reality is there for all to see, and it happened not just once or twice but over and over again. Again, I repeat what I said in a previous post: The author is not, should not be dead, in philosophy. Every philosopher writes out of a unique historical context, and the validity and strength of his/her arguments spring from that unique historical context. Philosophy is meaningless without history. (Later, I was astounded with Arendt's brave assertion of a parallelism between two ideologies that, at the time of her writing, seemed diametrically opposed to each other: Fascism and Communism.)
Discovering Arendt was like having the shuttered windows of my mind finally opened to the brightness of the sun. So many of the questions that had been simmering throughout my college life suddenly found articulation and insight in Arendt's work. I devoured The Human Condition like I had no other book in my undergraduate years, and I pencilled in exclamation point after exclamation point in the margins of her work. I was floored, flabbergasted, amazed.
Nobody could accuse Arendt of writing ahistorically. She wrote from her heart, from her experience, from her observations, from her marriage, from her love affair. She wrote reacting to the Nazism that had sought to annihiliate her Jewishness; she wrote as a German who had been displaced from her home; she wrote as a political prisoner; she wrote as the wife of a Communist philosopher; she wrote as the lover of the most brilliant mind of the 20th century who ironically could not see what was wrong with Hitlerism; she wrote as a journalist watching Eichmann's facial expressions; she wrote as friend and colleague of Benjamin and Jaspers and Auden.
And she wrote with a philosophy of the human person that I agree with. She wrote understanding humans' Weltanschauung, but believing strongly in humans' freedom. What makes as humans, and not animals, she said, is that we can begin things entirely anew. We are unpredictable, never tied to the behavior of the past. But at any moment, we can initiate something that has never been seen before. It is this initiation that allows us to promise, and that allows us to forgive. It is this natality that makes our history not one unbroken account by a meta-author, but a fabric of millions of interwoven stories, each unique and valuable.
And--perhaps the most feminine thing about her, in comparison with all the noisy, ranting masculine thinkers of the 19th and 20th century--she believed in the sacredness of life. Of each individual life. She believed in the value of each unique story. She spoke of infancy, of babies. She wrote biographies, not just of famous men, but of a dispossessed woman, a parvenu and pariah. She believed that the dispossessed, the marginalized, the small, the meek had stories just as valuable--possibly even more valuable--in the fabric of stories that form our history.
"It's ideas that change the world," a colleague of mine said many years ago. I agree to a certain extent, if we understand, by "ideas," not just the systematic ideas of foundationalist thinkers, but the Weltanschauung, the language, the principles, and yes, the individual stories.
Bourdieu, Heidegger, History
Serendipitously, my last two points come together in my discovery of this--
-- a book written by Bourdieu on Heidegger, published before Heidegger's Nazi involvement was revealed.
The Common Knowledge review states: “[Bourdieu's] short book on Heidegger, published before the recent revelations of the philosopher’s devoted commitment to Nazism through and beyond the defeat of the Third Reich, is a brilliant contribution to what is now called ‘contextualization’ (i.e., of Heidegger’s thought). Richard Rorty dismissed Heidegger’s Nazism on the ground that it had nothing to do with his philosophy; no reader of Bourdieu’s book will be able to continue to believe this for a moment.”
Yes yes yes. Shucks, biglang na-curious tuloy ako sa aklat na 'to.
-- a book written by Bourdieu on Heidegger, published before Heidegger's Nazi involvement was revealed.
The Common Knowledge review states: “[Bourdieu's] short book on Heidegger, published before the recent revelations of the philosopher’s devoted commitment to Nazism through and beyond the defeat of the Third Reich, is a brilliant contribution to what is now called ‘contextualization’ (i.e., of Heidegger’s thought). Richard Rorty dismissed Heidegger’s Nazism on the ground that it had nothing to do with his philosophy; no reader of Bourdieu’s book will be able to continue to believe this for a moment.”
Yes yes yes. Shucks, biglang na-curious tuloy ako sa aklat na 'to.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Heidegger (again) and history
I'm amused that my last two posts have mentioned Martin Heidegger.
I read somewhere that part of the reason why Heidegger's philosophy didn't spread as quickly in the United States as it did in Europe was because a lot of Americans were uncomfortable with studying the philosophy of a card-carrying Nazi. Could Heidegger's philosophy be separated from his Nazism?, a lot of people wondered.
In our department, the majority would shout a resounding "Yes!" to that question. I think we have more scholars of Heidegger than we do of any other philosopher, and very few of them talk about Heidegger's political inclinations.
I took my one and only Heidegger class as an undergraduate ten years ago, and back then, I agreed with many others in the department that given the brilliance of his insights, Heidegger's Nazi involvement could be relegated to a footnote in his biography. However, as time has passed, I've changed my mind about that.
One of his best students, Emmanuel Levinas, didn't think that Heidegger the philosopher could be separated from Heidegger the Nazi, and he spent his entire philosophical career trying to rectify the ideas that he felt Heidegger had gotten so hopelessly wrong.
Last July, at an Arendt conference in Sydney, I watched a video of Kate Fodor's stage-play Hannah and Martin. The play is fictional, but watching it made me rethink a lot of Arendt's writings as explicit struggles not just to come to terms with the historical fact of Nazism, but to come to terms with Heidegger's Nazism.
Which leads me to my point. The author is not, should not be dead, in philosophy. Every philosopher writes out of a unique historical context, and the validity and strength of his/her arguments spring from that unique historical context.
Not that we shouldn't study Heidegger. I do think he is the most influential and ground-breaking 20th century philosopher. But genius doesn't make a person infallible. Nor even necessarily moral.
I read somewhere that part of the reason why Heidegger's philosophy didn't spread as quickly in the United States as it did in Europe was because a lot of Americans were uncomfortable with studying the philosophy of a card-carrying Nazi. Could Heidegger's philosophy be separated from his Nazism?, a lot of people wondered.
In our department, the majority would shout a resounding "Yes!" to that question. I think we have more scholars of Heidegger than we do of any other philosopher, and very few of them talk about Heidegger's political inclinations.
I took my one and only Heidegger class as an undergraduate ten years ago, and back then, I agreed with many others in the department that given the brilliance of his insights, Heidegger's Nazi involvement could be relegated to a footnote in his biography. However, as time has passed, I've changed my mind about that.
One of his best students, Emmanuel Levinas, didn't think that Heidegger the philosopher could be separated from Heidegger the Nazi, and he spent his entire philosophical career trying to rectify the ideas that he felt Heidegger had gotten so hopelessly wrong.
Last July, at an Arendt conference in Sydney, I watched a video of Kate Fodor's stage-play Hannah and Martin. The play is fictional, but watching it made me rethink a lot of Arendt's writings as explicit struggles not just to come to terms with the historical fact of Nazism, but to come to terms with Heidegger's Nazism.
Which leads me to my point. The author is not, should not be dead, in philosophy. Every philosopher writes out of a unique historical context, and the validity and strength of his/her arguments spring from that unique historical context.
Not that we shouldn't study Heidegger. I do think he is the most influential and ground-breaking 20th century philosopher. But genius doesn't make a person infallible. Nor even necessarily moral.
Unmeditated (and possibly completely wrong) first impressions of Bourdieu
A colleague from school encouraged me to read Bourdieu, so I've been spending the past two hours trying to gather what cursory knowledge I can of him from--how else? hehe!--clicking on links from Google and Wikipedia.
My first impression of Bourdieu is that his concept of habitus sounds very Heideggerian (not surprising for any 20th century thinker, really), so that part I liked. I also like that he disagrees with a purely rationalist understanding of action (which is the same problem I have with Habermas).
One thing I'd like to find out more about, however, is how central is the concept of "class" in Bourdieu's analysis of what shapes one's Weltanschauung (to use the Heideggerian term). My initial scan of the commentaries about Bourdieu seem to imply that class is very central to his thought. I do wonder how I'm going to react to that; my guess is that I'm going to be ambivalent.
On the one hand, I like that Bourdieu seems to broaden the concept of class beyond materialist notions. Very important.
However, despite that, if I do find that the class rhetoric is the central hinge of his critical theory, I think I'm going to be slightly bothered. You see, one thing I've been wondering about these past few years (since beginning work on Arendt) is whether class ought to be our central way of understanding societies; the reason for this is that such frameworks seem to make the notions of power and violence overly, um, essentialist notions. (E.g., At the risk of oversimpliyfing it, I have problems with the notion for example, that, "Regardless of the kind of a person I am, by virtue of living in a third world country, or by virtue of being a woman, I am immediately a 'victim' more than anything else; and regardless of the kind of a person a white American man is, by virtue of his living in a first world country and being a white man, he is automatically an 'oppressor' above all else.") Any essentialist notion of power or violence in my (or should I say, Arendt's) book is dangerous and potentially totalizing (case in point: NPA purges). Following from Arendt, then, I would tend to have a more flexible view of it, making the class-based critique just one among many critiques.
In a similar vein, I do get uncomfortable (and I'm no longer talking about Bourdieu here; I'm not even sure if this applies to him), when anyone carelessly appropriates Marx's theory of class as an absolutely universal, universalizable idea, when I do think that it should also be nuanced by a more particularized understanding of what Marx was saying. To put it simply: the realities that Marx was writing about are no longer the same realities present today, and I do think that any good scholar should adopt theories carefully, testing their validity against contemporary realities. I get a little uncomfortable, for example, the way that some Filipino pundits talk about Marx as if Marx had been referring to the Philippine situation, when any reader of Marx will know that he was reacting primarily to the industrial society of 19th century Europe; the "Marxian" critique within primarily agricultural societies wasn't Marx, that was Mao's appropriation of Marx. Again, not that Marx isn't useful; I do think he is one of the most important philosophers of the 19th century, but at the same time he is one philosopher among many, and I think we need to be more faithful to the text and to the context of the text.
I haven't read Weber, but I imagine Weber's notion of social class might also sometimes be misappropriated in a similar way.
At the end of the day, it's the postmodern philosopher in me speaking. I suppose I really have taken Arendt to heart, and I do believe it's the essentialism of the political theories of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that led to the most horrible atrocities of the last century and I'm very wary of essentialism in any social or political theory.
Anyway, these are all just primary impressions and seeing that I've only read two hours' worth of Internet commentary on the guy, I've likely completely missed Bourdieu's point, and I may later have to retract everything I've just written. So don't quote me on anything!
My first impression of Bourdieu is that his concept of habitus sounds very Heideggerian (not surprising for any 20th century thinker, really), so that part I liked. I also like that he disagrees with a purely rationalist understanding of action (which is the same problem I have with Habermas).
One thing I'd like to find out more about, however, is how central is the concept of "class" in Bourdieu's analysis of what shapes one's Weltanschauung (to use the Heideggerian term). My initial scan of the commentaries about Bourdieu seem to imply that class is very central to his thought. I do wonder how I'm going to react to that; my guess is that I'm going to be ambivalent.
On the one hand, I like that Bourdieu seems to broaden the concept of class beyond materialist notions. Very important.
However, despite that, if I do find that the class rhetoric is the central hinge of his critical theory, I think I'm going to be slightly bothered. You see, one thing I've been wondering about these past few years (since beginning work on Arendt) is whether class ought to be our central way of understanding societies; the reason for this is that such frameworks seem to make the notions of power and violence overly, um, essentialist notions. (E.g., At the risk of oversimpliyfing it, I have problems with the notion for example, that, "Regardless of the kind of a person I am, by virtue of living in a third world country, or by virtue of being a woman, I am immediately a 'victim' more than anything else; and regardless of the kind of a person a white American man is, by virtue of his living in a first world country and being a white man, he is automatically an 'oppressor' above all else.") Any essentialist notion of power or violence in my (or should I say, Arendt's) book is dangerous and potentially totalizing (case in point: NPA purges). Following from Arendt, then, I would tend to have a more flexible view of it, making the class-based critique just one among many critiques.
In a similar vein, I do get uncomfortable (and I'm no longer talking about Bourdieu here; I'm not even sure if this applies to him), when anyone carelessly appropriates Marx's theory of class as an absolutely universal, universalizable idea, when I do think that it should also be nuanced by a more particularized understanding of what Marx was saying. To put it simply: the realities that Marx was writing about are no longer the same realities present today, and I do think that any good scholar should adopt theories carefully, testing their validity against contemporary realities. I get a little uncomfortable, for example, the way that some Filipino pundits talk about Marx as if Marx had been referring to the Philippine situation, when any reader of Marx will know that he was reacting primarily to the industrial society of 19th century Europe; the "Marxian" critique within primarily agricultural societies wasn't Marx, that was Mao's appropriation of Marx. Again, not that Marx isn't useful; I do think he is one of the most important philosophers of the 19th century, but at the same time he is one philosopher among many, and I think we need to be more faithful to the text and to the context of the text.
I haven't read Weber, but I imagine Weber's notion of social class might also sometimes be misappropriated in a similar way.
At the end of the day, it's the postmodern philosopher in me speaking. I suppose I really have taken Arendt to heart, and I do believe it's the essentialism of the political theories of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that led to the most horrible atrocities of the last century and I'm very wary of essentialism in any social or political theory.
Anyway, these are all just primary impressions and seeing that I've only read two hours' worth of Internet commentary on the guy, I've likely completely missed Bourdieu's point, and I may later have to retract everything I've just written. So don't quote me on anything!
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Technology, Heidegger, Women
I was thinking of the housework that awaits me, and I found myself thinking that technology has been so crucial in women's liberation: whereas women's bodies once were the "machines" of society tasked to cook and clean and keep house, those bodies have now been replaced by, well, real machines: Roombas to vacuum, dishwashers to wash dishes, microwave ovens to cook ... all which have aided in the process of allowing women to realize themselves in the world.
As soon as I said that I realized I was saying something related to Heidegger, but I'm not sure in what way. It's been 10 years since I read "The Question Concerning Technology" closely, so I can't really remember what Heidegger said about technology except that there is something about it that's bad. ([Technology --> Enframing = Bad] --> That's about all I remember.)
For Arendt, technology may be good because it is what liberates people from poverty.
And for me, technology is such a wondrous thing, as long as people keep it in perspective.
So I may be onto something here, but I won't know for sure until I, well, read up on Heidegger again.
Maybe I can write about how Heidegger is coming from a very masculinist (and therefore very Bad, hahaha!) perspective. That would be cool. Maybe in my old age (hahaha!) I will finally find a feminine voice in my philosophizing.
Okay, Rowie, stop counting chickens.
As soon as I said that I realized I was saying something related to Heidegger, but I'm not sure in what way. It's been 10 years since I read "The Question Concerning Technology" closely, so I can't really remember what Heidegger said about technology except that there is something about it that's bad. ([Technology --> Enframing = Bad] --> That's about all I remember.)
For Arendt, technology may be good because it is what liberates people from poverty.
And for me, technology is such a wondrous thing, as long as people keep it in perspective.
So I may be onto something here, but I won't know for sure until I, well, read up on Heidegger again.
Maybe I can write about how Heidegger is coming from a very masculinist (and therefore very Bad, hahaha!) perspective. That would be cool. Maybe in my old age (hahaha!) I will finally find a feminine voice in my philosophizing.
Okay, Rowie, stop counting chickens.
Idea Blog
As part of my blog restructuring program, I've decided to divide my online posts among several blogs--one for academic stuff, one for spiritual stuff, and so forth. This one here is my academic nerdy blog. Please understand that all entries here refer to works in progress, thoughts in the process of being thought. :) Enjoy!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
