Friday, May 16, 2008
(12:00 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Friday Afternoon Confessional: ABD Again and Lookin' to Score
I confess that I have passed my oral exam and have now attained to the status of "PhD candidate," colloquially known as "ABD" -- as certified by my advisor, the faculty of the Chicago Theological Seminary, and the big Other. I confess that the conversation about my proposal was very helpful. I confess that while I was waiting for the results of their deliberations after the exam, I began to hope that I had failed so that I could do a completely different proposal.I confess that even though some of my fellow students are putting together a party in my honor for Friday night, I still felt like no one in the world cared about me when I had nothing to do on Thursday after the oral -- or more precisely, not enough to do after the oral, since I went to the pub with my advisor immediately afterward. I confess that I dread the world-historical feeling of loneliness that will surely set in when I finish my dissertation.
I confess that I paid a $3 ATM fee for no good reason. I could've easily cancelled and gone to another ATM that I know has a lesser fee.
I confess that I used a new route home today to artificially inflate the number of L stops I've used. My usage was "sincere" in that this route dropped me off at a point equidistant to two bars I like -- though in the event, I of course did not end up going to either of those bars, due to my complete isolation from all other human beings, etc. I confess that I was satisfied the other day when a friend of mine in Evanston dropped me off directly at the Howard stop, to remove any ambiguity as to whether I could "count" it.
I confess that I'm using Super Memory software to learn Greek vocabulary, but I'm worried that my ability to identify the equivalent of flashcards won't translate into the context of trying to read a text. I confess that I am a flashcard skeptic.
I confess that I decided to ignore the poll results and read Blood Meridian.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
(10:38 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
The Latest from Sad Kermit
Anthony sent me the following video of Kermit performing "Needle in the Hay," together with a reenactment of the scene from Royal Tannenbaums:See more funny videos at CollegeHumor
If any of our readers are current college students who play acoustic guitar, I encourage you to learn this song and play it in the quad.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
(11:23 AM) | Brad:
Wow
For those who've missed the "Play of the Playoffs" thus far:(12:30 AM) | Ray Davis:
Wednesday Sex: A Pornstructuralist Reader
Some years ago, I sampled a selection of pornographic fiction. As you might expect, it tended either toward the episodic or toward something not much like porn. Alexander Trocchi wrote the exceptions. Although his ambitious works sloshed like bags in a stagnant river, hacking out smut roused an otherwise dormant gift for long narrative: 1955's White Thighs and 1956's Thongs are built like novels.In terms of genre, the one is dom/sub; the other's S&M. But White Thighs' perky dungeon is a far cry from Pat Califia's pragmatic naturalism and a closer cry to the fantasy scenes of 8 1/2, and I think we can agree that Fellini's neighborhood, distressing as it is, is best labeled vanilla male heterosexuality.
More abstractly, the two novels differ by the merest shift in motive force. Lust generates story by making us stupid. From that rich bubbling crude of gloryhallastoopid, White Thighs slightly emphasizes coupling's imperious loss of will:
"They have no more problems. They don't exist. Each day they become more like the animals they always longed to be.... no wonder they love you, Saul!"
Whereas Thongs slightly emphasizes the more solipsistic telescoping loss of proportion:
"Once the leap out of the self has been made, it is an anticlimax to go back."
1955 was a good year for wicked books. Like sibling Lolita, White Thighs roots its perversion in childhood ecstasy-trauma; like The Talented Mr. Ripley, its hero ascends consequence-free on wings of amorality. But don't let those comparisons or Trocchi's "poet"-studded blurbs mislead you. While he's capable of a telling image, here he mostly coasts by on rampant members and pulsing bellies. In his rush, the author once even seems to lose track of just whose implement he's tracking: "the one who was ever present in my belly like a dark pencil of lust."
The virtue (you should pardon the expression) of White Thighs lies not on its verbal skin but in its architectonics. Trocchi's coasting accelerates consumption as well as production; the weighty hyperfocus of a Marco Vassi would have slowed and finally fractured the book. Desire's absurd muddle of control and abandon — we want the other to want that we want that they want that this that was — is here split into an efficient cycle of surrender, disappointment, and manipulation that drives the story steadily upwards — I picture a rotary engine surrounded by flaps of sticky plastic — to a shaggy-dog punchline. I almost never draw the book from its shelf without finishing it; I almost never put it back without a smirk.
Thongs is another story, more ornately worked and ranging farther. After the traditional "John Ray Jr" prologue, it launches from a grotesque Glasgow slum with a thoroughly anti-erotic razor battle between a thug and his son; it bumps down onto a Spanish estate on the way to a new Golgotha.
Masochism-unto-death (with a female protagonist, ça va sans dire) is a common enough conceit for artsy porn, and the Black Mass and other parodies of Catholic ritual are common enough ornaments, but Trocchi elaborates and entwines them to uncommon extremes:
"Each Pain Cardinal has six Grand Painmasters under him, and they in turn have each twelve Painmasters or Painmistresses under them. Thus, you see that you are one of eight hundred and sixty-four Painmasters or Painmistresses.... If you were chosen as a Grand Painmistress while I was still in your service, you would have the choice of taking me with you as your secretary or of accepting the secretary of the ex-Grand Painmistress. In one sense his services would be an advantage since he would be already acquainted with all the customary forms pertaining to his master's office, but that can be learned and I don't suppose it's necessary to point out to you that a man who has risen with you is likely to prove more loyal."
From those elements, he builds an up-from-the-gutter success-with-regrets story, a reworking of the ancient struggle between orthodox hierarchy and mystic saint (with a Last Temptation-like twist in the tail), and an enduring stroke book for those who seek strokes. Not restricted to the three-chord riff that drives White Thighs home, Thongs' varied transitions all recircle to its fixed idea of consummation — an idea fixed in the reader's mind long before the heroine's, thanks to that prologue. If I finally find I have less to say about the later novel, that may be because it's more articulate on its own behalf.
He buried his face in my neck. What a child! Should I mother him? Is that what he really desires?
I thought not.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
(1:26 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Zizek and Theology: The British Invasion
In only a very short time, Zizek and Theology will be available in the United Kingdom. My editor already reports receiving physical copies of what is apparently a very handsome volume.(Americans have to wait until July, for reasons that have never been entirely clear to me.)
UPDATE: No need to guess at the book's appearance -- my copies just arrived in today's mail. Looks great to me. Here are the (very generous) blurbs, which I am only just now seeing:
"With remarkable lucidity, depth, and presence of mind, Adam Kotsko provides the most sustained engagement with Zizek's theological materialism to date. His study precisely and compellingly locates this dimension within the philosopher's intellectual itenerary from its beginnings to the most recent work, and lets the reader experience the force and necessity of its emergence." -- Eric Santner, University of Chicago
"Concise yet luminous, Kotsko's introduction serves to clarify what is at stake in Zizek's engagement with theology. The clear explanation of Zizek's development and psychoanalytic theory provides an excellent context for exploring the implications of Zizek's intervention" -- Philip Goodchild, University of Nottingham
(12:00 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Tuesday Hatred: The Fear Again
I hate the recent flakiness of my internet connection. All of my most commonly-viewed pages end up getting hung up on the last 1% or so, leaving it eternally "waiting" -- and this is often after multiple attempts to load the page at all. I hate how angry an underperforming computer makes me, particularly early in the morning. I hate how groceries are getting steadily more expensive.I hate that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was so boring that I could only watch a half hour of it. I hate that the post-strike episodes of House feel so phoned-in. After the first part, the two-episode season finale seems like it could be interesting, but also seems really rushed.
I hate that I seem to have shifted from a couple days of idle relaxation to a feeling of non-motivation and boredom.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
(10:54 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Reading
Once I'm ABD, I'm thinking of taking a couple weeks to catch up on my reading. In particular, I'm thinking of reading some novel that I never managed to get to back in my English major days (or in a couple cases, that didn't yet exist in those days). As a service to you, my faithful Webloggians, I have distilled my decision-making process down to blogpoll form, and you can determine my fate. (Please don't laugh at the books I haven't read yet.)(10:23 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
The Death of "Toughness"
As is well-known, Democrats frequently go along with Republicans on foreign policy issues out of a desire to look "tough." As is also well-known, Democrats other than Lieberman never get any credit for such positions.Hillary Clinton's campaign is the culmination of the quest for "toughness." Not only does she embrace right-wing foreign policy positions for the sake of "toughness," but she also began to base the entire rationale for her candidacy on how "tough" she was in her struggle against Barack Obama. Indeed, many liberal candidates expressed a grudging respect for her and wondered if perhaps her "toughness" would actually make her the better candidate.
Yet crucially, "toughness" didn't work! Barring some miracle, she has lost the nomination -- in fact, she effectively lost it two months ago. The whole charade of "toughness" took place as a desperate gambit after the battle had already been lost.
Friday, May 09, 2008
(8:34 AM) | Adam R.:
Friday Afternoon Confessional: Hijacked Version
I confess that I am posting this with no authority. I claim authorship as my moral right, but it was not given me to post today's confessional. I sincerely hope that whatever plans have long been in place for this spot will succeed my post, even abolish it if deemed appropriate. I'll live.I mean, fo' reals, I got shit I'm not going to confess here. Real, meaningful shit that is blowing me up with shit. I confess I'm a wretch. That'll have to do for the probing honesty you're going to get from me. Because I'm too sad to tell you.
Really, though, what I wanted to say is that I saw this at Ryan Call's new blog:
I think I might derive too much from this.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
(4:22 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
ABABD
I just finished my last exam. In addition, yesterday I sent my advisor the draft of my dissertation proposal that will be the basis for my oral exam next Thursday. Assuming I passed all the exams, I can think of no other way to describe my present status than ABABD.Even with the extra AB, it feels pretty damn good.
(12:00 AM) | Dominic:
Wednesday Sex: Alpha and Omega
Is there a parallax effect in sexual attitudes, caused by a fundamental inequality between two distinct classes of person?Consider the fables of sexual happiness set up by Houellebecq, in which a lifelong sexual loser finds love with a desirable, vivacious, obscurely unhappy sex maniac who will do absolutely anything to please him. A law of nature is posited in order to be broken: someone whose previous sexual experience is entirely composed of rejection, humiliation and sordid failed attempts at gratification with other unhappy persons is suddenly ennobled, granted the keys to the garden of earthly delights. It is like passing from one side to another of the screen separating the viewer from the pornographic movie: the world's great "no" to the loser is transformed into a ceaselessly renewed "yes, at once!".
The transformation is a "local truth", confined to the immediate vicinity of the beloved: the wider world remains hostile, contemptuous, structured through and through by the invisible line that separates the desirable from the undesirable. Happiness for Houellebecq is an "island", a zone of exception where the normal rules of social hierarchy are suspended and one's desires can be fulfilled without having to demonstrate one's status, or display one's credentials. His lovers visit sex clubs together, or frolic in the sand dunes, expanding the freedom they have found with each other to include others. There is something saintly about them.
Houllebecq's vision of happiness requires of women specifically that they cease to discriminate between desirable and undesirable sexual partners, whilst continuing to make every effort to be desirable, and not undesirable, to men. It is not as if there are not plenty of disgusted, contemptuous descriptions of old, saggy, emotionally mean or mentally inferior females in Houllebecq's tales: women who fail, or refuse, to give pleasure to men, to stimulate or accommodate them. Houllebecq dwells with morose delectation on every particular of the sexist schema within which his characters are imprisoned; but his imaginary solution to the impasse at the heart of that schema is for one party simply to roll over and let the other have whatever it wants.
What is this sexist schema, and where does the impasse arise? Houllebecq's novels assume, and propound, the premise that nature prescribes sexual competition between males for the attention of females. Male social hierarchy is organised around sexual access to females: the "alpha" male both monopolises resources (food, money, markers of status) and maximises his reproductive opportunity. Females co-operate with this system by awarding reproductive opportunities to those males who look like a good bet in terms of nourishing and defending future offspring. What makes females desirable to males however is not status but fecundity: the female sexual attributes that Houellebecq's male characters continually salivate over are all markers of reproductive health. (Nubility in this system is nothing other than fuckability, the state of being of "prime" child-bearing age). A male is undesirable if he is not materially successful, or if his place in the male social hierarchy is low; a female is undesirable if she is old, unhealthy or sexually unaccommodating.
It's clear that this system hasn't much to offer to non-alpha males, or non-conformist females; but the trouble is that the non-alpha males persist in finding well-formed females desirable, and ill-formed females persist in fantasizing about alpha males; indeed, they have to in order for the system to work. In reality? Who knows: this is ideology we're talking about here. And as ideology always does, it says two incompatible things: i) there is a natural order which matches sexual partners one to another according to a system of rank ("there's someone for everyone"), and ii) the system of rank operates by making everybody desire precisely those who are out of their league ("you shall go to the ball!" - and Houellebecq does indeed rewrite Cinderella with a male protagonist). Attempts to game this system, in the manner of Neil Strauss, only affirm its ludicrous premises.
To return to my initial question: do the kinds of inequality that Houellebecq first naturalises and then miraculously suspends (in a manner that actually completely validates the underlying logic of the system) actually exist in the real world in such a way that they result in a parallax view of sex? I've often felt that people talking about how constrained they feel by monogamy, for example, must belong to some entirely other sexual universe than the one I live in: a universe in which you're actually missing out on something by only having sex with one person. (One whole person!) For me, the familiar claim that no one person can completely satisfy one's diverse sexual needs just screams MASSIVE SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT. But this is wholly unfair of me: I like having more than one friend (while I'm not gregarious, I do like to hang out every once in a while...), and would probably feel a bit hard-done-by if even my best friend in the whole world were the only friend I had; and some people feel that way about fucking, too, and it's an entirely contingent and uninteresting fact about me that I mostly don't. Someone who found it difficult to form and sustain lasting friendships would probably find my alleged need for a wide and varied circle of friends similarly vexing, and suspiciously self-centred.
But still, there's that whole-other-world effect. I was once very briefly in a situation when I might if I chose have split up with one woman and taken up with another - or, if I'd been really crafty about it, managed to keep them both on the go at once (can't think of anything worse, actually, but some people would I suppose have relished the challenge). I think that was the only time in my life when I was ever in the position of having that sort of decision to make (in the event I vacillated, which is never good). It's incredibly difficult for me to imagine what it might be like to be continually faced with such dilemmas, but I've known people who were, and whose working assumptions about sex and relationships were simply incomprehensible to me. The thing is: they weren't necessarily the most attractive, or rich, or socially impressive people I knew. Some of the most mind-rendingly complex psycho-sexual configurations I've ever heard described were - apparently - swarming around the persons of some of the plainest and most unprepossessing people I've ever met. So it's not - pace Houellebecq - alpha-maledom or super-breeder status that makes for this kind of differend. In that case...what the heck is it?
