I cite

A horrible list

1.   Climate change. I read the NYT magazine today. One of its reminders--that US gas mileage is pathetically worse than that in Japan and the EU. That the structure of our communities around driving is killing the environment. It may be that little nudge that pushes me to start a vegetable garden although I hate gardening. There are good reasons for this: I will be changing my practices, decreasing my carbon footprint, all that stuff. But I'm really doing it because I think that the society is so close to the abyss that I need some skills and some kind of provisions for the calamity to come.

2.    Economic collapse. With no Soviet Union to keep it in line, capitalism has accelerated and intensified unbearably. I can't get over the fact that 50 hedge fund managers (combined) made over 20 billion dollars this year. And that the numbers of workers making 20 dollars or more an hour has declined to levels below where they were in the seventies. The greed is mind-boggling. The 'oh well, there's nothing we can do' attitude is unbearable. There has been a massive counter-revolution in the US since the 70s, brought on by finance capital, its corporate allies, and conservatives in the wake of the unrest of the 60s (this was what makes Reagan so popular, the not quite human face of counter-revolution in the guise of greed is good and sex is bad). And the thing is, people have gone for it, swallowed what was screwing them whole. Cheap credit, tons of consumer goods, constant entertainment and socially acceptable prescription drugs. Who needs economic equality when we've got You Tube? We are all creative. We entertain each other and let the rich take more and the environment collapse.

3.   That the Bush administration will get away with torture (waging aggressive war, undertaking illegal surveillance). How could the NYT have ignored the White House torture story for more than a week and then only produce one editorial on it? The editorial was pathetic, saying things like we need more information and we won't get the information and using the Orwellian euphemisms for torture promulgated by the White House. Isn't it their job to dig up this information? Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats are pathetic, too weak and spineless (and I include both presidential candidates here) to call for resignations, press for indictments, and all the rest (maybe if folks had been giving each other blowjobs in the Oval we'd have a case...). The sickness will fester, continuing to kill the Constitution until it rots away completely (or is just the building blocks of children's toys Agamben evokes). Do we have anything to offer in its place?

Addition: Global food riots, shortages, and massive price increases, the flipside of American obesity (think corn syrup).

Hell House

I watched Hell House this evening. It's about a halloween presentation written and performed by members (and friends of members) of an Assembly of God church in Texas. Scenes in the hell house show sin leading to death. They also enact struggles between demons and angels over human souls. After going through the hell house, attendees are asked if they know whether they will go to heaven and hell and given an opportunity to accept Christ.

I was completely struck by the participants' commitment and investment. The amount of volunteer hours was incredible; the volunteers were also extremely dedicated. A great deal of emotion accompanied every part of the process, from the initial planning, to the casting, the rehearsals, and the performances. Much of this emotion was expressed in prayer. Since Assemblies of God are pentecostal, the prayer was often in tongues. But, it also involved music, touching, embracing.

Participants also had a sense of mission--they were actively involved in saving souls. In one scene in the church, the pastor told the congregation that they were sent to infect (I think that was the word, it might have been infiltrate, the metaphor matters but I can't recall it and don't feel like goofing around with the DVD, especially since it is in my son's play station and I'm really awkward with the controller) the world or society. His message, overall, was pretty loving.

Another man who was followed during the course of the film also seemed very loving. Both he and his daughter were actors in Hell House. His wife had left him for another man. He was now raising their four kids, including one son with cerebral palsy and epilepsy, alone. Even though he played a demon tour guide, he also went through the house and was very moved, moved to want to continue to pray after the invitation at the end. His daughter plays the 'abortion girl.' She is shown covered in blood because of taking RU-486.

One of the organizers was properly straight-forward and unapologetic about the role of fear. He didn't deny that hell house used fear to win souls. Instead, he said that fear was part (not the whole) of salvation and faith.

One really great touch--having kids in a kind of hole in the floor, illuminated with red lights, filling with smoke or fog, and covered with plexiglass. The kids press their hands and faces up against the plexiglass like souls trapped in hell's eternal torment.

The film ends with a number of people talking about the imminence of the Rapture, their conviction that we are living in the end times.

"A Godless America is a dead America"

I finally picked up my campus mail. In it was a glossy publication (referred to inside as a 'book') from the Great Commission Center International edited by Thomas Wang and titled, America, Return to God. Psalms 33:12 is printed on the front cover: "Blessed is the Nation whose God is The Lord." On the back cover, in addition to a number of endorsements from evangelical ministers, written in red is the following:

America is courting self-destruction
A Godless America is a dead America
Time is not on our side
Repent now

The book is a call to arms in order to make American into a Christian nation. According to the introduction, 500,000 copies of the book are being printed and 'sent as gifts to American leaders at all levels (federal, state, and local) and in all professions (political, judicial, educational, scientific, commercial, societal, church, media, etc). The book (a collection of short pieces by different authors) includes explicit denunciations of the enlightenment, feminism, homosexuality, the media, and Herbert Marcuse.

The first section of the book ("from faith to unbelief: American in decline") documents the decadence and decline that have been wrought by secularism and liberalism. The second half ("from unbelief to repentence: American in restoration") begins with an emphasis on repentence and revival but moves quickly to a language of warfare. Thus, a chapter by James Dobson is called "How can we win this war?" The answer is by passing a Federal Marriage Amendment. What's interesting here is thus the ambiguity in the referent 'this'--it could be that the original article was clearly part of an attack on gay marriage. In the context of this book, however, the war in question seems more a war for the soul of America. Gay marriage thus works in this context as a particular standing in for a universal, as a consolidation of multiple evils and crimes (it should come as know surprise that Dobson rails against tyranny, oligarchy, and a runaway court). Dobson writes:

We are involved in nothing less that a civil war of values--a collision between two ways of seeing life. This is not an issue of two alternatives from which to choose, but a life-and-death struggle. And one value system is going to predominate. One is going to rule the country.

Praxis of Evil

An account of the summit: artforum.com.

SCENE AND HERD 04.08.05 Larissa Harris on "Regarding Evil"

All told, Cambridge's summit on evil last Sunday turned out to be good. Budding gnostic and MIT graduate student Ross Cisneros, one of six candidates in the institute's visual-art program, had convened "Regarding Evil," bringing together a "wise clergy" (in his words) that included natty artists Ronald Jones and Julian Laverdiere; bespectacled political scientist Jodi Dean; black-clad,... READ ON
    

From Boyd Rice

I got this email from Boyd and post it here with his permission:

J--- i was saddened & dismayed to hear about your situation. although i am utterly apolitical, due to some harsh opinions held by me i have long been deemed a "nazi" by certain factions of people who don't bother to look beneath the surface of things. most people are able to contexturalize some of my more seemingly extreme viewpoints, but there will always be some at either end of both political extremes who either can't do that or simply don't care to. i have put up with similar threats & name calling from the far left for years, & even though they imagine themselves to be the good guys, their actual behavior is identical. it's cowardly & thuggish. if i have an issue with someone i tell them to their face, but this sort of person doesn't want a discourse obviously. they need an enemy, someone who can be the villian so that they can wear the white hat. i really enjoyed meeting you, & even though we may not see eye to eye on a good many things, i never take it personally when a persons ideology differs from mine. in fact, i find it mindboggling that anyone out there doesn't expect to encounter as many differing opinions as there are human beings. perhaps this is my last vestage of misguided idealism, as experience has shown me time & time again that a lot of humans thrive upon irrationality. indeed, i've spent years investigating the dark side of humanity & don't expect to it's influence on our history diminished any time soon. at any rate, it's been my experience that the sort of person who gets angry over a mere idea or statement of opinion is someone out of step with the real world. they are capable of sending anonymous emails or calling in a bomb threat & derive enough emotional satisfaction from the act of expressing their rage that that's as far as it goes. let's hope that's the case here. wishing you all the best, boyd

Comments deleted and access blocked

Hi folks,
    An email from Kim alerted me to some comments that appeared here last night. They were from a Nazi supporter of Boyd Rice's who attended the MIT Evil Summit. I am really glad for the warning because the comments have shaken me up quite a bit.  I deleted most of them (and in the process one from George as well). I have also blocked the Nazi poster from posting further on the site. The first and primary reason I deleted the comments and blocked him from the site is that I don't want icite coming up in any anti-semitic searches or to be linked to the sort of hate that 'Bill White' preaches. The second reason is that I want icite to be a blog where disagreement is done from a prior kind of trust and solidarity, out of kindness and in terms of if not common hopes then hopes for some kind of commons in the future.
    I left some of 'Bill White's' comments that were targeted at me in particular. Maybe out of masochism, maybe as a reminder of the edges and hate from which I am usually thankfully sheltered, maybe as some kind of proof that I'm not scared of criticism, maybe even because I worry that they are somehow true (do I really dress that badly?).  I also left the comments as evidence of the dangers of assuming the meaning of a performance (and as evidence for some of what Christian posted with regard to the history of Satanism and fascism). The guys I wondered about in the audience really are Nazis. Interestingly, they are really Bush supporters as well. So, the issue of 'overidentification' remains in a way that, in my view at least, doesn't have the kind of disruptive potential Zizek sees (Kim said as much in her earlier post on evil art as well).

Evil art

The Evil Summit I participated in yesterday at MIT was interesting. Everyone else involved was an artist so I was out of my element.I don't know very much about art at all, especially the contemporary art world of magazines like Art Forum. So I learned a lot Julian LaVerdiere was funny and interesting. He gave a slide presentation of his work, which includes the two light towers that went up in NYC six months after 9/11. I liked the way he contextualized the towers of light in earlier light domes by Leni Riefenstahl and Albert Speers, a contextualization lost on makers of 2 light towers 9/11 souveniers. I also liked his American eagle wrecking ball. 

Another participant was Boyd Rice --a counterculture figure, industrial music icon, and former priest in the Church of Satan. He was very nice, charming soft voice, pleasant demeanor. And, he was dressed as a fascist (no fascist symbols, though, just Satanic--I think). Some of his fans, also dressed as fascists, came to the summit. Boyd gave a remarkable performance of a piece (song? poem?) called Total War. It struck me as the 'truth' of Bush and Cheney's militarism. Yet, it could also be hailing young and future fascists. I recognize that these are two elements of the same thing (the Laibach, over-identification issue). Yet, is there a critical edge when people respond and are interpellated as fascists. Boyd is an avowed social darwinist, by the way.  The fact that his art, and his self-presentation, is so troubling is probably good. It may even be an indication that counter cultural art forms have taken over (if not always had) the role of art in contemporary society--they are capable of shocking, disturbing, provoking, affecting, in ways that institutionalized academic art cannot.

A much better version of this argument was made by Ronald Jones. He said that art can't do evil because today it is not serious. Culture frames art in an unserious way; it makes exceptions for artists and doesn't take them seriously. So the past and potenial impact of art is dissipated, removed, immunized. It's just art.

So, can art do evil? I don't think evil is a useful concept. So, does art have some sort of moral and political responsibility? Or is it just art?

Anyway, one of the questions

Evil's own: lapping it up

  Clowns best friends 
  Originally uploaded by Mr Nylon.

lapping it up: who gets what? does it matter if we are lapping? getting our licks in? or we just lovin' it all, lovin' the being loved? or are we all just plastic, surface, schein all the way down?

pure evil

  CIMG0315 
  Originally uploaded by Streamish McNappy.

Is evil the naming of evil? Or, might it be our own impurity that forever stains any undertaking toward good? What is the name and naming of evil? Maybe I'll find out this weekened at MIT. If not, at least the hotel has robots.

Evil Doings

I thought that I has posted a link to my evil paper. After looking through the list of posts, though, I can't find it. So, I apologize to folks' who may have already seen it and think this is pathetic self-repetition. But, someone asked to see it, so I decided to risk repetition and provide it (again?). It will be published in Theory and Event later this spring. Download politics_of_evi1_5.doc

A very brief summary: the paper looks at the word 'evil' in presidential speeches, considering these speeches as political habitats which may or may not provide fertile ground for various tropes or ideas. I concentrate on a few representative speeches from 20th and 21st century presidents from Roosevelt to GWB.

I conclude that evil is at home in GWB's speeches not because of his personal faith, but because of a larger coincidence of relativism and absolutist conviction, of the instability of signification and the resolve to signify in the face of this instability. Rather than two warring epistemological or ethical attitudes, relativism and absolutist conviction should be thought in terms of the speculative identity. Relativism denotes an attitude toward absolutes. Far from negating absolutes, relativism requires the acceptance of particularized convictions, the acknowledgement that each is entitled to her own beliefs or opinions. Differing opinions are not to be analyzed, engaged, or confronted. Rather they are to be expected as wholes, as essences unique to the identity of another. Relativism encourages certainty in one's convictions precisely because it accepts that others have their own convictions.

Within such an environment, intensity and affect matter--we can only judge or assess the intensity of one's conviction. Thus, the efficacy of the term 'evil' shifts from the signified to the signifying subject. The subject is convinced, he feels the truth in his soul. As his hearers join him in filling in 'evil' with content, they become invested in the struggle against 'evil.'  Insofar as they have suppressed uncertaintites and installed their own unacknowledged fantasy of evil in the empty place the term occupies, they identify all the more deeply, libidinally, with the battle against it.