I finally got around to watching The Dark Knight.
Three problems with it. One, it's too long. Two, the Joker character is too much. And three (this concerns the very nature of the superhero), the billionaire's obsession with the maintenance of the law and order in the city that generated and stores his fortune. These laws not only protect his fortune but also block others from accumulating that kind of wealth. And, as we all know, any fortune of the size enjoyed by Wayne has raw robbery (dispossession, as David Harvey would put it) as its founding moment. In the last instance, Batman, the defender of the law, really defends his own money.

That was my impression of the madman/superhero of this endless movie.

As for the Joker, what other choice did he have but to be outrageously nihilistic? Only an evil person who is indifferent to money can sustain and strengthen the moral line that is instantly troubled and weakened when a proper robber, thief, crook is matched with the ultimate defender of the laws that protect and reinforce Wayne's wealth. Writes Herbert Marcus: "The ruling class, in order to justify its dominating position in the process of production, has to make the particular interest of its class seem valid as the general interest." This is the core of Batman.

If the dark core of Le Cercle Rouge is redemption through a criminal act—meaning, the morally ambiguous situation of a good arising from a wrong—then the dark core of Bresson's Pickpocket is a man's spiritualization through the mastery of a crime. Here the church and the saints have been replaced by the streets and crooks, and yet complete commitment to a life of crime ends at the same point as a life committed to the laws of God: holiness, grace, spiritual elongation.

Looking at these images of the lifeless amusement park, "Koga Family Land," in Shiga Prefecture, Japan, we almost hear the echoic laughter of phantom children and the dead dub of happy music.

Concerning Charles Peterson and Alain Badiou:

I can't stop watching the music video for Beyoncé's new tune "Single Ladies":

I've watched it about 50 times and could watch it 50 more times. Some of the hidden power of Beyonce's video is revealed when compared to Grace Jone's recently released video for the tune "Corporate Cannibal," a video and song that best expresses the kind of evil at the root of the current collapse of global capitalism.

Steven Shaviro just got me thinking. I read this passage in his penultimate post, "Crisis"...

[O]rgies of destruction of capital, such as we are witnessing now, are part and parcel of the "creative destruction" (Schumpeter's term, very much following Marx's observations) that is the modus operandi of capitalism. Individual capitalists may suffer (though usually far less than the rest of us do), but these convulsions clear up the system, unclog it, so that new rounds of exploitation and capital accumulation may then take place...

...I read the passage and thought about another passage on page 104 of Raymond William's book Marxism and Literature (one of the 27 or so books I constantly keep next to my bed). The William passage concerns the Benjaminian concept of correspondences:

At one level correspondences are resemblances, in seemingly very different specific practices, which may be shown by analysis to be both direct and directly related expressions of and responses to a general social process.

Walter Benjamin transformed (or translated, in the Latour sense--more about that in another post) the term from Baudelaire's initial use of it in his poem "Correspondences":

Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent
Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,
Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté,
Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent.

or

Like prolonged echoes mingling in the distance
In a tenebrous and profound unity,
Vast as the dark of night and as the light of day,
The perfumes, the sounds, and colors correspond.

With all of this in mind, I now want to establish a new correspondence between of two seemingly dissimilar histories. The history of capitalism and the history of Dick Cheney's heart.

Sensing a problem early Wednesday, Cheney saw the White House physician, who discovered the vice president was experiencing a recurrence of the irregular heartbeat. Cheney participated in regular morning briefings with President Bush, among other duties, and remained working at the White House until he went to George Washington University Hospital in the afternoon for treatment.

The process took nearly two hours, after which Cheney went home, said Megan Mitchell, a Cheney spokeswoman.

"An electrical impulse was delivered to restore the heart to normal rhythm," she said. "The procedure went smoothly and without complication."

From another report:

Mr Cheney, 67, has had four heart attacks, quadruple bypass surgery and operations to clear blocked arteries.

To begin with, correspond those details with the one in Shaviro's passage:

[T]he modus operandi of capitalism.... these convulsions clear up the system, unclog it, so that new rounds of exploitation and capital accumulation may then take place.

Though one system or substance (or assemblage--more on that in another post) is social and the other organic, a diachronic (or historical) analysis of capitalism and Cheney's heart would reveal convincing commonalities. The heart as the base of Cheney's life; capitalism being the base of social life. The situation of the heart producing a certain type of person and the situation of capitalism resulting in a type of superstructure. Indeed, both went into a state of crisis at the same time, and both are treated with shocks to restore stability and confidence. Seriously, the two (the heart and mode of production) need to be examined as being expressions of some larger moment or world process.

Trapped in a culture of poverty:

Black bears that live around urban areas weigh more, get pregnant at a younger age, and are more likely to die violent deaths, according to a study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

...[B]ears in urbanized areas weighed an average of 30 percent more than bears in wild areas due to a diet heavily supplemented by garbage.

...[T]hey are giving birth at an earlier age – on average when they are between 4-5 years old, as compared to 7-8 years for bears in wild areas. Some urban bears even reproduced as early as 2-3 years of age around Lake Tahoe.

...Urban bears also tend to die much younger due mostly to collisions with vehicles.

Fast cars, junk food, easy sex? The urban black bear is just another statistic.

The next movie!

I want to think about several things. First, the word "hypopsia." It's taken from ancient Greek and appears in Jacques Rancière's book On the Shores of Politics. The word means "to look underneath," meaning, to check and see if there's something underneath, say, your bed. You are checking because you are suspicious that the bed you are on is not safe or is not all there is. Hypopsia is the condition of being suspicious about the way things appear to be. And philosophy as a project, as a mode of thought begins with hypopsia, suspicion, and not, as some thinkers have argued, with "thaumadzein, the wonder at that which is as it is" ("As far as philosophy is concerned, if it is true it begins with wonder"—Hanna Arendt Introduction to Politics. On the other hand, the English philosopher Simon Critchley believes philosophy "begins with disappointment," which, of course, is very English of him.)

What is it that Marx brought to the emerging science of political economy (Smith, Ricardo, Mills, Malthus) in the 19th century? It was not heated wonder but cold suspicion. He did not trust the appearance (specter) of capitalism or the international market system, and his whole life was spent trying to remove its appearance and reveal its real. Capital is all about looking underneath the bed—what's really there?

Let's now think about a short but important work of semiotic theory by Roland Barthes, Mythologies. The opening essay in that book, "The World of Wrestling," decodes the language and tropes of professional wrestling, which was then (the early 1950s) as theatrical and scripted as it is today. In the essay, Barthes expresses fascination at the spectacle professional wrestlers make of their moments of victory and defeat. When a wrestler is doing well in a fight, he is in a state of extreme happiness and excitement; if he is losing, he makes a big show of his suffering—the wrestler moans, groans, and squirms like a worm. His suffering is bottomless.

Let's now think about the recent events on Wall Street. Like Barthes's professional wrestlers, Wall Street only has two emotional states: absolute euphoria and absolute suffering. When happy, it is too happy; when sad, it is too sad. When it laughs, it laughs way too loudly (showing teeth, gums, and a demented tonsil). When it weeps, its tears fall and fall and fall. But why this primitive performance? We must be suspicious of it. Why can't Wall Street be just sad or just happy? Why this need to go to such extremes? What is this (joy or joys) or that (sorrow or sorrows) appearance obscuring?

In the case of the present performance, all of this suffering and crying about the stage, Wall Street is obscuring a spectacular transference and concentration of wealth. What looks like a crash and a great amount of pain is in fact a socialization of losses (accumulated by, yes, neo-liberal policies—these people are shameless) and a mass movement of the universal equivalent to an even smaller percentage of the global population. What we are really watching is the whole world becoming a Third World.

Zizek cannot get enough of the "chocolate laxative." The product, which stands at the top of the philosopher's favorite capitalist concoctions, is available in the U.S. and advertised in this manner: "Do you have constipation? Eat more of this chocolate." What Zizek finds fascinating about this product is that it makes you eat "the very thing that causes constipation in order to be cured from it." Like Diet Coke and decaffeinated coffee, the "logic of chocolate laxative" is a product that undoes itself. And Zizek believes that this kind of commodity ("one through which we get the desired result without having to suffer unpleasant side effects") is the ultimate commodity of our age. The products of the 21st century are more and more becoming nothing.

With all of his digressions, jokes, knowledge of junk/popular culture, is Zizek precisely not like these products that negate themselves? Isn't he a philosopher who undoes himself? He is a philosopher without the unpleasant side effects of philosophy. 

2001 is a story about the development of consciousness.

I mean just consciousness and NOT human consciousness.

In 2001, humans are just one of several possible modes for the development of mind. In Hegel's philosophy, for example, the development of mind is limited to humans-two types of humans to be exact: Asians and Europeans. Consciousness starts in the mind of the Asians and moves to the mind of the Europeans (from the Greeks to the Germans--the race that ends the story of mind, according to Hegel). For Stanley Kubrick's movie, the story of consciousness moves from African apes, to American humans, and ends in a manmade computer. Also, consciousness is not limited to our planet. It's on a journey away from the Earth to where it supposedly came from: deep space.

For Hegel, what motors the movement/development of consciousness is history. Or, more closely, historical events. These events seem random, but if seen from the standpoint of world history, they are rational.

From the distance of world history we see the mechanism of these seemingly random events. That mechanism is what Hegel called "the ruse of reason." The leaders of world history (Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon) thought they were acting out of self-interest (out of passion) but were actually acting in the interest of the "weltgeist," the mind of the absolute, consciousness-which is ever-progressing toward an ultimate expression of consciousness: "What is real is rational and what is rational is real."

In 2001, the mechanism for the development of consciousness is the monolith.

The monolith ruptures and transforms the ape. The ape was once a member of the animal kingdom in the land before time; after the monolith appears, it enters the realm of reason. And that entrance is not smooth but violent. To progress from a dumb animal to a reasonable one is brutal. The same is so for the next, higher stage of consciousness.

The rupture between humans and machines is also violent. The computer kills that from which it emerges--reason in the mode of human beings. Hegel also saw the ruse of reason (2001,'s monolith, and also the Bible's apple--they are all the same thing) as a violent intervention. For him, "the History of the world (was) not the theatre of happiness."

And so the ape grips the bone.

The monolith inspires this gripping of the bone, the tool, the weapon. The word "grip" in English is related to the German word "begriff"-a concept, an idea, the form of a thought. Furthermore, the part of the brain that coordinates grasping and gripping is also the part of the brain that manages gestures, and gestures are the ancestors of vocalized language. There is a connection between gripping and the production of words, gripping and the formation of thought, gripping and the emergence of the state.Indeed, the Greek word for justice, "dikÍ," is related to the word "digit," fingers. The law, the truth, the state, the written language, the technologies of power and control-all have their origins in our hands. The moment the ape in 2001 grips the bone is the moment consciousness begins its long journey to outer space.

Listen closely, it's not an echo--the repetition of a sound after its source. With "Top Billin'," the word or words are heard before their source. The movement is not from real to ghostly, from life to afterlife, but from ghostly to real, from afterlife to life. It is the sonic version of raising the dead. And I can think of no other rapper who used this special magic, this other kind of dub--the echo as its opposite.

What's most impressive about Grace Jones' new video is it offers the viewer no access to enjoyment or thrills. The whole work has zero entertainment value; it's unpleasant to watch and hear--a grinding beat, a morphing monster. This is not a spectacle of corporate capital, corporate greed, corporate hunger. A spectacle seduces the thing it exploits or annihilates. With Jones as the corporate beast, there is no seduction, no sugar, no soft suffocation. Grace Jones makes every effort to fully represent the terrifying force of today's global rich.

Go back to 1985 and listen to "Slave to the Rhythm," which with good reason is referenced in "Corporate Cannibal" ("Lost in this cell, in this hell/Slave to the rhythm of the corporate prison"). Produced by Trevor Horn, the older tune has several seductions: the seduction of the then-new go-go beat; the seduction of Grace's appearance (at once elemental and futuristic), and the seduction of her lyrics, which expressed the sublime of world-historical labor.

Axe to wood in ancient times.
Man machine
power line.
Fires burn
Hearts beat strong.
Sing out loud the chain gang song.
Never stop the action
Keep it up
keep it up.

We have in these lines the same sublime that gave much of the Communist Manifesto its beauty and poetry.

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has
created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all
preceding generations together. Subjection of nature's forces to man,
machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam
navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents
for cultivation, canalization or rivers, whole populations conjured out
of the ground -- what earlier century had even a presentiment that such
productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor?

We are amazed and seduced by the spectacle of production itself, the awesome power of social labor.


With "Corporate Cannibal," the moment of Debord is over. We no longer look at capital (or the history of productive forces) from a safe distance ("don't cry, it's only the rhythm") but directly at its dark mouth, as if we were on a white plate, soon to be devoured. Nothing about this situation is pleasing or thrilling. All we want to do is find a way out of this place/plate; but the image of corporate hunger is fluid: it shifts its shape like some sort of digital snake ("...Digital criminal/Corporate cannibal/Eat you like an animal"). Writes Steven Shaviro:

The modulations of "Corporate Cannibal" don't give us the sense that anything can happen, but rather one that no matter what happens, it will be drawn into the same fatality, the same narrowing funnel, the same black hole

And you can not shake the hand of this snake. You can't even mistrust it, bribe it, distract it with talk about the importance of civility (verses barbarism), of re-investment of the surplus value, or saving for a rainy day. All of those possibilities are long gone. With this form of capital, neoliberal capital, every barrier to its desire, the negation/consumption of all value, has been removed. What's left is for you to await the inevitable on a plate.

Pleased to meet you/Pleased to have you on my plate"

The decency is a cruel joke; it's not needed.

You won't hear me laughing/As I terminate your day/You can't trace my footsteps as I walk the other way.

That's Grace Jone's stark conclusion of capital at this point, which roughly marks three decades of neoliberalism and de-unionization. The rich eat the poor with no compunction or preparation. The video is raw.


Note
For those who think we are living in the fairest of times, please read this article (sent to me by Comrade Erica C. Barnett).

A taste:

How much, we asked our group, would it take to put someone in the top 10% of earners? They put the figure at £162,000. In fact, in 2007 it was around £39,825, the point at which the top tax band began. Our group found it hard to believe that nine-tenths of the UK's 32m taxpayers earned less than that. As for the poverty threshold, our lawyers and bankers fixed it at £22,000. But that sum was just under median earnings, which meant they regarded ordinary wages as poverty pay.

"We work harder and aspire the most," one said. The longer we talked, the more they turned to moral reasons for success and failure, moving away from the structural globalisation reasons given above. One banker said: "It's a fact of modern life that there is disparity and 'Is it fair or unfair?' is not a valid question. It's just the way it is, and you have to get on with it. People say it's unfair when they don't do anything to change their circumstances." In other words, they see themselves as makers of their own fortune. Or, as another banker said, "Quite a lot of people have done well who want to achieve, and quite a lot of people haven't done well because they don't want to achieve."

Ten minutes ago, in an essay by Foucault, found is this wonderful statement at the end of a sentence about the method and aim of a genealogical approach to the study of history: "Plato, at Syracuse, did not become Muhammed." Let's quickly unpack it: East; west. Mecca as Athens; Medina as Syracuse. Philosophy as a story of failure; religion as a success story. And what is it that happens in Medina? Muhammed moves from a religious position to a political one. For Philosophy, this transition is attempted and immediately dropped. The handle on politics is too hot for the grasp of nous. As for irrational faith? No problem: it can hold, lift, and wait for the politics to cool into its own image. To this day, Islam and politics can not be separated.

Harvey is our Lefebvre:
Check out this video: The Right to the City - part 1