(3:07 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

A Candid List of Books I Have Not Read, Despite Being a Graduate Student

In his novel Changing Places, David Lodge describes a literary parlor game called "Humiliations" in which participants confess, one by one, titles of books they've never read. The genius of the game is that each player gains a point for each fellow player who's read the book—-in other words, the more accomplished the reader, the lower his or her score. Lodge's winner is an American professor who, in a rousing display of one-downmanship, finally announces that he's never read Hamlet.

• Ulysses -- I got about halfway through this one, twice. Dr. Belcher once started a summer reading group devoted to this text, which I halfway thought about joining; as I remember, Paul Anderson actually tamed the beast, while everyone else was too soft.
  
• Capital -- I have read neither a full volume, nor even selected sections from this great work. I am completely innocent of any acquaintance with Marx's magnum opus except for those proof-texts cited by Zizek, Jameson, et al.
  
• Critique of Pure Reason -- I once started to read Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, then decided not to read that after all. We can count the other two Critiques, together with the Metaphysics of Morals, the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone, and actually anything by Kant other than "Perpetual Peace" and "The Supposed Right to Lie."
  
• Confessions -- I have read neither Augustine's nor Rousseau's book of this title, though my French exercise book recently presented me with a few morsels from the latter. Similarly, I have not read City of God, Emile, On the Trinity, or The Social Contract.
  
• The Order of Things -- so much Foucault has happened to me, but I never quite attained the money shot.
  
• Anti-Oedipus -- If you think not reading this book is impressive, get a load of this: I have never read A Thousand Plateaus, Difference and Repetition, or The Logic of Sense, and I am similarly innocent of any direct knowledge of Deleuze's many insightful studies of pre-critical metaphysicians.
  
• The Documents of the Second Vatican Council -- who needs to actually sit down and read this stuff? Good liberal Catholics already know what it says: good liberal stuff that supports the kind of changes we'd like to see in the church.
  
• Works of Love -- again, plenty of Kierkegaard under my belt, but I've never read this one book that seems to be in his "top three" (with Fear and Trembling and Concluding Unscientific Postscript).
  
• A Tale of Two Cities -- no Dickens for me! Ha!
  
• East of Eden -- the same goes for Steinbeck (except for one short story), Hemmingway (got only halfway through A Farewell to Arms), Beckett, Sartre, Kundera, Ezra Pound, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Stephen King.

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(1:14 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

A Candid Assessment of Potential Flaws in My Way of Thinking

First and foremost, I tend toward vulgar Marxism, otherwise known as economism. I often formulate my political and moral stances based on the idea that a reordering of economic relations will automatically produce solutions to other problems -- that is, while I would love for particular problems to go away, I view a change in the economic structure of our world as the only way to really, really solve all the problems. This leads toward a certain irresponsibility of thought, given that the world-wide revolution is not likely to occur within the next few years. I toy with more pragmatic solutions while treating them as band-aids in which I don't finally have a stake. This tendency may be part of the residue of fundamentalist Christianity. Such views could be critiqued from a cultural studies, feminist, queer theory, or psychoanalytic perspective (the latter is particularly ironic, given my penchant for psychoanalysis).

Second, I tend to judge ideas based on their aesthetic appeal rather than strictly based on the arguments and evidence presented. All too often, this aesthetic appeal is based on some vague premonition that certain people (who may or may not exist only in my mind) would be annoyed by the ideas I espouse. Hence, although the idea that Paul did not write all the letters ascribed to him is a scholarly concensus, I tend to be biased toward positions that leave the fewest possible authentic letters, because that seems to produce more problems and thus be somehow "cooler." This tendency could account for my great devotion to the teachings of Ted Jennings, which may be deeply flawed in many ways -- but lack of coolness or lack of edginess is not one of their flaws.

Hand-in-hand with the above flaw is a tendency to take the latest controversial theory I have learned as an established fact and to discard the "conventional wisdom," even in cases where the conventional wisdom is barely established itself. The more "conspiracy-theory"-like the theory is, the more it appeals to me -- as I have noted before, conspiracy theories are in my blood, with my Grandpa Kotsko belonging firmly to the conspiracy theorist camp and my father being a devout Republican.

More generally, and third, I tend to be too easily convinced. I am more likely than anyone I know to say, "Okay, you're right" in a conversation about a controversial issue. It's not a matter of simply recognizing potential flaws or gaps in my ideas and taking other people's ideas into account -- I leap to affirm my interlocutor's position as a whole. I want to jump straight into having the whole truth, all at once. Again, the Christian, specifically Wesleyan, influences here should be obvious. (Similarly, I often seek after the one insight or action that will finally untie the knot of all my emotional and interpersonal hang-ups -- although entire sanctification never quite "took," and although I never delivered a sincere testimony in the appropriate context, I still do seek after it, similar to the broadly Hardto-Negrian insight that ideas and institutions are actually more effective when they are broken and propagated into more and more different contexts.)

I also hate it when people apply any kind of label to me -- whether it's my family referring to me as a "liberal," people in general calling me "Catholic," or whatever. I also hate it when people want me to affirm the impression they have of me -- "You're really smart, right?" or "You read a lot, right?" etc., etc. It's the same as the general problematic of when someone knows of one of your interests and that's all they want to talk about -- or the general problematic of people in literature classes learning two or three biographical facts about an author and interpreting every aspect of every text through the lens of what I like to call "footnote knowledge." Footnote knowledge is necessary, but it should not be mistaken for real knowledge. And so, if people try to deploy their footnote knowledge of me, I do everything possible to frustrate them and deny what they're saying. That's bad, because they're just trying to be friendly. If you're one of those people, I'm sorry that you probably felt put off -- but I was actually trying to make you feel put off, so I guess I'm not really sorry.

Further remarks about the flaws in my way of thinking can be directed toward the HaloScan-brand comments below. Thank you.

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(Adam Kotsko has asserted the moral right to be identified as the author of this post.)

Saturday, October 23, 2004

(4:39 PM) | Anthony Paul Smith:

I Find Conservatives Morally Reprehensible.

I did a bad, bad thing. No, I didn't cheat on my wife or buy drugs from the guys across the street. I've been reading conservative blogs out of boredom. This always starts out innocent, like that first time you heard Rush Limbaugh and couldn't stop listening due to your utter disbelief that anyone could actually believe this shit. It's so bizarre, so different and it becomes slightly entertaining. I have, after all, always had a passing interest in propaganda techniques. This stuff really is an art.

That interest always wears off in the face of reality. When I read that conservatives still support a President who isn't a conservative I realize they aren't artists, they are immoral fucks. I know that morality is usually the domain of the conservatives, but what they call morals is really just obscuring the fact that they have no positive plan for the future of America or the world. Really, they stand to serve the interests of their constituents in the upper echelons of society. So I think morals, as a word describing actions that will keep you from having a bad life, should be reclaimed by the left.

When I talk to a conservative I feel a bit like Kant. If we can't agree on a fundamental issue, like the fact that the Iraq war was at best an instance of extreme idiocy, then we just can't talk. Or maybe, at the very least, admit that Bush is not a Republican. He's for big government, expansionist foreign policy, and all the faux moral issues, like abortion, serve only as rhetoric tools since his office knows it is essential a non-issue.

Basically, I read these blogs and get angry. I want them to just go away. Maybe I should move to France, sure they may be appeasing bastards that eat too much cheese, but at least in France no one argues over the definition of torture.

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(Anthony Paul Smith has asserted the moral right to be identified as the author of this post.)

(1:14 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

A President Who is Proud of His Actions

Jesse sent me this article about how the president signed "the most sweeping overhaul of corporate tax law since 1986" on a Friday aboard Air Force One. The article notes that this behavior "stood in contrast with Bush's action on Oct. 4 when he sat before television cameras on a stage in Des Moines, Iowa, to sign three tax-cut breaks popular with middle-class voters and revive other tax incentives for businesses." My favorite part of the article, however, was this little two-paragraph gem:

Though the legislation provides new tax breaks, Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation says it has no impact on the deficit because it also closes corporate tax loopholes and repeals export subsidies.

Opponents disagree, saying it will swell the nation's huge budget deficit with a massive giveaway that will reward multinational companies that move jobs overseas and add to the complexity of the tax system.

Could we possibly venture a guess as to which of these positions more closely approximates reality? Or have we done our journalistic duty when we report what "both sides" say? Or, even better, does this "method" reveal that the journalist doesn't want to patronize the American public and knows that in the age of the Internet, every citizen is fully capable of reading the legislation, gathering the relevant statistics, and coming to her own conclusions?

Jesse just remarked that "the article was harsh," and indeed it was -- but the harshness was entirely directed toward the presentation of the action, not to the actual substance of the tax cuts. Presentation is relevant -- after all, maybe his behavior indicates that the president has something to hide, but maybe it just indicates that he doesn't have time for a big honkin' ceremony every time he passes a tax bill. The facts would help us to decide on how relevant the presentation actually is. And I suppose with some Google searching, I could find the facts -- it would just be so much more convenient if they were included in the article.

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(Adam Kotsko has asserted the moral right to be identified as the author of this post.)

(10:08 AM) | Adam Kotsko:

Blogging Charity

If possible, I would like to coordinate donations to Heifer International through The Weblog. I know that none of my readers are very well-off, but their program allows us to purchase livestock and other essentials for people living in poor parts of the world, for surprisingly low prices. I have enough in my savings account from my student loan that I can probably afford to give a goat, pig, sheep, or even a llama, but I think it would be nice if we used our blogging powers for good on a larger scale. I don't have a detailed plan for how it would work out; I'm just trying to see if anyone is interested.

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(Adam Kotsko has asserted the moral right to be identified as the author of this post.)

(9:50 AM) | Adam Kotsko:

Electoral College: Benefits and Drawbacks

I know that looking at the electoral vote website and really, really hoping that some particular state goes to Kerry is not the same as "actually doing something." But do you think it's bad that every time Florida seems to be swinging toward Kerry, I mentally subtract the electoral votes from Florida and look for other states that might fill the gap, assuming that Florida's votes will be stolen by the Bush team no matter which way they actually go? Not just that I'm thinking it, but that I'm actually rather sanguine about it, as though it's natural and acceptable that that will happen?

They used to talk about the need to inculcate a culture of democracy in former communist countries -- I think I need some of that inculcation right here in America.

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(Adam Kotsko has asserted the moral right to be identified as the author of this post.)

Friday, October 22, 2004

(2:25 PM) | Anthony Paul Smith:

Further James K.A. Smith Watch: The increasingly inaccurately called Jacques Derrida week.

I was bored at work, surfing the internet and I found one more Jacques Derrida obituary. I was surprised to find it in Christianity Today and even more surprised to see it was written by Dr. James KA Smith, the recent subject of a harsh post from me. Though it certainly isn't the most informational obituary, it is very personal focusing on some regrets Smith has in relation to a harsh paper he gave concerning Derrida. The humble tone that Smith writes in is certainly nothing you'd ever see from the likes of John Milbank. But you can tell it was written by a former student of Caputo, and I, for one, prefer prayers and tears to pomp and circumstance.

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(Anthony Paul Smith has asserted the moral right to be identified as the author of this post.)

(10:33 AM) | Anthony Paul Smith:

Derrida on the Radio: The increasingly inaccurately named Jacques Derrida week.

A professor of philosophy at DePaul University, someone I highly respect, Dr. Michael Naas was on the Chicago Public Radio program "Odyssey" with Dr. Francoise Meltzer of The University of Chicago Comparitive Literature Department and Divinity School speaking about deconstruction and the death of Jacques Derrida. For those unfamiliar with deconstruction or Derrida, or if you an analytic who thinks only of Derrida as a "belle-lettrist, obscuritanist, pederast", I highly recommend you listen to it.

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(Anthony Paul Smith has asserted the moral right to be identified as the author of this post.)

(8:24 AM) | Adam Kotsko:

Friday Afternoon Confessional: Group Participation Week

I have the following confessions to make:

• I've got to hand it to Anthony for pumping out three posts in one evening.
  
• I sometimes make overly ambitious promises that I can't keep.
  
• I don't know where to put things.
  
• Even though I know it just dries out my skin, I always take a really hot shower.
  
• My eating habits are far from healthy.
  
• I am veering toward coffee addiction.
  
• I feel like I'm really behind this semester and can't figure out what to do to catch back up.
  
• I never take my own advice.
  
• I routinely contribute to the political polarization of our great nation.
  
• Sometimes I think that the opinions I hold are true and that others ought to adopt them.
  
• I am all too often a whiny little bitch.
  
• I sometimes use misogynistic language (see above).
  
• My friend who always says the crassest possible thing in the bluntest possible way is no longer funny and cute to me.
  
• I'm on strike from going grocery shopping, because I went four times last week, each time falsely assuming that someone else would pick up staples that I had forgotten.
  
• My blog makes me late to work.
  
• I've lately learned of the existence of dozens of new blogs, and I have not made the effort to keep up on any of them.
  
• I'm passive-aggressive to a fault.

Feel free to share your own confessions below.

UPDATE: What does this mean?

AK, I think your style consistently mistakes "informed opinion" for "final authority" and openness for ambiguity. I'm sure you know that there are people who are more informed than you are that have different but equally valid perspectives. It's interesting to listen to what they have to say without despising them from the start.

It's from Adam Robinson. I wanted to respond to it, but I'm not sure what the first sentence means (sincerely). So, (a) what is he saying, and (b) is it true?

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(Adam Kotsko has asserted the moral right to be identified as the author of this post.)

Thursday, October 21, 2004

(10:59 PM) | Anthony Paul Smith:

Research Assistance.

I am in the process of being hired for an undergraduate think tank on ecology in the city. It seems they want us to read articles and then discuss and critique the ideas presented from our perspective disciplines, and I'm supposed to do so as a student familiar with Post-Structuralist philosophy. This sounds like a good opportunity for me and I hope it works out but I also feel slightly out of my element. I have some general ideas about what Deleuze, Derrida and Foucault would have to say, especially in relation to the whole idea of natural spaces in the middles of cities, but I would appreciate if anyone could point me to some actual texts that you think would be pertinent for this research.

The comment box is below.

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(Anthony Paul Smith has asserted the moral right to be identified as the author of this post.)

(10:05 PM) | Anthony Paul Smith:

A Polemic Against the Academic Dishonesty or Willful Ignorance of the Contributors of Radical Orthodoxy.

First off you should know that I like certain aspects of Radical Orthodoxy, even if the contributors are only unified by the fact that they read Augustine and French Post-Structuralists. That being said there are a lot of problems with it, and perhaps the most flaming is academic dishonesty or willful ignorance that many of those who claim the school partake of when working with non-Christian texts.

For example, albeit a blog one, James K. A. Smith, part of the ever growing Calvinist contingent within RO, has a blog that he doesn't post much on but did have this comment on Hardt & Negri's Mulititude.

Those who read Hardt & Negri's Empire (Harvard UP) will recall their invocation of the "multitude"--led by St. Francis, as it were--as the transnational network of resistance. Well, I just got ahold of what amounts to the sequel of Empire. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (Penguin). I'm taking it along with me to Cambridge, but it looks fascinating. And ripe for theological engagement. I wonder if what Hardt & Negri are looking for from "the multitude" might be precisely what one would hope to find in the ekklesia? I would highly recommend reading this book alongside Daniel Bell's outstanding work, Liberation Theology After the End of History, in the Radical Orthodoxy series (Routledge).

Now James KA Smith is a graduate from Villanova's philosophy department, and so I would expect better scholarship (even in blog form) from him (even though he's a Calvinist who teaches at Calvin "Evangelical Christian WorldViewTM" College in Michigan (it is, after all, a good school). Still he falls into the Radical Orthodoxy trap of seeing some random Christian from the Middle Ages mentioned in a book and taking it as some sign that the whole book is really built around how amazing Christianity and the Church are. I also found Hardt and Negri's use of St. Francis interesting, but suggesting that the multitude, as presented in its Hardto-Negrian form, is led by means you didn't understand the argument. St. Francis served as a model of the militant, who resisted violence (necessary in a time like our own) and hierarchy. There is no leader of the multitude, and to say that there is makes me wonder how well the book was read.

Smith also falls for the all too common "ask a stupid rhetorical question" trap when he muses, "I wonder if what Hardt & Negri are looking for from "the multitude" might be precisely what one would hope to find in the ekklesia?" What "one"? Hardt and Negri? Two atheists?!? Surely not those in Asia, where the church grows the most among those with upward mobility, and thus supports Capitalism! Ok, sure, if you are a Christian you want the Church to be every-fucking-thing that is good, but you know what? It's not. It just isn't. In fact the Church, or ekklesia (it doesn't change if you say it in Greek), may be the biggest political failure of the 20th Century. Sometimes when I read those involved with Radical Orthodoxy it seems that they feel threatened by things that don't easily fit into a narrow theological framework, and so they force those new concepts into ones they are familiar with. Derrida's concept of the gift? Oh, that's really just an incomplete picture of God offering God's only son to die. Badiou's theory of truth and universality? That's really just something ripped off from Christianity. Marion's questionable phenomenology? Ok, that is just Thomistic theology with a phenomenological framework, so they win that round. But Marion doesn’t really hide that fact or pretend to be a non-Catholic philosopher, so it seems fair to use him explicitly as such.

I think Radical Orthodoxy has a lot of good things in it, the "Erotics" chapter in the so-called manifesto is a good use of Bataille for theology, some of Milbank's critique of perceived "secularization" are rather helpful in dealing with the religious nature of Capitalism, and Daniel M Bell Jr's Liberation Theology After the End of History: The Refusal to Cease Suffering is a really interesting use of Deleuze and Foucault for critiquing Liberation Theology. So, they don't always suck, but when they do suck they really suck. I just want them to admit that "They aren't Christian," isn't a good critique of any philosopher.

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(Anthony Paul Smith has asserted the moral right to be identified as the author of this post.)

(8:57 PM) | Anthony Paul Smith:

The Phenomenology of Breaking Into a Pontiac Sunfire.

My car was broken into on Saturday morning. Rather, I discovered it had been broken into on Saturday morning but the actual break-in could have been anytime from 6:50, Friday morning to 11:15, Saturday morning. Regardless, I had the odd experience of walking up to my car, seeing it surrounded by blue-green glass, a lack of glass where the driver side windshield once stood, and thinking to myself "Someone hit my car." I expected there to be a note on my window, something along the lines of, "Sorry, I hit your car. Call me 555-555-5555." Instead I looked in and say two wires hanging out where my CD player had once been, and then I looked up to my visor where my CD wallet had once hung to find it missing. It contained some Belle & Sebastian, Wilco, The Catheters and some random burned CD's - they left the MC5 and the Brown Bunny soundtrack (Thanks!).

Husserl says that when we perceive of a thing we perceive of its value at the same time. Since this perception of value is also a perception it appears as something along a horizon, meaning you can be mistaken or take the object as something completely different when you perceive it again from a different vantage point. I drive a Pontiac Sunfire that was given to me by my parents after my dad, a police chief, had acquired it as a stolen vehicle. I am very thankful that my parents were able to help me out in this way, but it isn't a car I would choose to buy. When I think of Pontiac Sunfire and make it present to me in its absence I perceive it as a car with an overly-tan college girl driving it. Even when I think of my Pontiac Sunfire, I perceive it as such. I have no reason to believe others would see it too much differently, since it is a rather sparkly green color, I still haven't scraped the large fairy sticker off the back, and it is a Pontiac Sunfire. When you perceive of a car you apperceive of a driver, so I imagine the thieves say my car and say it as the car of someone who would put some money into the sound system (I hadn't, the CD player was from Wal-Mart.). They may have even perceived me, in my absence, as someone who listens to music they would like, after all I did have a nice CD player (Which I didn't.) so they stole my CD's.

I wonder how drastically their experience changed once they had broken the window, and ripped out the CD player, rushing to grab the CD's, and broke the grill on my heater vents. After that rush of adrenaline had faded I wonder how they experienced the realization that the formerly perceived nice CD player was actually a Pioneer from Wal-Mart. Did they suddenly perceive of me as a gay man when they heard the first few bars of "I Fought in a War" by Belle & Sebastian? Do they still think it was worth it? In the end that irony may have given me the last laugh, at least the perceived irony in my head. Regardless, if I ever find out who did this I will fucking stab them in the face.

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(Anthony Paul Smith has asserted the moral right to be identified as the author of this post.)

(5:16 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

Anger

If you want to read something really good, read this Derrida post from The Reading Experience, which is basically the best response to Derrida's death on the Internet. If you want to read something that I wrote, read this:

There are good reasons to be conservative. There are good reasons to support limiting the size of government and generally to oppose the centralization of power in the hands of the federal government. There are good reasons to support sexual restraint and to discourage people from choosing the path of heterosexual monogamy. There are reasons to be proud of military service and to be fiercely patriotic. There are reasons to worry that perhaps judges are overstepping their bounds and to view the Founding Fathers as a still-relevant source of guidance for our contemporary political challenges. I don't share those views, but I can understand how one would. It is more than possible to be an intellectually honest and reflective person and to have conservative political views.

However, most people who go under the name "conservative" in public discussions are not intellectual honest and reflective people, at least in terms of the politics they advocate. They are partisan Republicans, extremely partisan Republicans -- to such an extent that a Republican can do no wrong and the slightest slip-up by a "liberal" is indicative of their moral bankrupcy. Take, for example, the most recent post by frieda, Cap'n Pete's absolutely horrible co-blogger whom he should fire immediately. I will gladly excerpt it here:

dear john kerry,
we are the spirits of the geese that you killed needlessly so that you could get the vote of the nra and support of ohio voters. shame on you, you fake, opportunistic bastard. next time you walk through a beautiful field where we fly, without a gun and camoflauge, we will make sure to poop on your head.
signed,
the pissed off geese

I'm going to take John Kerry's word for it that he's a "lifelong hunter" until the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth come out with shocking evidence that he's never hunted in his life. The Google results for "john kerry lifelong hunter" all -- of course -- call Kerry out on his rank hypocrisy for enjoying hunting and supporting animal rights, and maybe that's a terrible thing that should make us all hate Kerry from the depths of our very souls -- but at the same time, all the stories agree that he was consistently able to hit his targets. The very fact that there are "dead geese" is prima facie evidence that he is in fact conversant with hunting, and it is completely appropriate for him to go to a hotly contested state and demonstrate that he shares interests with many of the voters in that state.

Yes, it's "political," but he's running for political office! By accusing Kerry of constantly making campaigning decisions -- not decisions in governance, but campaigning decisions, decisions in a context that is almost purely political -- based on "politics," the Republican hacks are implying that they are somehow not being political -- but as Carl Schmitt points out, claiming not to be playing politics is a particularly fierce way of playing politics. Jonah Goldberg and others were deeply offended by Alan Wolfe's article claiming that contemporary conservatives seem to be channelling the spirit of Carl Schmitt, but in reality, that's just a way of saying that Republicans are really good at playing politics. Being so extremely nit-picky and ridiculous while studiously ignoring the faults of the people on their own side is a brilliant political move -- perfectly calibrated to make one's non-Republican-hack opponents (commonly lumped together under the heading of "liberal") so angry that they can no longer think straight (as in my response to frieda's post, where I told her to "shut the fuck up" -- something for which I emphatically do not apologize), and thus reinforcing the stereotype that "liberals are all angry." Or, if the "liberals" patiently refute their claims, the Republican hacks can use that as evidence of the fact that "liberals are overly intellectual and lack the necessary clarity and decisiveness."

I've got to hand it to the Republicans on the politics -- they're great at it. They beat the Democrats in politics hands-down. The problem is that it leaves them very little energy to attend to the business of governing. The majority of Americans do realize that all the bluster of the Republicans is just that, and that Democrats are simply better at running the country. The problem is, those for whom the Republican bluster is a matter of life or death often outnumber those sensible Democrats-by-default on election day. Hopefully that will not be the case, and we will be able to return to the "radical center," neo-liberal normality of the Clinton years.

I fully expect to be deeply disappointed in Kerry, but I'd prefer his oppressive Enlightenment rationality to Bush's moral clarity, also known as willful ignorance of the way the world works (i.e., when you fight a war, sometimes people die -- that kind of thing). With Kerry, I can channel my disappointment and even my anger into