[MD] Neopragmatism isn't pragmatic.

[gav]

hey dave,
> 
> dmb says:
> I'm find it interesting too. And it does look like
> the two different 
> starting points, the one's Hildebrand's book brings
> out, really do get to 
> the core of the impasse. It seems to me that these
> two starting points 
> reveal the fact that Pirsig and Rorty, despite a
> large area of agreement, 
> are operating with two distinctly different
> epistemologies. I hope you and 
> Matt and others will explore this area with me, not
> least of all because I'm 
> doing a paper on it.
> 
> Tell me more about Baudrillard's 'perfect crime' and
> the 'spectacle' of the 
> situationists, will you? 

Baudrillard's 'perfect crime' is a book about (to use
MOQese) the murder of primary reality by intellectual
reality (which he likens to a mirror i seem to
remember) which then usurps its position, hence no-one
knows its been murdered: 'the perfect crime'.

the situationists i could talk all day about. in fact
i need to add another book to that lit list i knocked
out last week: 'the revolution of everyday life' by
raoul vaneigem.

the situationists were reacting against 'spectacular
society'. spectacular society is that mode of being
when one is but a subject gazing at objects,
spectating upon rather than participating in life.
alienated existence. they tried to see things
differently: life as a series of open-ended
situations, integrating the individual.

the situationists were definitely not postmodern.
indeed postmodernism, it could be argued, arose
because of the failed revolutionary project of the
situationists. may 68 was really a purely existential
rebellion...which makes it all the more interesting.

in a way the existentialists were a precursor to the
sits. the sits were trying to get past the ethical
vagueness of the existentialists and they realised the
problem was a metaphysical one. they were still stuck
in SOM though because they reacted against the
'objectification' of the world with a call to a return
to the 'subjective', by which they acually mean
immediate experience.

'the society of the spectacle', by guy debord, uses
the words of other philosophers only, rearranged to
convey his own meaning. the sits came up with
'detournement', the idea of using the language and
imagery of the dominant (spectacular) paradigm against
itself, hence 'adbusting'.

other key concepts include:
psychogeography: the effects of environment on
consciousness, intended or otherwise.

recuperation: the tendency of the spectacle to rapidly
appropriate novel cultural/intellectual developments
under a reductive label (eg as  another '-ism'), which
is then added to the rest of the spectacle....naomi
klein almost understood this in 'no logo'.

as far as power goes there is that vaneigem quote from
them that starts my 'student life' paper: "oppression
reigns becasue men are divided, not only among
themselves, but also inside themselves. what separates
them from themselves weakens them and is also the
false bond that unites them with power, reinforcing
this power and making them choose it as their
protector, as their father."

this 'power' is the giant pure, and simple.
to me power is usually a social level thing, along
with fame, money, status, etc.

so what we have is a metaphysical/epistemological
situation which suits the giant nicely: the spectacle.
the alienation implicit in such a view of the world
leads to fear and a general belief that the giant is
necessary in a hobbes-ian kind of way to protect us
from each other.

i guess nietzche's 'will to power' is a need to
disengage from the giant and direct our own lives. i
think the giant is a problem because it is so huge.
remember the giant is the social level and the social
level of the west is one relatively homogenous culture
that probably feeds off more than a billion people.

in the past social levels ended at cities or
relatively recently at countries. incorporating maybe
thousands or millions of people, but billions! in the
past the giant would have been more manageable, but
the modern western giant feeds off the insecurities of
so many... it is a mega-obese paranoid control junkie.

culture needs to be developed and directed by
individuals, rather than being commodified and added
to the spectacle for passive consumption. we are
talking about the intellectual level guiding the
giant, not the current reverse situation. to do this
we need to weaken the giant: to cut him down to size.
and as i said before: community is intellectually
guided society. decentralize!!

nice one on the dirty three! here's hoping you will
see em live soon. i am off to brisbane's first
alt-country music fest next month. i have a new fave
genre!

later bro
gav

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