Sociology as a Martial Art*: Remarks on Bourdieu

 

Me demonstrating ude kime nage 

I was an unapologetic "theory head" in my later years of college and first years of graduate school. I devoured theories as soon as I heard of them, pouring through books by Lyotard, Deleuze, Agamben, Adorno, etc., Some of these stuck with me and became lasting obsessions, and some just went by the wayside. For a long time Pierre Bourdieu was in the former. I read a few things, his book on a theory of practice, some of his polemics about the market, etc., but never really connected. However, I been driven to a kind of belated appreciation of Bourdieu as of late. This is driven by two very different areas of inquiry. The first, predictably, has to do with the way that Bourdieu has become an implicit or explicit point of reference in what I think of as Spinozist social thought.  More or less implicit in case of someone like Frédérique Lordon, who uses problems and terms like "symbolic violence," and more explicit in someone like Chantal Jaquet, who takes up what many see to be Bourdieu's central problem, that of reproduction, and Jacques-Louis Lantoine, who examines the connection between Spinoza's concept of ingenium and Bourdieu's habitus. The second point of reference, also belated is Michael Buroway, whose book on/with Bourdieu is one of the best things I have read all summer. 

Capriciously Categorical: On Plagiarism

 

I have often found Charles Mills' distinction between de jure and de facto racism to be heuristically useful if not not explanatory. It is one of the great merits of The Racial Contract to be an incredibly teachable book, it fits incredibly well in political theory class that has covered Hobbes, Locke, and/or Rousseau, with perhaps some Marx and Machiavelli, putting the very idea of a social contract to a very different use and in doing so, revealing exactly what is excluded from political philosophy, as Mills puts it, "White supremacy is the unnamed political system which has made the world what it is today." Despite this I find the very idea of a rigid division, and a progression, between a de jure racism, the racism of Jim Crow, and segregation, and de facto racism, the racism, of unstated norms and lingering effects to be questionable. This is perhaps because we are living through something else, some third form.

We Think in Society: Notes on the Destruction of Colllective Intelligence

Dinosaur left over from a miniature golf course in Florida.

I find myself coming back to one central question, that is at once political and philosophical. Previously on this blog I referred to the political dimension of this transformation as the constitution of a new episteme, a new standard for what counts as truth. This new standard appears primarily as the destruction of the old standards, as expertise of scientists are contested, and universities are under attack. This new episteme is not in itself a conscious program, and like many things it has multiple overlapping and contradictory conditions, encompassing both the assault on the expertise underlying the administrative state, the knowledge of scientists and experts, on one hand, and the proletarianization of the intellect of day to day life by the proliferation of artificial intelligence, on the other. These strategies often converge and overlap, but have different motivations and conditions. The primary point of their overlap is the way in which they elevate what Spinoza called the imagination about reason, above common notions. The truth of things is how they effect us, or how they effect certain people, if vaccines feel invasive and destructive then they must be, if America does not seem to be racist (to white people) then it isn't, if it seems like the machine is thinking, fully conscious and sentient, then it must be. It is an episteme the puts imagination above reason.  

Live Más, Comrades: Hegel, Marx, and the Dialectics of Diarrhea

The merit of Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right lie less in its solutions, constitutional monarchy, than in the way it grasps the fundamental problem of modern politics. Politics does not begin with individuals in some kind of pre-political state of nature, or as some kind of undifferentiated raw material. Politics, the state, comes after the institutions of the family and civil society, and these institutions are not just functional elements of society, they are, foundational in shaping the perspectives and conflicts of politics. The social is the antechamber of the political. 

We're All Starbuck*:The Barista as Worker and Cultural figure

The Double Shift had its moment on Brooklyn Coffee Shop 

 My first job, my first real job, was barista. Before that I had babysat, and done a bunch of odd jobs around the daycare center my mother ran, painting, assembling cots, making meals, which involved a lot of fish sticks and mac and cheese. It was my first real job in the sense that I had to apply for it, and received a paycheck (along with tips). I worked at Arabica: Coffee and Tea on Shaker Square (otherwise known as Chic-abica) during high school and on breaks during my first few years of college. This was before Starbucks came to Cleveland,  and thus before fancy coffee drinks went mainstream. While Arabica offered all of the espresso drinks, cappuccinos, mochas, lattes, etc., as well as various roast coffees from around the world, our average customer did not know about many of those things, and just wanted a "regular coffee." (which meant they got a medium roast coffee in a medium cup). Iced Mochas were popular though, basically as close as you could get to a milkshake without admitting that you were drinking a milkshake. I was a barista before coffee became the beverage that it is now. More importantly, I was a barista before a barista became a representation of work and a cultural figure.

Society is a Scam: On the Proliferation of Cons in Contemporary Life

 

A detourned Calivn and Hobbes cartoon going viral

When I was a kid we received a chain letter. It was sent to our house. It promised untold riches and bountiful luck if we sent money, I am a little unclear on the details, and warned of misfortune and calamity if we did not. I remember that it was adorned with all kinds of images from the world magic, strange symbols, evil eyes, and the like. It was absolutely fascinating. I also remember, a few years later, a friend of my father's bought a VCR from a shady looking fellow on the street. It seemed like a great deal, which reminds me of one of the first rules of cons, make the mark feel like he is in on it. When he got it home he opened the box to find a brick wrapped in a newspaper inside (VCRs used to be heavy). This were both scams, cons, and they seemed to be incredibly exotic and isolated incidents. My father must have told that VCR story at countless parties. Cons and scams were few and far between. 

Through A Google Glass Darkly: On The Draw

 

Marx wrote, "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living," but he neglected to add that it is the nightmare of traditions that weighs the heaviest in moments of crisis. Ever since 2016, we have seen a revival of some of the darkest moments of the imagination, Octavia Butler's The Parable of the Sower has made the best sellers list, and 1984 has been reread, made the subject of a documentary, which I have not seen, and also to some extent remade, as The Draw, which I did see. 

The Affective Constitution of Knowledge: Or, What Bias Feels Like

We are told again and again that institutions like medicine, journalism, and the university have lost the trust of Americans, and must work to regain that trust. Of course the pundits and politicians that tells us this are more often than not the very ones who have undermined this trust. This is definitely the case with RFK, and, more importantly, it allows me to use one of my favorite memes from one of my favorite shows. However, a few weeks ago the New York Times ran a column by Lydia Polgreen, that offers a different account of at least one institution, journalism. 

Untimely Dystopias: On The Long Walk and The Running Man

 

2025 will probably go down in history as a pivotal year in the US's decline into a particular kind of media driven twenty-first century fascism. It is the year that Trump got his paramilitary force, in ICE, it is also the year in which we saw the fourth estate capitulate to the administration, turning over CBS news to a bootlicking blogger, firing comedians, and gutting journalism to pour money into a fawning documentary about the first lady. The times would seem to be ripe for a film dealing with the combination of authoritarian power and media spectacle. We got two, both based on books by Stephen King. Books written over forty years ago. 

A Plague of Toadies: An Other End of History

 

One of my favorite Toadies from popular culture 

There is a rather influential thesis that comes down to us from Hegel as read by Kojève and then later Francis Fukuyama and Axel Honneth. The thesis, as it has been interpreted, states quite simply that history is driven by a drive for mutual recognition. In other words, we strive to be recognized by people who we also recognize, to be an equal among equals. Built into this argument is the idea that the recognition must be reciprocal, it is not enough to be recognized by someone, to have someone see us as who we want to be seen as, the person seeing us must be someone that we could recognize in turn, someone whose perspective and criteria we respect.. As the blog "Philosophy bro" put it, no one wants to receive a compliment on their fashion sense from someone wearing cargo shorts. (apologies to anyone who likes cargo shorts, but I think that we can all fill this in with our own example of some particular aspect of taste that calls a person's judgement into question). The various interpretations might agree or disagree on whether or not we have achieved this ideal of mutual recognition, but they all agree that it is what drives history--the revolutions of democracy have made this ideal more and more of a reality. 

Profane Existence: Capital Goes from Woke to MAGA

 In the US every presidential election is treated as a transformation of the nation, of the zeitgeist, like Brecht's line about the government electing itself a new people made true. This is especially true of the chattering pundit class who have greeted every election from Obama to Trump as a transformation not just of government but the nation. There is no small irony in this given low voter turnout, small margins, and anti-democratic institutions like the electoral college. What is often a small shift in numbers is treated as a major shift in values and ideals.

Fighting for Infection as if it were Wellness: On the Anti-Vax Moment

There was a moment in the beginning of the COVID pandemic when I thought to myself that surely this would be the end of the anti-vaccination movement. It is one thing to be against vaccines when diseases are rare, and pandemics a distant memory, but another to be against them in the midst of a pandemic in which tens of thousands were dying each week in the US alone. The anti-vax position always seemed like a luxury position, a position of privilege, an individual refusing vaccines is taking advantage of the fact that others are vaccinated around them and cases are rare. Like many things in US politics and culture, individual autonomy is made possible by the existence and occlusion of collective action. It is for that reason that I thought such a position would collapse in the face of an actual pandemic.

Everything is a Weapon if You Hold it Right: On Weapons

 

The titles of Zach Cregger's films are more riddles and interpretations than descriptions. One could conclude that the "barbarian" of the first film's title refers to the character of the mother, after all she is the one that smashes heads, but, as I said earlier, I think that misses the point that the film is a far deeper reflection on barbarians and civilization. In a similar way, we could conclude that the word "weapons" in the title of the recent film refers to the weaponization of the hypnotized individuals, as is stated in the dialogue.  (Oh, yeah, spoiler alert)

Don't Praise the Machine: AI and the Destruction of Three Ecologies

 

I was asked to speak at an AI and Ethics panel at my university. What follows is the outline that I am using for my talk.

The Miasma of Science and Ideology: A Postscript on the New Episteme

 

Of all of the various regressions under Trump 2.0 the anti-vaxx aspect seems to be the most perplexing. As disturbing as Trump's racism, nationalism, and everything else are, at least you can say that they were there since the beginning. Trump's political career began with calling for the death penalty for the "central park five" and his run for President began with nativist hostility to immigrants. The anti-vaccination stance seems new. The initial COVID vaccines were even developed under Trump, and one can imagine that he could take credit for them, since he loves taking credit for things, even for things that he had nothing to do with, or that have not happened. As Plato noticed, however, demagogues find themselves controlled by the same mob that they seem to control. I have not subjected myself to that much of coverage of Trump's rallies, but the only time I have ever seen Trump's mob ever boo him is when he mentioned vaccines.

Under New Management: Capitalism from Utopia to Dystopia

Inspired by this image, I am going with a giant donut theme for this post.

While I do not use the phrase much myself I have always been intrigued by the phrase "take as read" to refer to something that is assumed or taken as axiomatic rather than established. In academic contexts it can sometimes be useful to assume a particular interpretation rather than establish it, to lay out a baseline of understanding in order to move onto other things. In this particular case I am tempted to say, because I do not want to go into it here, that we can take as read that contemporary democratic society gets its image of the good life and its justification from capitalism. Capitalism provides us our image of "freedom, equality, and Bentham," to use Marx's phrase. Freedom is understood primarily as the freedom to purchase what we want; equality, understood as equality in the face of the same commodities, the McDonalds I eat is the same McDonalds that Donald Trump eats, and Bentham because we are all motivated by self interest. 

Do Your Own Damn Research: The New Episteme of Trump 2.0

I have been thinking a lot about the resonance between the current moment and this book

I am going to state this as clearly and as succinctly as possible. This is my thesis: the administration of Trump 2.0 is attempting to institute a new episteme, a new standard and idea of truth. This can be seen in the assaults on the funding and institution of higher education, on the cuts to funding scientific research through NIH and NSF, and in the undermining of vaccines and public health through RFK jr.'s management of Health and Human Services. All of these actions not only undermine the existing episteme, with its layers of expertise and legitimacy, but effectively enshrine a new one, a new practice of what constitutes truth and how it can be found and established. 

Workers of the World, Divide! Work and the Constitution of the People

 

Pictures from Princeton (where this paper was presented)

This might be the worst place to begin, but in February Marjorie Taylor-Greene stated the following about the Department of Government Efficiency's cuts of the jobs of government workers across a broad swath of office and programs, from USAID to the NOAA, “Those are not real jobs producing federal revenue, by the way. They're consuming taxpayer dollars. Those jobs are paid for by the American tax people, who work real jobs, earn real income, pay federal taxes and then pay these federal employees." This is a terrible place to begin, because as is often case during the Trump years, we have a statement which seems so outlandish, so beyond the pale of what generally counts as political discourse, that it is tempting to discount it entirely as hyperbole if not insanity. However, I would like to argue that this extreme point can be situated in a broader logic that is at the core of right wing populism, both here in the US, and elsewhere. This core is what I would call “right workerism,” a claim for the virtues of work, for both the individual, people are worthwhile because of their ability to work, and as the constitution of the people, the people, the nation, is defined as a nation of workers. I am calling this right workerism, to contrast it , in the sharpest terms possible with left workerism, in which work, labor, functions as a point of antagonism between workers and capitalists. Work no longer functions as a point of division, between capitalists and workers, exploiter and exploited, but draws new lines of demarcation between “true” and “false” workers. I will return to this point, but first I would like to situate Representative Greene’s statement within this a larger logic, offering both a historical genesis and a conceptual genesis of right workerism.

It's the Economy (of) Stupid: Or, Destroying the Economy to Save its Image

 

Cops in Chicago, defending private property while devaluing the brand. 

In some of the most rhetorically dense passages of Capital, passages that I have cited again and again, Marx puts forward the idea that the economy, or at least market relations produce their own image, their own spontaneous ideology. As Marx writes,

Post-Orwellian: From 1984 to Project 2025

 

Apple's famous 1984 ad

Etienne Balibar titled one of his first essays on Spinoza to appear in English, "Spinoza, The Anti-Orwell." George Orwell is not really discussed in the essay, and the title is only referenced once in the final paragraphs. Balibar writes,