Derrida Dead

Jacques Derrida died at a Paris hospital of pancreatic cancer; he was 74.

administered life

Against the backdrop of the administered life, or the life of administration, everyone imagines herself inimitable. The more bureaucracies, corporations and schools treat us as if we were entirely interchangeable, the harder the American Culture Industry sells us its brand of individualism. In the publishing industry, writing about oneself has become entirely reified as “journaling” (a noun become gerundive verb like “parenting” that describes the complete colonization and objectification of these of activities by the advice industry). Everyone’s story is a unique narrative of rugged individualism, of sins redeemed, of innocence molested, of genius unrecognized and courage unspoken. (Parenting.com and Parenting magazine seem to be financially viable: you can find some advice next to lots of advertising. But Personal Journaling, a magazine -- yes it's true -- is on "hiatus": they must be still looking for their market niche.)

Multinational publishing houses market the spectacle of exhibitionism and confession as “life writing” in order to destroy experience as such. Witness only the latest in such literary projects cum marketing gambits as Toni Bentley’s The Surrender, (a sort of Anal Sex in the City). I happened upon it on Roger Ailes's blog. Bentley's book is an autobiographical account of this former New York City Ballet dancer's romance with taking it up there where the sun don’t shine. Maybe Toni Bentley could take over at Personal Journaling and refocus the magazine on lubricants. Advice! Advertising! Anality!

Thinking of voting your wallet? Think again...

A lot of eminently reasonable people have been reminding you, haven't they, that in this raging election, with its military themes spilling over into the campaign and media metaphors ( - "the ground war to register voters" - and other unthinking babble), it really comes down to one thing: it's still the economy, stupid! Economists say if Bush keeps unemployment and inflation in check, he will be re-elected. And while this insight, such as it is, is neither new nor compelling, it does keep providing an angle on current events as we hurtle towards due deliverance.

Certainly politicians are too easily blamed for a stalling economy, and too eagerly take credit for well-performing markets. While politicians have historically proven all too able to exert their influence through regulation, taxation, jawboning... the facts remain: interest rates are set by non-elected administrators, financial institutions are hardly ever (only in extremis) regulated by representatives of the people (some people might remember President Clinton cursing the "bunch of fucking bond traders" he had to keep giving in to in matters of international trade etc), and it is we the people who are the economy.

However, an important perspective is the inverse: how does Wall Street like this or that candidate? The assumption generally remains that despite some centimillionaire Democrats here and there, the mainstream of the investor class likes Republicans. Polls of fund managers and traders tend to indicate an overwhelming majority supporting President Bush; banks and funds show their allegiance with the checkbooks. No doubt the main reason for this is the tax policy of the current administration, favoring the rich (although increasing the federal deficit - in flagrant contradiction of long-standing Republican principle...)

Nevertheless, historically the average gain for equity markets under Republican presidents is 3.7%, while it has been 10.6% on average with a Democrat in the White House. Republican Presidents ruled over the three great bear markets of the century, and half of them left the stock markets lower than when they took office. And while Republicans love to extol the virtues of small government as a boon to investment, the current administration allowed federal spending to rise almost by a third! "Hands off regulation" - a staid Republican motto - was ignored in favor of new steel tariffs and higher farm subsidies. NEW STEEL TARIFFS! HIGHER FARM SUBSIDIES!

On the other hand, not all commonplace notions have been thrown out (yet). If you're looking over the predictions issued by Wall Streeters, it seems most would expect Kerry-Edwards to be tougher on pharmaceuticals than Bush-Cheney; defense stocks have been buoyed by the Iraq and Afghanistan engagements, which may or may not be scaled back if the White House changes hands. This kind of knee-jerk, "Farmer's Almanac" style horizon of expectations is undeterred by anything like experience, plain facts, or widely available stump speech quotes... Common sense, as wrong as ever, continues to dominate. And as long as enough people believe Republicans are for small government, reducing federal debt, and eliminating subsidies and trade restrictions - and as long as enough people go on to believe Democrats were really all raised in France by homosexual couples - this upcoming election will succeed in distracting you all from what is going on.

self-interest is baaahd --mkay?

On Michael Bérubé's blog recently, there was a heated debate on Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?. Although there was a great deal
of disagreement about Frank, everyone seemed to think that it is indeed deplorable that Republicans have hypnotized millions and millions of Americans into believing that to vote with the elephant is to vote for their own self-interest. Frank demonstrates that sad untruth of this for his home state of Kansas where Great Plains farmers and down-sized workers pull the lever for the party that is bent on promoting the economic interests of a cynical plutocracy by eliminating the estate tax and foiling any serious discussion of national health care.

But here's the rub, it may work as a temporary salve to convince the red states that voting blue is in fact in their selfinterest, but self-interest IS the whole damned problem. "Self-interest" is a manufactured value: its apotheosis as rugged individualism is a spectacle that Hollywood narrative and tabloid newspapers have been peddling to those of us least in charge of our lives, least capable of laying claim to anything resembling autonomy -- the workers, the wage slaves, the paper pushers, the majority of Americans who live form paycheck to paycheck.

It was "self-interest" that supposedly crushed the collective dreams of Communism like locusts under the heel of a lizard skin cowboy boot. (Reality check -- Soviet style Communism killed itself.)

Self-interest is about a complete denial of the social link that weaves us into communities, dependencies and collectives whether we like it or not. The opposite of self-interest is not self-sacrifice, which is just another face of heroic, Christianized individualism exalting itself in a narrative of mortifications of the flesh (the appeal of self-sacrifice has worn a bit thin in the Western World even as it has gained cachet elsewhere).

The bourgeoisie has created a new International cartel of self-interest designed to promote and export its corrupted ethics, its contempt for critical thinking, its masochistic submission to the brand name, its wholesale acceptance of what is given and its anxiety-ridden and phobic parenting techniques to all the corners of the globe.