PARRHESIA:Reading Snowden as Parrhesiastes Through Foucault's Fearless Speech-Part 3

"Hence, real parrhesia, parrhesia in its positive, critical sense, 
does not exist where democracy exists." 
Foucault (FS p.83)

EDWARD SNOWDEN -A  PARRHESIASTES

Chapter 3 in Foucault's Fearless Speech is titled:

Parrhesia in the Crisis of Democratic Institutions

What if all Germans had worn yellow stars? What if all travelers going through Customs carried a copy of Foucault's Fearless Speech?

What if all emails contained the words terrorist, bomb, backpack, pressure cooker, etc. What if these words were included in all telephone conversations. All comments on the internet. In all blogs, letters, everyday conversations? Jes' sayin'.

Foucault's genealogy of parrhesia begins with ancient Athens. All male citizens had the right of parrhesia at any time, although often they requested permission from the other to use it. Since there was no ruler, parrhesia  was considered as a critical guide to informing citizens and improving their governance, their city. It was a greatly prized right.  As Democracy transformed so did parrhesia noted especially by Isocrates in 355 B. C.

In the "Areopagiticus" (355 B.C.) Isocrates draws a set of distinctions which similarly expresses this general idea of the incompatibility of true democracy and critical parrhesia. For he compares the old Solonian and Cleisthenean constitutions to present Athenian political life, and praises the older polities on the grounds that they gave to Athens democracy, liberty, happiness, and equality in front of the law. All of these positive features of the old democracy, however, he claims have become perverted in the present Athenian democracy. Democracy has become lack of self-restraint; liberty has become lawlessness; happiness has become the freedom to do whatevr one pleases; and equality in front of the law has become parrhesia. Parrhesia in this text has only a negative, pejorative sense. So, as you can see, in Isocrates there is a constant positive evaluation of democracy in general, but coupled with the assertion that it is impossible to enjoy both democracy and parrhesia (understood in its positive sense). Moreover, there is the same distrust of the demos' feelings, opinions, and desires which we encountered in more radical form, in the Old Oligarch's lampoon.

....Plato's Republic  (Book VIII,557a-b), where Socrates explains how democracy arises and develops. For he tells Adeimantus that:

When the poor win, the result is democracy. They kill some of the opposite party, banish others, and grant the rest an equal share in civil rights and government, officials being usually appointed by lot.

This is Bane in The Dark Knight Rises.

Socrates then asks: What is the character of this new regime? And he says of the people in a democracy:

First of all they are free. Liberty and free speech (parrhesia) are rife everywhere; anyone is allowed to do what he likes...That being so, every man will arrange his own manner of life to suit his pleasure.

What is interesting about this text is that Plato does not blame parrhesia for endowing everyone with the possibility of influencing the city, including the worse citizens. For Plato, the primary danger of parrhesia is not that it leads to bad decisions in government, or provides the means for some ignorant or corrupt leader to gain power, to become a tyrant. The primary danger of liberty and free speech in a democracy is what results when everyone has his own manner of life, his own style of life, or what Plato calls (Greek untranslated). For then there will be no common logos , no possible unity, for the city.  Following the Platonic principle that there is an analogous relation between the way a human being behaves and the way a city is ruled....And you can see that Plato also considers parrhesia not only as the freedom to say whatever one wishes, but as linked with the freedom to do whatever one wants. It is a kind of anarchy involving the freedom to choose one's own style of life without limit. 

The I Ching

This is what Foucault defines as "problematization", and, in this case political problematization of parrhesia in Greek culture. And he brings our attention to focus and observe two main aspects of this problematization during the Fourth Century B.C. 

And I especially want to point out - here and elsewhere - the correspondence of the destinies of ancient Athens and the present US Empire. The Events that occurred and are occurring that are, while not identical, so similar they cannot be ignored. It is almost as if Toynbee's proposal of "challenge" to an empire, which the empire cannot respond to in a positive way in order to continue to grow, is stalking us from 2500 years ago.

Two main aspects then:

First, in Plato's text for example, the problem of the freedom of speech becomes increasingly related to the choice of existence, to the choice of ones's way of life. Freedom in the use of logos increasingly becomes freedom in the choice of  bios . And as a result, parrhesia is regarded more and more as a personal attitude, a personal quality, as a virtue which is useful for the city's political life in the case of positive or critical parrhesia, or as a danger for the city in the case of negative pejorative parrhesia.  

Demosthenes does not seek or make an issue of institutional guarantees for parrhesia, but insists on the fact that he, as a personal citizen, will use parrhesia because he must boldly speak the truth about the city's bad politics. And he claims that in so doing, he runs a great risk. For it is dangerous for him to speak freely, given that the Athenians in the Assembly are so reluctant to accept any criticism. 

Secondly, we can observe another transformation in the problematization of parrhesia: parrhesia is increasingly linked to another kind of political institution, viz., monarchy. Freedom of speech must now be used towards the king. But obviously, in such a monarchic situation, parrhesia  is much more dependent upon the personal qualities, both of the king (who must choose to accept or reject the use of parrhesia), and of the king's advisors. Parrhesia is no longer an institutional right or privilege - as in a democratic city - but is much more a personal attitude, a choice of bios.

And the "king's" wisdom or folly is revealed by the parrhesiastes. And are we not seeing this today in the US. The parrhesiastes unmasks the smiling face of the tyrant, the fool, the unwise sovereign. And the demos  can see for themselves. 

Edward Snowden has said he doesn't want to live in a world where everything he says and does is subject to surveillance. Well nobody does, so what makes him different from the rest of us who say these things every day? Obviously Snowden has said it very publicly.  Snowden was subject to Foucault's thinking on this: Who can say it, where they can say it, when they can say it, how they can say it,what they can say and why they can say it. Snowden has met every limiting attribute of the practice of parrhesia. This is why he is a parrhesiastes.And this is the difference between Manning and Snowden. This is what makes Manning a conscientious objector or a whistle blower and Snowden a parrhesiastes.

Only by thinking genealogically can we arrive at this conclusion. We are facing another transformation of parrhesia, and this transformation has been driven by the internet. Parrhesia has fused with Cartesian proof, the bio  with the logos. Solzhenitsyn hid his manuscripts of The Gulag with many different people. They were smuggled to the west and published to his dismay and against his desire at the time. It was too dangerous to too many people including himself. His celebrity was too great for him to be snuffed and so he was exiled to Vermont. He said very little about the US but he was not an admirer of our capitalism and said so, but in no great detail. More like a tweet. And as soon as he could return to Russia he went back. And began again, also helping many many ex Gulag survivors, zeks, as many as he could pouring all his financial resources into helping them. His sons went to prestigious New England colleges.

My obsession with parrhesia consists of what the parrhesiastes reveals about the Other, so I hope to get there soon. 

PARRHESIA: Reading Snowden Through Foucault; Part 2

Edward Snowden - A Parrhesiastes

Parrhesia - Fearless Speech - Truth-Telling

 The Parrhesiastes is the one who uses parrhesia, i.e., the one who speaks the truth.

The Meaning of the Word

• Frankness
• Truth
• Danger
• Criticism
• Duty    

Frankness:The word parrhesia, then, refers to a type of relationship between the speaker and what he says. For in parrhesia, the speaker makes it manifestly clear and obvious that what he says is his own opinion. And he does this by avoiding any kind of rhetorical form which would veil what he thinks. Instead, the parrhesiastes uses the most direct words and forms of expression he can find. ...in parrhesia, the parrhesiastes acts on other people's minds by showing them as directly as possible what he actually believes. 

For, as we shall see, the commitment involved in parrhesia is linked to a certain social situation, to a difference of status between the speaker and his audience, to the fact that the parrhesiastes says something which is dangerous to himself and thus involves a risk, and so on. 

Truth: There are two types of parrhesia which we must distinguish. First, there is a pejorative sense of the word not very far from "chattering," ....This pejorative sense occurs in Plato, for example, as a characterization of the bad democratic constitution where everyone has the right to address his fellow citizens and to tell them anything - even the most stupid or dangerous things for the city. In Christian literature the emphasis will change as it is an obstacle to the contemplation of God.

Most of the time, however, parrhesia does not have this pejorative meaning in the classical texts, but rather a positive one. .....To my mind, the parrhesiastes says what is true because it is really true. The parrhesiastes is not only sincere and says what is his opinion, but his opinion is also the truth. He says what he knows to be true.  The second characteristic of parrhesia, then, is that there is always an exact coincidence between belief and truth.  

It would be interesting to compare Greek parrhesia with the modern Cartesian conception of evidence....It appears that parrhesia, in this Greek sense, can no longer occur in our modern epistemological framework.

 I am soon to disagree with Foucault here, as I think the "proof" produced by Snowden satisfies Cartesian evidence while demonstrating classical parrhesia attributes in addressing the "sovereign." I think Snowden has executed a Foucauldian CUT in the genealogy of parrhesia.
The discontinuity is that all requirements of classical parrhesia have been met by Snowden accompanied by Cartesian evidence. By inverting the paradigm, the searchlight is thrown on the Other, the more powerful entity, and we see that the parrhesiastes using parrhesia discloses the character and "truth" of the "sovereign" to the people. In that respect parrhesia lifts the mask of the "sovereign."

As Bane says in The Dark Knight Rises, "When all is lies, the truth is a weapon."

If there is a kind of "proof" of the sincerity of the parrhesiastes, it is his courage. The fact that a speaker says something dangerous - different from what the majority believes - is a strong indication that he is a parrhesiastes. 

Danger: Someone is said to use parrhesia and merits consideration as a parrhesiastes only if there is a risk or danger for him in telling the truth. ...when a philosopher addresses himself to a sovereign, to a tyrant, and tells him that his tyranny is disturbing and unpleasant because tyranny is incompatible with justice, then the philosopher speaks the truth, believes he is speaking the truth, and, more than that, also takes a risk (since the tyrant may become angry, may punish him, may exile him, may kill him.) And that was exactly Plato's situation with Dionysius in Syracuse....

And of course this is Edward Snowden's situation with the US Empire's government.

 So you see, the parrhesiastes is someone who takes a risk....Parrhesia, then, is linked to courage in the face of danger; it demands the courage to speak the truth in spite of some danger. And in its extreme form, telling the truth takes place in the "game" of life or death.

It is because the parrhesiastes must take a risk in speaking the truth that the king or tyrant generally cannot use parrhesia; for he risks nothing. 

When you accept the parrhesiastic game in which your own life is exposed, you are taking up a specific relationship to yourself; you risk death to tell the truth instead of reposing in the security of a life where the truth goes unspoken. Of course, the threat of death comes from the Other, and thereby requires a relationship to the Other. But the parrhesiastes primarily chooses a specific relationship to himself: he prefers himself as a truth-teller rather than as a living being who is false to himself. 

Hamlet anyone? 

 Criticism: For in parrhesia the danger always comes from the fact that the said truth is capable  of hurting or angering the interlocutor. Parrhesia is thus always a "game" between the one who speaks the truth and the interlocutor. The parrhesia involved, for example, may be the advice that the interlocutor should behave in a certain way, or that he is wrong in what he thinks, or in the way he acts, and so on. ...So, you see, the function of parrhesia is not to demonstrate the truth to someone else, but has the function of criticism: criticism of the interlocutor....Parrhesia is a form of criticism either toward another or towards oneself, but always in a situation where the speaker or confessor is in a position of inferiority with respect to the interlocutor. The parrhesiastes is always less powerful than the one with whom he speaks. The parrhesia comes from "below," as it were, and is directed towards "above."...But when a philosopher criticizes a tyrant, when a citizen criticizes the majority, when a pupil criticizes his teacher, then such speakers may be using parrhesia.

This is not to imply, however, that anyone can use parrhesia. ....most of the time the use of parrhesia requires that the parrhesiastes know his own genealogy, his own status;...In "democratic parrhesia" - where one speaks to the assembly, ....one must be a citizen; in fact, one must be one of the best among the citizens, possessing those specific personal, moral, and social qualities which grant one the privilege to speak. 

However, the parrhesiastes risks his privilege to speak freely when he discloses a truth which threatens the majority. For it was a well-known juridical situation that Athenian leaders were exiled only because they proposed something which was opposed by the majority, or even because the assembly thought that the strong influence of certain leaders limited its own freedom. And so the assembly was, in this manner, "protected" against the truth. That, then, is the institutional background of "democratic parrhesia" - which must be distinguished from that "monarchic parrhesia" where an advisor gives the sovereign honest and helpful advice. 

And it is here that the boundaries of democratic parrhesia and monarchic parrhesia begin to get blurry for me. Snowden's situation seems not only to be an example of "democratic parrhesia, but also one of "monarchic parrhesia," speaking truth to the tyrant. Although in this case it is a team of tyrants, a multitude of tyrants that includes the rulers and citizens combined. And this is something very new in the US. Solzhenitsyn in Soviet USSR was gulagged and when he survived was exiled. Snowden faced something swifter and something worse. This is where I see the Foucauldian CUT in the genealogy of parrhesia:

1. A merging of proof and classic parrhesia
2. An automatic and threatened sentence of endless torture and captivity proposed in advance of the supposed "criminal trial" of truth-telling, to silence all future truth-tellers

Duty: The last characteristic of parrhesia is this: in parrhesia, telling the truth is regarded as a duty. The orator who speaks the truth to those who cannot accept his truth, for instance, and who may be exiled, or punished in some way, is free to keep silent. No one forces him to speak, but he feels that it is his duty to do so. ...Parrhesia is thus related to freedom and duty.

To summarize the foregoing, parrhesia is a kind of verbal activity where the speaker has a specific relation to truth through frankness, a certain relationship to his own life through danger, a certain type of relation to himself or other people through criticism (self-criticism or criticism of other people), and a specific relation to moral law through freedom and duty.  More precisely, parrhesia is a verbal activity in which a speaker expresses his personal relationship to truth, and risks his life because he recognizes truth-telling as a duty to improve or help other people (as well as himself). In parrhesia the speaker uses his freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of flattery and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy. (FS pp.11-20) 

Although Foucault is constructing a genealogy of parrhesia within the time period of the Fifth Century B.C. to the Fifth Century A.D. - one thousand years! - It would seem with Solzhenitsyn and Snowden that parrhesia does not stop there but has only rested. Its form has changed but I see no reason to change the name or the concept.

PARRHESIA - Fearless Speech:Reading Snowden Through Foucault

Edward Snowden - A Parrhesiastes

Socratic-Platonic answers to the questions:

1. How can we recognize someone as a parrhesiastes?
2. What is the importance of having a parrhesiastes for the city?
3. What is the training of a good parrhesiastes?

FOUCAULT

And I would say that the problematization of truth which characterizes both the end of Presocratic philosophy and the beginning of the kind of philosophy which is still ours today, this problematization of truth has two sides, two major aspects. One side is concerned with ensuring that the process of reasoning is correct in determining whether a statement is true (or concerns itself  with our ability to gain access to the truth). And the other side is concerned with the question:

What is the importance for the individual and for the society of telling the truth, of knowing the truth, of having people who tell the truth, as well as knowing how to recognize them?

With that side which is concerned with determining how to ensure that a statement is true we have the roots of the great tradition in Western philosophy which I would like to call the "analytics of truth." And on the other side, concerned with the question of the importance of telling the truth, knowing who is able to tell the truth, and knowing why we should tell the truth, we have the roots of what we could call the "critical" tradition in the West. And here you will recognize one of my targets in this seminar, namely, to construct a genealogy of the critical attitude in Western philosophy. That constituted the general objective of this seminar. (FS pp. 170-71)

My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of the truth-teller, or of truth-telling as an activity....At issue for me was rather the attempt to consider truth-telling as a specific activity or as a role. ...I could have compared the role and status of truth-tellers in Greek society, Christian societies, non-Christian societies _the role of the prophet as a truth-teller, the role of the oracle as a truth-teller, the role of the poet, of the expert,of the preacher, and so on.  But, in fact, my intention was not to conduct a sociological description of the different possible roles for truth-tellers in different societies. 

What I wanted to analyze was how the truth-teller's role was variously problematized in Greek philosophy. ....this same Greek philosophy has also raised the question of truth from the point of view of truth-telling as an activity. It has raised questions like: 

1. Who is able to tell the truth?
2. What are the moral, the ethical, and the spiritual conditions which entitle someone to present himself as, and to be considered as, a truth-teller?
3. About what topics is it important to tell the truth?(About the world? About nature? About the city? About behavior? About man?)
4. What are its  anticipated positive effects for the city, for the city's rulers, for the individual?,etc.

And finally: What is the relation between the activity of truth-telling and the exercise of power? 

Should truth-telling be brought into coincidence with the exercise of power, or should these activities be completely independent and kept separate?
Are they separable, or do they require one another?

These four questions about truth-telling as an activity:

1. Who is able to tell the truth?
2. About what?
3. With what consequences?
4. With what relation to power?    

These four questions seem to have emerged as philosophical problems towards the end of the Fifth Century around Socrates, especially through his confrontations with the Sophists about politics, rhetorics, and ethics. (FS pp. 169-173)

And we all know what finally happened to Socrates. 

 And what is disturbing to me is that my tweets on Foucault's Panopticon have been picked up concerning Snowden's truth-telling of NSA surveillance (see a google search on Foucault + Snowden) but no one - NO ONE - is discussing Foucault's last works at the end of his life on parrhesia, or as Foucault calls it truth-telling, outlined in a series of talks at Berkeley in the early 1980's collected after his death from transcripts into the Semiotext(e) edition Fearless Speech.

Is this subject too frightening to touch? Are academics too scared? There are careerist academics who have made their career off Foucault's coattails. They have written dissertations on his work, books on his life, gotten tenure, prestigious chairs at universities all over the world and not one goddamn one of them has connected Edward Snowden to Foucault's work on truth-telling or the ancient Greek term parrhesia and the parrhesiastes!  This is 2500 years of critical tradition in the West, and only in the West, and no one is connecting these dots?

SHAME

DRTA - Directed Reading Thinking Activity - Russell Stauffer: A READING LESSON TEMPLATE FOR THE DRTA

THE MAN IN THE TRUCK

I have had first, second and third graders to teach reading as a thinking process. Having studied at the graduate level with Stauffer I was well prepared. It was a bloody boot camp with him. In his Reading-Study Center at the University of Delaware we trained with students privately enrolled for reading instruction. There were adults, brain damaged veterans, children levels behind, dyslexics and aphasics. A variety.

This is an example of a Directed Reading Thinking Activity - a DRTA - using the two pictures of Rob Pattinson above which have clearly shown he has packed up and left his girlfriend Kristen Stewart - breaking up with her.

Here's how it would go with students. For my purposes I am fictionalizing a group to work with to serve as an example.

The Man In The Truck: The two pictures above on facing pages at the beginning of the story.

Look at the title and the pictures on the first two pages. What do you think  the story will be about? 

Here you are leading each person to set their own purposes for reading this selection via predictions - teaching the Scientific Method. Not your purposes, their purposes, their reason for reading this selection other than learning how to think critically, which is what you are doing. That is your purpose, your intention. This is your hidden agenda.
______________________________________________________________________________
I bet he's taking the dog to the vet.

What makes you think that?

The dog is in the front seat instead of the back of the pick up so maybe it is not feeling so good. Its ears are down and when my dog's ears are down he is unhappy or not feeling so hot.

Stauffer was adamant on the role of experience in reading. Children didn't learn to read in areas outside their personal experience until they knew how to read at an independent reading level. The DRTA approach was to teach hypothesis setting (not theory) how to guess as correctly as possible, how to express a hunch, a guesstimate as Stauffer called it then. He was influenced by Jerome Bruner and Dewey's Experience and Education. Profoundly.

______________________________________________________________________________

"I think they are going to the doggie park."

What makes you think so?

When dogs go to the doggie park they get dirty and my mom doesn't want our dog in our good car.

______________________________________________________________________________

"I think he's taking the stuff to the auction."

How come?

It's all messy in the back and junked around. He doesn't want it anymore. 

______________________________________________________________________________

"I think he's taking the stuff to the DAV or  Good Will."

Why do you think that?

Because it's better to recycle than just throw it away at the dump and I think he wants to recycle. 

How come you think that?

I don't know.

Can you guess?

It's a hunch.

Based on what?

He has a nice dog. It sits up on the seat. He should have a doggie seat belt on though. It looks clean.

Any other reasons?

No.

___________________________________________________________________________

"I think he's going to get groceries."

How come you think that?

Hmmmmm. I just think that.

Why?

He's reaching in the mailbox to get the mail, so this is probably the first time he's driven out the driveway today. So it's probably early in the day and that's when most people go grocery shopping. That's when my mom does and my dad too.

What about all the stuff in the back? There won't be room for a lot of groceries. (from another child)

He maybe will dump the stuff or give it away before he goes to the grocery store. Or maybe just pack it better and take it home again. My dad leaves stuff in the back.

_____________________________________________________________________________

"I think he's picking up some furniture."
"Maybe he's going to the dump with old stuff."
"Maybe the dog just loves to ride in the truck."
_____________________________________________________________________________

I'll let you readers imagine your own questions for these three. 
_______________________________________________________________________________
Read to see if you are right.
______________________________________________________________________________
As soon as you say this, no more questions. You now honor each person's purpose for reading the selection.
______________________________________________________________________________
The rule is that you can ask as many questions as you want BEFORE the person reads the selection. After the person finishes reading you don't get to ask any questions. This is because you are honoring the person's purposes for reading that particular selection. Your purposes are not their purposes for reading it. The individual's reasons take priority. It is about respect for the person's intentions. You are not  playing authoritarian with their mind. This is not a hidden lesson teaching fascism.
______________________________________________________________________________

Were you right?
_____________________________________________________________________________
At this stage of the DRA the child will tell you S/he was right or wrong. If s/he says, "Right," then you ask her/him to read the part out loud that proves it. Oral reading is NOT used to check or judge how well the person pronounces the words. Oral reading is for the purpose of backing up your hunches for someone else, for supporting your thinking. Here you are teaching the Dominating Discourse of critical thinking as it exists at the present time.

What mostly happens is that the children will say who was wrong and why. They love to find another child wrong. Then they need to read the part that proves their  point.  

It is possible a child will say the man is leaving his girl friend or wife and taking the dog. 

Another child is very likely to say that if he were leaving his girl friend would be running after the truck and crying. Or if he were leaving home why would he stop to get the mail, challenging that hypothesis.

On the THEORY part of this, it is that the way a child learns to read is just as important as the fact that s/he learns to read. Since Stauffer defines reading as a thinking process, this stated assumption determines how the child learns to read. A purely phonic approach that emphasizes oral pronouncing of words is not a thinking process but a pronouncing process. 

Phonics are taught as tools for figuring out unknown words, not as a way of checking on whether the child can pronounce the words or not. Not as a testing procedure. Oral reading is purely for confirming or disproving your purposes (hypotheses) for reading the selection.

This is just one way of teaching reading. It is particularly effective in the classroom with a group. The children spur each other on and lively discussions result. Reading becomes an activity that is anticipated with pleasure.

Besides you get much smarter as the kids will see things you didn't notice. 

Children who learn this way are never going to be brainwashed by the tabloids. They are never going to take just one way of reading anything. They are not going to be seduced by the printed page. They are not going to believe one person's way of reading it. They are forever going to be questioning authority. If you aren't comfortable with that kind of thinking child, then try a rote learning process. See and say. Or cat, rat, sat, mat.

If you think these predictions are too sophisticated for young children then you just don't know how smart they really are.

Reading the Flux and Dispute of the Music Tonal System Through Foucault's Dominating Discourse

(Un)purity

Reading Through Foucault The Dominating Discourse of the Music Tonal System 

In Flux and Dispute

Re posted from

naudengels

Vaguely I was aware of it, but I never realized it as precisely as described by Stuart Isacoff in The Octave. That the establishment of our tonal system – in which we modulate through all keys back and forward and in doing so produce the most beautiful musical constructions – is the result of a major battle, and that this battle proceeded along theological and philosophical lines. The story of that struggle can be read as a sound built version of a larger story. If you want: aliberation story that has interfaces with the emancipation of Western man from the tutelage of the Greek classics and the Christian church.

The story begins with ideas and with a problem. The ideas include the view – based on Pythagoras and Plato – that music is the reflection of a universe which is organized according to harmonious mathematical relationships. Music therefore must be composed of pure intervals such as the perfect fifth (3:2) and the perfect fourth (4:3).

The problem with this was that Pythagoras’s formulas left no space for some very popular harmonies: the major thirds, the minor thirds and their counterparts, the sixths. These intervals were so popular because they made music more intimate, more sensual and more expressive. But their use generated a lot of discussion, because according to opponents these intervals did not fit into the the world order as proclaimed by Pythagoras and the Church.

There were quite some solutions for this problem. They were found in the musical practice and consisted in more or less cheating as to the purity of the intervals. With stringed instruments this could be done because the musician has to pitch the tone himself and always can intonate slightly higher or lower. Singers could do so the same by constantly adapting their pitch to make the different intervals sound together as harmoniously as possible.

These were pragmatic solutions in which the problem was not calked and which did not challenge the guardians of the strict mathematical order. But these solutions were half-baked, because singers were accompanied by organs and there was music written for strings with harpsichord accompaniment. And with keyboard instruments such as organ and harpsichord one can not intonate while playing as it can be done with a voice or a string. Instruments must be tuned properly in advance, and when you want to play thirds on them then you have to consciously tune them differently than when only fifths and quarters are to be heard.

This technical feature left less room for pragmatism, the question of tuning had quite some theoretical aspects. That’s why it soon attracted the attention and the interference of more or less self-appointed guardians of the divinely established order. And these had fundamental objections against any infringement of the pure mathematical relationships.

Meanwhile blood was thicker than water and musicians tried all kinds of tunings on their  keyboards. Concessions were made as to the purity of the intervals for the sake of the possibility to unlimitedly interconnect a variety of fifths, fourths, thirds and octaves without the music getting terribly false.

The opponents were not amused. The 16th century music theorist Zarlino Gioseffo believed, like many others, that singers naturally sing pure intervals and that the new tunings threatened the world’s unity. He was offended when Vincenzo Galilei (father of Galileo Galilei) found that singers in practice go in one piece through different tunings because they are constantly looking for a beautiful harmony. Galilei reproached Zarlino that he fought for an illusion and that the music had to be completely freed from the tyranny of the inviolable numbers.

Rousseau also took position in the debate and he chose for his own variant of the cosmic order. Therein music figured as a primeval force that definitely had to be defended against the refined and therefore decadent experimental tunings. Even Newton, who in his physical work was brave enough to describe the world as it is rather than as it should be according to tradition, showed conservative here: “It is unworthy of philosophers to interfere with the pure proportions” he thought.

In particular, in the appeal which is made here to the sanctity of a divine natural order – against the praxis actually experienced or sought by people – a parallel can be drawn between what happened in the musical area and what in other areas is still happening. I am thinking of some representatives of the established order that label gay sexuality as unnatural and therefore as undesirable. Or of managers who barely pay attention to the actual undercurrents in their organization because their self-invented order leaves no room for them.

From this perspective one could call the musical struggle against the illusion of purity and pro  the multiplicity of lived practice an exemplary European project. And fortunately that struggle  ended well. In the late 17th  century the physicist Daniel Bernoulli was able to show that each tone produces overtones and that the series of overtones ‘above’ the basic tone of a string is much larger than originally thought. Isacoff: “These additional sounds are an endless expansion of the range with tones that are generally not harmonious. So all vibrating bodies float in a sea of dissonants. The idea that nature has a preference for pure harmonies was, it appeared, permanently expelled from the scene.”

Also see Order

JUNKY BY WILLIAM BURROUGHS: REVIEW

INTRO BY ALLEN GINSBERG

COVER PAINTING BY WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

DOWNLOAD HERE  for FREE PDF

Published first in 1953 and a book  - actually all his books - I dipped in and couldn't read at the time I tried to read them just because it was Burroughs. No go. Yesterday and the day before my modem was out so I read Junky non-stop and was electrified.

Did you ever read a writer where you were hit suddenly by "that's exactly the way I think about that, the way I would have said it, the way I would have thought it?" That's me and horrors, I think the way Burroughs does, so no wonder I couldn't read him before. Now he felt like home. 

There is no plot. It is not a linear narrative. Just one event after another. Discontinuous. No drama. Burroughs has no style. What you see and hear is what you get.

Burroughs's writing is pared down, like Hemingway, but no noticeable influence, just the way he speaks, thinks, writes. If you have listened to him on youtube or read his interviews you can conjure up his voice as you begin reading. Everything is seamless. 

He has a dispassionate, indifferently contemptuous, contemptuously indifferent hatred of the law and government from first hand experience. It is cold, factual,correct without a trace of emotional outrage. He has a great amount of factual knowledge about it and about JUNK and the Junk Life. Without a sentence of preaching he reveals to you how our drug laws are for the benefit of those who enforce them and the prisons who confine the offenders.

There is a type of person occasionally seen in these neighborhoods who has connections with junk, though he is neither a user nor a seller. But when you see him the dowser wand twitches. Junk is close. His place of origin is the Near East, probably Egypt.....He is basically obscene beyond any possible vile act or practice. He has the mark of a certain trade or occupation that no longer exists. ...

So this man walks around in the places where he once exercised his obsolete and unthinkable trade. But he is unperturbed. His eyes are black with an insect's unseeing calm. He looks as if he nourishes himself on honey and Levantine syrups that he sucks up through a sort of proboscis.

What is his lost trade? Definitely of a servant class and something to do with the dead, though he is not an embalmer. Perhaps he stores something in his body - a substance to prolong life - of which he is periodically milked by his masters. He is specialized as an insect, for the performance of some inconceivably vile function. (112)

This is Lovecraft's Nyarlathotep, the monstrous Cthulhu is stirring and one of Burroughs factually reported dreams of weeds growing through the pavement of New York City has the power to create terror in your bones, for both these writers have a sense of clairvoyance that feels horrifying and accurate in its premonition. 

AND SO MUCH MORE

Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to an increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life.

JUDY GARLAND: OVER THE RAINBOW

What did Judy look like in this outtake? What we can hear is precisely what we can’t see and aren’t shown. My feeling is that Judy/Dorothy was supposed to cry during this scene, only not like this. Not this much and not this hard. Dorothy is finally going home, after all. She is sad about leaving Oz, but what’s calling her home is supposed to be stronger than the intimate bonds she’s forged on her odyssey. But the line between emotion and real pain—between the emotion you are asked to tread, to supply and to invent; to bring to a scene, and the real pain that shows up and intervenes; causing a breach in the fiction and a break in the breach (all the breaches that are enacted and received in a lifetime)—are devastatingly blurred. It’s too much for Judy, not Dorothy. It was often too much for her. These are Judy’s tears, not Dorothy’s, and they are not the result of the fiction of movies, but of the reality of having lived them and made them.

From Masha Tupitsyn's Beauty Talk

HERE

In “Kleptomania” I describe Garland’s voice as “a blue bird hitting the windshield of a car.”

What truth are our faces allowed to tell/show today? Think of how men instruct women to smile while they’re walking down the street. If Hollywood and mass media are any indication, nothing is faked and enacted more these days than a face, especially a woman’s. A woman’s face is something she has to fake almost all of the time—from the wearing of make-up to the surgical enhancement and modification of facial features, to the lightening of eyes and skin, to the concealment of age, to the facial expressions we make or don’t make. Faking is not only the modality par excellence of late modernity, the fake/r (not the real or original, as Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy demonstrates) is the thing to imitate and strive for. And based on the 21st century fiction and artifice of celebrity consumer culture, there is no greater truth than a successful lie. Than a lie that functions and succeeds in public, even if and especially when it inevitably performs its disclosure-as-lie and breakdown-of-truth as just another show (Reality TV). The lie (or the secret of ideology) is no longer something to conceal, for, in the era of cynicism and instant commodification, dissemblance is the only truth worth telling (living). Truth, along with reality, is merely a performance, and vice versa, performance is reality.

Before we believed that a lie was the truth, we believed that what we were seeing was real, which means we believed what we were told. The fiction was not meant to be interpreted purely as fantasy or pure-fantasy, but as the ultimate-real. However, now that we know that the fiction is a lie, that the truth is a lie, we have learned to approach it as such. We live in the name of truth, even though, and because we know, the name of truth is fiction. We tell ourselves that it’s not that we have a more dishonest or corrupt relationship to truth, it’s that we have a different kind of relationship with the lie. That is, with the staging of truth.

When I watched Garland’s performance of “The Man That Got Away” from A Star Is Born for this essay, I broke down in tears almost immediately. Garland’s heartbreak is my heartbreak. A heartbreak of women watching women. Women being women. It is my invisible (off-camera) face coming undone as it bears witness to the brave face another woman puts on for the whole world. Garland is giving us her heartbreak so that we can survive and better understand our own. 

Read the whole post from Masha Tupitsyn

HERE

EVER SINCE THIS WORLD BEGAN

Judy Garland Live at the LondonPalladium 1964 

Simulacra and Simulation: Babette Babich-Deleuze and Guattari

BABETTE BABICH - AESTHETICS

What Deleuze and Guattari offer, particularly in A Thousand Plateaus, is a logic capable of grasping Baudrillard’s failing world of representation as an effective illusion the demise of which opens a glimmer of possibility. Against cynicism, a thin but fabulous hope—of ourselves becoming realer than real in a monstrous contagion of our own making.”

— Brian Massumi, Canadian social theorist, Ph.D in French Literature from Yale University, Realer Than Real: The Simulacrum According to Deleuze and Guattari (1987) (pdf)

(Source: amiquote)

Read the rest here at  Miaokuancha's blog

Videos Expose the Fraud of US Weekly Photos of Kristen Stewart and Rupert Sanders.

HERE 

FOR ANOTHER VIDEO BY SAME PERSON

http://youtu.be/bnPCF9AQzCM 

On The Road NY Premiere Kristen Stewart

Is everyone happy now to see the flailed actress all skin and bones

Has she been punished enough for THAT AFTERNOON

Or do you want more more MORE

For THAT AFTERNOON see The Rashomon Effect here:

Complete with pictures from THAT AFTERNOON

The camera never lies. It records what is there. It is we who lie to ourselves when we perceive what we think we see. as it filters through our own protective shield.

Does this mean that the photos we see take on the literal truth of what the camera has recorded? 

Look at this video

Now tell me what you see in those pictures you just looked at

355,000 views so far

Watch and Learn

As Diana was dying in her car pleading with her eyes for help the papz were filming her 
THEY TURNED HER INTO A SNUFF FILM


WIN ONE FOR DIANA
DOWN WITH THE TABLOIDS WHO CREATE THE MARKET 
FOR THE PAPZ

YAAAAY          OCCUPY!

A dress which is more than a dress: Kristen Stewart, Cannes 2012

I hear the question upon your lips: What is it to be a color? Color is the touch of the eye, music to the deaf, a word out of the darkness. Because I’ve listened to souls whispering — like the susurrus of the wind — from book to book and object to object for tens of thousands of years, allow me to say that my touch resembles the touch of angels. Part of me, the serious half, calls out to your vision while the mirthful half soars through the air with your glances. I’m so fortunate to be red! I’m fiery. I’m strong. I know men take notice of me and that I cannot be resisted. I do not conceal myself: For me, delicacy manifests itself neither in weakness nor subtlety, but through determination and will. So, I draw attention to myself. I’m not afraid of other colors, shadows, crowds, or even of loneliness…

 “My dear master, explain red to somebody who has never known red.” — “If we touched it with the tip of a finger, it would feel like something between iron and copper. If we took it into our palm, it would burn. If we tasted it, it would be full-bodied, like salted meat. If we took it between our lips, it would fill our mouths. If we smelled it, it’d have the scent of a horse. If it were a flower, it would smell like a daisy, not a red rose.”

Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red pg. 186-8

Security? Street Numbers; Zip Codes and 911 Reordering - Do You Feel Safe Now?

Agnes Martin Grid

With Numbers in Place: Security, Territory, and the Production of Calculable Space (2012) by Clare O'Farrell Rose-Redwood, Reuben (2012). "With Numbers in Place: Security, Territory, and the Production of Calculable Space". Annals of the Association of American Geographers , 102 (2), 295-319. Abstract Recent geographical scholarship on the politics of calculation has led to a reevaluation of the role of statistics, census-taking, and mapping as calculative techniques that have been of primary importance to the rise of the modern territorial state. The current study contributes to this literature by examining how the political technologies of street addressing have been employed to reconfigure the territory of the United States as a calculable space of security. Drawing on extensive archival research and thirty semistructured, in-depth interviews, this study provides a genealogy of calculable space, focusing particularly on the extension of city-style street addressing systems into rural communities to aid emergency management, homeland security, and various other governmental measures as part of the general process that Foucault (2007) has referred to as the "urbanization of the territory." As a case study, I consider the campaign to readdress rural areas in West Virginia to illustrate the social and political processes at work in remaking the territory into a space of calculation by encoding the landscape with a spatial regime of inscriptions. The results presented here show how 911 addressing systems have been central to the reorganization of political space at a time when the apparatuses of security are being "enhanced" by the apparent marvels of geospatial technology. To the extent that such technologies are themselves implicated in reshaping the very spaces that they are designed to represent, this study calls our attention to the pervasive role that spatial calculation plays in the production of a geo-coded world.