What is habit?

"One may say that no real movement becomes aware of its global character all at once, but only gradually through experience—in other words, when it learns from the facts that nothing which exists is natural (in the non-habitual sense of the word), but rather exists because of the existence of certain conditions, whose disappearance cannot remain without consequences."

Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks  (1971: pg. 158).

It is not easy to separate nature and habit, if "nature" refers to a set of preconditions, rather than predeterminations, of human action, and moreover, if habit is more than a thoughtless internalization ("routinization") of social norms. Why did we ever assume that habitual experience is simply a copy of something transmitted to an agent from an "outside" structure? It is a problem that even makes Bourdieu's use of the concept of "habitus" seem closed and functionalist at times. Habit is unfortunately associated by Gramsci in the above quote (as well as by others in the classical marxist and neo-marxist traditions, which Gramsci straddles) with technique or instrumentalization, which, as artificial or cultural is, by binary opposition, conditioned and unnatural. Within neo-Marxism, there is a tendency, traceable to Adorno and the Frankfurt School, to view nature itself as a deterministic mechanism related to unconscious domination. In his writings, Adorno consistently associates habit with routine, with "the administered life" of dull banality, as well as instrumental reason and technique; technique is necessarily unconscious, and therefore serves to enslave conscious reason (1975 [1951]). Because of their reliance on Freud's psychoanalysis, they view actors as primarily the product of 'drives' - i.e., dangerously irrational instincts unleashed by "industrial society's" under excessive technological development - and as a desiring subject, rather than analyzing social needs. Only later did the Frankfurt School come to see natural dispositions - world-forming eros - as potentially productive and compatible with social emancipation (Marcuse 1955). That the Frankfurt School fail to distinguish between the unchanging and sovereign "power-over" of domination and the articulated and changeable "power-to" characterizing oppression is another point. However, the argument I am making, drawn from Bourdieusian notions of "habitus" and practice, is that there are two forms of skill or ability: one based in technique and conscious rationality, to which closed-systems theorizing applies, and the other based in habit and unconscious affect, to which open-systems thinking applies. The latter allows nature to once again become the "realm of freedom," rather than blind compulsion or domination, as it is in the modern philosophical conception.

The problem of the 'misrecognition' of habit is rooted in classical Marxism. In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx separates, yet fails in his effort to dissolve, the difference between theory and practice, associating the imaginative act of thinking too closely with thought, abstract ideas, and theory, a move which subsumes imagination to Reason, despite Marx's pointed criticism of German Idealism. At other times, Marx confuses imagination with bourgeois 'sentiment,' feeling, fantasy, and fetishization (whose effect, paradigmatically, is the visual camera obscura), and later presents the dichotomy of "conception" (ends) and "execution" (means) in Capital Vol. 1. For Marx, when experience becomes consciousness through reflection (as opposed to false consciousness, non-consciousness, or unconsciousness), the distorting effect of ideology will supposedly be broken, and class-in-itself will become class-for-itself. At this point workers will no longer 'consent' to domination, and will communicate the falseness of ideology through education mechanisms. Even the outline of communism takes the form of "a common and rational plan," for Marx.

But habits are not so easily manipulable or subordinate to conscious recognition. If we agree with the Marxist view that thinking arises from experiences, and that experience can encompass practices/acts, gestures, affects, and imagination, as well as reflection, then habit cannot be reified or idealized separately from its specific form in the world - the way dispositions and capacities accumulate around certain experiences. Routinized habits can only be 'constructed' from above when mental conceptions dominate practice, as Barbara Ehrenreich relates in the surprises she experience in the habitus of low-wage workers: "Educated middle-class professionals never go careening half-cocked into the future, vulnerable to any surprise that might leap out at them. We always have a plan or at least a to-do list; we like to know that everything has been anticipated, that our lives are, in a sense, pre-lived" (2008 [2001]: pg. 54). While she could assume the formal role of service workers, her imitation could never capture their experience, and given her own physiological comportment, she supposed that many of the "grunt" jobs that drained her energy must have been just as "skilled" as more high-paying jobs, even though they were more degrading. Because of its creative dimension, habitus is more of an art than a science: while involving technique and formal rules, its outcomes are ultimately dependent on the ongoing construction of refrains, and the ability of an actor to achieve a precarious balance. Moreover, a purpose or end result can neither ground nor orient habitus definitively: it cannot be stabilized and hence regulated 'externally.' Clearly, habit is rooted in experience, but this experience cannot be reduced to a means to an end, or become routinized by an abstract logic such as scientific management.

What Marx ignores in both his early and later writings is the auto-poietic experience of practice noticed by phenomenologists like Martin Heidegger (whose notion of dwelling is important for the concept of habit/habitus), and Heideggerian Marxists such as Kostas Axelos. This practice of inhabitation is not static; in fact, it is ek-static: necessarily outside of itself, projective, anticipatory; in a word, 'homeless.' It is world and meaning-embedded forms of imagination, rather than the rational subject, which project actors 'outward' into the future, improvising from experiences 'thrown' into through the formation of 'new' patterns of common action. New temporalities of practice continually emerge from the 'games' actors play with the habits and dispositions their "field" seeks to reproduce them by; but they are always specific to and in reference to their singular origins (biography, generation, learning styles, etc.). They are not necessarily conditional or 'random,' though they may appear to be spontaneous.

In comparison to repetitive techniques, habits are relatively open, changing and re-arranging/re-assembling over time in relation to social practices. Rethinking the notion of "creation," French post-Marxist philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy conceives creation "ex nihilo" (i.e., from nothing) as originally shared, adapting Heidegger's phenomenology in Being and Time to a vision of "literary communism" (1991 [1986]: pg. 40): all being-there (Dasein) - presence - is always already being-with (Mitsein)(2000) - an "absent" presence generating shared habits and dispositions. In other words, there cannot be a being-in-itself (objective form) which is not already being-with-others (inter-subjective community, Heidegger's being-in-the-world), though this takes the alienated form of being-for-others (association, formal recognition "in society") under capitalism. For example, workers under the technical division of labour are alienated and atomized in individual workplaces ("bargaining units" if unionized), and hence, class-formation (becoming class-in-itself) can only be a project, rather than an assumption grounding class struggle. In the Hegelian conception of Community, however, being-for-others is the primary basis of mutual recognition or identity: one has to be made conscious of oneself through an external mirroring process in order to act ethically, learning how to imitate and model oneself based on the Other's gaze. Pure objective being ("naked life" in Agamben's conception) is the effect of domination, and recognition seeks to rescue identities through self-consciousness. No distinction is made between actors' ethical conduct and systematic morality. However, in the Heideggerian, post-Marxist perspective, our being-with-others implies community, and all communities are communities of practice. This implies an active power-to-do (in a sense never complete), rather than passive membership: the power-relations involved could potentially transform, rather than merely repeat, past structures of domination/oppression. Moreover, rather than being based on discourse or recognition/consensus, such as a hypothetical social contract or educational degree and discipline, communities and practices are inscribed politically, with reference to an imaginary, shared experience (called "the social flow of doing" by Holloway, and the "collective unconscious" by Jung and Jameson). There is nothing necessary or predictable/guaranteed about shared practices so long as imagination and creativity generate new non-technical or non-repetitive habits and dispositions to counter such reification. This is the infinite background against which the world reveals itself, providing definite yet changing potentials for social action. The generation of habit is therefore fundamentally social, but social relations cannot be too closely associated with social structures. Habitual social relations bring together "parts" that are too intricately interwoven to be simply re-arranged at will; change must come from their interrelation. This is very much like the argument of Axelos (2005), Nancy (2007 [2002]), and other post-Marxists that for the contemporary capitalist system, there is an absolute difference between world ("mondialisation") and globe ("globalization"), or between possibilities and totalities. Thus, when Bourdieu states that "the schemes applied to the world are the product of the world to which they are applied" (2000 [1997]: pg. 147), this world is always greater than a social structure, and also less: while going beyond the parts, it does not subsume them in an aggregated or bounded system. This means that Burawoy's (2012: pg. 191) Marxist critique of habitus in flawed: habitus is not simply the logic of its reproduction. Rather, if "the social" is not a closed system "society," then habitus does not refer to an ultimate structural logic, and therefore involves "temporal slippage" within and outside the "field" it is structured by (Beasley-Murray 2010 [2003]: pg. 177-8). The social unconscious or imaginary generates singular combinations of possible forms of meaning and action, giving rise to actors' habits and dispositions (possible "games"), rather than pre-determined causality.

The mistaken notion of habit as deterministic, unnatural, leads to a politics which - fearing domination by nature - seeks to dominate it in turn by converting practice into instrumental rationality and consensus to guarantee control over action. Habit is the core of practice, but habit is much closer to poiesis, i.e., "creativity" or play, or techne, i.e., "craft," than to the modern interpretation of skill as instrumental technique (which must be willed by an agent). This reconceptualization allows for the possibility of affective action, and a "step back" from the paradigm of effective agency: affects become the the link between potentialities and possibilites, and effects are reassigned to the level of closed or reified systems. By refusing to separate the imaginary from the real or objective, without seeing it as a product of subjective rationality or agency, actors continually have the potential to emerge and transform their worlds with others.

Bibliography

Adorno, T. (1974 [1951]). Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. Trans. E.P.H. Jephcott. London, UK: Verso.

Axelos, K., and Elden, S. (2005). "Mondialisation Without the World: An Interview with Kostas Axelos." Radical Philosophy. Vol. 130: pg. 25-8.

Beasley-Murray, J. (2010 [2003]). Posthegemony: Political Theory and Latin America. Minneapolis, MT: University of Minnesota Press. 

Bourdieu P. (2000[1997]). Pascalian Meditations. Trans. Richard Nice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Burawoy, M. (2012). "The Roots of Domination: Beyond Bourdieu and Gramsci." Sociology. Vol. 46 (2): pg. 187-206.

Ehrenreich, B. (2008 [2001]). Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America. New York: Metropolitan Books; Henry Holt & Co.

Gramsci, A. (1933). "Conceptions of the World and Practical Stances: Global and Partial." In Hoare, Q., and Nowell-Smith (Eds. and Trans.). (2012 [1971]). Selections from the Prison Notebooks (pg. 157-8).  New York: International Publishers. 

Marcuse, H. (1955). Eros and Revolution: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Marx, K. (1844). "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844." In Tucker, R.C. (Ed.)(1978). The Marx-Engels Reader (pg. 66-132). New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

Nancy, Jean-Luc. (1991 [1986]). The Inoperative Community. Trans. Peter Connor, Lisa Garbus,    Michael Holland, and Simona Sawhney. Connor, P. (Ed.). Minneapolis, MT: University of Minnesota Press.

----. (2000). Being Singular Plural. Trans. Robert D. Richardson and Anne E. O'Byrne. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

----. (2002 [2007]). The Creation of the World or Globalization. New York: State University of New York Press.

Thoughts on Life as of Nov. 21st

• I think people should be judged about the extent to which they take care of themselves and allow for their selves to develop, rather than in the rational persuit of self-interest in which a "self" is already present and defined. It's perfectly fine to distance yourself from the experience of someone who systematically negates or degrades themselves at the same time as they are trying desperately to protect themselves. I believe sharing mental and affective space with that person is actively harmful to you, but that you should not stigmatize this kind of person. 

Recent Thoughts on Gender

Last week, Friday night - what did I do? I went to an SFU conference on gender and video games. It was uncanny, because it brought me back to a point in my life when I didn't really have time for women (so I told myself) and gamed or watched TV by myself. Experiencing pleasure in my control over information didn't really involve much emotional depth, maturity, or meaningful affect, so I see this as a typically masculine experience. Fine. The past may be another country, but it's not a prison. After this, and after having two really good, mutual encounters (conversations) with women at a bar the next night, I started to reflect more on gender.

There's no question that women have greater affective expression and skill with gestures than men, and in a way our alienated society would be better if that was encouraged. But I don't think it means abolishing the concept of masculinity in favour of feminity, as some radical feminists such as Jessica Valenti have argued (Full Frontal Feminism). You can oppose the common-sense that naturalizes gender as a product of sex and 'instinct' (biological reductionism), without ignoring the meaning of 'nature' and bodily differences that shape different dispositions and needs of men, women, and other gender and sexual experiences.

While the women's movement has taken great steps in making women's experience meaningful, and in raising women's standard of living and quality of life, I sense an ambiguity. The issue is that, historically, welfare and communitarian values have underlied women's suffrage and women's isolation from men in self-protecting groups. The first feminists had conservative or traditional values (and not only because of their race and class), taking advantage of gender segregation: this 18th-19th century perspective suggests that women are weak and need to be protected, that they need to be included because they would otherwise be subject to scandalous forms of exploitation. However, public scandals or moral panics around violence against women  rest on an implicit paternalism: it is a notion that uncivil men constantly threaten to harm a valuable piece of private property. Protection against harm has long been part of the modern liberal-communitarian tradition, dating back to John Stuart Mill's On Liberty and The Subjection of Women in the mid-19th century, and even to the Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft in the late-18th century. Back then, women were strongly associated with welfare: i.e., both caring work and the need for protection by institutions. Today, the turn to family values, i.e., strengthening "women's domain" according to conservatives, is posed as the solution to social problems in the public sphere. I don't mean to be too critical, but .States today boast that they protect women's rights, protect LGBTQ rights, as part of their legitimacy 'domestically' and internationally, as a pretext for foreign interventions. But they negate (exclude) what they aim to include. On that note, the concept of the nation as a 'domestic sphere' or 'motherland' is interesting. I want to avoid allying myself with this when I try to be an ally of women.

When feminism is based on mistrust of men, and a priori fear of sexual assault, it seems like it is playing into patriarchy. I can see this in the idea that women shouldn't go out to bars and social events, or the notion that female sexuality is auto-erotic - independent of men, or a power-over men (rather than an independent potential for themselves). When a modern feminist asserts her bodily autonomy (which she should have the right to do), or hides herself from the male gaze, this to some extent relies on the traditional discourse of femininity, which says that women 'play hard to get,' choose their partners carefully, and play a passive role outside private life. Let's imagine, and this does happen, that a liberated woman chooses a stereotypical 'alpha male' or very attractive male as her partner: this would be realizing her freedom to choose, but at the same time, would be contradictory. It might also be classist, though that's contentious. Having the right to choose does not give you the right to support other oppressive hierarchies such as those based on physical appearance, income, or the unequal possession of emotional capital. I don't think these problems are exclusively to do with intersectionality, but with the idea of rights as exclusively individual (which is not necessarily even modern). Feudal and aristocratic societies were also intensely individualistic (within a Christian framework), based on personal relations of domination rather than abstract power.

I think that movements that are based on defense and protection end up being contradictory and potentially even statist, and I sometimes wonder if movements - whether feminism, labour, civil rights, environmental - can only really be recognized by the State if they embody the paternalistic logic of protection assuming public benevolence. Defense of the public sphere and of 'rights' is inadequate because it conceals oppression. This  is the ambiguity I sometimes feel as an ally.

Thoughts - 26/09/2012

• Marx speaks of alienation as spiritual poverty: lethargy, practical activity as an external rather than external/internal synthesis, frustration and impotence, inability to act without outside pressure, the treat to subjectivity inherent in an entirely "objective" labour process.
• The transmission of information, rather than it's emergence from and relevance to experience, always ends up placing the subject externally to other subjects. Hence, it breaks the 'social flow of doing' (Holloway) which is material-practical-discursive activity. If others do not respond to the analytical framework, the set of categories, it does not mean they do not (or could not) understand the issue. If there is no gestural accompaniment, with its sympathetic and sensori-motor feedback between speaker and audience, communication will be entirely one-sided and didactic. In a crisis situation, it may seem more important for those who understand the systemic foundations of the crisis to urgently impart this knowledge on those suffering from the crisis, but part of the alienation from creative activity and conceptualization. We shouldn't speak as priests, or therapists, warning of the impending apocalypse and/or irreversible symptoms. That never solves systemic problems, which have their roots in a relational crisis - with other people, with nature (mere resources), and with the world (things or data). Even the best-intentioned fall into the trap of thinking that total knowledge will rescue them from the problems of living - which, while greatly exacerbated by oppression, are not automatically solved by removing it from the top-down. This doesn't preclude drawing on past experience and connections, but it involves opening them to new possibilities and encounters not originally conceived.
• Knowledge is embodied, it is intuitive and dispositional - it's our sense of how things fit together and ability to navigate and form relations. There is a strong imaginary and affective component, which is not about individual conscious emotion, but is more like a collective unconscious.
• Regardless of what people are thinking, just the fact that they are present and responsive/sympathetic to each other stimulates recognition in public spaces, not the other way around. Our bodies immediately betray the shape - the form + content - of our seemingly personal thoughts, or our state of mind. The way you move through physical space says more about the mental space you inhabit than what you say or consciously project.

Thoughts 23/09/2012

• Does standing up for the rights of a group of people equal being in solidarity with them? I'm still trying to work out the meaning of allyship vis-a-vis solidarity. The notion of an ally implies a degree of separation, i.e., strategic action as well as sympathy. Solidarity starts more at the level of a general commitment, and some of the sympathy might spill over to empathy. Why am I bothering to discuss this distinction? Well, because I wonder at what point I'm accepted as an ally, and to what degree this acceptance limits or shapes the kind of result that I see.
• As much as it sucks not being intimate or having sex, or being unable to express yourself in that way, there are far worse indignities that people experience in their everyday lives. Someone suffering from those, silently or openly, does not necessarily have the affective presence to relate because their libidinal energy is slowed down or repressed. Some would say 'man up', others would say not to take it personally, or not to interpret everything as an explicit judgement of value. Viewing yourself based on the number of sexual 'conquests' you achieve is part of the same logic of competition that does so much damage already. Affective expression - which is its own form of energy and creativity - is what it seems people are really aiming at. Community/communication are part of a healthy sexuality, rather than any compulsion.
• This was the subject of Herbert Marcuse's book Eros and Civilization, in which he associates love and affect with creativity and "world-forming." People have allowed their lifeworld - the basic forms of experience (being, doing, feeling) - to be colonized, and hence people feel ontologically insecure. Perhaps a "free sexuality" could exist if we stopped treating each other as solely as things/objects. The free presencing of others in their singularity has a fetishized appearance in fixed objectivity. The way we dwell in the world can never be broken down into the sum of its parts, but its substance is infitely relational., giving it the appearance of permanence to the reified gaze.
• Why should you expect something from someone whose full personhood you deny? You shouldn't, obviously. But that also limits the forms of sexual expression you have with that other person. It's more engaging to have a full human being present with you than to have an image out of your fantasy.
• Feminism is not against men per se, but against oppressive male behaviour and structures of power. Feminism's militancy in that direction - mainly among radical and/or socialist feminists - should not be seen as reversing the binary, i.e., it isn't about saying that women are better than men. The anger and pain of some women, as well as the strategic value this kind of statement might have, can lead to this but I don't think it has to.
• The women's movement, and women in general, have become closer to the LGBTQ community than men have. Personally, I've known a couple transsexual people, and for a guy, even talking to them is somewhat deviant. It's not something I would tell anyone, except for women. When I talk to women, it's accepted by other men because i'm supposedly doing "what guys do:" but I'm more interested in closeness and companionship than "getting laid." If other guys knew that, I'm sure it would be less accepted, because men aren't supposed to feel the weakness that the need for care and love implies. But on the other side, I don't want to associate women too much with care and love because it really should be mutual.

Thoughts - 22/09/2012

• Quebec students' tuition fees will necessarily increase if the federal government transfers less money to Quebec's education budget.
• Unfortunately, while some in the rest of Canada may want Quebec to give up its federal transfers as well as its inordinate share of seats in parliament, if it decides to leave the Canadian nation, the original reason for those transfers was that Canada needed Quebec's economic partnership. Quebec has shown signs of being willing to trade with other countries and of participating in the world market; as well, it already supplies electricity to some states in the northeast USA. This is why the Parti Quebecois can run on a sovereignty-in-association platform and not be too heavily criticized by the federal government.

Thoughts - 06/09/2012

• Pure immediacy is impossible - human life is mediated - but not to the exclusion of affect and the unconscious. It's possible that both affect and the unconscious is highly intelligent, but in an "inductive" (experiential) way rather than a "deductive" (abstract) way. The tendency toward abstraction doesn't exhaust the struggle to fulfill our concrete needs.

• Regardless of the parental functions of authority, and the respect they expect from their children, it is an empirical fact that as society changes and generations succeed each other, certain forms of common sense, knowledge, and habit become irrelevant or anachronistic. Particularly now, as the labour market demands more refined communication skills, emotional competence, and mental and physical health, children increasingly have to deviate from their parents just to survive. It is increasingly impossible to be an introverted or solitary person, since social and cultural capital are key parts of the social structure we live in. This may be one of the factors contributing to the breakdown of the traditional form of the family and the rise of the new extended family (divorce, foster parenthood, etc.). The disconnect is only partially psychological, since if we see the family as an institution, then it will change in relation to other institutions and relationships. This is why more non-traditional forms of the family have appeared in recent decades.
• Parents can try very hard and project love on to their children - for example, by complimenting minor achievements - but their strain within the parenting role (for example, lacking cultural and emotional capital) is clear when passive-aggressive tendencies show themselves. For example, teaching children by either completely taking over the cognitive and affective processes (to the exclusion of the child's own psychic development) associated with a behaviour or leaving the child completely on their own to learn with no support are both extreme parenting styles. Hiding your difficulties in relating to other human beings behind "tough love" and self-discovery can understandably lead to resentment. When the expectations placed on children to succeed are greater than the child's self-development allows, the parent who feels justified in their own anger or disapproval is basically just confirming their own ego. What children need is a basic level of support in developing their selves, some guidance and leadership rather than discipline per se. The ability to lead by example, but not to project one's self to strongly onto others, is much more admirable: one needs to be able to respond to other people in order to relate to a child during development, rather than only being able to respond to one's self.
• Important to make a separation of inside and outside in order to develop a sense of self and of identity. Without this, stress is guaranteed, as one's behaviour is so immediate and easy-to-interpret that others can predict and control what you are doing. As well, projecting your own thoughts into the world and into conversation-spaces makes it difficult to listen or respond without feeling totally overwhelmed by the experience. If all one's internal processes are externalized, bodily integrity starts to decline, chronic stress mounts, and it gets more out of control as the capacity to experience declines. Humans don't need absolute certainty, but they do need to be able to process their experiences as at least somewhat distinct from their selves.
• Dignity and immanence are compatible, but immanence is more than presence (Hegel's interpretation). Being-there includes both presence and absence, a sense of relating to others and to the whole that goes against the Aristotelian notion that things can be broken down into the sum of their component parts. Every moment is infinite, incalculable, yet has its own distinct shape and "logos" or habitus (as opposed to a logic). Dignity is not according to some human essence we can be certain of beforehand: it is the ability to embody numerous potentials as they arise, to not be treated as a thing, but instead as a decentered, relational person.
• This phenomenological perspective can be applied to the labour process to describe it as indignified, rather than alienating of the human essence. The most we can say is that certain needs are not fulfilled, but we can't infer from that we know the totality of the person from the observation of a lack. Yet, the sense of dignity that people have - that their world still turns, so to speak, without having to constantly check or scrutinize it - depends on the degrading characteristics of the capitalist labour process.
• One day every week I need to dedicate to mental and physical health and well-being above other things. It seems like Sunday is that day.

Thoughts 14-09-2012

- Suburbanization has soul-atrophying effects: fatigure from long commutes, sterile relationships, large houses and too many opportunities to waste time, and lack of grassroots community.
- I see the waning of affect, and the inability to live with meaning and give form to lasting or new connections as endemic in this society.
- A constant feeling of insecurity and a `generalized loss of solidarity` grips me - prevents me from having the confidence to take a risk (F. Berardi).
-  A tragic perspective is definitely needed - remaining immanent, but not positivist: we cannot fully know the world, in a timeless formal way, or in an essential way. We cannot use this to predict the future: we can project what might occur, but without the certainty of knowing our struggle must result in an ideal world. Realizing that oppression cannot be finally eliminated, but not resigning ourselves to this fact nor justifying it in any way, gets us outside the optimism vs. pessimism way of thinking. Tragic perspectives are not nihilistic - as Professor Cornel West argues, they are profoundly hopeful, yet pragmatic and ethical in seeking freedom.
- I am committed to anti-oppression analysis more than some Marxists in the world, but I do not see all instances of skill, self-expression, and personal development as oppressive. I see oppression as systemic, but not as a closed system, or as a totality in which all instances of skill, self-expression, and personal development would necessarily reproduce domination. For example, while men may possess particular skills which reinforce their domination over women, it would be less accurate to say the totality of their experience is somehow so corrupt that the shape of those abilities, or the process of skill-formation, cannot be recaptured and put to more liberating uses. In the desire to remove `privilege` and to distrust any productive forms of power, I see aspects of the death drive - pure negation. I see an abstract or mystical idea of life projected which does not address the practicalities of getting things done, nor the benefits in terms of standards of living, quality of life, and the difficult development of experience and affect (community). Humans have needs, which are not simply socially constructed by oppressive power relations: they are in flux and changing (as open systems) but nevertheless they are real and need to be addressed as such, independent of critiques of human nature myths. Nurture doesn`t trump nature, it`s just that humans are not naturally oppressive toward one another. And the development of nature is far more extensive than pure immediacy or bare life - ironically what it seems pure social constructionists would like to turn to. Our affects carry experiences forming multi-layered worlds, assemblages of skill as well as guides for experimentation for new forms of culture and social relations. That doesn`t mean we can just polemically embody pure feeling in opposition to, rather than in harmony with, reason (of a more substantial variety).
- Foucaults point in comparing class war and race struggle discourses is not that class conflict does not exist, but that Marxism itself gave rise to the friend-enemy distinction underlying the identity politics paradigm that many Marxists (rightly, I think) reject.
-  I`m having trouble being an ally, questioning what that means. If I cannot not act oppressively, then I don`t see how can I be part of the solution, and I don`t see how it is possible without a larger social effort. I`m not on board with abolishing masculinity: that goes beyond `checking my privilege` and positions me as an impossible ally. It`s a very immature way of dealing with the power imbalances, with simple friend-enemy distinctions. We can transform aspects of masculinity, but I thought that patriarchy was the source of oppressive masculinity, as well as many of the aspects of femininity that some more radical (not socialist) feminists valorize. Here`s the thing: insofar as a man does not overtly act oppressively, within the system we live in, he will passively acquire advantages. By theorizing closed system, you see everything as contributing to reinforcing patriarchy - thus making it very discouraging for men who try to be allies to the feminist movement. This isn`t about assigning moral blame based on intentions: it`s about recognizing good and bad examples.
- Escaping from emotions and bodily feelings by chattering and externalizing is a neurotic way of living, something I don`t hope for, but not something I would criticize to the point to stigma or depression over - because that would only reinforce the neurotic condition itself.

Notes 11/08/2012

• It seems like people are saying "social media has changed everything!" but just uttering that statement meaninglessly. From my perspective what's changed is the way people greet each other: when you could potentially look at a person's photos, status, and profile updates, it takes away some of the authenticity of asking "how are you?" or "what's up these days?" I predict that more and more, people will choose to hang out with or date people they already 'know' online, once the person has already represented themselves to you. I've also heard people talk about almost entirely text-based relationship they've been in. But either we insist that this is only a partial picture of ourselves, or we concede that complex/creative arrangement of code is equivalent to our experience. Maybe what we need to do is connect with each other on an affective/experiential level and not confuse that with the bits of information we can associate with ourselves.
• My task for myself: try to convert chronic stress into acute stress and affect in the face of an inability to fully control the circumstances I live under. There are things that are not only out of my control in a generic sense, but actively limit or models my potential. Some of the habits, coping mechanisms, moods/tendencies, and practical knowledge needed to succeed can only come from a healthy environment in early years and as you're growing up. Because the relationship with parents is a contract, where you are grateful what they give you (for the most part) and agree to take their intentions toward you at face value, it's sometimes hard to admit your parents' weaknesses (and their effect) without endangering the relationship. There is only so much you can do as a parent, and everyone has limits, but the authority and dependence of the relationship prevents some of recurring issues from being resolved, such as self-defeating lifestyles and attitudes.
• The anarchist idea of "the smith" may be just as interesting as the idea of "singularities" in post-structuralism: according to Day, in Gramsci is Dead (2005), the smith is a social actor that is open to creativity and improvisation based on affinities with others. The smith's identity is not determined, like the citizen or the subject, but it is not free-floating and nihilistic like "the nomad" (autonomist, post-anarchist idea) (pg. 126). What I find compelling about it is that it is a way of being made possible, but not determined by, multiple and overlapping communities: the smith can hop between communities or belong to more than one at one time. A lot like Hardt and Negri's idea of "the multitude," and the idea of singularity, this leaves room for everyone's uniqueness without becoming an ideology of individualism, plus, it critiques the view that community, or what is common, requires some sort of collective whole based on unified morality. The energy and ability of the smith thrives on the presence of others who are not defined by abstract categories, and Day argues that it is the key actor in "structural renewal." You don't need to isolate yourself from other people and get depressed to be part of radical change.
• It's arrogant to assume that others should immediately care about your shit, especially when you can only recognize a small part of others' experience yourself. It shows a lack of life experience that you desperately want to hang on to a connection that is strained. Why assume our interests and needs must be compatible?

Notes 05/08/2012

• By calling others' social interactions shallow and alienating, you ignore that as social beings, people need to communicate well and develop relationships with other people to live a good life. You also misunderstand how selves are produced: they aren't shaped privately, it is and can only be an intensely "interpersonal" process. That means that if you don't engage on that level, your development will be limited, something it makes no sense to aim for. If people don't interact with each other how you want (and who says it should be up to you, or that perfection is attainable), you can struggle to build alternative forms of socializing, but you can't just retreat into your ego without neglecting some of the participation that is necessary to meet peoples' social needs.

Power-to and Embodiment

Gabor Mate (2003), When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection

• "Higher levels of stress cause higher cortisol output via the HPA axis, and cortisol inhibits the activity of the inflammatory cells involved in wound healing" (pg. 36). 
• "The higher the level of economic development, it seems, the more anaesthetized we have become to our emotional realities. We no longer sense what is happening in our bodies and cannot act in self-preserving ways. The physiology of stress eats away at our bodies not because it has outlived its usefulness but because we may no longer have the competence to recognize its signals" (ibid).
• "Emotional competence is what we need to develop if we are to protect ourselves from the hidden stresses that create a risk to health, and it is what we need to regain if we are to heal" (pg. 38).
• "The body's hormonal system is inextricably linked with the brain centres where emotions are experienced and interpreted. In turn, the hormonal apparatus and the emotional centres are interconnected with the immune system and the nervous system, These are not four separate systems, but one super-system that functions as a unit to protect the body from external invasion and from disturbances to the internal physiological condition. It is impossible for any stressful stimulus, chronic or acute, to act on only one part of the super-system" (pg. 61).

Franco 'Bifo' Berardi (2009), The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy

• In Italy in the late-1970's, happiness, rather than depression/alienation, became the best weapon against capitalism: "rich, aware, productively and culturally autonomous, liberated individualities deviated with rage from the ideology of sacrifice and the work ethic: work was denounced as a pure hierarchical repetition, deprived of any intelligence or creativity" (pg. 93).
• From an Oedipal to a post-Oedipal paradigm: "The dominant pathologies of our times are no longer neurotic, determined by a repression of libido, but rather schizo-pathologies, produced by the expressive explosion of the just do it" (pg. 175).
• "It is true that biology dominates human action, but human action also determines biology. The question is to understand which choices (epistemic, technologic, and finally instinctual and aesthetic) a conscious human mind will make" (pg. 198).
• "Control over the body is no longer exerted by molar mechanisms of constriction, but by micro machines that are incorporated into the organism through psychpharmacology, mass communication and the predisposition to informatics interfaces. This means that control over the body is exerted by the modeling of the soul" (pg. 200).
• "Overcoming depression implies some simple steps: the deterritorialization of the obsessive refrain, the re-focalization and change of the landscape of desire, but also the creation of a new constellation of shared beliefs, the common perception of a new psychological environment and the construction of a new model of relationships" (pg. 217).
• "In the days to come, politics and therapy will be one and the same. The people will feel hopeless and depressed and panicked, because they can't deal with the post-growth economy and they will miss our dissolving modern identity. Our cultural task will be to attend to these people and to take care of their trauma showing them the way to pursue the happy adaptation at hand. Our task will be the creation of social zones of human resistance, zones of therapeutic contagion" (pg. 220).
• "The process of autonomy should not be seen as Aufhebung [sublation or overcoming], but as Therapy. In this sense, it is neither totalizing nor is it intended to destroy or abolish the past" (pg. 221).

Jon Beasley-Murray (2010), Post-Hegemony: Political Theory and Latin America. Reprinted ed.

• "Affect marks the passage whereby one body becomes another body, either joyfully or sorrowfully; affect always takes place between bodies, at the mobile threshhold between affective states as bodies either coalesce or disintegrate, as they become other to themselves" (pg. 128).
• "Resistance is no longer a matter of contradiction, but rather of the dissonance between would-be hegemonic projects and the immanent processes that they always fail to represent" (pg. 136).
• "Politics is no longer a matter of the consent and negotiation implied by the hegemonic contract; it is a (non)relation or incompatibility between processes of capture and affective escape" (pg. 139).
• "The politics of habit is not the clash of ideologies within a theater of representation. It is a politics that is immanent and corporeal, that works directly through the body. Yet habit is primary; it is not an effect or a consequence of political processes that take place elsewhere" (pg. 181).
• "Power's most successful strategies are precisely those that will never emerge into discourse, that go without saying in everyday life's routine rhythms (pg. 187-8).
• "What habitus reproduces is our corporeal assent to power's legitimacy and to the unequal distribution of capital that it secures" (pg. 192).
• "We stand, walk, feel, and think to collective rhythms synchronized and orchestrated at a pace set by social institutions. But it is also in these everyday practices that we might realize the potential opened up by the temporal slippage inherent in habitus and by the dissonances that result. Even in the most routine activities, a new autonomy arises, and new habits" (pg. 202).
• "The immanent, guiding principle of the multitude's self-constitution is fluidity and flux, but this is not a seething mass of atomized individuals; instead, mobility and motility maximize opportunities for contact and encourage the formation of habitual patterns shaped by affect rather than the force of law. The multitude is eminently sociable: as the subject of constituent power, it produces society itself" (pg. 250).

Richard J.F. Day (2005), Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements.

• One concept of community (from Hegel) is a unified totality, based on a universal morality; however, "just as the rejection of coercive morality need not necessarily lead to passive nihilistic relativism, so the rejection of Hegelian community need not necessarily lead to an anti-social individualism. In poststructuralist theory, it leads to something quite different that can be approached via the concept of singularity" (pg. 180).
• The coming communities: "at their radical limit, they present that which cannot be represented, that which must not signify - they are the disavowed, unconscious underside of globalizing capital, the Real that, just as it must be repressed, must just as surely return" (pg. 183).

Catherine Malabou (2008), What Should We Do With Our Brain?

• Epigenetic changes are possible because the brain and biology are not fully determined: the anatomical structures of brains are completely genetically-based, but the neurological organization is dependent on experience.
• We make our brains, but we do not know it.
• Brains are plastic, but not infinitely flexible: they are not blank slates that can be simply molded at will by employers.
• “Humans make their own brain but they are doing so” (pg. 8).
• “Today, the true sense of plasticity is hidden, and we tend constantly to substitute for it its mistaken cognate, flexibility” (pg. 12).
• “What flexibility lacks is the resource of giving form, to invent or even to erase an impression, the power to style. Flexibility is plasticity minus its genius” (pg. 12).
• “Even if all brains resemble each other with respect to their anatomy, no two brains are identical with respect to their history...Repetition and habit play a considerable role, and this reveals that the response of the nervous circuit is never fixed. Plasticity thus adds the functions of artist and instructor in freedom and autonomy to its role as sculptor” (pg. 24).
• “The concept of plasticity has an aesthetic dimension (sculpture, malleability), just as much as an ethical one (solicitude, treatment, help, repair, rescue) and a political one (responsibility in the double movement of the receiving and the giving of form). It is therefore inevitable that at the horizon of the objective descriptions of brain plasticity stand questions concerning social life and being together” (pg. 30).
• “Plasticity, between determinism and freedom, designates all the types of transformation deployed between the closed meaning of plasticity (the definitive character of form) and its open meaning (the malleability of form). It does this to such a degree that cerebral systems today appear as self-sculpted structures that, without being elastic or polymorphic, still tolerate constant self-reworking, differences in destiny, and the fashioning of a singular identity” (pg. 31).
• “The primary qualities of assemblies of neurons are their mobility and their multifunctionality” (pg. 44).
• “The absence of centrality and hierarchy evoked above...the absence of clear and localized conflict, and the necessity of being mobile and adaptable constitute new factors of anxiety, new psychosomatic symptoms, new causes of severe neurasthenia” (pg. 48).
• Proposes a "biological alter-globalism."

Social Beings

• Sociological critics of modernity argued that large cities produced anonymity: a kind of 'generalized otherness' is caused by having such a large mass of people who have never met before, which was contrasted to rural towns and settlements where communities were closely knit. Urban metropolises were supposedly anomic and impersonal. Today, that analysis is no longer valid: within urban centres, distinctive neighbourhoods have developed with close relationships. People's consciousness and habits are more developed through the closeness, which produces affect rather than detachment. The place where the real anomie and alienation exists is in the suburbs, with the added twist that it the isolation is due less to of the density of the population, than to the sprawl of street, shopping, and housing design. People don't normally talk to their neighbours or develop close ties. They don't develop local mores and aesthetics like urban communities do. They are less ethnically diverse, and more likely to be dominated by mass-culture. The numbing of human potential through mindless routine makes communication static and boredom the norm. Thus, is no coincidence that the majority of social movements bypass suburban residents, or force the more conscious ones to travel long distances. And suburbanites are rarely socialized enough to effectively participate: the need for easy-to-consume solutions produces a lack of energy and inability to effectively struggle. But since the majority of the population lives in suburbs, no movement that seriously seeks social change can ignore the plight of people living there.
• It's enjoyable to have as many good interactions as possible, to build and share social worlds with other people. And there is no substitute for face-to-face, fully-embodied communication for that. I don't want to hide from real people behind a computer screen, mediated by thousands of meaningless signs and identities. There's no responsibility for your actions in that: it is complete freedom, but complete alienation. Reality can be coded, but the code needs to be balanced by one's actual experience. If that experience is the problem, if it's not possible to have good interactions, then as painful as that is, it will constantly derail living life unless some progress is made. You can start from anywhere in a virtual reality, but every moment spent is taking away from the value your life could potentially have now. I promise that being in the present will be vastly more meaningful than anything the virtual world could offer you, and will open new paths. Interpersonal skills, like technical skills and the ability to act on your own needs, are essential to making life more enjoyable.
• I admit my flaws and remain aware of them. I do my best to change the little habits and behaviours that reproduce them, when it is possible. If it isn't, I don't get frustrated, but I do have an image of where I should be that I would like to achieve. If someone points out a flaw, I don't get hurt or offended, but I ideally respond: what could I really have done otherwise, given the influences on my decision-making abilities so far? To put this another way: if you get defensive when problems are pointed out that affect you, would you really want other people to suffer from the same condition? Would you really recommend it, for example, if you had children you were trying to raise?
• Even the most serious or stoic person has a less serious unconscious playing beneath the surface. It is amusing to see this undermine their pretenses.
• One of the most important goals the left can follow is the care of the self: affective expression, emotional well-being, and personality development.
• Being healthy, by developing good habits, and avoiding self-destructive behaviour, such as depending on TV, food, sugar, etc., solves many problems.

The Effects of Stress

- I accept the biological model of human potential, but not biological determinism. It is important to minimize the sources of chronic stress in life, including the internal(ized) ones, and how it can affect other people around you. Chronic stress leads to an over-stimulated hypothalmic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis system, which leads to a weakened body. Science has only just become aware of the difference between chronic and acute forms of stress, and the ability for similar 'stress profiles' to be passed on between generations. If worldviews, communication styles, and problem-solving strategies are all part of peoples' coping mechanisms, then in learning and being socialized, we are also acquiring certain stress-responses that embody and signify our ability to achieve things.
- You don't even have to be constantly active or coerced to be stressed. It's stressful just to sit around and do nothing all day: you are wasting your ability to do things, to learn new things. TV watchers: if you're not going to at least watch a show with a friend, or have it be relevant to some sort of human connection, do you honestly watch TV because you enjoy it, or because you have nothing left in your boring, fatiguing, unfulfilling life?
- Never be content with processing information about the world. Experience should always be significant and always create resonance between people. Affect and imagination are intrinsic to the human conditions, in which we are ecstatically projecting the new against the background of what we already know about ourselves. Self-knowledge is only the starting point, and very provisional: if you tried to get all the 'data' about yourself in view, you'd end up fitting it into one or perhaps two very small boxes (paradigms, models, etc.) that only reveal certain aspects of your life. You are an ensemble of social relations: as long as you're part of that, affect and imagination will always be with you, because society isn't a closed network of information. But if you alienate yourself from your social creativity, boredom will hit you.
- I showed some autonomy. Oh, I'm so sorry it put you in a manic state!... In the future, I will immediately make myself docile and incapable, so that I don't make you uncomfortable. Because I know you care about me that much. Seriously, can I be more than just your object of concern? If you can only understand me in your terms, and make no effort to imagine me beyond the scope of your conception, you aren't doing what is best for me, aren't allowing me to become all that I could. What is most frustrating is that the category you use to understand yourself implies you are perfect at this, and always have good intentions, but neither of those things is always there. This isn't a criticism, it's just a statement of fact. But your ego prevents you from seeing that you betray your good intentions. You say things are going well, because you want them to be, while you hide the reality: this normalizes a pathological state. What if relating to you in your terms inherently limits my potential? If you see the world as a depressed/stressed person would, not fulfilling your full potential, and you agree that is not the ideal way for people to develop, then wouldn't the authority you have over me just be reproducing that same condition?

Being Honest With Yourself

In searching for a better life, some people cannot see the problems they have now. A sense of failure, or of unconstructive criticism by others, can activate a very defensive mentality, where a person jealously guards the little they feel they have achieved against all 'threats.' The result is that this person might try to reduce others down to their current psychological condition in order to reaffirm that it's 'not so bad' for themselves: they have to question everyone else's achievement, always with scepticism and a lingering sense of fear. They unfortunately see opponents and challenges - which everyone needs to some extent - as enemies, or as potentially oppressive. Because awareness of an issue is too painful for them, the person loses themselves in mindless distractions, hoping that the issue will not come up again. This is very sad to see. Bad things happen to people, things they are not necessarily responsible for, but that they really should struggle against. For example, chronic stress, such as from job and financial insecurity, usually has an impact on the quality of the home environment for children growing up, because peoples' moods will lead them toward anger/irritability, impatience, and/or confusion. However, because most parents want to love children and provide for them, they blind themselves to their own shortcomings. Likewise, if you're younger, you shouldn't necessarily expect more mature people to treat you as a real equal - realistically, you are only potentially equal in the future. Another example is: when someone doesn't have a likable personality, they shouldn't resent others not wanting to spend time with them. It's nothing personal, really, just a reflection of human needs. If someone is not capable of meaningful interaction, it doesn't mean that they don't have the potential to achieve it in the future. Faults are not eternal, but they do require effort to avoid. We need to live in a society where criticisms and personal development won't be perceived as attacks on individuals. I also think it's very useful to strive for "power-to" (doing/relationships) against "power-over" (control of things) even though one always has the potential to change into the other, and even though we all can relate to both at the same time in different ways.