The Broken Mirror

(A meditation on mediation)

She left the web, she left the loom,

She made three paces thro' the room,

She saw the water-lily bloom,

She saw the helmet and the plume, 

                      She look'd down to Camelot.

Out flew the web and floated wide;

The mirror crack'd from side to side;

"The curse is come upon me," cried

                      The Lady of Shalott.

--Alfred, Lord Tennyson 

We forget that with “progress” comes change.  This is facile, so I must elaborate. 

To remember, one must forget.  A memory, when vivid, when consuming, obliterates for a little while the present.  Memory is safest when it lurks unlooked-at.  But memory is aggressive, and it is jealous, and it does not like to compete with the present.

Our words for memory, at least in English, are telling. 

We piece together parts of the past into a present comprehension, a presence. We Re-Member scattered fragments we Re-Collect, and when we present these pieces to another we Re-Count them (as in Account, but also possibly Countenance), we Re-Cite (from citer, “summon,” as in incite). 

The opposite of Memory is not Forgetting.  It is the Present, the Now, the Moment.  Forgetting (For: Away, Wrongly: Get: to learn, obtain;) is not the anti-thesis of memory, it is the failure to Re-Call (again-summon) the past in a present moment.  There is no question about Forgiving (Giving-Away) and Forgetting.  Forgiving is the act one does when Forgetting fails, when a wrong is recalled, recounted, remembered from recollected scattered fragments of a past that exists only in memory.

But we must Forget in order to Remember correctly.  Time must pass out of mind in order to recount (to give account again) for the past in a new way. 

We must forget the present in order to remember what we have forgotten. 

Before writing, there was only speech.  Before books were everywhere, there was only story and the teller of the story, the Bard, the Grandmother, the friend.  A change occurred, and we forgot what is forgotten when knowledge can be had in books.  I am a writer, and I love my books, but because of this I do better by not forgetting this.  I cannot see the face of he who reads my words.  I must trust my own art and my own suspicions, and I cannot adjust, I cannot maneuver, I cannot change the cadence or the rhythm to entice the bored or distracted intended.  Word-Art now requires an act of abandon, a suspended waiting for a response. 

We rely on the other for understanding.  If I speak and am never understood, I am alone.  An increasingly good friend remarked recently on his pleasure that I’d read writing of his thought otherwise un-read, and I understood his pleasure: no one wishes to write into a void, to speak into a silence. 

To remember what we have lost, we must forget what we think we have gained. 

After the book came suddenly, in a great breaking-open of nature, much more.  We’ve had millennia to adjust to written word, we’ve had only 120 or so years to understand the phone.  The missive we’ve had for almost as long as the book, envoys of words (evoyer—to send away) to another.  With the letter, we know only how our words were understood by the response, and over-land this could come months or even years later before, until Empire formalized communication (to impart, make common, to share; rivers are routes of communication, as are words) by building roads. 

Only 20 years to adjust to phones which travel, messages which move without human hands.  Only a bit more than a decade for words to show up in a pocket as if from a thief, and less than that for Facebook and Grindr. 

What have we forgotten to remember? 

Caitlyn and John Matthews chide Tennyson for confining the Lady of Shalott to her tower:

Here the Maid of Astolat [Elaine of Astolat, who fell in love with Lancelot as she nursed him back to health but was never able to tell him while she lived] is translated into an enchanted maiden who is doomed to weave whatever she sees in her mirror, but never to look upon the world of Camelot in person, let alone enter it herself. (Ladies of the Lake, pxxx).

I take no issue with their feminist analysis, but I think we should forget in order to remember what exists now. 

A friend and former lover recently had a very public suicidal episode.  Splattered all over facebook were updates stating “OH GOD SOMEONE HELP ME” (capitals his) and “SO MUCH BLOOD.”  I do not dare for a second, nor should dare anyone else, doubt the extra-ordinary nature of his pain (or of anyone else’s) which led him to such a public cry.  The pain is the same, whether it is on display or not; few self-respecting extroverts, who loves people and realize their identities through them, would seriously consider a “public” suicide undignified.  But it was not just public, it was Mediated.

Mary is sometimes known as the Mediatrix, the mediator between mortals and God, just as the Christ is known as the Mediator between mortals and The Father.  In the same way, the Church became the mediator, not just between humans and the divine, but between life and meaning.  And when the power of the Church fell away, this Mediation continued.  To mediate (to be in the middle) is to connect, but also to intersect and divide (as in median).  Media is the form communication takes, but what comes between is also a barrier of communication.

I do not think we should see the woman in the Tower, staring into the mirror and weaving what she sees as being imprisoned.  She can leave at any time, and does.

That is, she can at any point look down upon Camelot, can look upon the face of her beloved.  She is in no windowless tower.  It is the moment when the life she sees in a mirror sings nearby, out her window.  The Real of the Other, rather than the image of the Other, stands outside, singing.  The mirror is before her, but the Real of the reflection is just outside her, and she cannot bear her confinement.  But she confines herself, for the mirror, the loom is in her Tower.

I think on this when I’ve been in front of a computer too long.  I am no ascetic prophet—I’m writing this to be read on the internet, after all.  But, too, I am pained to be aware of what I have forgotten through this, what I cannot easily forget in order to remember.

What is seen in the mirror is shadow.  A screen is a barrier—it keeps out insects and debris (i.e., life) from an inside that is destined to a dance of insects and debris.  A veil is a screen between the face and the viewer, but veils can part, screens can only tear or break. 

I suspect we are all half-sick of shadows.  The curse is mortal existence.  Life, the Real, the face of the lover, the Other all exist “out there,” and are only dimly reflecting in the mirror.  From the loom of our imagination springs all manner of brilliant tapestries, yet they are only reflections of the Real.  We cannot merely ‘like’ life to live it, any more than we can hope to find in the mediated mirror the true recognition of the Other which forges our own recognition.

Donnerlied

(For you, Anam Cara)

 

I.

Strands of sunlight streaming through the windows of my room, illuminating long shadowed corners.
A hot mug of strong ceylon, mildly sweet and milked, thick like coffee, a draught from the well of life.
Ancient music filtered through speakers, reminding of what was and shall be.
Wisps of incense rising through the light, filling my mind with scents of elsewhere.
A kind cat companion playing just outside my door amongst the tentative sprouts of my garden, life dancing in life.
A lingering chill, clear air breathing like a contented sigh from the quiet mountains.
The presence of gods, whispering patiently, awaiting their revelation.
And an anticipation which challenges all my words:
I do not know enough languages to paint for you the serene thrill of an impending presence, a long-awaited visit, a kind haunting of a living soul soon to manifest. All poetry fails, all prose is just prattle.
Not long.
I am happy.
I am alive.

 

II.

I have always been very proud of my ability to dream fantastic worlds, to envision things more brilliantly illuminated than any light I've seen. Yet sometimes, all dreams prove pale.

Ancient wells overflow in torrents of rain from unseen worlds, and I didn't realise how dry this world had been. Forests overtake vast wastes, mirthful fecundity when I'd been thinking only of a little shade. Overwhelming symphonies scream from the stars when I'd thought only of some simple tune.

I shake my head and smile at how little I'd dared, while Brigid tosses more wood upon the hearth, and laughs.

 

III.

What is love then, without sorrow? What rain could give more life to the soil of the soul than the tears of parting? From which springs could flow such waters to cleanse the heart, to make it ready for the next embrace?
It is spring. Winter has kept safe all which needed to sleep, has culled from the ground all which needed to die. Now comes to us the awakening, mists falling upon us from the worlds above, from which our lives are seen outside of the time we know.
I have known such joy because of its shadow.
I have known the winter which precedes this spring.
It is as it must be, world without end.
I am all gratitude.
I am all love.

Other

"Or say that the end precedes the begininng
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end
And all is always now."
--T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets, I

Almost a year after I last took up marshaling words against the vast abyssal Other, I find myself here again. Older, more solitary--different, or resolved, recollected into something I seem to have always been seeing. 

There are two different things people mean when they refer to deja vu.  The first, which seems to be the general experience, is the sense of having seen or done something before, and any consequences of such a sensory suspicion are typically ignored or not bothered with (one wouldn't want to be insane now, right?).  I used to be interested in the myriad explanations for that feeling, though I never found them quite descriptive of what I meant when I say I've had an already-seen, which is the second sense: the suspicion that the current experience is being remembered later.

The first suggests only past, while the second is more contorted.  I'm always happy to find another who experiences it the second way, who describes it similar language or, upon hearing mine, nods in pleased consent, the relief that one feels when someone feels the same way too.  And more fun when someone uses the self-same words I would choose. 

To expand for a moment--there is this sense that time has somehow bent, folded in, that past and future are being experienced at one, and at that moment, one feels somehow right, as if what has just happened was meant to happen in the past or, because it is remembered in the future, had to have happened.  Further, there's this sense that you've done something "right," like you are on a correct path. 

Of particular note in this is that strange desire, tendency, reflex-- I ascribe meaning immediately to the event, while I don't normally bother with more mundane or more common events.  I immediately find myself taking note of my surroundings, giving more attention to what just happened, what was just said--that is, inscribing in into a tapestry of thought and sense.  To use something analogue, it is as if I've just hit "record," ultimately perhaps creating a memory which I will probably access later. 

I have come to name such experiences as Other, which has also become my way of understanding the world outside the world I understand, or, to use more religious language, the Divine or the Eternal.  But I choose Other specifically because it does not indicate agency--that is, it is not like the christian experience of God or miracles.  Rather, experiences of the Other indicate differences in perception, an almost intangible perception.  I do not mean extra-perception here, nor do I refer to the "paranormal," which I find to be a rather embarrassing attempt by rational people to understand what is outside the rational: to paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, it makes no sense to look for a ghost in a laboratory, because ghosts do not particularly like laboratories. 

I've used Other two ways here.  I'm attempting to expound upon something I started in a missive to someone, and found that I really ought to try to explain it better.  There is the Other of Lacanian and other psychology and philosophy, which is the subject that is not self, the other person, the abyss behind the material/objective existence of another person.  We can guess at what is within the mind of another person, be it a stranger, a lover, or an enemy, but we cannot know.  One can get quite good at anticipating the other/Other's thoughts and feelings, and friendships and loves require such an anticipation.  So, too, do certain careers requiring manipulation and coercion, for such is the social intelligence of the propagandist, the advertiser, the dictator.

In this first sense, the Other is an abyss we can only begin to plumb.  I have had many loves, and have known lovers and friends deeply, and yet have still been surprised and almost disturbed when I suddenly realize I don't know why an other did what he just did, uncharacteristic of what I'd grown to understand.  This I suspect is usually the result of laziness, or of the same intellectual shorthand we use in order to comfortably live in the world.  A familiar chair is stable, and most chairs (by nature of being chairs) are, and so we do not test every chair we sit on.  Familiarity is a sort of stability, an assumption that what we know about an other will be generally the same each time.  But unlike understanding the nature of "chair," the Other is an abyss, or a vast sea, fully unfathomable; though we can come to understand and rely upon certain characteristics (a vast sea is full of water and other things, has shorelines and waves; a friend likes certain things, dislikes others, find certain things funny, finds certain things uncomfortable), we cannot fully know it.  Part of the joy of a friend is learning of them, exploring their depths, discovering what can be known, and in love this is even greater.  But I am not them, and so I cannot fully know them (much less so than one can even quite know oneself.

In the second sense, the Other is uncomprehended, the different, the outside.  An uncanny experience is different from the mundane, it is unexpected, fits somewhere outside of comprehension.  It is fun for some to attempt to explain the Other, and some of these explanations fit well, though within the experience of the Other most explanations fall away, at least as they occur.  Later is when the explanation comes, to fit this event back into a narrative of one's life where it does not disturb anything.  We re-inscribe it into what we already believe to be true, or re-write what we already think to be true in order to fit this new thing into it.


Both Others--An Other and The Other--are the same.   Better said, the experience of love for an Other narrates all past and future in order to fit them in, just as the experience of hatred or trauma from an Other colors all memory and future longing.  The experience of the Other alters all other experiences and understandings.  Or, conversely, both The Other and An Other can be rejected, forgotten, uninscribed.  Love requires choice (letting down defenses, choosing to love back, etc.), and it is as easy to choose not to love as it is to love.  An Other can be rejected, just as The Other can be rejected, and usually without much real harm to the material existence of the self.  What is lost in that rejection, though, is the very point of accepting An Other or The Other. 

That is, meaning.  Even horrific trauma, once "processed," creates and is embraced by meaning, just as the loss of love or friendship creates meaning (the 'better to have loved and lost...').  The material goes on, the body keeps living until is stops, but everything in between, the interior spaces of existence, dreams and hopes and desires and time itself have no narrative, have no meaning.

And somewhere in that gap between our self and The/An Other, is the space of the meaning itself.  I suspect this is why it was said "how can you say you love God whom you have not seen, when you do not love your fellow whom you have seen."  This elaborates the last post, almost a year ago.  The realm of the Social is the realm of the Real, where meaning is created in the dance between self and Other, where thought, idea and belief become Real, or all that we can know of the Real. 

The Real of the Social

There's a crucial abyss one encounters in arguments about race, class, culture or religion when one side evokes "hard" scientific certainties to counter (generally leftist) statements or assertions about inequality or oppression.

Most leftist arguments rely heavily upon a premise which cannot be proven or reproduced in the laboratory, a premise I believe did not originate with Marx (I'm currently reading Capital, a long, wondrous trudging indeed) but was most perfectly codified by him.

It can be re-stated as such: What is Social is Real.  Or, less simply: What is created by social interactions functions as real, independent of intrinsic materialistic laws or proofs.

Consider Marx's argument from Capital concerning Value.  Value is the summation of socially-constructed desires (both the usability of an item, as well as the exchangeability--i.e., whether that item can be exchanged for a different item, and at what quantity).   An item/commodity itself has no -inherent- value, insofar as value does not derive from the material properties of any item.  Gold is a metal, it does not of its own declare its Value to the beholder.  Only the social existence of the holder of a bar of gold gives Value to that gold.  If I have gold and can exchange it for something else, or if I have gold and want to make jewelry with it, I construct around that item worth, or Value (this is the beginnings of commodity fetishism).

In fact, Value and Worth have no scientific meanings, and yet both are omnipresent ideas that function as really-existing properties of items.We work to obtain a (socially-constructed) money commodity which (socially) is worth something, which (socially) can be exchanged for items of socially-decided value.

 I recently read a rather fantastic (and yet tragic) attempt  to present a defense of Critical Race Theory against Arizona's academic pogrom.  Briefly put, Critical Race Theory is a field of (mostly) social science which examines the origin, functions, and implications of Race Theory.  If you're unfamiliar with looking at Race and Racism as a theory, this may be strange, but it's also rather enlightening.  Critical Race Theory asserts that Race is a social construct, an overlay of ideas atop the material world which makes distinctions between people based upon the theory that there are significant differences between groups of people based on skin color or ethnicity.  That is, race is not an inherently self-evident division, but a socially-created one.

What's more interesting about this essay is the comments, the extreme (and very familiar) reactions which basically state: "but there are racial differences, and these are important, and no amount of multiculturalist post-modern (read: leftist) social bullshit can cloud the real, scientifically-verifiable (i.e. my pre-conceived notion) truth of the matter.

Though the readership of the NYtimes is a bit more educated than most, it isn't surprising to find the same tired backlash there.  What's more worrisome, though, is how most people a leftist persuasion get backed into re-addressing the "scientific consensus" (that is, the general agreement of most scientists which is, itself, another social construct) in order to counter these arguments across the abyss.  While most scientists don't assert a genetic (that is, materially intrinsic) distinction between "races," some do (and proudly wear the same blood-stained cloak of renegade truth-speakers as that one racist family member we all seem to have).

Race is a socially- (and historically-) constructed division of peoples, just as class is.  But this isn't to say it doesn't exist: in fact, race is a powerful and destructive thing, and it is precisely its origin as a social-construct which makes it that much harder to argue against.  Before the 1800's, race had no scientific trappings or pretensions, being rooted as it was (at least in western culture) as a derivative of the biblical story of Noah's three sons being the progenitors of all the peoples in the world.  Even up to the early 1980's, you could still buy encyclopedias and dictionaries bearing a language chart which divided all languages into three branches: Semitic, Hametic, and Indo-European (Noah's sons were Shem, Ham, and Japheth).

In the 1800's (well past the introduction of African slaves into North America), the notion of Race as a scientifically quantifiable division arose, spurred on by the work of biologists such as Darwin (but, importantly, not specifically by Darwin).  Turning newly codified scientific reasoning onto the natural world to develop grand theories of relations is far from evil; but turning assumptions about the inferiority of certain peoples into scientific fact  through measurement of cranial size, comparisons to simians, and social relations--well, is it scientific?  Depending on who you're reading or speaking to, it just might be.

Recourse to science, though, doesn't matter in the realm of the social, which is the only realm upon which we actually operate with each other.  As long as race exists as an inherent/intrinsic division amongst people, it will function as truth.  Blacks will exist as a separate sort of human from whites, or hispanics or asians and will appear to really be different, just as money really appears to have value, no matter how hard you remind yourself that it's only a social construct.

The answer, then, probably lies in attacking the Social itself.  Multiculturalism shifts the argument away from race in the hopes that the notion withers away.  Critical Race Theory also attacks this same re-inforcement at the core, addressing race as a socially-constructed real, but as is apparent in the reactions in Arizona (and to that essay), the social-consensus doesn't intend to give up without a fight.

But there's another really important question here.  Why is it so important to the dominant order that race exist?  There's an easy answer here.  Race theory arose almost simultaneous to another theory, this one more liberationist.  Class and Race both vied for the consciousness of the multitudes during the same period, and while the Marxist and anarchist notions of class-struggle threatened to obliterate the right-to-wealth of the upper classes, race fit rather well with the order.  It serves capitalism quite nicely for whites to be justified in their wealth (because they are hard-working,  and value family and independance, or because they have higher IQ's, or whatever metric is en vogue).  The true danger of class-struggle was/is that it threatens to unite all the poor (and they are legion, and they are not all white) together against a minority of (mostly white) capitalists and their attendant prophets and priests (their political, media, and other fawning protegees).

Class, just like race, is a social construct, and a dangerous construct at that, at least if you're rich.  It is little wonder that race continues to be a matter of debate in the (capitalist-controlled) social sphere, while class is considered a fringe absurdity.  Racism continues to cause misery and suffering to vast parts of society, which class struggle attempts to obliterate the notion of race altogether, pitting 99.9% of the world against an absurdly powerful handful of greedy people who rely on race to divide us.

The hope of things to come...

It’s become quite fashionable to bash utopia. 

The notion that a society could be made more ideal or better organized, that social ills can be corrected by changing the structure of a society, or that life could be made somehow better were the general external circumstances of that life somehow changed—well, how absurd, yeah?

Most criticisms leveled against utopianism are generally in the context of state or centrally planned societal changes.  The great failures of the communist project of the soviets are fertile ground for examples—the endless five-year plans, the collectivization of farming, forced internal migrations, gulags.

Skeptics such as John Gray (an endlessly wonderful read, regardless of how much I always seem to disagree with his conclusions), in his Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia,  have also labeled Nazism as an utopian project—the work/concentration camps, eugenics, eloquent internal propaganda all in the service of a grand, “utopian” Aryan future.

And the failures of past central planning is often a repeated criticism of modern “liberal” projects—universal health care, wealth redistribution, compulsory recycling/conservation.  Two almost reflexive complaint seems to echo back against any attempts to re-introduce utopian ideals into societal discourse—the first is that central governments are either incapable or inefficient at social change; the second, that “you can’t change human nature.”

I’m completely uninterested in the first response, except to concede a few quick points and dismiss it otherwise.  Central powers—states—are very, very bad at understanding the repercussions of their projects.  Many humorous and horrific examples abound (besides the soviets), and I’d strongly recommend Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, by James Scott for an excellent perspective on this problem.  But on the other hand, few would ever deny the awesome/aweful power of a central authority to radically change society, whether they intend to or not—think Eisenhower’s highway projects laying the groundwork for the American car-culture (I throw up in my mouth a little when I write those two words together) or the relationship between taxation levels and income/cultural disparities after the Reagan years.

But again, I’m more interested in the second criticism of utopianism—that you cannot change human nature.  A wise friend once pointed out to me the absurdity of the term—human nature is an abyss into which we can dump anything we want in and believe it to be filled.  Depending on who you’re talking to at any given time, humans are “naturally” selfish, greedy, kind, caring, innovative, lazy, mimicking, brutal, religious, curious, close-minded, tribalistic, unrealistic, rational, irrational, sexual, depraved, artistic, noble, or, really, anything you want us to be. 

We are all that, and more.  But unfortunately, even the most rigidly careful thinkers fall into the dangerous habit of asserting that humans are, “by nature,” something or other, only to then fall back into the abyss of obstinate faith.  That is, amongst many behavioural theorists, we are “wired” to be self-interested.  In the face of conflicting evidence, this postulate can then be extended into a more complex theory—we do “selfless things” when they will, in turn, serve our self-interest.

I do not mean to attempt to argue against the whole of evolutionary psychology on these grounds, only to point again to the abyssal void of what human nature is or is not.  The most rational (and probably frustratingly meaningless to some) assertion about human nature is that we are “all of the above, and probably more.” The notion that the experiences, habits, personalities and desires of billions of individual organisms can be reduced to a few base truths seems ambitious at the very least. 

But let’s go back to communism and utopianism.  That Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Trotsky, or any of the rest of them went up against “human nature” and failed is, ultimately, a weak argument.  There’s an overabundance of failures and massacres to accuse them on—criminalizing the dreaming of a fairer society would put us all into prison. 

And there are a host of other utopian tendencies which do not receive a similar treatment.  The ideal of a society organized by rational self-interest, free of government interference is, itself, a utopian project.  So, too, is the exuberant celebration of a soon-to-be freer, more interconnected society by means of back-lit machines through which we’ll all soon be able to access any information we want.  A greener capitalism, a world free of diseases, societies unrestrained by religious dogma, increased technological advance—the popular utopianism spewed from every media source is no less ambitious and no less unfounded than any of the previous projects. 

But despite the fact that I don’t buy any of the aforementioned utopias for a second, I disagree with John Gray and others—I find it lazy to dismiss a belief merely on the basis that it’s utopian, and useless. 

What’s important here, I think, is that every utopian ideal, the ones we fear, the ones we adore, and the ones we embrace without recognizing them all come down to belief.  We cannot know the future.  We cannot predict a freer society or accelerated technological advance (sorry— singularists and transhumanists—you’re as dependant on faith as the rest of us).  There’s an exuberant optimism required to posit future answers to current societal problems, and as specious as I think it is of someone to assert that we’ll find a way to replace our dwindling fossil fuels with an equally abundant, as-of-yet unseen energy source, I won’t judge him or her on hope. 

There’s something else I’ll judge them on, though, and this I think is a better metric for evaluating ideals and ideologies.  A utopianism which says “another world is possible” (the chant of the anti-capitalist , “anti-globalisation” protestors) at least is not advocating for the continuation of a current problem in hopes of an as of yet unseen but messianic solution.  But the unstated chants of the unnamed priests of the unacknowledged utopia we’re already in, that of modern industrialized capitalism, urges that the mechanisms causing the problems of society (global warming, increasingly unequal distribution of wealth, dwindling fossil fuels) be allowed to continue until the coming of our long hoped-for, long prayed-for salvation.  Worse, and more confusingly--no man knoweth the hour—we need not less capitalism, less technological advance, less energy expenditure, but more.  Just a little more faith, a little more devotion, a little more hard work, a flatter screen, a better car and a more expensive light bulb and we shall see the promised land

Review: A History of Pagan Europe, by Prudence Jones

The question of paganism in europe doesn't present itself immediately as a matter of scandal, though the relative absence of histories on the subject does at least hint at the controversy of the topic. Usually relegated to Folkloric studies (with their classifications and archetypes) the issue of paganism is miserably under-treated.

Contention exists over the very definition of pagan--the general "western-academic" consensus is that it is a useless or over-used word, stolen by new-age neopagans to mean something somehow universal. History usually attempts to draw straight lines through time, successions of tendencies and thinkers one after the other until the present (or until the death of the idea), and is more than happy to this sort of thing as long as funding for "history of science" grants continue. Everything that can fit into the grand-narrative is important (or, conversely, nothing that has already been used in the grand-narratives matters), leaving the question of pagan/indigenous beliefs of europe to the celtic-tapestry lot (of which, i'm told, i belong).

So, what then to make of the libraries and archives full of catholic denunciations of "pagan" practices remaining all the way into the 19th century? Offerings at well, shouting at the moon, refusing to eat certain animals or drinking certain things on certain days. Injunctions against paying any attention to the phase of the moon at all are rife. The Catholic (and its reformist-children) church has long tried to uproot these practises, and as facile as it might be to attribute such tirades to religious hysteria, the fact people that some people still throw spilled salt over their shoulder or that most of old bretons in northwest france still tie ribbons over "fairie wells" (i've seen it personally) suggests that the pagan-tendency was never fully uprooted.

So, come we now to Jones and Pennick. Their book is an inadequate (but welcome) addition to the shelf that so far only contains books like The Golden Bough. Slim (288 pages), well-researched, but unsatisfying. I don't mean to be hard on them, seeing as how they couldn't seem to secure any sort of funding whatsoever for their subject matter (and received rather vicious reviews by folklorists for disturbing their comfortable calculus). But it's too small, a tiny drop in an drained pool. Still, since it's something at all, and more than interesting to read, i highly suggest it. Work on the lithuanian pagan kingdom is appreciated (not original, but most wouldn't know where else to turn), but the sense that they're screaming into the wind is difficult to shake. They know they're not wrong, they're not being foolish, and yet they seem to apologise almost--take us seriously, they almost say, even though the reader probably already is. I did, i still do. But having read other accounts alluding to the same periods, i can't help but think they could use a little more confidence.

One thing they do well, however, is begin to place european paganism within the context of other paganisms. One of the biggest objections to anyone beginning to address the issue is the right-wing tendency of some european and anglo paganisms: every white-boy software coder was pretty certain he was scottish after Braveheart, and not a few of them used this new-found heritage to argue against other indigenous-rights movements (scots were an oppressed people, too, and so why are all the american First Nations complaining?). There's a way out of this, and it seems humorously simple, though one needs to look elsewhere (I suggest India: Chakrabarty and Leela Ghandi). J&P begin some of the work to link paganisms outside of racial/tribal groups (race didn't exist as a notion till the 19th century--is no one reading Hannah Arendt anymore?), and a lot more could be done, but again we come back to the question: why should J&P have to apologise for a bunch of white idiots at Microsoft calling themselves "goths in the traditional germanic sense"? 

Review: The Origins of Capitalism, by Ellen Meiksins Wood

 This is a repost of a review I wrote elsewhere, with minor editing.


While I'm still waiting for someone to do a treatise on the alchemical language employed by Marx to explain Capital and the magic the Capitalists/Bourgeoisie employ ("everything that is solid melts into air..."), I've had to settle instead with general clarifications.

So in the meantime, TOoC was quite useful. This is the second time i've read it, though for some reason the first reading (about 6 years ago) really must have been inadequate. Or, rather say, I had at that earlier point less exposure to most of the historians and economic theorists she uses and conflicts. I'd heard of E.P. Thompson but never read him; Weber was un-opened on my bookshelf, and I hadn't even read Das Kapital yet. But none of that adequately explains why, on the second reading, i held in my hands an entirely different book.

Her premise is simple: The birth of Capitalism was a recent historical event. Within that statement, however, exists a myriad of complications, and it's a minority view.

The typical story of Capitalism goes like this: after massive european plagues, the printing press and the Reformation, so many people lived in towns instead of feudal arrangements that we all became somehow liberated to our own self-interest, investing surplus funds ("primal accumulation") into our own improvement and, with enough people doing so, the rate of "technological progress" sped up to make most of us not need to raise our own food anymore. We all became Capitalists (after a few beheadings in France) and spread the good word to the rest of the world, constantly making life better for ourselves and others, though we were a bit sloppy and maybe shouldn't have burned so much coal.

Capitalism in this scenario is a natural outgrowth, then, a step along the way (or the Final Step, if you aren't a Marxist) towards democracy and space exploration and flat-screen tv's and kidney transplants. Marxists point to the exploitation within the system and suggest another step (Communism, or central-planned economies, where our lives will finally be better), but either way, Progress will win out (or our cities will flood).

The very lazy or the very Ayn-Randian posit Capitalism as already-always existing, merely waiting to be freed by oppressive trade barriers (like Feudalism), but their further arguments still usually follow the aforementioned pattern. Evolutionary/Behavioural/Psychologist sorts also sometimes get into this, coming up with all sorts of Scientific (tm) ways of explaining how well natural selection and Capitalism go hand in hand.

But Wood has none of it. For her, Capitalism began in England when rent for farms became a market, something which had never happened in recorded history. Landlords, with the death of feudalism (she argues that Capitalism did not destroy Feudalism, against most histories), had to collect "surplus" from tenants in the form of monied-rents without "extra-economic" coercion (i.e., taxes, levies, outright violence) because they had lost much of their legal/juridical power. Markets (and trade) had always existed, but economic coercion had not (Florence and the Dutch Republic were both massive urban areas with huge markets without Capitalism--even most of the "Commercialists" agree to this and call them "failed transitions").

With the pressure from landlords now to collect surplus money, the farmers on their land found themselves needing to grow even more than before (previous feudal arrangements were typically one-third of all produce, but now the amount was set, regardless of what markets provided). Farmers suddenly had to compete with each other for profit, which destabilised prices and made some people lose their farms. The landlords, in response, could charge more for the land of the "productive" farmers, could re-lease unrented land to them, thus rewarding the successful competitor taking from the loser their very access to self-reproduction (substinence, etc.). Those dispossessed farmers became reliant on the market now for everything they used to be able to make for themselves before, thus creating "consumer-goods" markets.

The key-word for her is Imperative. Farmers didn't take advantage of "opportunities," they responded to imperatives (grow/make more or lose your land). Landowners also found themselves no longer in a voluntary position--once one landowner can't farm out his land to tenants, his land is threatened by other landowners who can. Markets previously were governed not just by supply and demand, but community/social obligations and restrictions, but the pressure of so much displacement and imperative to earn/invest violently reduced these restrictions (Enclosure had happened before, but not with so much speed and legislative authority).

But therein lies another complication. Any Free-Market apologist will tell you that the state gets in the way of the market, though they still consistently rely upon central authorities to ensure the right conditions for their profit-taking. Without police, no one's around to arrest the thieves or squatters, because the coercion of Capitalism is pristinely Economic. Political Coercion must come from outside of it, must serve it, and must not get too much in the way. The English State's willingness to serve this role ensured capitalism's naissance (consider Foucault's point in Discipline & Punish about the number of "economic-crime" laws--and their commensurate violence-of-punishment--which did not exist before Capitalism took hold).

Capitalism didn't take hold elsewhere for a little while, nor did it "spontaneously generate" anywhere else. Other states responded to the pressure eventually to the point we're at now, but it's vital for her that we continue to see the exact genesis point (in england, in the rural areas).

She makes a few other arguments, some of which almost seem extraneous and besides-the-point. Placing the birth of Capitalism in agriculture, rather than the cities, places into doubt the traditional/marxist understanding of the Bourgeoisie. She's right to point out that the bourgeoisie in France were not fighting for capitalism, but rather access to extra-economic coercion (offices, titles, etc. that would allow the professionals of the city to collect taxes).

I'm willing to accept this, but I don't like the consequences of her final conclusions. She separates the French and English Enlightenment (England had Locke--arguing that natives should be forced off their land because they refused to put it to productive use; France had Voltaire and Rousseau), and she can do this to a point, but by the time of the French Revolution i don't think the differences continue. She makes a great argument for separating "modernity" from "capitalism," believes as I do that most food shortages are due to capitalist profit-imperative, not productive capacity, and she almost completely destroys the notion of Progress.

But something suddenly stops her. The last two chapters find her shredding through her entire argument, leaving the pieces on the floor for us to paste back together in her search for some way to keep Human/Universal Rights as Progress.  She rejects much of the "post-modern" arguments about the meta-narrative concerning Capitalism because human rights/western secularism is something too important for her to destroy. She's almost there, she's about to axe them, and then you hear her gasp as she suddenly realises she's throwing out what she thinks is the baby in the muddy water of the bath.  It's not a baby, actually, there never was one. Capitalism used her tub as a toilet, and, perhaps exhausted from her brilliant intellectual work, she mistook one of the undissolved turds (the "progress" of human-rights") for a drowning child.