[The Tupinambas; Image from wikimedia] In his provocative Society Against the State, Pierre Clastres draws from his ethnographic work to provide a theory of a society that, rather than developing into the state, operates directly against it. By ‘operating against’ I mean, following Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s reading of Clastres in A Thousand…
Tag Archives: Economy
In “This Sex Which Is Not One” (an essay in the book of the same title), Luce Irigaray critiques the masculine conception of feminine/female sexuality and proposes descriptions that come from a woman. Irigaray explains that within female sexuality, an opposition is set up “between ‘masculine’ clitoral activity and ‘feminine’ vaginal passivity” in which “the…
It has been a looong time since I last posted something here. Partly because I took a break (from writing, at least), partly because I had to move to my new settlement for the next few years (beautiful SoCal). To restart another period of (hopefully prolific) activity, I significantly revised the profile page of (mass)think!…
[Some of the PhD programs I applied to wanted to know more about my person and how it has shaped the kind of work that I do. This is the statement of “personal history and philosophy” I wrote in addition to the “purpose of study.”] I was born in cosmopolitan Manila, capital of the Philippines,…
Karl Marx (with Friedrich Engels) lays out his method of revolutionary critique in The German Ideology. Not a professional philosopher (like Kant and Hegel, or Feuerbach) and more like an intellectual journalist absorbed in political economy committed to the Revolution, Marx, drawing from the philosophical currents of his day (Hegel’s idealism and Feuerbach’s materialism), nonetheless…
[Peter-Paul Rubens' The Prophet Elijah Receiving Bread and Water from an Angel] In From Hegel to Marx, Sidney Hook traces the intellectual development of Karl Marx within the context of the dominant Hegelian philosophy of his day. While Karl Marx was indeed highly influenced by the systematic, totalizing, and absolute philosophy of Hegel, in the…
[Shopping at Macy's, the world's largest store; Image from corbis] Andrew Bacevich, Professor of International Relations at Boston University, contributes to the discourse on American empire in an interview with Bill Moyers. Bacevich’s thesis is that America’s current troubles (brewing for decades now)—a consequence of its worldwide empire—are caused not by something external—some enemy plotting…
Fellows, Friends, and Others, I am sending another one of my reports from the field. As stipulated, I am using the species’ own mode of transmission, their own semiology—what is referred to in these parts as “language” (though, technically speaking, they use many “languages” organized in a similar way as a system (i.e. as “language”),…
[The "reformatory" of Mettray, north of Tours, France] [Continues "The Panoptic Society (of Surveillance)"] Despite (modal/technological) changes in the way that power is exercised—despite, that is to say, the (systemic/structural) change in the regime of power—one function/element remains central to society: namely, penality. This is true even of the panoptic society (of surveillance). The disciplinary…
[The interior of Stateville Penitentiary in Joliet, IL, USA; Image from Superstock] [Continues "Individuality of Disciplinary Power"] The (intensive) Panopticon provided (the virtual modality of) disciplinary power an individualized mode of its exercise. In its efficiency and effectiveness—as is especially apparent in its adroit mechanisms (of normalization), (machinic) automation, and perfectibility—this particular manner in which…
