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Roads to Oriskany

May 19, 2015 / posted in images of being-human, reviews / No Comments

Roads to OriskanyRoads to Oriskany by Gil Herkimer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Semi-fictionalized, Herkimer tackles a key demographic in the settlement of the Americas by the British — the attempt of the British to utilize cheap German labor to settle the west. The tactic of bringing in cheap labor (slavery or indentured servitude) was common back then.

To make the history more accessible, Herkimer introduces fictitious characaters over three generations. Some of it is interesting. I think it’s quite entertaining. Towards the end, he signals the arrogance of the British officers (their brilliant military strategy, and their lack of seriousness in the war) through the way they treat their men and the amount of resources they devote simply to their own enjoyment. We can’t help but feel that the British deserve to lose, being so bourgeois and corrupt, but Herkimer could have included some maps and more detail about the campaign in the North East around Fort Ticonderoga, as well as the key battle of Oriskany. It’s only afterwards that we get a sense of the importance of this tiny battle in the overall flow of the war. We also could have used more development of the key characters involved. It’s a little too late after the description of the fighting to start to talk about the character of some of the men involved.

I think Herkimer found a very interesting subject matter, although he could have presented it more from the view of the surrounding political and economic context outside the characters points of view. His attempt to stay focused from within his characters force us to lose perspective on what was only later on understood as being significant. Because his characters did not understand the significance, we do not get the full picture until later. Perhaps this could have worked out, if we had a stronger tie to the human element of in the battle… although the key figures of the battle were not the key figures we were invested in (of course not, since they were fictitious).

In a way, I think you can see how the Germanic-European pattern of civilization repeated and transposed itself despite the British attempt at dominating the people who were brought over. The mercantile system from the point of view of this book, didn’t seem to function or play much of a part — perhaps because Oriskany is so far inland, compared to New York or Boston. Instead, we get through these inland settlements the beginnings of a real different identity being borne, one of settlers living their lives for their own self interest, not really bothering much with the Indians or anyone else. This kind of inward introversion is a big inheritance of what made America America, in terms of foreign policy, as Americans turned their attention inward to develop their own infrastructure and lifestyle.

I did like how he included the many varied relations between the settlers, the British and the Indians. I hadn’t realized how many mixed blood individuals were involved.

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Katherine

May 4, 2015 / posted in images of being-human, love, reviews / No Comments

KatherineKatherine by Anya Seton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very strong text. Although I didn’t realize it was a historical romance novel, I still found it to be quite compelling. The characters are lively, and the modality of the descriptions are inline with “old timey-ness”. The language is not too stilted, and the sensibilities are modestly “old timey”.

What I liked about the book was the unexpected development of the character. At first it felt very much like a text acknowledging how women were trapped in a world ruled by men (which in the 13th century England, was so). But eventually it cleared out to become a text about a spiritual coming-of-age. After all, Katherine’s reputation was ruined by her affair. And as the facts of their lives followed, Katherine did come to leave him and then eventually marry.

In this sense, the pacing was quite appropriate, and even if the story was long, it was also compelling in its details and political forecasting. I am not certain that the background actions of the Royal family would have been as important to Katherine as a lover of John of Guant but then again, it gives a sense of legitimacy and romance to the atmosphere.

What I liked the most about this story was the execution preformed by Seton. She set out to write this story within the constraints and pulled it off, with character and plot. The development of Katherine was both expected and unexpected. After all, she did need to come onto her own as her own woman, which she does admirably, in order to be worthy of John of Guant at the end. I do believe as well, that John of Guant did need to also show some worthiness, although he seems more of a foil for Katherine’s development than anything else. How does love fit into this? I think some more spiritual placement of love could have been needed, although Katherine did not become a nun as she did intend when she was sad, and that love remained unresolved until the ending we are waiting for happens.

So in this sense, her growth as a character was appropriate to the story, although I wonder how her re-found luxury sat with her spirituality. I would have liked to hear more of that, as Seton did previously make a big deal of it with her taking it for granted, and admiring all this wealth around her.

Despite never becoming king of queen, we do still find a happy ending, situated for the couple. And that was followed by a nice afterword that sealed the book.

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Icelander

May 4, 2015 / posted in reviews / No Comments

IcelanderIcelander by Dustin Long
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While entertaining and promising, Long’s book built on a legacy of a false saga seems more of an introduction than a true intermix. The story follows as the book jacket says, a reluctant heroine is pulled in to solve a mystery of a friend that she doesn’t want to solve. In a way, the ending and wrap seem rather contrived. The writing is clean. The footnotes are a nice touch, bringing to bear the extra “dimension” of the text. But the stumbling of the heroine into the lair, the expected confrontation and lack of resolution is damning (knowledge is often adequate for the mystery to be solved, but inadequate as a true resolution if at least someone is not caught, or a wrong is not righted). In that sense, this book, while organized around a mystery is not really a mystery novel, than it is an exploration into this world.

We have the pieces of all the conspiracy but nothing really happens. It is annoying in your traditional mystery novel where the heros discover the plot and then the last 50 pages is just the wrap up to spoil the bad guy’s plans, but in this, there seem to be almost no need to spoil any plans since the bad guys don’t seem to have any plans whatsoever.

Instead we are left with a hole where neither side can move forward. The comparisons with Pynchon are many, but we do need to have an ending that extends beyond the text of the book, and that doesn’t seem to really happen here. Instead we are left with many pieces where it seems that the bad guy was in fact the other author and not the author of this text. What makes this less of a mystery was the interference of a refined trajectory, and instead, a forestalling of one author attempting to block another author’s telling of how things should be.

I did however like the book, since it was entertaining, until the ending, which seemed too easy a wrap up. I guess the heroine needs an audience to preform for. The promise at the start of the text however was a bit too much for the performance.

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Children of Dune

May 4, 2015 / posted in dialectics, images of being-human, reviews / No Comments

Children of Dune (Dune Chronicles, #3)Children of Dune by Frank Herbert
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book wraps up the trilogy, by critiquing the themes of the previous two Dune books. It does the expected thing of bringing all the characters together, while wrapping up the ending tightly. There is a bit of ridiculousness in Leto’s ability towards the end, and that seems like a deus ex machina, but that’s the only complaint. The ideas were at full force.

In a way, trilogies have to follow the initial good step, the mistaken second step, and the correction of the final step. The system of three follows why we get three lives in video games, why tripods have three legs for stability and why Hegel’s dialectic can be read as a three step process (although its really four steps, with three steps happening twice, overlaid on each other). Leto remarked on the calibration perfectly. We looking inward, at the end of the second book was Paul’s mistake, so the empire rotted. Looking outward, in the first book, with no sense of direction the empire expanded but the individual had no guidance. Paul walked into a self made trap through his error. I am not certain Leto does better, but with his twin sister perhaps that works.

Thus, we have the Preacher’s inward guidance with no external ability. We have Alia’s external ability but a rotten internal force. This bad reflection is corrected by the twin’s movement.

Typical of Herbert as well, he is able to guide self knowing mysticism as a genetic/spirit reality with the muster of political implication. The characters in their technological empires are less technicians of execution than they are forces requiring self knowledge. In a technological age when we have mastered all the materials (of space, food, shelter, &c) all technology becomes transparent to the core of our inner essence. Since our inner beings guide what technology does, and technology as a tool of the empire is the pure execution of a dictator, so must the elite come to know themselves if they are to be effective rulers. The people around them have less need to know themselves as they are focused outwardly, as technicians and policy implementers. Focused on outward action, this becomes an area where they covet power above them rather than focusing on knowing who they are.

I think this line of reasoning works well for at the top of the technological empire. In this sense, however, this book is less a book about the dune empire than it is for as a guide for inner peace.

Having read this book, the conclusion seems inevitable, although when I started it, it seemed completely without guidance, as in, what could the third book possibly be about? This is a sign of mastery, that Herbert wraps up the potentiality of the text beyond what at least I can see.

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Astonishing X-Men, Vol. 1: Gifted

May 4, 2015 / posted in art, reviews / No Comments

Astonishing X-Men, Vol. 1: GiftedAstonishing X-Men, Vol. 1: Gifted by Joss Whedon
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Pretty amazing read. The style is clean and in true x-men form, we have a mix of action with dialogue about the nature of humans and mutants co-living. The pacing for much of this was a bit too much like a movie though. You can tell the influence of old comic costumes with the influx of the recent glut of x-men movies. I did find Emma Frost’s incredibly revealing dress to be pretty stupid. But that’s traditional comic book taste too, although I would have liked something more realistic. In this her role seems more to provoke the others into questioning their unity than to being an effective leader. Which is a waste.

Having read only this volume thus far, it ends on the typical note of how everyone is against the x-men including their mysterious leader. The fight with the danger room seemed pretty pointless though. So all in all, I would have appreciated in a volume 1 a more coherent story with a singular conflict than a smattering of loose ends that were untied to be tied (we didn’t know Colossus was missing, or what brought Frost into the team), leaving us with more loose ends (what was Professor X doing all this time, what is happening with Ord). So in this sense, there is no real sense of beginning or end. Rather we have two story arcs that seem highly unrelated. In a 2 volume set, there should be more cohesion of story.

Additionally, the lack of character development is annoying. Of course, one assumes we know who these characters are, after all this time, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a brief introduction to each character, as is the typical beginning of a comic book (for anyone picking it up half way). Instead, we get the assumption that the characters are stables, that we know who they are, and in that sense, we can predict that they won’t change at all, since if they need no real introduction than they most likely have identities that can deviate. And in that sense, this comic book is more about action as entertainment than it is for drama, tragedy or any deeper human feelings.

Overall, this comic was entertaining for a time, however. I read it in two sittings. The lack of flashbacks for Beast, or anyone else was mostly surprising since it made the drama and self questioning seem pretty irrelevant. In this way, this comic writes itself more like a movie than anything else — all action and expository for plot than for any other purpose. And unlike a movie, as awesome as the images can be, we shouldn’t rely on one medium trying to imitate another since comics can be more in-depth than movies and movies can present us with some glorious shots of sound and sight than comics cannot.

That’s really the only criticisms I have.

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Modern Living Accessories: 100 Years of Design

May 4, 2015 / posted in art, life as we know it, rational choice theory and homo economicus, reviews, Theory / No Comments

Modern Living Accessories: 100 Years of DesignModern Living Accessories: 100 Years of Design by Martin Wellner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This amazing survey walks backwards into the 19th century. Year by year, you see how contemporary design evolved into its basic constituents. Modern works reflect a refinement in the use of materials, such that the deformation of familiar objects at first, geometric and blocky become expressive with a higher resolution in material agency. While many contemporary objects start to break the grey areas of design, where form suggests not only novel movements adhering to a singular force (such as Bauhaus design, where form matches function) but today into postmodern ambivalence where a singular object suggests multiple uses that are sometimes more clever than useful but at other times, far more ingenious as to dissolve the logical categories by which we classify what an object is.

Given in full page color, the short captions, and the short articles give us a brief introductory taste as to the mechanisms of design, the influence of the visions of designers and the continual mastery of material.

With the final works of the industrial revolution having established its conquest of human materialism in production, we have the beginnings of middle class wealth, to support a need for mass export of finished products. Art Deco and Art Nouveau come to the scene with its whimsical forms, to introduce a new level of finish, where product production shares no seams as to its origins. Here we have the advent of a new consumerism, the full split of producer from consumer so that only expert craftsmen and finally engineers and scientists are the gate keepers for designers. For in areas of such refinement, only the knowledge of specialized processes and the abstractness of a designers breaking out of the box lay the condition for the deformation of our modernist categories of contemporary appliances.

One thinks in the near future the inclusion of smart devices will reach a further deterritorialisation of what objects can be, do and coexist with us, further anticipating human need and modifying further the trajectory of how we can be (and have agency) in an environment.

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The Theory Mess: Deconstruction in Eclipse

April 29, 2015 / posted in images of being-human, reviews, Theory / No Comments

The Theory Mess: Deconstruction in EclipseThe Theory Mess: Deconstruction in Eclipse by Herman Rapaport
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Rapaport draws us a line from Derrida’s deconstruction as received in the United States to the foundation of critical theory. He is quick to show us how various misreadings all compound one another and contribute to the condition of loose readings and theory used for the purposes of exporting political ideology in the name of objectivity.

Rapaport is less interested in providing an analysis of the ideas involved on their own merits than with showing us how misreadings slide from a specific use of deconstruction as a philosophical movement founded on transcendental phenomenology as a basis for propelling us out of routine layers of traditional thought to the projection of social changing ideology about our roles as subjectivities. It’s useful to not misread others, but this of course does not detract from the very real condition inherent in followers of critical theory. We end up repeating routine gestures mis-attributed to thinkers like Derrida and Lacan in the name of progress. We end up constructing a new, if shortly lived tradition of post-colonialism and post-modern subjectivity in which we parrot one another with our own political teleological apparatuses.

Rapaport does however, still see deconstruction as being necessary to help bring critical theory to awareness of its own follies of structured identities and strict dualistic thinking. In a very real way, Rapaport is correct. Only a close, honest reading of the flaws of a given worldview will allow us to step beyond the constraints of our own horizons. This isn’t a promise of a new worldview, this is simply a promise of freedom, the same pursuit of freedom of thought that Derrida sought in introducing deconstruction so long ago.

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The Anti-Oedipus Papers

April 29, 2015 / posted in images of being-human, life as we know it, lyrical-narratives, manifesto, reviews, rhizomatic architecture, Theory / No Comments

The Anti-Oedipus PapersThe Anti-Oedipus Papers by Félix Guattari
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In anticipation of re-reading Thousand Plateaus I thought I’d tackle this book. As a reader of Deleuze (I’ve read all his books), I always understood the progression of Deleuze’s thoughts with the turn coming after Logic of Sense. Some of Guattari’s books, such as Chaosomos enforced for me his role in bringing to Deleuze a completely different view. It didn’t help that Guattari did not publish nearly as much nor as systematically. But after reading this book, I fully acknowledge the debt to Deleuze that many do not see. Deleuze is often given credit since he is of an institution (of philosophy) but Guattari’s running amok, his ability to abstractly critique different ideas and view them from vastly different zones really hits home with his letters to Deleuze.

I’ve always understood Anti-Oedipus as a failed work in the sense that although they reject a metric by which to organize thought they still in interject a methodology (Marxism) by which to organize meaning. Part of this is due to the extension of their rejection of Lacan and psychoanalysis. By rejecting the normalization that psychoanalysis employs, D&G also end up rejecting all normalisations. In this manner they unwittingly step very close to Kant’s “all concepts are regulatory”. While I fully agree with Kant, I think Deleuze’s love of conception forces him to reject Kant’s systematization of thought on aesthetic grounds. In a way, Deleuze’s work ends up being very close to Kant in aesthetic but very different from Kant in method and content.

Again, reading this book allowed me to see that Guattari really pushed Deleuze, who was already pretty out there, to really refocus on how one should approach the problem of multiple-domain knowledges. There are many gems here, to be found. Various extensions of thought that may have gotten lost in Anti-Oedipus, various and of course, a seemingly lack of coherency on the part of Guattari to systematize a presentation that was not rambling. In a way, what Guattari brings to Deleuze is a grasp of normalicy that should be rejected. Guattari allows Deleuze to understand the effects of concepts outside of conception — the role they play on one another and society. In a way Deleuze already understood the way concepts match one another. He does this frequently, and to an extreme, as with Difference and Repetition. But what he failed to include was the political angle that concepts have on people, on subjectivities and logics of peoplehood.

Obviously this book would never have been published if D&G were not as popular as they are. Obviously this is not a complete work on its own because it references other works that you may not have read, that are not included in this volume. Still, if you like the other stuff, this provides another inflection point so that you can begin to understand what Deleuze and Guattari both brought to the table, and how their co-production was a unique synthesis that was necessarily a combination of their personalities, outlooks and backgrounds.

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Infinite Jest

April 29, 2015 / posted in images of being-human, reviews / No Comments

Infinite JestInfinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

In a big way I did not like this book. While I found many parts of this book to be interesting and amusing, I believe that Wallace manages to present the alienation of his characters through the ironic filter of alienating his reader. I wanted to like it. I thought it would be great. But really, what seems to happen is that people behave in ways that promote their own self interest and in the process of doing so only really enact manipulations of processes that exist. Much of the self discovery and the tennis school training, really only set the stage for me as being anticipation of some kind of material process. Such as how to train. The film. The filming. The conversations about family, about other people. All of this seemed to be an endless insurmountable obstacle to a point where one wrecks oneself on too much pleasure. Sex, or drugs. Alcohol. Smoking pot. Trying to justify what one can do based on some kind of special knowledge of what one is supposed to be doing, which includes appearing to know what one is doing. The institutions involved also are guilty of this.

But maybe the cleverness didn’t inspire me. Didn’t amuse me. Whatever people like about it, I don’t get. So I do intend to re-read this book, later on. Just not now.

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Between the Absolute and the Arbitrary

April 29, 2015 / posted in reviews, Theory / No Comments

Between the Absolute and the ArbitraryBetween the Absolute and the Arbitrary by Catherine Z. Elgin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While clearly written, this book is also frustrating. What’s frustrating about it, is also what I liked about it. Elgin attempts to calibrate between the absolute and the arbitrary. The way she does so is through this series of essays in which she emphasizes a constructivist approach to language, meaning, belief, identity and other kinds of objectivities. Unfortunately she is unable to find a stable point to align to. While she takes an analytic philosophy basis between these differences she ultimately judges these attempts on the basis of agency. She seems unable to realize that her pragmatic function relies heavily on the applicability of any knowledge as a philosophic credit, all the while she talks about this as if it’s in plain sight. In a way her addressing past philosophers with their previous inquiries, which is a credit to her book, act as a barrier for her to really establish her own platform of assessing and generating philosophical knowledge.

I think in a greater sense, absolute positions are also arbitrary, even if they are absolute immanently. The main cut that creates this inflection point in establishing such a difference is that of the transcendental. While Elgin realizes there are different domains of knowledge, she does not seem to able to account for how these domains are different or how they interact or do not comprehend one another. In this sense, while I admire her book, her book is an incomplete gesture at attaining a fundamentally consistent application as to what is absolute and what is arbitrary. The accepted synopsis given by the publisher demonstrate this distinction quite clearly in that absolute is relied on in a traditional sense of being a true basis where as arbitrary is understood as being what is contingent. Nowhere in this book does she have a discussion about these categories even if she titles her book after them. In this sense, her reliance on the “absoluteness” of her definitions betray a blind spot in how she judges the validity/applicability of any concept. I think a discussion involving domain parameters (transcendentals, if you will) will be a good place to begin to frame how this distinction is itself arbitrary, although of course, such a discussion should not remain locked in terms of transcendentals at all.

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