Philosophy, Myth, Video Games

I'm currently working through Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment. The dialectic the title refers to seems to be between nature and society and potentially between myth (magic) and science (though the latter may fit into the former). While reading through their analysis of The Odyssey a few light bulbs started going off, and I definitely got a kick out of it. Namely, Horkheimer and Adorno were pointing out the compulsions of mythical beings - they are cursed to act out the powers that define them (e.g., Medusa is compelled to turn those who gaze upon her as stone. If she does not, what is she?). Then I came upon this quote:

"Mythical inevitability is defined by the equivalence between the curse, the abominable act which expiates it, and the guilt arising from the act, which reproduces the curse. All law in history up to now bears the trace of this pattern. In myth each moment of the cycle pays off the preceding moment and thereby helps to establish the continuity of guilt as law. Against this Odysseus fights. The self represents rational universality against the inevitability of fate."

Now, perhaps for some this underlying theme in myth would call up certain works, but for me it speaks directly to video games I've played. In Final Fantasy X, as Tidus and Yuna reach Zanarkand to learn the summon that will defeat Sin, they learn that the summon has long since been destroyed. One of their comrades must become the summon, but after they defeat Sin that summon will be reborn as Sin - perpetuating the cycle of mythical inevitability. (Now that I think about it, this is also a similar theme in The Matrix). In the face of this endless curse, Tidus and Yuna refuse to take part, and fight against the fate that constitutes the myth shared by so many.

A quick Bourdieu soundbite on gender

This past semester in Feminist Criminology we very briefly talked about the differences between feminist ideology and feminist science, the difference being that feminist science utilizes feminist theory. I wasn't quite convinced and wished that we had spent a little more time on it because my inability to articulate a clear difference between the two was uncomfortable. Fortunately, I recently picked up Bourdieu's Masculine Domination, which so far I interpret as an attempt to explain the perceived permanency of patriarchy. I was drawn to the book because of the applicability of habitus and doxa to the division of the sexes, and so far I haven't been disappointed.

What I believe is that in Feminist Criminology we missed the chance to break down the antimony between feminist ideology and theory by seeking an theoretical account of the structures that in essence conceal the origins of ideology. An account of the socialization from which patriarchal ideology derives its permanency. Bourdieu says it better.

"This detour through an exotic tradition is indispensable in order to break the relationship of deceptive familiarity that binds us to our own tradition. The biological appearances and the very real effects that have been produced in bodies and minds by a long collective labour of socialization of the biological and biologicization of the social combine to reverse the relationship between causes and effects and to make a naturalized social construction ('genders' as sexually characterized habitus) appear as the grounding in nature of the arbitrary division which underlies both reality and the representation of reality and which sometimes imposes itself even on scientific research" (p. 3).

It is refreshing to begin to construct a theoretical (objectified) understanding of what previously appeared to be an eternal patriarchal order. I remember thinking as I wrote a paper on the origins of rape legislation that patriarchy began simply because men thought of taking power first! I especially like the the notion of "a long collective labour of socialization of the biological and biologicization of the social combine to reverse the relationship between causes and effects", or a naturalization of social differences in biology and socialization of biological differences through science, presumably.

Unintended consequences

I recently finished reading John Berger's Ways of Seeing, a book recommended to me by a friend who suggested that it would "blow my mind". The book is a short, accessible combination of Horkheimer and Adorno's The Culture Industry and Bourdieu's Distinction, arguing that art plays a key role in the legitimation of social differences. There was one particular quote in the book that struck me.

Publicity (product advertising) has another important social function. The fact that those who use publicity are unaware of this use in no way diminishes its importance. Publicity turns consumption into a substitute for democracy. The choice of what one eats (or wears or drives) takes the place of significant political choice. Publicity helps to mask and compensate for all that is undemocratic in society.

-- John Berger, Ways of Seeing.

This quote has so much meaning packed into it, combining doxa with capitalism, domination, social reproduction, and democracy. But the italicized part is what I am concerned with. The incorporation of unintended consequences in social theory has helped me make sense of incredibly irrational way that people conduct their lives, subjecting themselves to conditions and begging for economic systems that enslave them. There is simply no support for the rational subject at the center of economic theory, and no reason to think that individuals know the costs or benefits of essentially any action that they take. Instead, the experience of social reality (regardless of an "objective" underlying reality) is masked by the manners in which we are socialized and the messages that constantly bombard us. We are unwitting agents in the reproduction of the conditions that oppress us (and those that enable us, to be fair) because we have come to internalize those values as what we desire.

Long time coming, a lot of growth?

Should I feel obligated to write in blogs? Is it alright to just let this sit here? Well, sometimes your experiences accumulate to such an extent that I can now probably write most of a post.

It's entertaining to look at these posts I was making less than a year ago and look at how far my thinking has gone. I'm not going to call it maturity or growth, and I'm a bit less concerned about getting it "right", but there have been so many great influences. Taking Feminist Criminology and Contemporary Sociological Theory has exposed me to a lot of scholarship that has made substantial contributions to the way that I conceptualize social science, reality, consciousness, and oppression. Sociology has really helped to put my criminological education in perspective - I honestly feel that the divisions between the two are unnecessary and only hamper education.

I suppose after reading The Sociological Imagination I was skeptical as to what I would find in a sociological theory class. I expected heavy positivism and Parsonian dominance, but that's what happens when you read books that are 50 years old and treat them like they are talking about today. What I did find has really ignited some interests that were unknown/alien to me just last year.

The critique of Modernity

Two quotes:

For Marx "...modernity is seen as a monster. More limpidly perhaps than any of his contemporaries, Marx perceived how shattering the impact of modernity would be, and how irreversible. At the same time, modernity was for Marx what Habermas has aptly called an 'unfinished project.' The monster can be tamed, since what human beings have created they can always subject to their own control. Capitalism, simply, is an irrational way to run the modern world, because it substitutes the whims of the market for the controlled fulfillment of human need." - Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity

"Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened Earth is radiant with triumphant calamity." - Horkhiemer & Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment

Before setting foot in the class, I had never once thought of applying reason and science to society as a "value" that could be, or had been, otherwise. I had simply taken them for granted. While the enlightenment thinkers had displayed such exuberance in expounding those beliefs, present-day sociologists have argued that the conception and creation of a scientific society has only placed humans under, using Weber's term, an inescapable iron cage. These readings spoke to me the same way that reading Nietzsche did, kind of a "I can't believe people can say these things!" reaction. The amount of philosophy I found in sociology has been a reason that I have found it so interesting. These ideas are applied by criminologists as well, I simply had not recognized it. Whether that is my fault or the fault of my education is a moot issue.

Perceptions of reality

As I had indicated in earlier posts, I was interested in morality, and sociology has only helped. Really, my conception of "what is theory" has been expanded, from beyond positivist attributions of cause, to complete models of human reality. Very briefly, Bourdieu's concept of doxa has helped me make sense of a lot of my own questions about morality and political dispositions, and at the same time has opened many new questions.

"One of the most important effects of the correspondence between real divisions and practical principles of division, between social structures and mental structures, is undoubtedly the fact that the primary experience of the social world is that of doxa, an adherence to relations of order which, because they structure inseparably both the real world and the thought world, are accepted as self evident." - Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction

Perhaps in the past I would have read such a statement and thought, "Fuck, this isn't falsifiable". Well, I'll leave that to those who care about those sorts of things. For me now though, doxa helps to explain the manner in which normative orders against the interest of those who follow them are able to persist for so long (e.g., Tea Party Movement, minimum-wage labor, women living under Roman Catholocism, etc.). Taking another quote from Adorno, doxa helps to explain why groups inevitably "insist on the very system that enslaves them".