Moralist tone of the Hayekian critique of excessive borrowing aside, I find it quite interesting how the liberatory tinge of Hayek’s “I want to free the markets!” is made to contrast with Keynes’ “I want to steer the market”. In a sense, hiphop (an element of erstwhile element of alternative youth culture) and discourses of freedom are mobilized to support a particular economic ideology (and I am not using ideology in a merely pejorative sense). No doubt, underlying this freedom versus planning dichotomy is the ultimate normative bedrock of neoliberal creed: freedom of choice. Nevertheless in this particular context, it seems that our choices are truncated; they are limited to either steering the economy or freeing the economy. As if these two are our only choices. What about embedding the economy, or socialising the economy, or ecologising the economy? The implicit common denominator that brings Keynes and Hayek together is that both place their bets on economic growth as the ultimate aim of social evolution and that they are both blind to the systemic nature of class and ecological injustices of these creatively destructive but also destructively creative cycles of boom and bust.

It is instructive to watch Bernard-Henri Levy as the white liberalized secularist he is and his articulation of an image of Obama as someone who will bring regulation and control into the extreme liberalism of recent decades…

You need more You need more You need more You need more
You need more You need more You need more You need more
You need more
Boy it’s tough getting on in the world
When the sun doesn’t shine and a boy needs a girl
It’s about getting out of a rut, you need luck
But you’re stuck and you don’t know how, oh
(Don’t have to be) A big bucks Hollywood star
(Don’t have to drive) A super car to get far
(Don’t have to live) A life of power and wealth
(Don’t have to be) Beautiful but it helps
(Don’t have to buy) A house in Beverly Hills
(Don’t have to have) Your daddy paying the bills
(Don’t have to live) A life of power and wealth
(Don’t have to be) Beautiful but it helps
You need more
Than a big blank check to be a lover, or
A Gulfstream jet to fly you door to door
Somewhere chic on another shore
You need more You need more You need more
You need more You need more You need more
You need love
You need love
You need love
Too much of anything
Is never enough
Too much of everything
Is never enough
Boy it’s tough getting on in the world
When the sun doesn’t shine and a boy needs a girl
It’s about getting out of a rut, you need luck
But you’re stuck and you don’t know how, oh
(Don’t have to be) A big bucks Hollywood star
(Don’t have to drive) A super car to get far
(Don’t have to wear) A smile much colder than ice
(Don’t have to be) Beautiful but it’s nice
You need more
Than the Gerhard Richter hangin’ on your wall
A chauffeur-driven limousine on call
To drive your wife and lover to a white tie ball
You need more You need more You need more
You need more You need more You need more
You need love
I believe that we can achieve
The love that we need
I believe, call me naïve
Love is for free
(Don’t have to be) A big bucks Hollywood star
(Don’t have to drive) A super car to get far
(Don’t have to live) A life of power and wealth
(Don’t have to be) Beautiful but it helps
Beautiful but it helps
Beautiful but it helps

In his short but inversely rich essay on ‘Ambient Music’ (courtesy of Dj Eko), Brian Eno provides us, this time, with a musically inflected expression of the concept:

“In late 1977 I was waiting for a plane in Cologne airport. It was early on a sunny, clear morning, the place was nearly empty, and the space of the building (designed, I believe, by the father of one of the founders of Kraftwerk) was very attractive. I started to wonder what kind of music would sound good in a building like that…And most importantly for me, it has to have something to do with where you are and what you’re there for–flying, floating and, secretly, flirting with death. I thought “I want to make a kind of music that prepares you for dying–that doesn’t get all bright and cheerful and pretend you’re not a little apprehensive, but which makes you say to yourself, ‘Actually, it’s not that big a deal if I die.’” (Audio Culture, 96)

Doesn’t that last sentence of Eno echo Freud’s definition of the aim of the psychoanalytical practice (and of traversal of fantasy) as changing “neurotic suffering into ordinary human misery”?

K.
PS Judging by the long stretch of inactivity on the blog, folks must be consumed these days by producing only “necessary thought” (or have found other outlets for their “surplus thought”). So be it.

Traffic: From dope on the table (use value) to dope on the market (exchange value)
I should admit I am here using “commodity fetishism” in a very loose sense, so loose that I am afraid jamar would cut me loose. I allude to it as a particular way of understanding the world according to which many things in life, if not everything, are determined by market forces, through the interactions of the motivated sellers and buyers. The belief that the war on drugs will not be won unless the conditions that support and motivate both sides of the market are explicitly addressed and curbed typifies, for instance, commodity fetishism. A good representation of this view is perhaps the widely acclaimed and award winning movie, Traffic, by Steven Soderbergh. By making the (white) demanders as much a part of the problem of drugs as the (nth generation? immigrant) suppliers, and by highlighting the role that the corrupt states of the “third world” play in supporting the transnational drug trafficcing (yes, US state is never corrupt! Only too naïve to be actually duped to putting its trust in the corrupt and evil General Salazar, Head of Mexican Drug Police), Traffic sends the message that just like any other commodity, the elimination of drugs, would require removing the conditions of existence for this market: eliminating the (state) support for drug merchants, as well as rehabilitating the existing demanders/addicts, and preventing new ones coming into being.

Certainly, Traffic complicates the solutions and policies devised to address the drug problem. It offers a different take on the “war” on drugs by pointing, for instance, to the inadequacy and incompetence of the repressive state strategies of confiscating the drugs, and imprisoning and blaming the addict. One might say that the state, in this sense, cannot see the bigger picture beyond the individual and the use value of drugs. Thus, the familiar fetishistic displays that we often see on TV: The dope on table and the heroic police force standing right behind it. Indeed, Traffic manages to socialize the economy of drugs beyond the sphere of the individual user to the relations market exchange constituted directly by the state itself. At the same time, it puts into question the “war” metaphor altogether. Though one should admit that such questioning is certainly easier for the audiences to handle when they can readily identify it as an unfair “war,” because, after all, it is a war waged by a good-intending father from the privileged classes of suburban Connecticut—who happens to be the Head of the US President’s Anti-Drug Campaign—against his very own addict daughter—who happens to be the best student in her high school.

“Where’s it all go? The money, where’s it go?”
D’Angelo Barksdale

Still, Traffic falls short, I want to argue, because it does not leave the sphere of the market, its focus remains fixed on exchange and on exchange value. It does not enter into the “hidden abode of production” of surplus. (With production I do not have in mind the production of opium poppy or coca leaves, but the cutting, mixing and preparing the vials and other drug products). Thus, it misses the broader political economy that the drug economy connects with and sustains through the revenue flows and distributions from the surplus value appropriated from the sale of drugs. And it misses the point that the political economy of drugs is an alternative class formation that inner and shattered cities of the US have produced as a reaction to the destructive consequences of the so-called legal (and good) capitalism. Yes, horrifying as it may be, it is still an alternative…

It is the strength of the Wire to show in detail how intimately entrenched the drug economy is within the various aspects of the political economy of Baltimore: The surplus from the drug trade being channeled to city politicians in the form of election contributions, bribes, lobbying money, to developers to finance posh urban revitalization projects, to the establishment of local businesses (a night club, a photocopy center,…) as primitive capital accumulation, to destroyed neighborhoods as the meek substitute of the non-existing state distributions, to the disappearing dock workers and their families to subsidize their ever decreasing wages, even to high schools as fellowships for retaining students for the basketball teams of West and East Baltimore gangs, and, of course, to the “soldiers” of warring drug gangs. So much so that the territorial economy of drugs seems to be the only authentic and viable economy that gets produced within the decimated neighborhoods of Baltimore (or Body-more). It is the only one that fills the void that neo-liberal state capitalism has left behind. At the same time, it wrecks other possible economies, lives, and dreams, degenerates much more than what it generates.

the Wire also portrays the illegal drug economy as one of the few experiences that the blacks of inner city US share with the disappearing white union workers. It is the only other economy in which they participate and manage, at the expense of their lives, which they exert some power, autonomy, and subjectivity and resist against the pending option of taking their place at the lowest ladders of the labor market of US capitalism. Perhaps there is something to David Simon’s, the executive producer and writer of the series, saying that the Wire is “is more about class than race…”

“I am a soldier.”
Bodie

In “This Job Has No End,” Cecilia Rio discusses how Black women in early 20th century resisted both the memory of slavery as well as the option of “capitalist wage slavery” through working in the informal market as paid domestic laborers and struggling to claim some independence over both the conditions of production and the amount of the surplus value they appropriated. In this way, Rio argues, they were able to shape more positive and empowering gender and racial identities for themselves.

What paid domestic labor was to black women of the early 20th century seems to be what the illegal drug labor is to black young men of Baltimore. The feudal, at times, communal, and times, independent, class alternatives spawned by the drug economy is one of the few ways, or so it seems, for black men to claim some subjectivity and some sense of power and community. At least it offers a fantasy, a way of life that is not completely subjected to the racial discriminations and exploitations of neoliberal state capitalism.

Though the Wire is also succesful in showing how the feudal code of the game, on the one hand, is prone to shift towards the capitalist code. This is best exemplified via the attempts of Stringer Bell to transform the competitive illegal economy of drugs to one of ‘legalized’ city capitalism as well as a ‘non-violent’ drug oligopoly in which the ‘rule of contract’ rather than the ‘ties of gang solidarity and retribution’ reigns. The attempt, however, fails. On the other hand, there is a transformation of the drug economy to a more violent, sectarian, arbitrary, and ruthless form of, can we even say, feudalism, as we witness through the rise of the new kingpin Marlo and his co.

“War on drugs” is definitely a bankrupt strategy. However, its bankruptcy should not be read a sign of its failure. In fact, if we read it through Giorgio Agamben’s notion of the camp, we will be able to see it as a strategy of keeping social antagonism at bay while continuously perpetuating it through feeding off of it. Even the police force in the Wire is well aware of this. What is called for is a serious deliberation of the social relations of production and distribution that the drug economy both constitutes and is reacting against…as well as the subjectivities and cultural meanings brought to existence in and through such economic processes. And that is what the Wire just seems to be doing.

Good news: Turkey has finally gained the requisite power and is internationally authorized to fight wars beyond its borders. Bad news: We can’t even talk about it. Apart from celebrating it. We should all admit the necessity of this war and commemorate the martyrs. They are our martyrs, they died for us. So the more we glorify the war, the more sublime we get and so does our army. This is a dead-end cycle. All the headquarters, whether it is the parliament or the armed forces or the arterial media/press, are repeating the same heroic story. People on the street blindly join this choir, repeating the same speech. A hate speech against Kurds, but what is it really anyway? It is all blurred. No one really knows what it is all about. We are making some movements, moving our mouths slightly, mumbling, having something to say, but what is it really? We have no idea, muttering something, the martyrs never die, all memorized, then dragged along like a dead weight. Like an atmosphere of an early expressionist film noir we are in. Maybe worse. Orwellian, right. Then we say the Turks and Kurds are brothers, and then we gaze down again and keep walking. In a routine. A rote. A route-going effort led by others, superiors, those with wolf-hearts.

Something happened on Sunday, not a major event, therefore it is not much talked about on TV, yet again it is immediately restricted by RTUK, a protocol charged with overseeing the private TV channels, since every deviance from the mainstream ideology should be banned for such acts are deemed to hostile especially during these “sensitive times”. Bülent Ersoy, a well-known singer, also a transsexual herself, made a very “unfortunate statement” regarding our martyrs and the ongoing operations in Northern Iraq.

It was an interesting incident because she is the least likely person to criticize the acts of the officials as she is widely known for her conservatism on national and religious values even though she is cross-gendered. I also have to underline that she actually is a very powerful figure in Turkey’s popular culture; not a rebellious outcast from the underground. She is a bonanza-rich celebrity and hosts one of the most highly rated shows on prime-time TV (the version of American Idol in Turkey). The public knows she is half crazy, even a freak, but still likes to see her bitching around in their middle class lives. It is weird, I know, but sometimes I think it is a nice one.

Being once considered the “transatlantic of transsexualism” by an intellectual, she has always been a walking dilemma. She is trans-gendered but hates the community, she has been imprisoned during the coup d’état of 1980, but always kept good relations with subsequent presidents, at least never spoke against the establishment. She has a terrible voice and a terrible way of singing, but thinks she is the greatest. Worst of all, she thinks she is a real woman and is completely alienated from her real state of being. She dislikes gays, effeminates, the prostitution of transgendered people like her, even though she comes from the subculture. Also she is a devout Muslim, a wholehearted nationalist and speaks a fake Ottoman Turkish. She gets married to young and sexually confused males and gets divorced later. Did I mention that she is a DIVA?

OK, this painfully funny, transient-cult icon made a really heartfelt speech which was radically discordant to all her former lightheartedness. As you may see in the video, people applaud her speech but this is no obstacle for an inquiry that was initiated by a public prosecutor in Istanbul immediately the day after the show is broadcasted. So let’s see what has happened on that very night.

And here is the complete conversation in text:

Bülent Ersoy: The wars Mr. Gencebay (the guy sitting next to her) indicates were the ones that had been held bravely, manly, wholeheartedly; not like the contemporary ones which are conducted from the desks, vis-a-vis conspiracies. It is directed from somewhere and everybody play their parts. If I was fertile and had a son, in such conditions, I mean some will come and say “You are supposed to do this or that in order to weaken them”, in the end I will be burying my child. Is that it? (the audience applauds) Well, okay, the land is ours and unitary, whatever, but how can you let it happen with eyes wide open? Then all the women bear this and bury their babies, is that what they are trying to say? It is not a war under normal war circumstances [I am wondering what the normal circumstances are], it is all about conspiracies. You can’t get away with conspiracies Mr. Erkır!

Mr. Erkır: Yes maam.

B. Ersoy: I may not know what a baby means to you like you do. I am not a mother and I will never be one [interesting confession here] , but I am a human being. And as a human, seeing those mothers giving their babies to the ground, their aching hearts burning in flames; I may not feel it truly but those mothers do feel.

Ebru Gündeş (singer, the only woman on stage): I wish God’s mercy on our martyrs and patience to their families. Hope God wills I become a mother to a soldier son one day (the audience applauds). Hope I have a son one day to send to the army so that he becomes a renowned soldier.

B. Ersoy (interrupting): Then they will send you his dead body back [I am totally blown away here].

E. Gündeş (lightly): If it is written in our destiny that he will die, he will die for this nation, this state, [tries to say "this country" but says] for these lands [instead]. As a woman I can do whatever I can for this territory [again no mentioning of country, only land land and land] and sure my son does too [what happened to children rights? she is assigning a life policy for her unborn child!] And if he has to die for all this, he will have to. It is written on our foreheads. [Finally] No death to martrys, no division of the land.

(applauds)

B. Ersoy: We keep telling the same. The kids are going to war, then comes the bloody tears, the cryings, the funerals. We keep telling it on and on. I don’t agree with your clichés.

Mr. Erkır: But that is how our flag keep waving in the air.

B. Ersoy: OK, I know. But why are we falling for these easy games, why can’t we make a way out of it finding a radical solution? My greed is all about that.

Mr. Erkır: Yes, I understand. You are right.

B. Ersoy: I mean, of course we will go running barefoot to do what we can for our homeland. That flag reflects the colour of our blood, I know all that, but!… That “but thing” really bothers me. Why? Why are we struggling for nothing?

since then, in the past fifteen years,  this image has been used and reused, rendering mediterranean into a selling brand. we encounter it everywhere: on the packaging of a sea salt washed in “clearer blue” meditteranean water, or the olive oil and its reiterated merits as the miracle of nature, or a certain dish called hummus as the embodiment of all things mediterrenean. in those fifteen years however, something else must have happened because while i was rummaging through internet looking for the above mentioned image of mediterranean, i found a recent commercial for the same product but this time articulated strictly in nationalist terms. here it is:

but what could have happened in those fifteen years that made it necessary to narrow down the transnational mediterranean image to crescents and stars? moreover, it used to be the state that bestowed those images, it was the army, the government institutions, the schools, the police. how does unilever get the right to speak of crescents and stars, to be a decoy of the army generals (one of whom just recently applauded a bunch of highshool kids for painting a turkish flag with their blood), and to restore authenticity to turkish (or any) culture? is this the sacredness of profit? deleuze asked aptly whether we can grasp the rough outlines of the coming forms of struggles, “capable of threatening the joys of marketing?”  how does one fight the shallow image of the deep mediterranean sea, the frightening mercenary nationalisms, and the epidemics of emotions they unleash?

perhaps the ottoman empire and later on the turkish republic were always vulnerable to the advances of nationalism, which changed its focus from religion, to ethnicity and back to religion, at will, depending on the circumstances. however, it seems to me now, the impossiblity to achieve a turkish identity, the growing reaction to european union (which by now exceeded the limits of self-disneyfication to be taken seriously anyway), and the desire to differentiate itself from other muslim nations (but nevertheless hoping to find solace in their company), make people living in the confines of the republic of turkey much more prone to injury than ever before: this injury will be inflicted upon themselves in their endless pursuit of reterritorializing what has been lost, or justify what has never been achieved in the first place. the image of the quick-footed crescent and star in this commercial scares me to no end.

As for the title of this blog entry…until I saw the documentary, I wasn’t aware of the parallels/affinities between the lives of these two thinkers, which are so striking that it makes you wonder why you don’t hear Zizek being referred to as the “21st century McLuhan” more often (Saint ymm recalls seeing on the back cover of a Zizek book an epithet along these lines). In the interviews you hear how, back in the day, people were awestruck by McLuhan’s meshing of high- and low-culture: “he can use Elvis Presley & Plato in the same sentence”. Replace that couplet with Hitchcock & Lacan and…It is only natural, I suppose, that this iconoclastic attitude of McLuhan’s toward cultural hierarchy (or hierarchization of culture) is reflected in his transgressive attitude toward disciplinary boundaries; you can’t juxtapose Presley and Plato without “short-circuiting” (a la Zizek) a few disciplines. As McLuhan’s wife points out, however, when McLuhan first began to capture public’s attention (and capture he did), neither cultural/media studies nor interdisciplinarity were de rigueur as they are today (are they?).

Speaking of public attention, also shared by McLuhan and Zizek is a penchant for the limelight. No need to remind the fellow bloggers of Surplus Thought of the numerous appearances of Zizek before the (TV or movie) camera. It might come as a surprise to folks, however, to learn that McLuhan, during his heyday, was a household name for many Americans, who watched him on their TV sets in shows like the Today Show and many others. So much so that I imagine back in the 70s if you overheard somebody say “McLuhan on TV”, it was as likely that s/he meant “his opinions on TV” as “he is actually on TV” – much like “Zizek on movie”, I suppose.

Popularity, however, is a mixed blessing. While the public was obviously enchanted with McLuhan, this fascination seems to be borne out of not so much appreciation for the profundity of his thought, but rather for his eccentricities –that is, his entertaining qualities, shock value, sensational musings (“Word merchant”, they called him). And as attested by another documentary, “the giant of Ljubljana” suffers from the same Faustian dilemma (or should I say, ‘deal”?). Zizek admits to being positively irritated by his admirers who treat him like a pop star. He wants people to understand that behind this entertaining persona lies a monster. Yet all these confessions are being addressed to a camera, whose footage is to become Zizek! The Movie. Medium is the message, indeed.

PS To his defense, though, Zizek’s attitude toward being filmed is more sincere than the reluctance exhibited by Derrida in Derrida the Movie. In the said documentary we hear Derrida openly objecting to the idea of capturing somebody’s life on camera, with a thinly disguised contempt for the director. In a scene where Derrida and a colleague of his are walking across the street, Derrida’s colleague smugly remarks –in the direction of the camera crew– that “Americans don’t believe they exist unless they’re being filmed”. Despite all the condescension and protests, however, the movie wouldn’t be possible without the consent and the cooperation of Derrida.
PPS In Umbr(a)’s issue on ‘Incurable’ (ed. by a fellow Surplus Thinker, Andrew Skomra), there is a very insightful review of Zizek! The Movie. Umbr(a), by the way, is probably the most underappreciated publication on the face of the earth –after Rethinking Marxism, that is : )

ABOUT DETROIT BEIRUT (in its own words)

“This music comes from South Lebanon, was born in Lansing and lives in Detroit. A sound declaration. This music is rhythm for revolutions, rebellions, empowerment and progression. Through audio and images, history is projected onto the future, terrorific stereotypes are rejected, a slandered heritage is reclaimed, the ruins of a city are rebuilt. Sound and visions express the struggles and share the beauty of Detroit, Beirut.

We bang on drums to be heard, we make art to be seen.”

ON THE RHYTHM

“In Arabic, the drummer is simply refered to as el-iqaa (rhythm).

Detroit Beirut is the result of a life dedicated to the beat. This first album from beat conductor El-Iqaa is an excursion in sonic collage, or the beautiful art of sampling. Infusing traditional Arab music, Detroit Hip Hop, Electronic, Jazz, Latin, and European Classical; Detroit Beirut is the instromental expression of an individual, created independant and raw.

Rhythm is all.

This music was made with live drums, with samples from old 45’s and new mp3’s, with a mixer and a mic, Michael’s Moog, technics and technique, some claps and snaps, a g4, pro tools, sticks on cymbals from Istanbul, fingers on a Kevork riq, masking tape, kahwa araby, sweat, pride and love (infused with a little camoon).”

“Thanks for the wild turkey and
the passenger pigeons, destined
to be shit out through wholesome
American guts.
Thanks for a continent to despoil
and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a
modicum of challenge and
danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to
kill and skin leaving the
carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves
and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until
the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK.

For nigger-killin’ lawmen,
feelin’ their notches.

For decent church-goin’ women,
with their mean, pinched, bitter,
evil faces.

Thanks for “Kill a Queer for
Christ” stickers.

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

Thanks for Prohibition and the
war against drugs.

Thanks for a country where
nobody’s allowed to mind the
own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the
memories– all right let’s see
your arms!

You always were a headache and
you always were a bore.

Thanks for the last and greatest
betrayal of the last and greatest
of human dreams.”

William Borroughs

…