How situated a pedagogy of the oppressed within these discourses?

How situated a pedagogy of the oppressed within these discourses?

I want to reexamine the strange discursive moment of the Atlantic article in the style of Cormac McCarthy that described Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's ordeal to obtain his position earlier this year. The novelist Cormac McCarthy is of course very discursively present these days: he seems to get more famous with age. I want to look at it from another angle: the production of the discourse - the aims, the motivation - behind the text itself. 

Paolo Freire, the author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, postulated that certain individuals located at a critical nexus of political experience could use their own lived experience as a basis for their own education, particularly in terms of acquiring literacy. 

Could we take a hopeful look at this singular article as naught but the concrete manifestation of the current politics of a pedagogy of the oppressed? As in, as an attempt to make a living sense of the World, if not through lived experience, then through read experience. As we all struggle to make sense of climate change, and that on the farm, could it be that some sort of pedagogy of the oppressed has been activated and could be formulated out of our common desire just to understand what is going on in the world?

Of course, we have to assert to be complete that this is not all, there is more Present and absent here than would be to make this only the pedagogy of the oppressed. But for those who see hope despite it all, there may be glimmers of it here, as a monument to a species reaching a new level of consciousness of itself...

Foucauldian Vietnam

January 22, 2023

The unavoidable question for the skeptic familiar with East Asia is: was Michel Foucault's work, even his attitude, a part of the "civilizing mission" of Imperial France in its colonial projects? My answer turns on the topic of the great rupture that occurred in the consciousness of international humanity in the 20th century, a situation that France and the United States shared, and that has loomed over all manner of discourse in the decades since it. This is, of course, Vietnam. 

Vietnam constituted an intellectual crisis in both countries. The involvement of both in the internal affairs of Vietnam was an imperialist crime of aggression, although that is a fraught term in Asia. But we should tone down the guilt by association, especially such tenuous association as through nationality. Foucault's work is more than anything a rejectamentalist commentary when it comes to Vietnam, and doubly a commentary on the failure of the French Left to constitute in its own mind the identity of Vietnamese and Southeast Asian culture. 

In one of his essays that mentions Vietnam ("For an Ethic of Discomfort") there comes this quote that I believe applies equally well to the traumatic experience of Vietnam:

"decisive moments when things begin to lose their self-evidence."

Anyone who's been to Vietnam can probably tell you that the country has that effect on our fundamental assumptions, and not only as Westerners but on people from other parts of the world too. 

It's not only the nature of politics but the nature of its people and language that creates this doubt about fundamental truths. Perhaps it is the time-honored resistance to outside pressures (from Chinese and Indic Empires in antiquity) that create this social force. Vietnam seems to situate itself as the yin to every yang in the world, the dark complementary to every ideology and culture, no matter its provenance. And this is exactly their point of pride, I think. 

There's another passage from the same essay: 

"a manifest truth disappearing not when it is replaced by another one that is fresher or sharper but when one begins to detect the very conditions that make it manifest: the familiarities that served as its support, the darknesses the brought about its clarity, and all those far-away things that secretly sustained it and made it "go without saying.""

This is Vietnam. And it's through this uncertainty that the solidarity of the Vietnamese with each other is constituted, I believe. So it's a mistake to portray Foucault as an apologist for French intervention in Vietnam, I contend. (His stance on Algeria and other issues is more clearly no.) I will limit the scope of this to these observations. However, as a general matter I think it's misguided to label someone so fundamental to modern left-liberal discourse as representing something antithetical to it.

(╯°□°）╯

Ownership of all the products of labor

January 20, 2023

I have already mentioned the economic theory that a craftsman has absolute ownership of all the products of his labor. It resounds in Locke's labor theory of value, among other places. It strangely enough could be extended to the State, by saying, if money is a product created by the state, then, the State has the absolute right to print more of it for any purpose. I have heard that espoused before. I wonder what Locke would think about that. I wonder what would Silvio Gesell. I wonder what Modern Monetary Theory would make of it.

Without deproblematizing Foucault’s work, but properly problematizing it

January 14, 2023

Foucault looms large in contemporary discourse, not the least because from his time and position, France was the last colonial master of Vietnam before the Americans fought the Vietnam War. Because of Foucault's insistent focus on the grain trade, and because of common sense with the important Farm Bill this year, ask: how delicate is this? The US is involved in some grain trade politics trying to institute a stronger domestic farm. This is the year for the Farm Bill, and you cannot oppose the Farm Bill; that's not how it works. 

The financialization of the farm leads to the politics of agrarian tumult. From Occupy Wall Street to the present day, to what extent does all this become enmeshed in the legacy of the Vietnam War, the longer you look into it? In particular, the U.S. unavoidably took over French prerogatives in Vietnam during the course of the Vietnam War. 

How was physiocracy a resistance element to this, and how much was it implicated in it? There is a legitimate question about the structure of the state apparatus in Vietnam and the reminder to learn history or else be victimized by it. Imperialism is mercantilist in its most brutal face, but paternalist in its softer face, which involves physiocratic analysis. 

The physiocracy of Foucault is also the paternalistic concern for Vietnam implicit in its colonialism there, which might be a reason there is an aftertaste of imperialism in its theory. But that's simply the conjunctive presence of French imperialism on our history with Vietnam. When we hear statements like "rural America has been colonized by urban America" keep in mind that in the theory of physiocracy this is but an unfortunate coincidence of history, implying nothing eternal. 

Physiocracy is a medieval theory. Its use is that it is infinitely more advanced than the practice of agriculture as it originated. But it's more than the administration of agriculture. It's the politics of the grain reserves. What's interesting about this is how it involves statecraft and international politics and affairs. What is undeniable from the mature perspective is that sometimes commodities are spent like coin to create certain outcomes. 

Has the supply chain weirdness with Covid (soybeans), food aid to Afghanistan, even the Ukraine situation, and whatever else the grain reserves are going to, put us on a strong footing or back-footed with this new Farm Bill? That's what I think Foucault would be interested in: not to deproblematize physiocracy, but to properly problematize it. 

“Deconstruction” with respect to “free-market agriculture”

January 11, 2023

I came across this sentence today: 

"With all things being equal, the deconstruction of free-market agriculture will eliminate the need for GMO patents."

Just to remind, the real dispute over GMOs is that they're mainly used to increase corporate control over private farms. 

Let's talk about the phrase "the deconstruction of free-market agriculture" first. 

Physiocracy, that is to say market pricing and a government reserve, was instituted to prevent scarcity. It's easy to talk about free market agriculture if you're raising for the export market, such as soybeans. But the real issue at hand when talking about classic commodities is the division of purposes between the "land use office" and the "laboratory".

The contraindication from the free-market camp is that the system of government reserves constitutes some kind of physiocratic lease on the produce of the farm. Pricing commodities above the level the free-market can afford is sort of a lease on commodities. But this is overly economistic thinking. Building up a fractional reserve is as old as society itself. It's agronomistic.

The phrase "the deconstruction of free-market agriculture" puts the cart before the horse. Agriculture has never been a free market. 

When you set this misconception to rights, it raises the deep-set issue dividing the concept of land use, from the concept of research and development in the food laboratory. 

Namely, would GMOs even be considered without the misconception going around that the farm is a corporate business?

The politics of agrarian tumult

January 10, 2022
The mockery of Kevin McCarthy is a little irrational. The lengths that men will go to maintain power. That's all it is. I"m not insensible to it. There's a lot to be done. The human drama of this moment is unspeakable. It's a ritual scalping.

Remember when Cersei Lannister was paraded around in penance during the TV show Game of Thrones? Perhaps this is overly interpretative. The impossibility of that show is that no one will ever get satisfaction. To promote that would take a certain distaste for civilized procedure. But somehow these parliamentary shenanigans have happened anyway. Interpretative of: 

It's an echo of the country we were revealed to be after the groundswell in voters over the past ten years. Insisting that we still do parliamentary procedure - as leverage for what? Ostensibly for diversity. But how about this: the long and short of it is I don't fear this sort of parliamentary procedure. It's worthwhile to ask why.

Interpretation of this moment in the press

The worth of this moment is going to be decided by if these guys do anything worthy. The next few years will depend on what goes on at the state level. Which makes my area an important place to be. 

The arena of contestation has narrowed to who holds the mandate for democratic ideology. Which means only one thing. I smell the farm. A crucial part of the conversation has moved over from conservation to cultivation.

The Ministers of Cultural Resentment

 January 9, 2022

The Ministers of Cultural Resentment

Something has to be said about this widening window onto China and the Far East in Western media. In short, nothing can be done about it unless we introduce the concept of differing language. Language comes with history, and history comes with popular memory. Part of that popular memory is traumatic, especially when it comes to the events surrounding the overthrow of the last imperial Chinese dynasty. It will never not color the memory of Chinese people toward history. Some say that the current government of China is naught but another new dynasty. And dynasties in China have never not ruled with fear, coercion and violence. There have been bright spots in the past, but only for the literate population. 

With such a language and a history, the consolations of philosophy are great, but they act at a certain remove from the population and create enclaves of literate ministration. There is an immense tendency toward entropy. Part of the reason Chinese people downplay the extraordinariness of their suffering is because their government needs to centralize their needs into one holistic policy. Some of this is because of language but some of it is just plain bad sense by the Communists.

It's complicated to speak of minority rights in China because some of the most notable minorities are full-on co-opted as the undergirding for Chinese philosophy, putting their fate out of the hands of contestations about rights and into the hands of statecraft. The government may make some rare concessions over the Days of Bridge Man and the White Paper Movement, and then the philosophy apparatus will make some, on a scale so slow that it will be tough to track. What this all adds up to is a system where protests and most movements of the people don't coordinate to public policy, in a way that may make Western observers uncomfortable. But this is the cost of making a system that has a cultural element to it as well as a political one. People in the West may know about yin and yang. This is the consequence of it. In a space of contestation bounded by a language that allows for the position of a cultural minister, sometimes you have to make your case to these ministers of cultural resentment. --Now, this is China and not just Chinese so the problem is finally openly stated here with Bridge Man, that, since the Cultural Revolution, there has been no one else to make the case to... so we shall see how history changes.

The interesting chronology of the Days of Bridge Man and the White Paper Movement

January 4, 2023

The interesting chronology of the Days of Bridge Man and the White Paper Movement

Covid is rampant in China right now. It is interesting, noteworthy even, to understand how they got there. In early fall, Bridge Man stages his protest in Shanghai. In one manner of speaking, he reacted to the national Covid restrictions by calling for more democracy. Soon, many people were copying his response, leading to the White Paper Movement. The government has since retaliated by ending all Covid restrictions, allegedly according to the peoples' will (but no mention of democracy.) So now people are getting Covid again. But what is a happy spin on this story, is that even with the total abdication of zero-Covid measures, the early consensus is that a vaccinated population isn't getting awfully ill. This is both good and brings the strictness of the past zero-Covid measures into doubt. It's an irony that comes around full circle.

How last year ended

January 2, 2022

How last year ended 

It was announced at the end of last year that Morocco had engaged in corrupt practices at the U.N. level to hide its wrongdoing in Western Sahara.  Morocco holds Western Sahara as an absolute colony; - just in case anyone thinks that imperialism is dead, they should know that.  A resistance movement called the Polisario Front has been resisting the colonialism in their home of Western Sahara for decades.  Something is turning over in the consciousness of world politics.  In these kinds of moments, only augmented by Lula's victory over Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, I find myself turning over things in my mind like turning over rocks and stones trying to find a dark secret.  And what comes to mind in the end is this: remember when Italian farmers occupied Rome with tractors pretty recently, in the midst of a painful 2022?  Philosophically, what relates that to the other thought-provoking moments in the past 12 months?  Assuredly, something is turning over at the level of the soil worldwide.  Desertification in the Sahara, deforestation in Brazil, protesting farmers in Italy...  Climate change is changing how we cultivate.  How about if we change how we cultivate ourselves?

New Years

January 1, 2023

New Years

It is lovely in a way that the New Year can be raucous or reflective, Hogmanay or hallowed, as if you could choose the state in which it would be appropriate to exit one year and enter the next. Every New Year is an opening to a new world, and you can choose what to take with you through that gap. The odds are for a new beginning this year, for many reasons. For one, can we adjust to a new normal over interminable Covid pandemic - but for a more important reason, too. I think more and more groups are starting to realize they have to think ahead and start planning for the new century rather than continuing with the old business. Two indicators are showing of this. One is the bipartisan energy to get serious on China policy. The second is the increasing interest in philosophy among the population. With regard to the second, it is increasingly notable that the subject of rationality has begun to enter into the popular discourse. What is quite effective about these things is that it is an intergenerational shared interest, indicating that we are entering into a very serious age in political discourse.