Week 8 - Derrida and friendship

Unfortunately I was sick this week, after struggling through the slightly bizarre Jacques Derridas' 'The Politics of Friendship'. It opens like the lament of a drunken barman -'O, my friends, there is no friend [1].', but thankfully picks up towards the end. Derrida confronted the idea of friendship as 'political', associated with his previous more prominent theory of 'deconstruction'. The famous quote, attributed by Montaigne to Aristotle, functions as a way for Derrida to deconstruct the idea of friendship, leading to the conclusion that friendship is linked to both past and future phases, confusingly telling the reader that a multitude of friends is less 'politically' beneficial than a smaller group.

Since I clearly had some difficulty with this text I was sad to have to miss the seminar - owing to horribe stress-influcted migraines that I'm prone to - so I decided I'd see if I could get a copy of the lecture notes from a friend. However, when I came to try to contact someone, I realised that: yes, I have many friends in that seminar; but no, I don't know any of them well enough to have their phone number. I wondered if this might have been the overwhelming message of Derrida - the importance of having a few, close friends, as opposed to many, distant friends.

[1] Derrida, Jacques, The Politics of Friendship, London, Verso

Week 7 - Reading week

Hurrah! 

Week 6 - Irigaray and love

Luce Irigaray is a Belgian feminist, famous for being expelled from the Freudian School in Paris. She criticised Freudian theory in 'Speculum of the other woman', discussing theoretical neglect and the social implications of excluding women, who were treated as 'lifeless inessential matter without consciousness[1]'. 'Subjects' are therefore always male - women can only become subjects if they adopt a male subject positioning.

Irigaray therefore positions the female 'other' not as a 'fixed female subject' but as a changing one, leading to a dialogue of differentiated states of being. The difficulties in the relationship of 'love' are more than just a confused psychiatric female identity - Irigaray deals with the idea of the 'constraints of privilege' that disable members of hierarchical levels from countenancing external influences.

Language, therefore, is both Irigaray's path to, and barrier from, the other. In order to traverse the collective idea of 'difference', there must be a philosophy and language that theorises for diversity. Irigaray therefore suggests a new 'language of love' that focuses on verbs instead of 'gendered' nouns. It is key, she tells us, that we should not appropriate the subject - telling the other I love *to* you.

The sad conclusion of Irigaray's work is that there is simply no language capable of articulating our relationship with the other. Not even these love-themed fridge magnets.

[1] Irigaray, Luce, The Way of Love, trans. by Heidi Bostic and Stephen Pluhácek, London, Contiuum

Week 5 - Heidegger and metaphysics

Heidegger presents us with the question 'Why are there beings at all, instead of nothing?'[1]. He goes further, breaking down the question into its elemental linguistic form. He tells us that posing a question of 'nothing' is a heresy of language; that simply by asking about 'nothing', we are making it 'something'. Therefore the most valid question is not 'Why are there beings at all, instead of nothing?', but 'how does it stand with being?', allowing us to confront first and foremost our knowledge and understanding of being, which by its very existence is no longer 'nothing'.

Moreover, the question 'How does it stand with being?' has not been successfully confronted by History or Science, who are more concerned with an 'object of knowledge'. This is a problem also confronted with difficulty by language - the awkward, irregular tenses of the verb 'to be' reflect our inability to first ask the question.

The essay uses language first and foremost to posit the 'correct question'. In a desperate attempt to work out how this could be of any philosophical use, I related it to the famous opening of The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where the answer to 'life, the universe, and everything' is, disappointingly, '42[2]'. The supercomputer tells his questioners to look for 'the real question' first, before seeking the answer. I thought this was a good way of looking at the questions Heidegger poses - asking us not to question our origination out of nothing, but question the formation of questioning itself.

[1]  Heidegger, Martin, Introduction to Metaphysics, London, Yale University Press
[2]  Adams, Douglas, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, London, Macmillan, 1979

Week 4 - Foucault and Butler

Foucault and Butler are concerned with the way in which 'power' influences human behaviour and thought. They are both interested in the way this is implemented in contemporary society. For Foucault, 'power' can be symbolised as an institution, 'in the context of the school, the barracks, the hospital, or the workshop. He tells us, 'Discipline 'makes' individuals; it is the scientific technique of a power that regards individuals as both objects and as instruments of its exercise [1]'. 

This is more than an analysis of the prison system - Foucault is studying the 'production of the individual'. This was explained in the lecture using the idea of the 'Panopticon', the structure by which members of society, under fear that they are possibly or probably being scrutinised, become self-policing individuals.

This can be applied to a modern-day British psyche. We are constantly aware of the CCTV and various other measures around us, that cause us to watch our own behaviour all the more intently. On my way to work in the West End, I noticed that large blue podiums had been erected in main tourist areas, at the top of which stood police officers.

After a bit of research, I found out that this was an element of 'Operation Trafalgar', which has been 'designed to tackle crime, disorder and anti-social behaviour in the heart of London'. This move to in-person police scrutiny clearly takes its cues from psychological thought, creating a panopticon in the centre of London. The effects are clear - while we are afraid of scrutiny through CCTV, the direct cause to effect framework of punishing a crime is absent, allowing us to 'procrastinate' our concerns about being watched to a later time (perhaps when the police come knocking). Operation Trafalgar, with its highly-visible police force, means that the urge to self-police is much stronger owing to the immediacy of the threat of punishment.

[1] Foucault, Michael, 'Docile Bodies' in The Foucault Reader, ed. by Paul Rabinow, Penguin, London, 1986