#Ideal Essays 2021

[mostlysignssomeportents]

An interoperability rule for your money

This is the final weekend to back the Kickstarter campaign for the audiobook of my next novel, The Lost Cause. These kickstarters are how I pay my bills, which lets me publish my free essays nearly every day. If you enjoy my work, please consider backing!

"If you don't like it, why don't you take your business elsewhere?" It's the motto of the corporate apologist, someone so Hayek-pilled that they see every purchase as a ballot cast in the only election that matters – the one where you vote with your wallet.

Voting with your wallet is a pretty undignified way to go through life. For one thing, the people with the thickest wallets get the most votes, and for another, no matter who you vote for in that election, the Monopoly Party always wins, because that's the part of the thick-wallet set.

Contrary to the just-so fantasies of Milton-Friedman-poisoned bootlickers, there are plenty of reasons that one might stick with a business that one dislikes – even one that actively harms you.

The biggest reason for staying with a bad company is if they've figured out a way to punish you for leaving. Businesses are keenly attuned to ways to impose switching costs on disloyal customers. "Switching costs" are all the things you have to give up when you take your business elsewhere.

Businesses love high switching costs – think of your gym forcing you to pay to cancel your subscription or Apple turning off your groupchat checkmark when you switch to Android. The more it costs you to move to a rival vendor, the worse your existing vendor can treat you without worrying about losing your business.

Capitalists genuinely hate capitalism. As the FBI informant Peter Thiel says, "competition is for losers." The ideal 21st century "market" is something like Amazon, a platform that gets 45-51 cents out of every dollar earned by its sellers. Sure, those sellers all compete with one another, but no matter who wins, Amazon gets a cut:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Think of how Facebook keeps users glued to its platform by making the price of leaving cutting of contact with your friends, family, communities and customers. Facebook tells its customers – advertisers – that people who hate the platform stick around because Facebook is so good at manipulating its users (this is a good sales pitch for a company that sells ads!). But there's a far simpler explanation for peoples' continued willingness to let Mark Zuckerberg spy on them: they hate Zuck, but they love their friends, so they stay:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

One of the most important ways that regulators can help the public is by reducing switching costs. The easier it is for you to leave a company, the more likely it is they'll treat you well, and if they don't, you can walk away from them. That's just what the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau wants to do with its new Personal Financial Data Rights rule:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-proposes-rule-to-jumpstart-competition-and-accelerate-shift-to-open-banking/

The new rule is aimed at banks, some of the rottenest businesses around. Remember when Wells Fargo ripped off millions of its customers by ordering its tellers to open fake accounts in their name, firing and blacklisting tellers who refused to break the law?

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/10/07/497084491/episode-728-the-wells-fargo-hustle

While there are alternatives to banks – local credit unions are great – a lot of us end up with a bank by default and then struggle to switch, even though the banks give us progressively worse service, collectively rip us off for billions in junk fees, and even defraud us. But because the banks keep our data locked up, it can be hard to shop for better alternatives. And if we do go elsewhere, we're stuck with hours of tedious clerical work to replicate all our account data, payees, digital wallets, etc.

That's where the new CFPB order comes in: the Bureau will force banks to "share data at the person’s direction with other companies offering better products." So if you tell your bank to give your data to a competitor – or a comparison shopping site – it will have to do so…or else.

Banks often claim that they block account migration and comparison shopping sites because they want to protect their customers from ripoff artists. There are certainly plenty of ripoff artists (notwithstanding that some of them run banks). But banks have an irreconcilable conflict of interest here: they might want to stop (other) con-artists from robbing you, but they also want to make leaving as painful as possible.

Instead of letting shareholder-accountable bank execs in back rooms decide what the people you share your financial data are allowed to do with it, the CFPB is shouldering that responsibility, shifting those deliberations to the public activities of a democratically accountable agency. Under the new rule, the businesses you connect to your account data will be "prohibited from misusing or wrongfully monetizing the sensitive personal financial data."

This is an approach that my EFF colleague Bennett Cyphers and I first laid our in our 2021 paper, "Privacy Without Monopoly," where we describe how and why we should shift determinations about who is and isn't allowed to get your data from giant, monopolistic tech companies to democratic institutions, based on privacy law, not corporate whim:

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy

The new CFPB rule is aimed squarely at reducing switching costs. As CFPB Director Rohit Chopra says, "Today, we are proposing a rule to give consumers the power to walk away from bad service and choose the financial institutions that offer the best products and prices."

The rule bans banks from charging their customers junk fees to access their data, and bans businesses you give that data to from "collecting, using, or retaining data to advance their own commercial interests through actions like targeted or behavioral advertising." It also guarantees you the unrestricted right to revoke access to your data.

The rule is intended to replace the current state-of-the-art for data sharing, which is giving your banking password to third parties who go and scrape that data on your behalf. This is a tactic that comparison sites and financial dashboards have used since 2006, when Mint pioneered it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/12/mint-late-stage-adversarial-interoperability-demonstrates-what-we-had-and-what-we

A lot's happened since 2006. It's past time for American bank customers to have the right to access and share their data, so they can leave rotten banks and go to better ones.

The new rule is made possible by Section 1033 of the Consumer Financial Protection Act, which was passed in 2010. Chopra is one of the many Biden administrative appointees who have acquainted themselves with all the powers they already have, and then used those powers to help the American people:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

It's pretty wild that the first digital interoperability mandate is going to come from the CFPB, but it's also really cool. As Tim Wu demonstrated in 2021 when he wrote Biden's Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy, the administrative agencies have sweeping, grossly underutilized powers that can make a huge difference to everyday Americans' lives:

https://www.eff.org/de/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

Image: Steve Morgan (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._National_Bank_Building_-_Portland,_Oregon.jpg

Stefan Kühn (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abrissbirne.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

 - 

Rhys A. (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/rhysasplundh/5201859761/in/photostream/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

#pluralistic #cfpb #interoperability mandates #mint #scraping #apis #privacy #privacy without monopoly #consumer finance protection bureau #Personal Financial Data Rights #interop #data hoarding #junk fees #switching costs #section 1033 #interoperability

[storyofthenauseouseye]

The Duality of Woman: Anais Nin

Vogue Magazine, Anais Nin talks about being a woman, 15 October 1971

Anais Nin is a woman of duality. It's been a well-known fact for those who know or love her that she is truly a two-sided coin. She said it herself in her book Henry and June,

"I will always be the virgin prostitute, the perverse angel, the two-faced sinister and saintly woman"(bookquoters.com).

From her intense marriages to two different men on opposite sides of the country, to her literary career, to even her personal reflections and essays, Nin was a figure bathed in duality. How does one split the image of Anais Nin ideally in half? You just have to find the seam between diarist and eroticist.

The Diarist

Anais Nin is most well-loved by her adoring fans because of her published diary. As a young girl, Nin wrote her father a letter begging him to return to the family he had abandoned (The Anais Nin Foundation). This was the beginning of Nin's diary, which would be published in seven volumes, with four unexpurgated diaries later appearing after their original publication.

Her diaries were incredibly personal, full of secrets and thoughts she never thought would come to light. The biggest secret within these diaries was that she was married to two different men simultaneously, something she would remove from the diaries upon initial publication. Years later, Nin compiled the removed sections into one volume, the first of her unexpurgated diaries. It was called Henry and June, and detailed the letters and writings the two shared. The duality of Nin stretched throughout every aspect of her life.

These highly intimate journals struck twentieth-century American women directly in their souls. As one journalist famously put it in an article for The Conversation,

Anaïs Nin dreamed, in all senses. She dreamed of lives and possibilities. She dreamed in slumber and allowed her dreams to leak into the day. As I regularly committed the cardinal social sin of recounting my dreams over breakfast, she seemed a soulmate across oceans and generations (Gorman).

These teenage girls and their daydreams were instantly hooked on Nin's likeminded wonder and splendid prose. She became a sensation after the diary publications almost instantly, giving her a decent seat in literary history.

It wouldn't be long until something else gave her another boost of fame.

Ramon Casas, Decadent Young Woman. After the Dance, 1899

The Eroticist

In the late 1970s, Anais Nine published three volumes of erotic short fiction, each containing approximately ten stories. Despite their popularity, the term erotic is a tad inappropriate. Although she wasn't a follower of the transgressive art movement like Georges Bataille, Anais Nin's erotic stories are more disturbing and controversial than actually arousing.

Nin wrote about such topics as sexual abuse, incest, pedophilia, and other forms of sexual violence within her stories. These works would go on to shock and challenge readers even today (Maza).

Lost Lenore Antiques, Anais Nin ~ Little Birds and Delta of Venus ~ 1st Edition Books ~ Vintage Erotica, 27 August 2021

Works Cited

The Anais Nin Foundation. “bio — The Anais Nin Foundation.” The Anais Nin Foundation, https://theanaisninfoundation.org/bio. Accessed 11 December 2023.

Gorman, Alice. “The book that changed me: journeying to the self with Anaïs Nin's sensual, transgressive diaries.” The Conversation, 25 April 2022, https://theconversation.com/the-book-that-changed-me-journeying-to-the-self-with-ana-s-nins-sensual-transgressive-diaries-176135. Accessed 11 December 2023.

Maza, Sarah, and Paul Herron. “Swinging: The Double Life of Anaïs Nin.” Public Books, 19 February 2018, https://www.publicbooks.org/swinging-the-double-life-of-anais-nin/. Accessed 11 December 2023.

Nin, Anaïs. “Quotes from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin by Anaïs Nin.” BookQuoters, https://bookquoters.com/book/henry-and-june-from-a-journal-of-love-the-unexpurgated-diary-of-anais-nin. Accessed 11 December 2023.

Further Reading

#absurdism #french literature #academic aesthetic #academic writing #dark academia #academia #albert camus #academia aesthetic #english major #french #anais nin #delta of venus #diary #writeblogging #literature blog

[psychewritesbs]

My essay for class. Applying an existential lens to Sukuna. Don’t mind the leaps in logic. I had to take them to make the theory fit Sukuna’s character. Enjoy if you read. Share thoughts if you have them.

Ryomen Sukuna is a 1000-year-old sorcerer who has taken the idea of existential freedom very literally, thus resulting in imposing his sense of self upon those he deems as weaker. He likes to eat people, literally and metaphorically, and can be considered a hedonist. Sukuna claims to have lived a life devoid of higher ideals and finds “love” to be worthless but romanticizes the thrill of finding an equal.

He rejects versions of reality that don't align with his sense of self, but fails to realize his sense of self is limited by his definition of the world. He has been challenged to grow but continues to assert his will and in doing so only reinforces his confirmation bias about how he sees the world. According to Schneider and Krug (2009), one way to deal with an individual like Sukuna, is by exploring the limits of freedom. Sukuna is one-sided in his approach to meaning-making and fails to consider others, thus the limits of his freedom would involve acknowledging the value of the existence of others, even if it limits how he operates in the world. Easier said than done, but a way to help him reconcile the limits of his freedom might involve helping him sit with feelings of discomfort that might come from having his freedom challenged, and feelings of “enchantment” he experiences when he finds someone who might be able to challenge his perception of the world. Since he is Japanese, despite his predominantly individualistic worldview and mindset, it is important to help Sukuna by assessing his values (Kress & Seligman, 2021).

#idk even know how to tag this #wtv #something something

[fandomshatepeopleofcolor]

Do you know of any articles/posts discussing the fact that the majority of shows with a diverse cast are primarily police dramas? Brooklyn 99, The Rookie, L.A.’s Finest etc.

Hmmmmm so on the one hand the television industry is a bit of a hellscape but honestly I would question this assertion like yes the correlation is frustrating but just because police shows often feature actors of color, doesn’t mean that most shows featuring POC are police shows. Like okay off the top of my head, here are a few:

Harlem on Prime

2. Run The Burbs

3. Quantum Leap

4. Abbott Elementary

5. Interview With The Vampire

Honorable mention to NBC’s Found starring Shanola Hampton, imo the show took a little bit to find it’s footing and it’s only not a police show on a technicality but the core cast has done a solid job in their first season and they got picked up for a second season, so I’ll recommend it on this list

Anyone reading this feel free to send in an ask to shout out your favorite show featuring a majority non-white cast and ideally not a police show, always happy to boost 📨

• mod dyr

p.s. for the folks who enjoy/prefer YouTube video essays, Skip Intro has put out a ton of work re copaganda in entertainment https://youtube.com/@SkipIntroYT

#show recs #@atopcat fwiw i def remember some commentary articles addressing copaganda = poc casts when b99 was ending #but idk if there’s comprehensive / broad view articles yet about the police show = diverse cast correlation #also there is something to be said for venturing outside the mainstream but also the mainstream has options #like those first two might be niche ish but i think ? quantum leap and abbott and iwtv are all pretty solidly mainstream #but yeah like i said. always happy to boost this audience’s recs for shows or movies (esp featuring majority poc given the blog topic lol)

[sincerelyandyourstruly]

#boyyuri

on xiaoven & yearning

—

so as we all know, "yuri is when there’s themes and motifs and yaoi is when there’s two blokes who do fuck all. if you reblog this you love trans people." (tumblr user dyggot, 2023.); that "yaoi is about entanglement and yuri is about yearning." (tags by tumblr user thyminesquared, 2023, screenshot and archived on this post.)

as should be clear from these definitions, this essay is not going to concern itself with whether a pairing counts as "yaoi" or "yuri" on the sole basis of the genders of the characters involved. although i understand the deeply gendered connotations of both of these terms, to ME, yuri is about the distance between one’s self and others around them (maybe people, maybe dreams and ideals), and the deeply-rooted desires that grow in that gap as a result.

as a post made to tumblr, put in the xiaoven tag, everyone reading this knows the basic lore surrounding their characters and world: that venti is the anemo archon, god of wind and freedom; that xiao is the last yaksha, who wields the power of anemo in battle to protect his homeland of liyue; that Visions are considered to be representations of a person's dearest wish, crystallized into physical form. but let's run over the basics again real fast, just to keep this piece from having external dependencies to understand, yeah?

venti is a wind sprite from mondstadt who ascended to godhood at the end of a rebellion against the at-the-time god of storms keeping his people in a cage made of windstorm thousands of years ago, and he chose his ideal of freedom to honor the bard who led said rebellion and died at the end of the final battle, but whether the nameless bard even got to see the clear skies he fought so hard to live under is currently up to interpretation. either way, venti took on the nameless bard's appearance so that his nation's people would never forget the true hero who won their freedom, but because thousands of years have passed the people have kind of forgotten by now anyway, and venti probably has a lot of identity issues about it!

also he's a bard who plays music in exchange for wine because singing to pass on the memories of heroes past and then drinking to numb the grief of people's forgetting is how he Copes™.

AND ALSO he will occasionally sleep for hundreds of years at a time.

Meanwhile, xiao is an immortal/"illuminated beast" from liyue whose true form is technically that of a bird, but he goes around in the form of a hot emo boy, ostensibly because he needs hands to don his mask, hold his spear, and do his dance to conquer the remnants of evil gods, the act of which literally taints his soul with their sins— his karmic debts.

anyway he was enslaved by an evil god in his youth because said evil god (probably) knew his True Name and because we're going by fairy rules this means he was forced to commit atrocities (namely eating people's dreams) against his will until the god of contracts geo archon zhongli killed his previous master, gave him a new name, and contractually tasked him with the job of subduing the demonic remnants of other defeated gods, which he has since proceeded to unflinchingly, unwaveringly, and unquestioningly obey for the last few thousand years. however, despite his unfathomable obedience and devotion to his duty, his Vision (his life's greatest desire) is that of anemo (of freedom).

also a few hundred years ago when he was about to succumb to the weight of his karmic debts, xiao's life was saved by the sound of someone (venti) playing the flute in the marsh where he'd been working, and so now his dream, the deepest wish he holds closest to his heart, is to someday "wear the mask and dance — not to conquer demons, but to the tune of that flute amid a sea of flowers." (xiao's character card, genshin impact, 2021)

…can you guys believe that the dihua flute moment was like all we xv shippers had to hold onto for like two years?! that, and xiao's extremely yearnful voiceline abt venti that's just like, "venti? is that what he goes by these days? his tunes are… nevermind." but the point of this recap i hope has become clear by this point: that the relationship btwn xiao and venti seen through these few snippets alone is just rife with potent yuri energy.

like, to elaborate on the opening of thie essay, yuri is specifically about the uncross­able distance between two people who are already sitting right next to each other, so close that only a single thread of wind could even hope to weave its way between them— although, as evidenced by the fact that such a thread of wind could weave its way between them, they are still shy of truly touching— and the painful yearnings of being unable to close that gap… even though you both exist so close to one another, so similar in both place and time, you are the only thing stopping yourself from reaching across that seemingly infinite distance.

as a result, i think that unlike yaoi, yuri— thematically speaking— tends to have a greater mutuality to it: whereas i understand being in a yaoi to be more about acting on one's impulses towards one another and passing along cycles of power, i believe that an important aspect of being in a yuri is the constant fear and anxiety of violating an unspoken boundary because you're afraid that you aren't actually on the same page about those.

deep down inside, you know that you're not supposed to want all the things you've built for yourself in all those private daydreams and self-indulgent fantasies you've created about yourself with the other person, because you know you're not supposed to have drawn your boundaries the way you have, such that the other person would be let in on the most intimate parts of your identity (if they were willing to see all that is ugly sleeping under­neath your skin.)

as mentioned in the paragraph summarizing his lore, xiao's youth was marked by the fact that his very autonomy was continuously violated in service of forcing him to violate others' boundaries, crushing their hopes and devouring their very dreams. his deep cultural ties to liyue as the land of contracts means that he carries within him a keen sense of obligation as inseverable as the need to breathe; thus, saddled with guilt and believing himself to be incapable of gentility, he has come to view himself as nothing more than a weapon for others to use.

in signing his contract with the geo archon, xiao went from a situation where his agency was continuously denied and his boundaries intimately violated to one where he relinquished his agency and had his boundaries delineated for him by his new lord.

he has no desires of his own; immortals aren't so worldly. (if that were true, he wouldn't have a Vision.) he is not an active subject in his own life; anything he does is the effect of someone else's will. (if that were true, he would have stopped protecting liyue the moment that he learned his lord abdicated his rule.) he does not let anyone near him; it is inevitable that his karmic debts will force his hand against them. (if that were true, he wouldn't have been saved by the sound of venti's flute playing nearby.)

don't you see? he places himself in a subservient role to everyone around him, rigidly obeys every ritual of propriety, because he is afraid that by asserting agency over a situation, he will end up violating other people's boundaries again. except that this time, the responsibility for doing so would fall squarely on his own shoulders.

during the main quest arc for liyue, zhongli literally fakes his own death as an archon so that he can finally retire and be free from his own contractual obligation to the nation. this gives us reason to believe that xiao's contract with the geo archon has thus been rendered void, meaning he no longer has any obligation to continue his endless suffering for the sake of liyue— yet he does so anyway.

i think a lot of fans tend to view this as xiao needlessly chaining himself down to his duty, something that's often framed in fanworks as something rather tragic in venti's eyes. however, as the god of freedom, venti feels very strongly about giving other the freedom to make their own decisions, even if he himself may disagree with them or wish they had chosen differently. others' autonomy is deeply important to venti, perhaps even so far as to call it sacred: to order anything from anyone would be a violation for the boundaries venti has set for himself as an archon.

and because we're all familiar with genshin impact lore, what i have to say next should go without saying, we are all so familiar with it: the element of a person's Vision will be directly related to the kind of ideal they strive to meet and uphold, and as such, can generally tell you a lot about a person's desires.

xiao wields an anemo Vision— the only known anemo wielder in liyue until the arrival of xianyun, presumably because that is how deeply ingrained the binding sense of obligation is in its culture— and wears it visibly on his person at all times. it would be ridiculous not to believe that venti knows, and intimately so, just how xiao desires.

and i think that a lot of fans can fail to consider the idea that to xiao, his duty of protection is a choice he made of his own volition when he was first set free, and is, in all likelihood, one he continues to make in canon. yes, this choice comes with a great many obligations restraining him in various ways— but do our choices truly mean anything if they are not bound by obligation? this is something venti would obviously understand and respect as lines drawn in the sand by xiao himself, and he would never dare even suggest they be crossed.

it's clear from the various scraps of in-game lore that xiao craves proximity to and knowledge about his savior in the marsh. yet, he refuses to go out of his way to attain these things and will even deny ownership of these desires altogether because in a sense, they are blasphemy: venti, although not his archon, is still a god.

might seeking venti out over zhongli not be considered a sign of detracting, or perhaps even failing faith in the unwavering sureity of the geo archon? or even if it turns out that's not so— who is xiao to ask anything of venti? the god of freedom must surely be a flighty little thing, following his every capricious whim. to ask him to stay would be akin to tying him down, no?

clearly, there is no need for xiao to call out for him. if venti wants to be with him, he will simply be there.

(and if he doesn't, then he won't.)

((after all, it is the duty of the servant to wait on the master's call.))

it's easy to imagine that these two immortals might end up in a sort of song and dance of propriety for a while, that at fight might be genuine, but eventually just becomes habit and custom. they both want, in some way, for xiao to lay down his duty, to be free of the strict hierarchy of master & servant or god & disciple. but for venti to say it so plainly would feel like he's trying to convert xiao to his ideals— a discomfort that would more than likely only be compounded by how seriously xiao takes the word of god(s), and how expressly venti hates being treated like anything but an equal— and so he would hesitate on his feelings; whereas for xiao to speak of his desires so plainly, it would feel like a betrayal of his duty— that which he chose to shoulder as his first act of free will.

you see it, right? the gap between these two characters, whose lives will otherwise touch and cross over and over through their long, immortal lives, and the mutual desires they can both plainly and painfully read in one another, yet never individually act upon due to their already-established senses of propriety, tradition, and boundaries?

these are the basic yuriisms of xiaoven genshinimpact.

#xiaoven #long post #only reason i put part of this post under a cut is bc it's 2111 words so in the interest of being polite i put 1356 of them under the cut #anyway happy birthday to xiao my son my melancholy yearnful boy c': #adapting this essay to the context of tumblr was more work than i anticipated #but i think it pairs nicely w/my xv moon/moon essay from a while back c: #i've actually been sitting on this one for a few months now; this entire chunk got cut from my submission to yaoizine vol 3 (yurizine) #and if you haven't had your brain chemistry altered by the yaoizines published by tshirt. what are you doing. go read them

[indexcard]

i was tagged by @tobermoriansass to share the top 10 books i read in 2023! i went through a number of phases... as you may see... and read a lot more nonfiction than i have in previous years. it was fun! i'll be keeping up the pace this year too!

catch-22 by joseph heller - okay, this was a reread, but a much-needed one; catch-22 was my favourite book as a seventeen year old and i'd kept meaning to revisit it. fittingly, for a book that mostly takes place in hospitals, i mostly read this while largely couch-bound with an ankle injury. i felt a little prescient. i once again experienced transcendence. 10/10 perfect book

the social photo by nathan jurgenson - a quick, absorbing read on photographic theory in relation to photography as a means of communication in the age of social media. not to be dramatic but i do think everyone needs to read this

the committed by viet thanh nguyen - he really fucking lays into the french in this one

society of the spectacle by guy debord - i actually read about half of this in 2021 and only finished it last year, and then decided to base my entire personality around it. do recommend

L.A. woman by eve babitz - not as good as "slow days, fast company" but it's always a pleasure to spend time with eve

lyrical and critical essays by albert camus - is it cheating to include an essay collection? i really uhhh developed a parasocial relationship with camus over the course of reading these essays. they're so personal, you really get a sense of who he was. i was actually legitimately quite heartbroken by the end because it meant our time together was at a pause. i will almost certainly be rereading these, though.

set the night on fire by mike davis and jon weiner - yes i DID carry this 700-page history book around with me for three+ months thank you for asking

pale fire by vladimir nabokov - it's a real "what the fuck did i just read" kind of book, and nabokov's prose is really just outrageously lush. platonic ideal of the midcentury Dude Novel, a genre i'm looking to explore further in 2024

comments on the society of the spectacle by guy debord - did you think i was done?????

play it as it lays by joan didion - i honestly can't say i "liked" this novel but i am OBSESSED with didion's prose. it's so aspirational to me. she manages both density of information and minimalism somehow; her character portraits are exquisite. another author i plan to big-time revisit this year.

tagging @snakemix and @dykedteach because i know you guys read a lot, but anyone else who wants to do this please steal and then tag me 🙏🏻

#questionnaire

[lenaschin]

Critical Television Analysis: The Good Place

On the surface, The Good Place is well-loved, hilarious, and surrounds a diverse cast with characters that differ from identity-related stereotypes. The show surrounds Eleanor, who wakes up in heaven, referred to as the “Good Place,” alongside Tahani, Jason, and Chidi (who is labeled her soulmate). Michael is the supposed leader of the “Good Place,” but we later discover that–in alignment with Eleanor’s selfishness–he is actually a devil and this is the “Bad Place.” The characters’ out-of-placeness (except for Tahani and Chidi, who initially think they belong) is meant to be their eternal torture, but Eleanor’s repeated solving of this mystery results in endless reboots and failures. The series ends when the humans team up with Michael and they realize that the entire system is off, as everyone is being sent to the “Bad Place” based on its unattainable, binary measures of morality. They successfully reform the system, resulting in Michael’s transformation into a good being–and living out his fantasy of being a ‘human’ on Earth–and Eleanor, Chidi, and Jason transforming into blissful nothingness while Tahani helps to design a better afterlife. 

Photo: Michael and Eleanor.

Although we eventually learn that everyone is being sent to the “Bad Place,” the show’s group of focus is diverse (through their sexuality, gender, or race), generalizing “Bad” people to be those who defy hegemonic norms. This mirrors our current society, especially with those in control being white men (like Michael & the other Devils, and one white female judge) with outdated ideology–I explore this further in my video essay. While the final message of the show recognizes this point system as flawed, revealing the lack of a binary good/badness (the main point of my video essay), it doesn’t at all explore the sexual, gendered, and racial aspects of the characters’ intersectional experiences, making the show more hegemonic than not. I analyze the portrayal of specific characters and how these may be negatively interpreted by viewers despite this show’s positive overall message. 

Photo: Tahani, Jason, Eleanor, and Chidi as they stand before the judge and request the chance to 'start' life--and their "Good" vs "Bad" point count--from scratch.

I critique responses to The Good Place that commend its progressiveness based on the fact that its cast is racially diverse and they don’t align with traditional stereotypes, and instead suggest that in this case, “not all representation is good representation” (Hsu, 2021). The show fails to reconstruct intersectional identities in a positively ‘different’ way due to its “color-blind” approach, which disregards, rather than reconstructs, gendered and racialized oppression throughout history. The non-hegemonic aspects of characters’ racial or gender identities are dampened through their adoption of traits that reinforce hegemonic ideology; this is particularly prominent among the female characters, however I address the male characters prior to my conclusion. Primarily, each female character represents an atypical, but similarly problematic form of femininity that continues to reflect the male gaze; Eleanor’s narrative control as a woman is dampened through her alignment with hegemonic masculinity–this is heightened by Chidi’s femininity (perpetuating an innate gender binary), Janet’s non-binary identity is overridden by their similarity to the ideal, domesticated woman (reasserting heteronormativity as the norm), and Tahani’s Pakistani background is misportrayed through her assumption of a privileged white-washed identity (making racial histories invisible) (Kaplan, 2010). Kaplan, Shohat, and Diawari note that the significance of media’s portrayal of gender and race lies in its influence on the minds of its viewers; what media constructs is perpetuated and eventually, realized within our own reality, pointing to the significance of recognizing ideological media as such before its perpetuation. While the presence of three female characters in the show’s main ensemble provide us with the illusion of gender equality, upon closer analysis it is clear that each reinforces problematic stereotypes surrounding race and gender. 

Primarily, the protagonist is a white woman–the show opens with a shot of her face, bright and glowing, and follows her perspective throughout the narrative. Eleanor’s non-feminine, general indifference is framed as the essence of her personality, and resultantly, the reason behind her punishment. Kaplan notes that attempts to reconstruct female characters in defiance to gender norms can fail through their consistent creation of a male/female binary; “our culture is deeply committed to clearly demarcated sex differences.” Eleanor illustrates Kaplan’s point that emerging female “representation” remains binarized, as she adopts a specifically masculine position that is characterized by her lack of “traditionally feminine traits,” particularly, her “cold and manipulative” personality (Kaplan, 2010). Flashbacks of Eleanor’s life on Earth revealed that everyone hated her because of her manipulative ways and carelessness surrounding others’ feelings. On Earth, Eleanor used to get drunk before going out with her work colleagues on the night she was designated driver, just to joke that the only place she’d be driving was through the “loophole” she found in the system… When she’s (finally) forced to stay sober and drive, she pretends to be doing it out of care for her friends to get the bartender’s attention, and later chooses going home with him while stranding her drunk friends at the bar. Needless to say, Eleanor isn’t invited to go out with her colleagues again.

This careless emotionlessness is counteracted by Chidi’s “kindness, humaneness, and motherliness,” evident in the fact that his personality surrounds his nervous awkwardness and indecisiveness based on a desire to make the most moral, utilitarian decisions possible (Kaplan, 2010). Many viewers think Chidi illustrates “positive masculinity,” but his emotionality and indecisiveness–alongside a resulting inability to “take action” in the way Eleanor does–suggest he may align with the feminized role as described by Kaplan (Kaplan, 2010). Moreover, Chidi is used to counteract Eleanor’s masculinity and keep the gendered binary “structure intact” despite the supposed stray from hegemonic gender norms (Diawara 2014, Kaplan, 2010).  

The idea of Eleanor’s defiance of traditionally feminine gender norms is directly framed as related to her “badness” through her narrative arc, in which her transformation into a “good person” directly aligns with her acceptance of hegemonic femininity; she adopts “kindness, humaneness, and motherliness” and heteronormativity (Kaplan, 2010). When the humans are given the chance to live again and restart their point count, Eleanor struggles; as soon as Chidi kisses her and they recognize their feelings, she finally does better on Earth and becomes “good.” While one could argue the arc’s alignment with heteronormativity is purely coincidental, it contrasts with the show’s previous focus on Eleanor’s bisexuality, aka, its queerbaiting of Eleanor. Throughout early seasons, Eleanor frequently commented on Tahani’s attractiveness, and even came close to kissing Simone (Chidi’s gf at the time); the usage of her bisexuality is, in itself, framed inappropriately comically, and coincides with her previously “masculine” traits– carelessness, moral indifference, and lack of romantic interest in Chidi–suggesting non-heteronormativity to be similarly negative. Moreover, the fact that Eleanor is a woman does not necessarily mean she’s a progressive character, as is evident in her adoption of a non-feminine, but similarly binary form of masculinity, the presence of Chidi as a feminine counterpart , and the show’s aligning of her bisexuality with “badness.”

Photo: Eleanor and Tahani

Janet, a white character, is framed as the perfect woman, which is problematic due to their identification as non-binary, both because it is transphobic and frames servitude (her main purpose) as innately feminine. Primarily, I noticed that Janet mirrors our assignment of femininity to technological sources of servitude: Siri, Alexa, GPS navigation, “the number you have dialed is not in service…” Like these objects, Janet’s “servitude and obedience” are viewed as innately feminine, and are thus assigned a feminine identity (James, 2018). Despite Janet’s attempts to reclaim their lack of alignment with societal labeling norms through the consistent assertion that they are not female, but rather a vessel of knowledge (equating themself to AI), characters always call them a “girl.” Janet never argues with this misgendering, and instead responds with a smile and a kind, “Once again, I’m not a girl” (Beck, 2023). While Janet’s character could have been an opportunity to explore a non-hegemonic perspective, the show harms non-binary identities more than it supports them, by enabling characters to misgender Janet and using their feminine appearance (always fresh, made-up, and in a dress) and feminine subservience to justify this assumption as comically obvious and justifiable (Beck, 2023). The show actually perpetuates their femininity so much that their character is referred to as a girl both within and out of the narrative (among characters and audience members). In the end, Janet is framed as a woman in nature despite their assertion of being non-binary, both aligning femininity with object-ness and servitude and framing non-binary identities as lacking personhood. The show uses Janet as a diversity point without truly questioning binarized views of gender; Janet’s consistent positivity and agreeability disregard the harm of misgendering, and actually works to justify the characters who misgender her by framing Janet’s “femme” physicality and personality as evidence of their ‘obvious’ femininity (Beck, 2023). 

Just as Janet’s intersectionality is subdued through their over feminization, the only other intersectional identity (and the only non-white woman) of focus–Tahini–is made palatable through the show’s white-washing of her personality. While Tahani is a first generation Pakistani in the United Kingdom, her struggle-free experience in white-dominated high society disregards a perspective representative of non-white culture, and instead hides it with a British accent and Tahani’s infinite wealth. Tahani’s lack of race-related struggles are completely disregarded through her defining trait: selfishness. Even her greatest deeds, such as organizing charities on Earth, were all based on selfish intentions surrounding her parents’ validation. Her biggest struggle is framed as her sister’s fame, specifically, her parents’ heightened love of her sister, which aligns with Tahani’s inherent self-focused attitude. In this way, UK’s historical colonization of Pakistan and the current othering of British Pakistani are made invisible. (Aljazeera, 2023). As noted by Shohat, attempting to re-frame gendered and racial history (patriarchy and colonialism) is not always done in an “unproblematic” way, just as The good Place’s color-blindness to Tahani’s racial history actually perpetuates social ignorance of historical oppression. In alignment with Shohat’s explanation of the “mark of the plural,” in which any “negative behavior” (Tahani’s personality-defining selfishness) is viewed differently based on the characters’ race, Tahani’s characterization is more likely to be generalized to Pakistani people than Eleanor’s would be to white people (Shohat, 2014). Tahani’s obliviousness to her culture’s oppression projects a falsely generalized idea of this racialized history as insignificant among Pakistani despite its continued prevalence.

While I mainly focus on female identities (complicated by Janet), The Good Place frames the experiences of Jason, and Chidi (in addition to Tahani) as completely unaffected by their race. Jason’s ability to pass as a Taiwanese monk due to him being Asian–despite the fact that he’s from Florida and is not a monk–perpetuates essentialist ideology surrounding sameness based on race, and his heightened lack of intelligence is a poor choice for the only Asian representation throughout the show. Chidi’s violation of hegemonic masculinity (through his emotionality, indecisiveness, etc.) being framed as the reason he resides in the Bad place aligns with problematic characterizations of Black characters “playing by hegemonic rules and losing” (Diawara, 2014). More broadly, the fact that Chidi, Jason, and Tahani are supporting characters for a white woman–like many other characters of color–repaints white-washed film narratives in which POC don’t hesitate to “protect” the “same order that has punished and disciplined” them (Diawara, 2014).

The afterlife’s similarity to Earth suggests its culture as to be reminiscent of our own, however, the color-blind attitude of the main characters disregards the rampant racism that we still work to subdue. Unfortunately, The Good Place’s opportunity to explore an array of perspectives and lived experiences through characters’ diverse backgrounds is lost, even just based on the nature of their show; they do not take into account that the negative representations assigned to each of its characters have a different impact on their community. The fact that a white man created “The Good Place” isn’t surprising, and points to Shohat’s recognition of the necessity for “historically marginalized” groups to “control their own representation” to avoid reproducing something from a white audience’s lens of “pleasure” (Shohat, 2014).

Photo: Tahani and Jason.

Works Cited:

Beck. “‘I’m Not a Girl’: Janet, Nonbinary Representation and ‘The Good Place.’” The Spool. Accessed December 12, 2023. 

Diawara, Manthia. "13 Black Spectatorship: Problems of Identification and Resistance." Black American Cinema (2012).

Hsu, Leina, Ruchi Wankhede, Ayan Omar, and Jennifer Ammann. “No, the Good Place’s Jason Mendoza Does Not Defy Asian Stereotypes.” Women’s Republic, March 1, 2021. 

James, et al. “The Other Secret Twist: On the Political Philosophy of the Good Place.” Los Angeles Review of Books, October 13, 2018. 

Kaplan, E. Ann. "Is the gaze male?." (2010).

Shohat, Ella, and Robert Stam. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the media. Routledge, 2014.

Staff, Al Jazeera. “Braverman Words on British Pakistani Men Discriminatory: Pakistan.” Al Jazeera, April 5, 2023.

@theuncannyprofessoro #oxyspeculativetv #speculativetvanalysis

#oxyspeculativetv #speculativetvanalysis

[utilitycaster]

In the Locked Tomb series, the villain of the first book ends up being Cytherea, Lyctor of the Seventh House. She, like most lyctors, epitomizes her house. The Seventh House serves to celebrate the beauty found in death and decay: "They draw out moments of beauty, preserving people, places, and times in amber for later dissection and delectation."[1] Cytherea is herself nigh-immortal, as a lyctor, and also eternally dying of a terminal illness. Her plan is to eliminate the heirs of the houses to prevent there ever being other lyctors, destroy the Emperor (and Empire), and in doing so, be destroyed herself.

She succeeds only in her final goal. The Seventh House's predilection for those preserved-amber moments is its undoing, as its heir is slaughtered by its lyctor, and its lyctor driven to seek death because of her unending pain, but unable to do even that with peace and dignity, as ending her life means ending what remains of her cavalier, who, by the nature of the lyctor process, must be an eternal sacrifice.

Given the author's background in fandom (particularly fanfiction) and internet culture[2][3] and the many references to that both textually and metatextually within the series, it is not out of line to assume that the Empire, constructed in-universe in our near future and stagnated for ten thousand years at the start of the series contains commentary for, among many other things, fandom itself. The plight of Cytherea explores the fallacies inherent in a number of common trends in fanon.

Cytherea explores, as do all the original lyctors, the trope of lifespan angst. In Harrow the Ninth, we learn that the requirement of cavalier sacrifice is a profound source of guilt for the necromancers who experience it, even millennia later. It is then revealed that the sacrifice was always avoidable. By the end of Nona the Ninth, only one "imperfect" lyctor remains of the seven there have been, and she is newly ascended within the past few months, underscoring the unsustainable nature of this trope.

Cytherea, and the Seventh House's philosophy, can also be interpreted as a critique of "woobification", of angst for the sake of angst, and of the prioritization of the aesthetic with no consideration of consequence. It is precisely Cytherea's combination of incredible power and endless pain without respite that destabilizes her utterly. The preservation of that which is by its nature ephemeral is itself her destruction - and deconstruction. The attempt to create something from a mortal being that must simultaneously embody fleeting beauty, saintly tragedy, and near godlike power, and which must exist in this state, as a public figure, for eternity, ultimately becomes, not once, but twice, a vehicle through which corruption, failure, and ruin enters what was meant to be a sanctuary.

In the Critical Role fandom, the ultimately impossible ideals imposed upon Cytherea which lead to her downfall are reflected in the similarly impossible expectations some fans have regarding the characters played by the women of the cast (and, in extreme cases, those women themselves), most notably those of Marisha Ray. In this essay I will

Rocket, Stubby the. "Find Your Necromancy Family Among the Houses of Gideon The Ninth". Tor.com. Written Sep 20 2019, Accessed Dec 9 2022.

Grady, Constance. "How Gideon the Ninth author Tamsyn Muir queers the space opera". Vox.com. Written Feb 5 2021, Accessed Dec 9 2022.

Clements, Mikaela. "The Butch Lesbian Sci-Fi Aesthetic: A Conversation With Tamsyn Muir". Los Angeles Review of Books. Written Oct 1 2020, Accessed Dec 9 2022.

#sometimes you get a really cursed thought and just need to ride it #not maintagged in either fandom but fine to reblog or what have you

[angelosearch]

A quick little meditation I wrote on why it is so painful to update my resume. I may delete this later because I might turn it into a larger personal essay piece.

It is 10:35 am and I am sitting in front of my laptop’s brutally large screen, fixating on the thin line the blinks on the document in front of me.

The document is my résumé, circa December 2021.

That was two years. That was one hospital stay, three intensive outpatient programs, and a two month stay in residential care ago. That was two jobs ago. The person reflected in this document represents an ideal self that I no longer aspire to embody: A girl, reeling from the reckoning of her CPTSD, hanging on the vestiges of a career that constantly reminded her of her flaws and insignificance.

And in that torrent of criticism and mistreatment, she felt at home. Her jobs became her family. If she could just be enough, then they would see her, then they would understand that she shouldn’t have to push herself to the brink of mania to earn their love. But even when they did try to claim she was talented, she twisted the words into lies and duties. This was the bare minimum. This is what she had to do. She was not worthy of real admiration.

Yet, she constantly kept trying to outrun one family to try to find one that would treat her differently, somehow without altering the contract of her contact. This document is a map of that attempt of escape, littered with sparkling phrases like “proficient in project management” and “developed effective marketing strategy.” Do any of these phrases truly fit what she has done? Is anything she has ever accomplished impressive in any way?

“Has anyone ever believed in you in your entire life?” One boss once asked her.

The question from the democratic ex-mayoral candidate turned marketing director caused her to spin out.

If they have, I’ve never recognized it—for all words in a language that you do not speak sound like gibberish the first time you hear them.

This man made her feel as though he believed in her, and she said as much on one autumn morning in the lobby of a hotel in Phoenix, Arizona where they had just pulled off a successful presentation as exhibitors at a conference.

But she required too much patience and too much medical leave when her illness reached its peak. He fired her on the phone while a messy medication transition left her unable to move for several days. He did so subtly that she had no idea she had lost her job, her purpose, until human resources called and explained how to return her computer.

That’s the last entry on the résumé.

I am changing this document to capture a version of myself who belongs in an Art Therapy graduate program. It reads like an obituary for a woman who knew nothing of setting boundaries or connecting with her inner child.

If she is not dead, I’d like to kill her.

But how can I shape this disparate smattering of “wear a lot of hats” skills into something that resembles the creativity, compassion, and emotional intelligence required of an Art Therapist?

Résumé and resume are such similar words in the English language that the modern spelling of the former word has dropped it’s accents to be more easily written online. To resume is to pick up after a pause—but I have always been told negative space in your work history is unacceptable.

But despite that, I am resuming. This isn’t even my first period of resume.

It’s funny how those gaps on your résumé are seen as something negative. I’ve learned more, and more valuable, things in the times between my jobs than I ever did in them. I cannot explain it in bullet points or with stop and end dates, but I do have experience with creativity and compassion and emotional intelligence. I’ve sat on a couch instead of an office chair and I’ve grabbed tissues instead of leaflets. I talked a woman, frightened and in chronic pain, through her first few days of residential care. I’ve been told my capacity for vulnerability makes space for others.

Can I list the applause I got from my peers as I left the treatment center as professional recognition?

No. We all must come to our places of work as unbroken things who swear their lives to the job. We get paid to lie about not just being there to be paid. The only true passion you must clock in for is the passion to stay alive.

I hope that the world of Art Therapy is different, but upfront I must pretend that I have an acceptable amount of trauma and valuable work experiences.  It’s makeup over a scar on my neck that looks like a hickey—an undeniable part of me too easily misunderstood to be revealed at the offset.

The true contents of what may make me good at my job may never be revealed to my colleagues, peers, or clients, and certainly will not be quantified on this document.

And so I move sections around on my resume like puzzle pieces and hope it matches the picture on the box.

#personal #extremely personal #art therapy #journaling #personal essay #needs editing but there are some lines I like #kinda vent #kinda rant #more than you ever wanted to know about me probably

[alexhwriting]

Unpacking The Plum: Manet’s Footnote Painting

This essay was written as the capstone to my art history major at Wayne State and remains a work that I'm particularly proud of. I'm including the name of the class and professor, since those are important, and I've ordered the images at the bottom of the post in descending order. Image 1 is figure 1, image 2 is figure 2, etc. Otherwise, the body of the text remains unedited from what I submitted to Dr. Olmsted.

AH 5710

Dr. Olmsted

April 25th, 2021

The Plum[1] by Édouard Manet is an often-discussed piece in his oeuvre to show how the earliest of the painters of modern life handled images of women and as a foil to the ever-popular image of lounging Olympia[2]. However, while this painting is often mentioned it is rarely unpacked in depth, with the figure’s more precise identity up to speculation. This is partially due to what Manet is so often praised for accomplishing: realism and ambiguity. There is some speculation as to the occupation, social class, and purpose of the figure that takes up such a large portion of the canvas. Clues lie in her clothing, visible behaviors, and the titular plum that resides in an intricate glass of brandy. This paper looks to explore the available information about the woman. What is her likely occupation? What is the implication of her sitting at this café table alone? Why does she seem completely oblivious to the viewer, yet retain Manet’s signature unavailability? By looking through some of the situations regarding the artist himself, the café culture that was ubiquitous with Paris in the late 1800s, and examination of similar works of women and figures of various social classes, this paper looks to gain a deeper understanding of The Plum. Ideally, as more than just a footnote at the end of a biography[3].

The painting itself is a portrait, or perhaps a one-figure genre scene, showing a woman in a pink dress sitting alone at a marble café table as she looks off into the distance away from the viewer. One hand supports her head, while the other holds an unlit cigarette, both hands exposed with no fashionable gloves in sight. Before her, on the table, sits a single glass with a plum and brandy inside it, though she does not appear to have had any of it yet. The style avoids much modelling, and flattens the image significantly with visible brush strokes, making the constructed nature of the painting known to the viewer. The setting of the image, the café, which is seen in the distinctive marble table style and the latticework behind the figure’s head, serves as a good backdrop for both Manet and unpacking the information that would have been known to Parisians in 1877.

In the Paris of the 19th century, food and the café atmosphere were large parts of daily life, often discussed as new restaurants emerged frequently in the large city, prompting many discussions about the cuisine of the city[4]. By the 1880s, cafés of all different types were available for residents and visitors of the city of lights[5]. They became increasingly popular as a business model and as a cultural fixture, frequented often by the impressionists in the case of Café Guerbois[6]. This is benefitted by the natural landscape of France, which is able to support the growth of all different types of flora and fauna that would make a diverse spread of food available to much of the population[7]. They even gained new language to better describe the people who would often visit cafés, calling them Habitués, people who would habitually return to their restaurant of choice[8]. Often going to a café was a social affair, with patrons coming in groups[9] or meeting with specifically “café friends,” those who one would meet and talk with specifically in the context of a cafe[10]. Some of these Habitués would even garner nicknames for themselves among the groups of other café goers, distinguishing them by physical characteristics such as dress or clothing, and these usually took the form of such phrases as “le décoré” for someone who often wore army medals[11]. This rings a bell as a similar form for the French title of The Plum, La Prune.

While many people would go to the café alone, or specifically to mingle at the café[12], this was not something that was available for all sexes (as is so often the case in modern period cultures). It was considered uncouth for women to go alone to these places to socialize[13], especially so for women who were more scrutinized in public; those of the upper classes. This leads The Plum to show a scene that is strange in the isolation of a female figure, something that would have been seen as indicative of her lack of attention to proper café customs. However, it would not have been uncommon for a woman to go to a café alone if her profession were more illicit. Prostitution took hold in the restaurant scene in the 19th century as they could be used as spaces for more clandestine meetings between women and clients[14]. These meetings would often lead to the actual transaction occurring in a place other than the café establishment but were encouraged by an air of availability when a woman came without a companion. In addition to this, there was a societal connection drawn between food and sex that emerged from the availability and consumption of both in the same type of building[15].

It does not help the case against the cafés of Paris that the city had recently seen an increase in a type of business referred to as Brasseries à femmes, café that employed young women and girls as waitresses who would often flirt with the customers[16]. These very irreputable businesses gave many of the working-class restaurants around Paris a slightly more unfortunate reputation[17]. This even gave a seedier reputation to more middle-class cafés as well, affecting the perception of the Folies-Bergère[18]. While this reputation may have been somewhat warranted, the reputation was still affected regardless as the brasseries became more known and understood for their services around the city. This was all the more appealing for those who looked to paint modern life, however, for whom the sexuality of the city was seen as indicative of the new fast paced modern age of decay[19].

However, the availability of a woman alone in a café is not precise, and there is always wiggle room, especially in Manet’s works[20]. The cigarette and isolation lead to one interpretation, but her contemplative expression and obliviousness to the viewer give another[21]. Hollis Clayson suggests that the viewer is thwarted in their access to her by the lack of any sense of seduction, while there is no consumption of the food or smoking to suggest that she is also for consumption[22]. Carol Armstrong, who uses The Plum as an interpretive foil to Woman Reading[23][24], cites the posture of the woman as something that belies her iniquity as it is reminiscent of the pose of his Absinthe Drinker[25] from nearly two decades prior[26]. Though this seems to be a bit more on tenuous grounds as the pose is merely a gentle lean in both paintings and given Manet’s interest in the realism of Courbet[27], seems more likely a consequence of their respective seating than an indicator of character. Something similar could be said of the pose of the central figure in Bar at the Folies-Bergère[28], as she leans against the counter towards the viewer, save for the artist’s continued rejection of the traditional visual language of sexuality in 19th century Paris[29].

Drawing comparisons between Absinthe Drinker and The Plum is certainly an interesting pairing as well. Given their historical distance in a time of great upheaval and change in Paris, they do have some similarities. Ewa Lajer-Burcharth places great emphasis on the costuming and almost parody aspect, the playing with expectations that the Absinthe Drinker would have had during its Salon submission[30]. This mirrors Armstrong’s interest in the clothing and painterly quality to the brushstrokes as they render the clothing of the woman in The Plum[31]. And both, as figures of more working-class origins based on their costumes, serve to pull more towards an interest in the more Marxist leanings of Lajer-Burcharth’s interpretation[32]. Both works are engaged with this kind of focused modernity in the same way as well, with the interest in clothing and their existence in a modern world being the primary subject in lieu of a more narrative-styled image.

Though another place to look for parallels to The Plum would be in other specifically café scenes like with Woman Reading. Bradley Collins compares The Plum with Chez le Père Lathuille[33] in the similarity of still action in a café, containing the fleeting moment, but in a sense of the fleeting moment of a person’s life rather than the mechanical pace of modernity[34]. Despite being another brief reference to The Plum, this puts a unique trajectory on the interpretation. For example, thinking of it as a snapshot of one of the slower aspects of 19th century Parisian life along with Manet’s interest in the complicated individual over the archetypal café prostitute, could this be an image regarding simply a person experiencing their day, immortalized in paint only by association with the post-Haussmann Paris? This would be somewhat on the uncharacteristic side, given the academic thoroughness of many of Manet’s other works around this time and earlier[35].

Therese Dolan has her own take on the work of Manet in the changing cityscape of Paris, taking his work in conjunction with the writings of Baudelaire to make an updated and modern aesthetic to match their environment[36]. In this style of interpretation, which focuses on the modernism of the paintings, both the poet and artist create kind of scaffolding for future artists to be able to paint the milieu of city life that was unconstrained by older styles of artistic interpretation[37]. This would make sense as an atmosphere that The Plum would fit into, disrupting the modes of genre painting and of portrait, while removing the overt sexuality that would be present in portraits of women of the time. This also follows with the earlier possibility of the painting dealing with a more focused modernity and even the kind of anonymity that would be present in the crowded café scene of 1877[38].

In many ways there are similarities to be drawn, as well, from the central female figure in The Bar at the Folies-Bergère, particularly in the interiority that is shown from just her facial expression[39]. Additionally there is a similar placement to the still life elements within the pair of paintings, the titular plum next to the woman’s left hand matched by the vase of flowers on the bar in front of the waitress. While the Plum is several years older than Bar at the Folies-Bergère, there is still foreshadowing in the plum itself that gives a hint to the still life interest that Manet will develop later and eventually make obvious in the features on the marble bar in the Bar. There is a similar disinterest in the viewer as well, despite the more direct gaze of the waitress. This is the sense of interiority that gives each of these women a realism about them beyond the surface level, the appearance of thinking and even being more absorbed by their thoughts than whatever position the viewer occupies just beyond the fourth wall of the canvas. This open-ended nature of The Plum is remarked upon by Clayson, who uses this to place the work of Manet in the 1870s apart from his contemporaries like Degas and Renoir[40]

To summarize, The Plum has very little direct scholarship written about it, and most of the sources used for this paper are tied to the handling of similar topics in other more frequently discussed paintings that Manet made. However, there are some intriguing possibilities that come out when taking more careful consideration of the piece itself. It has a bit more of an interest in the mystery of the figure. Now, that sounds very close to a Manet calling card, but rather than trying to pick the clothing, plum, and general figure apart to gain answers, perhaps the anonymity is exactly what the painter was aiming to achieve. It simulated, though little space around the figure herself, the small space of a café, and the kind of vignette that would be seen there. If the viewer were stood looking across a room, and saw a woman sitting alone, there is very little that would be properly known about her in that moment. Rather, she would be known only by her usual order, maybe a typical piece of clothing, or some other surface level identifier. She may have any type of occupation, but the mystery of knowing only inferences from her appearance makes part of the atmosphere of the image as a whole. Her raison d’être is to be an unknown woman from across the bar it seems.

 Initially this project was started with the idea that it would be possible to discover the meaning behind the plum, what kind of intentions Manet had given his previous works with such academic references as Olympia. However, in searching that turned out to not be the case. Instead the culture around food and public spaces, the handling of other similar figures, and the artists own disposition had to fill in the gaps for topics to explore throughout this essay. Given the chance, a trip to France, really, there could be much more to learn and dissect in this painting. Many questions remained unanswered by the end of my research: what does the plum mean? What kind of symbolism is at play here? What would contemporary Parisians have known during their interactions with such a piece? Could “the plum” reference a nickname? Perhaps those are questions for a full-time scholar and professional researcher to find the answer to. Though, the painting now has a dedicated piece of text to it, not just as a footnote or comparison image in the tradition that goes all the way back to Duret’s contemporary accounts.

[1] Fig. 1.

[2] Fig. 2.

[3] Duret, Théodore, and Flitch, J E Crawford. Manet and the French Impressionists: Pissarro--Claude Monet--Sisley--Renoir--Berthe Morisot--Cézanne--Guillaumin. (London: Grant Richards, 1910). 245.

[4] Richardson, Joanna. “Eating in Paris.” (History Today 26 (February 1976): 125–31). 128.

[5] Haine, W. Scott. “'Café Friend': Friendship and Fraternity in Parisian Working-Class Cafés, 1850-1914.” (Journal of Contemporary History 27, no. 4 (1992): 607–26). 609-610.

[6] Duret, Manet and the French Impressionists: Pissarro--Claude Monet--Sisley--Renoir--Berthe Morisot--Cézanne—Guillaumin. 76.

[7] Richardson, “Eating in Paris.” 126.

[8] Haine, “’Café Friend’: Friendship and Fraternity in Parisian Working-class Cafés.” 612.

[9] Haine, “’Café Friend’: Friendship and Fraternity in Parisian Working-class Cafés.” 612.

[10] Haine, “’Café Friend’: Friendship and Fraternity in Parisian Working-class Cafés.” 614.

[11] Haine, “’Café Friend’: Friendship and Fraternity in Parisian Working-class Cafés.” 616.

[12] Haine, “’Café Friend’: Friendship and Fraternity in Parisian Working-class Cafés.” 612.

[13] Haine, “’Café Friend’: Friendship and Fraternity in Parisian Working-class Cafés.” 617.

[14] Ross, Andrew Israel. “Serving Sex: Playing with Prostitution in the Brasseries à Femmes of Late Nineteenth-Century Paris.” (Journal of the History of Sexuality 24, no. 2 (2015): 288–313). 300.

[15] Ross, Serving Sex: Playing with Prostitution in the Brasseries à Femmes of Late Nineteenth-Century Paris.” 300.

[16] Ross, Serving Sex: Playing with Prostitution in the Brasseries à Femmes of Late Nineteenth-Century Paris.” 288.

[17] Ross, Serving Sex: Playing with Prostitution in the Brasseries à Femmes of Late Nineteenth-Century Paris.” 290.

[18] Collins, Bradford R., and John House. “In Front of Manet's Bar: Subverting the ‘Natural.’” Essay. In 12 Views of Manet's Bar, 233–49. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996). 237.  

[19] House, “In Front of Manet’s Bar: Subverting the ‘Natural.’” 242.

[20] Clayson, Hollis. Painted Love: Prostitution in French Art of the Impressionist Era. (Los Angeles, CA: The Getty Research Institute, 2003). 99.

[21] Clayson, Painted Love: Prostitution in French Art of the Impressionist Era. 99-100.

[22] Clayson, Painted Love: Prostitution in French Art of the Impressionist Era. 99.

[23] Fig. 3.

[24] Armstrong, Carol, and Manet Édouard. Manet Manette. (New Haven: Yale, 2002). 244-250.

[25] Fig. 4.

[26] Armstrong, Manet Manette. 244.

[27] Lajer-Burcharth, Ewa. “Modernity and the Condition of Disguise: Manet's ‘Absinthe Drinker.’” (Art Journal 45, no. 1 (1985): 18–26). 18-19.

[28] Fig. 5.

[29] House, “In Front of Manet’s Bar: Subverting the ‘Natural.’” 239.

[30] Lajer-Burcharth, “Modernity and the Condition of Disguise: Manet’s ‘Absinthe drinker.’” 21.

[31] Armstrong, Manet Manette. 244-245.

[32] Lajer-Burcharth, “Modernity and the Condition of Disguise: Manet’s ‘Absinthe drinker.’” 21.

[33] Fig. 6.

[34]Collins, Bradley. “Manet's ‘In the Conservatory’ and ‘Chez Le Père Lathuille.’” (Art Journal 45, no. 1 (1985): 59–66). 63-64.

[35] Duret, Manet and the French Impressionists: Pissarro--Claude Monet--Sisley--Renoir--Berthe Morisot--Cézanne—Guillaumin. 80.

[36] Dolan, Therese. “Manet’s The Street Singer and the Poets.” (Word & Image 34, no. 2 (2018): 88–110). 106

[37] Dolan, “Manet’s the Street Singer and the Poets.” 107.

[38]Haine, “’Café Friend’: Friendship and Fraternity in Parisian Working-class Cafés.” 612.

[39] House, “In Front of Manet’s Bar: Subverting the ‘Natural.’” 240.

[40] Clayson, Painted Love: Prostitution in French Art of the Impressionist Era. 99.

#art history #class essay #undergrad research #edouard manet #manet #oil painting #impressionism #paris #french art #19th century #art #artwork #history #french culture

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Private equity finally delivered Sarah Palin's death panels

Tonight (Apr 26), I’ll be in Burbank, signing Red Team Blues at Dark Delicacies at 6PM.

Remember “death panels”? Sarah Palin promised us that universal healthcare was a prelude to a Stalinist nightmare in which unaccountable bureaucrats decided who lived or died based on a cost-benefit analysis of what it would cost to keep you alive versus how much your life was worth.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

Palin was right that any kind of healthcare rationing runs the risk of this kind of calculus, where we weight spending $10,000 to extend a young, healthy person’s life by 40 years against $1,000 to extend an elderly, disabled person’s life by a mere two years.

It’s a ghastly, nightmarish prospect — as anyone who uses the private healthcare system knows very well. More than 27m Americans have no health insurance, and millions more have been tricked into buying scam “cost-sharing” systems run by evangelical grifters:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/02/health/christian-health-care-insurance.html

But for the millions of Americans with insurance, death panels are an everyday occurrence, or at least a lurking concern. Anyone who pays attention knows that insurers have entire departments designed to mass-reject legitimate claims and stall patients who demand that the insurer lives up to its claim:

https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/khn-podcast-an-arm-and-a-leg-how-to-shop-for-health-insurance-november-24-2021/

The private healthcare sector is designed to deny care. Its first duty is to its shareholders, not its patients, and every dollar spent on care is a dollar not available for dividends. The ideal insurance customer pays their premiums without complaint, and then pays cash for all their care on top of it.

All that was true even before private equity started buying up and merging whole swathes of the US healthcare system (or “healthcare” “system”). The PE playbook — slash wages, sell off physical plant, slash wages, reduce quality and raise prices — works in part because of its scale. These aren’t the usual economies of scale. Rather the PE strategy is to buy and merge all the similar businesses in a region, so customers, suppliers and workers have nowhere else to turn.

That’s bad enough when it’s aimed at funeral homes, pet groomers or any of the other sectors that have been bigfooted by PE:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/16/schumpeterian-terrorism/#deliberately-broken

But it’s especially grave when applied to hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/21/profitable-butchers/#looted

Or emergency room physicians:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/14/unhealthy-finances/#steins-law

And if you think that’s a capitalist hellscape nightmare, just imagine how PE deals with dying, elderly people. Yes, PE has transformed the hospice industry, and it’s even worse than you imagine.

Yesterday, the Center for Economic and Policy Research published “Preying on the Dying: Private Equity Gets Rich in Hospice Care,” written by some of the nation’s most valiant PE slayers: Eileen Appelbaum, Rosemary Batt and Emma Curchin:

https://cepr.net/report/preying-on-the-dying-private-equity-gets-rich-in-hospice-care/

Medicare pays private hospices $203-$1,462 per day to take care of dying old people — seniors that a doctor has certified to have less than six months left. That comes to $22.4b/year in public transfers to private hospices. If hospices that $1,462 day-rate, they have lots of duties, like providing eight hours’ worth of home care. But if the hospice is content to take the $203/day rate, they are not required to do anything. Literally. It’s just free money for whatever the operator feels like doing for a dying elderly person, including doing nothing at all.

As Appelbaum told Maureen Tkacik for her excellent writeup in The American Prospect: “Why anybody commits fraud is a mystery to me, because you can make so much money playing within the guidelines the way the payment scheme operates.”

https://prospect.org/health/2023-04-26-born-to-die-hospice-care/

In California, it’s very, very easy to set up a hospice. Pay $3,000, fill in some paperwork (or don’t — no one checks it, ever), and you’re ready to start caring for beloved parents, grandparents, sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles as they depart this world. You do get a site inspection, but don’t worry — you aren’t required to bring your site up to code until after you’re licensed, and again, they never check — not even if there are multiple complaints. After all, no one at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has the job of tracking complaints.

This is absolute catnip for private equity — free government money, no obligations, no enforcement, and the people you harm are literally dying and can’t complain. What’s not to like? No wonder PE companies have spent billions “rolling up” hospices across the country. There are 591 hospices in Van Nuys, CA alone — but at least 30 of them share a single medical director:

https://auditor.ca.gov/reports/2021-123/index.html#pg34A

Medicare caps per-patient dispersals at $32,000, which presents an interesting commercial question for remorseless, paperclip-maximizing, grandparent-devouring private equity ghouls: do you take in sick patients (who cost more, but die sooner) or healthy patients (cost less, potentially live longer)?

In Van Nuys, the strategy is to bring in healthy patients and do nothing. 51% of Van Nuys hospice patients are “live discharged” — that is, they don’t die. This figure — triple the national average — is “a reliable sign of fraud.”

There are so many hospice scams and most of them are so stupid that it takes a monumental failure of oversight not to catch and prevent them. Here’s a goodun: hospices bribe doctors to “admit” patients to a hospice without their knowledge. The hospice bills for the patient, but otherwise has no contact with them. This can go on for a long time, until the patient tries to visit the doctor and discovers that their Medicare has been canceled (you lose your Medicare once you go into hospice).

Another scam: offer patients the loosest narcotics policy in town, promising all the opioids they want. Then, once their benefits expire, let them die of an overdose (don’t worry, people who die in hospice don’t get autopsies):

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/05/how-hospice-became-a-for-profit-hustle

You can hire con artists to serve as your sales-force, and have them talk vulnerable, elderly people into enrolling in hospice care by convincing them they have nothing to live for and should just die already and not burden their loved ones any longer.

Hospitals and hospices also collude: hospitals can revive dying patients, ignoring their Do Not Resuscitate orders, so they can be transfered to a hospice and die there, saving the hospital from adding another dead patient to their stats.CMS’s solution is perverse: they’re working with Humana to expand Medicare Advantage (a scam that convinces patients to give up Medicare and enrol in a private insurance program, whose private-sector death panel rejects 13% of claims that Medicare would have paid for). The program will pay private companies $32,000 for every patient who agrees to cease care and die. As our friends on the right like to say, “incentives matter.”

Appelbaum and co have a better idea:

Do more enforcement: increase inspections and audits.

Block mergers and rollups of hospices that make them too big to fail and too big to jail.

Close existing loopholes.

They should know. Appelbaum and her co-authors write the best, most incisive analysis of private equity around. For more of their work, check out their proposal for ending pension-plan ripoffs by Wall Street firms:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/05/mego/#A09948

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Burbank, Mountain View, Berkeley, San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

[Image ID: An industrial meat grinder, fed by a conveyor belt. A dead, elderly man is traveling up the conveyor, headed for the grinder's intake. The grinder is labelled 'HOSPICE' in drippy Hallowe'en lettering. It sits in a spreading pool of blood.]

Image: Seydelmann (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GW300_1.jpghttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GW300_1.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #cepr #medicare advantage #medicare #hospice #aca #aging #death panels #fraud #california #preying on the dying

[wigilda]

I posted 12,907 times in 2022

That's 4,319 more posts than 2021!

188 posts created (1%)

12,719 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@13-lucky-tapeworms

@teabox

@propalahramota

@worm-bus

@ghoulfr13nd

I tagged 9,313 of my posts in 2022

Only 28% of my posts had no tags

#art - 1,341 posts

#fav - 857 posts

#lotr - 525 posts

#mcr - 522 posts

#for my bad days - 385 posts

#the light bearer - 343 posts

#quotes - 313 posts

#on my path to be a goddess - 305 posts

#feral ukranian - 287 posts

#videos - 231 posts

Longest Tag: 135 characters

#please don’t let the „resigned and prepared” convince you that this is somehow not horrible or that ukrainians gave up or accepted this

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

I love you sm!!! happy new year to youu

happy new year to you too bestie

ily but we somehow are online when other one is not [sadness]

13 notes - Posted January 1, 2022

#4

tagged by @miriel-therindes :3

indoor plants or gardens // cloud-watching or star-gazing // water or fire // paperback or hardcover // running or hiking // sleeping with socks or without socks // fruit or vegetables// hanging plants or succulents // dark wood or light wood // handwritten or typed // instagram or pinterest // braids or pigtails // dc or marvel // books or movies // oceans or meadows // forests or fields // sweet or salty // ice cream or chocolate // hoodies or sweaters // long hair or short hair // piercings or tattoos // summer or winter // boots or sneakers // cars or motorcycles // curls or straight hair // castles or cottages // sunny days or storms // reptiles or birds // disney or nickelodeon // strawberries or watermelon // essay or posters // phones or laptops // glass or stone // dark or light // photos or painting // circuses or theaters // reading or writing // dogs or cats // poetry or novels // monsters or ghosts // thrift shops or libraries // fiction or non-fiction

tagging (no pressure) @dramatic-weirdo @13-lucky-tapeworms @theelfmaiden @ingoblingo @will-ruadh

14 notes - Posted August 5, 2022

#3

so @lyndeth-halfelven asked me few days ago where my icon is from but when i tried to answer the ask it vanished (thanks tumblr *looks judgmentally*)

my icon is a detail from this illustration by Vladyslav Yerko, ukranian artist

it's from the book "Child Roland and Other Knightly Tales" ("Казки Туманного Альбіону").

the level of detail in his works is simply insane, i mean, look at this (the highest resolution i could find btw but still not ideal):

See the full post

28 notes - Posted June 8, 2022

#2

guys what if i created an art sideblog, or writing one? or combined? would anyone be interested in my works being in separate place from all the flood i post here?

alternatively i can keep posting my art here and each time i will just reblog it to the sideblog, or vice versa

please reply under this post if you have an advice for me :3 thank you

39 notes - Posted May 22, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

"space song" by beach house

i will soon either curse my camera or my hands asrfhjrfjk

52 notes - Posted January 27, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #your tumblr year in review

[radicalfeministnews]

Article to consider and critically discuss: "A wave of TV shows, films and books is now really getting to grips with the difficult, and sometimes shocking, realities of becoming a mother."

Media by women discussed: dark TV comedy-horror "The Baby", book, The Panic Years, by journalist Nell Frizzell, the 2016 film Prevenge (horror), Maggie Gyllenhaal's 2021 Netflix adaptation of Elena Ferrante's 2006 novel, The Lost Daughter, the much lighter sitcoms Motherland and Workin' Moms, the comedy-drama TV show from Australia The Letdown covering mothers' PTSD and struggles, Marianne Levy's new book, a collection of essays, Don't Forget To Scream written by Levy when pregnant and directly after about her experience, more books by mothers about motherhood, Mother Ship by Francesa Segal, I Am Not Your Baby Mother by Candice Brathwaite, My Wild and Sleepless Nights by Clover Stroud, A Life’s Work: On Becoming A Mother by Rachel Cusk... and Fiction books, Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder, The Harpy by Megan Hunter, and The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan on the "bad mother" stereotype and losing custody of children.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood is mentioned at the end.

dark TV comedy-horror "The Baby" "We were excited about the possibility of exploding cultural ideals around motherhood," says co-creator Siân Robins-Grace about the starting point for the series, "and revealing the darker, violent or oppressive forces at play in that kind of ideal account of what motherhood should be. The genre of horror obviously allows you to take that to a really extreme place, and set up some really taboo situations to explore why they might be taboo."

Co-creator also said: "I think a lot of ways that motherhood is depicted is thin and uncritical, and reinforces the idea that 'the mother' is cis, female, straight, middle-class, white, caring and nurturing." so ya know, wonderful implication that a woman admitting struggle in motherhood or revulsion to it is "not cis" or that mothers being female is a stereotype. But in general she is probably just buzzwording

Her co-creator Lucy Gaymer adds that for her, the series – and genre – was a way to process her own internal battles about motherhood: "The genesis of this idea comes from me being in my 30s and feeling really confused about whether I wanted to become a parent or not, and I didn't realise that until after we'd plotted episode one, when I was like, 'Oh, of course I had that idea as it represents what it would feel like for me to become a parent right now'. It definitely comes from that place of anxiety, and also of jealousy of people who seem to feel so clearly one way or another. That feeling of not being sure feels scary and sometimes isolating."

The article name checks Rosemary's Baby, The Omen and Mommie Dearest (films) as examples of horror depictions of motherhood, and I want to say while I don't know the 2nd two the film of Rosemary's Baby is sexist and from a sexualizing, terrorizing women as titillation, male view, even if we could also have a good reading of it (disagreement welcome)

A recent book, The Panic Years, by journalist Nell Frizzell. The book covers the "biological deadline" women have to consider when thinking about trying to be pregnant at some point

"2016 film Prevenge, another horror story in which a pregnant woman's foetus orders her to carry out a series of murders to avenge her partner's death. As the baby's chipmunk-esque voice threatens her ("What did I say will happen if you don't do as I say? Blood will be shed, one way or another") it's extreme and ridiculous of course, but, deep down, speaks to fears that many carry about the power that the living being inside them holds over them. As Ruth (Alice Lowe) says about missing an ultrasound scan: "I don't want to know what's in there. I'm scared of her. I'm not even in control. It's like I'm some crap, banged out car and she's driving, I'm just the vehicle," she tries to explain to the patronising midwife, who replies with another platitude."

More quotes from the article on Prevenge:

While I've never procreated a homicidal infant, I have had two babies delivered prematurely by emergency C-section who both required a five-week-long stay in a NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) – and so slasher horror plot aside, the abject terror around labour and birth that the film depicts is something I can relate to. Even before my double traumatic labours, while pregnant with my first child, I remember feeling like the experience was akin to knowing you're going to be in a car crash, but you don't know when, or how bad it's going to be.

Understandably, it's hard to relax and "enjoy the pregnancy" as you're so often reminded by healthcare professionals, midwives and anyone else who happens to be walking past in the street. Portrayals in popular culture push the idea that babies are something that happen to you, rather than because of you. In Prevenge – aside from all the slash-and-kill sprees – it's implied that Ruth is already a bad mother as she's breaking the unspoken code of complying and not complaining, as her baby hasn't even been born yet. In an interview with Indiewire, Lowe – who was eight months' pregnant when she wrote, acted in and directed the film – said: "I kind of took all my frustrations of what I was feeling… Suddenly, you're a mother and people think different about you and you don't have control over your job anymore. All of this stuff, I was feeling fairly grim and dark about, and I just put it in this film."

"Another mother breaking the code is Leda, the protagonist of The Lost Daughter, Maggie Gyllenhaal's 2021 Netflix adaptation of Elena Ferrante's 2006 novel. While not a horror story, Leda (Olivia Colman) is regarded as something of a monster by the family she meets on the beach while holidaying in Greece – including the pregnant woman who she tells bluntly: "Children are a crushing responsibility". The character then flips the script on how mothers are expected to act with her unsettlingly unpredictable behaviour: she helps find a lost young girl on the beach to the relief of her family, only to steal her doll, watching the girl's devastation unfold, to play with at home. Over the course of the film, we discover she's behaved in this kind of impulsive way before, committing the most unthinkable, most transgressive of acts – in the eyes of much of society, anyway – and walking out of her family home, leaving her two young daughters behind.

Through flashbacks we see young Leda (Jessie Buckley) struggle as a young mum with her career, relationships, sexuality and personal sense of being, as well as some clearly unprocessed trauma from her own mother. The story asks the audience to confront an uncomfortable question: who was my mother before I was born? What were her desires, wills and opinions before she was in this role; and what has happened to those now?"

When it comes to the frustrations of motherhood, the sitcoms Motherland and Workin' Moms explore this territory in a lighter fashion, foregrounding in a both realistic and hilarious way the manic juggle that parents – mainly mums, if we're being honest – are expected to undertake. Mistakes will inevitably be made, and then there's the guilt and shame to contend with when this happens.

Another comedy-drama that has nailed the complications and conflicting emotions of the maternal experience is Australia's The Letdown. So much popular culture tells the story of pregnancy and birth – typically shown in a nice, neat, two-minute montage of a woman crying and screaming – and then wraps things up there. Which is why The Letdown was refreshingly unusual in starting its story when its lead character was two-months post-birth. Having been through a distressing labour, we see Audrey (Alison Bell) seriously minimising her experience and telling her mum-and-baby group: "It was fine, thanks, in the end, C-section," while also emphasising she was "not too posh to push. I didn't elect it." She's already guiltily justifying an experience that was out of her hands, in the hope that people don't judge her for it. 

"As the show goes on through its two series, we're shown in both banal and excruciating detail how difficult it can be just to get through the day with a newborn, and the emotional weight of the first year that hangs heavy each day. Finally, fighting back tears, Audrey admits why she's struggling: "It wasn't a great start. I kept arguing for a natural birth because I'd read all this stuff and… we nearly lost her." One of the other characters later suggests Audrey has PTSD – official figures estimate anywhere between three to nine percent of women who give birth do, although it's likely that many more women are never diagnosed. For me, that PTSD hit home on my son's first birthday – while everyone was celebrating his arrival, I was experiencing upsetting flashbacks of the anniversary of one of the scariest days of my life. Everything ended up fine, I was reminded by my partner and well-meaning friends, and that's all that mattered, wasn't it?"

Marianne Levy's new book, Don't Forget To Scream. In one anecdote, she explains: "I got chatting to a mum at the school gate and I asked her about her experience of birth. 'Oh, it was awful,' she said. 'It's why I only have one. But, you know, it's fine.' 'Is it?' I said. She thought for a moment. 'No'."

Don't Forget To Scream is a collection of essays making sense of the psychological shifts and heavy emotional turmoil of becoming a mother, which also reflect on why people are so unwilling to talk about these. "After my daughter was born eight years ago, when I tried to tell people what was happening to me, they told me I was wrong, or mistaken," Levy tells BBC Culture, explaining what led her to write the book. "It was as though, on becoming a mother, my language had lost its meaning. A few times, they literally walked away. So when my son was born four years later, instead of speaking, I wrote. I found I could be truthful on the page in a way that I could not in conversation."

More visceral books about birth and bringing up children: Mother Ship by Francesa Segal, I Am Not Your Baby Mother by Candice Brathwaite, My Wild and Sleepless Nights by Clover Stroud

The writer that arguably first paved the way for this line of memoir, Rachel Cusk's A Life’s Work: On Becoming A Mother (2001). Cusk – an acclaimed novelist – left London with her partner and small child, found herself pregnant once again, and wrote what one reviewer described as "akin to a war diary".

Cusk faced fall out from publishing it: "I was accused of child-hating, of postnatal depression, of shameless greed, of irresponsibility, of pretentiousness, of selfishness, of doom-mongering and, most often, of being too intellectual." But equally, she noted how she was also lauded for her frankness, quoting one appreciative critic who had written how "Motherhood, as it is lived, is still individual, personal, private, and therefore deeply undervalued, sometimes even by those of us who move between the 'real' world of work and the shadow world of family life. Between these worlds, Cusk has crafted a work of beauty and wisdom."

Other writers have notably been turning to fiction recently to portray motherhood in its most animalistic form – from the woman who metamorphosises into a dog in Rachel Yoder's Nightbitch (now being made into a film with Amy Adams) to the half-bird-half-human inspiration for Megan Hunter's tale of family life and adultery, The Harpy. Or they have gone dystopian, as with The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan which examines the "bad mother" stereotype via the tale of a mother losing custody of her daughter and being sent to an institution in order to dwell on her failings.

Key Quote in the Article:

"For me, the negative depiction is that of the perfect mother; the traditional image of a woman brimming with endless tender love who never entertains a moment's negativity (or, indeed, personality)… We seem to have removed the space for women to speak freely and openly about their experiences having and raising babies and children. The result is tremendously harmful. The consequences, for maternal mental health, the mental health of our children, and wider societal health, economics and equality, are appalling." - Marianne Levy, author of Don't Forget to Scream

BBC/AMC adaptation of Adam Kay's bestselling medical memoir, This Is Going To Hurt, which follows Kay's real-life experiences as a junior doctor on an ​​Obstetrics and Gynaecology ward in a British hospital, also came under fire for its traumatic scenes of women giving birth, as well what "positive birth" expert Milli Hill called the "paternalistic, misogynistic attitude" of Kay towards his female patients. But others argued the depiction of the maternal experience was creditable for being uncomfortably real. Times journalist Alice Jones wrote that she "didn't feel angry watching This Is Going to Hurt, I felt glad that someone was telling the truth. Birth can be beautiful, but it's also brutal. What are we going to do about that?"

Culture exploring the darker side of motherhood may also now have an extra resonance at a time when, in the US, some states are intending to remove the constitutional right to an abortion, after the Supreme Court overturned the case of Roe vs Wade. In one harrowing episode of The Baby, we see how the titular child's biological mother – Helen (Tanya Reynolds) – is held hostage and forced to give birth, in scenes reminiscent of The Handmaid's Tale; Robins-Grace explains how differently that scene hits home for her now. "It's sobering to realise that we were naive to believe, in a legislative way, that [abortion] was off the table."

More generally, the fact that current films, TV series and books might shock us and shatter our collective illusions about motherhood is only a good thing, says Levy. "Popular culture finally seems to be waking up to the idea that mothers can be interesting, dynamic characters in their own right, front and centre to the story, with all the foibles and flaws and fascinating facets exhibited by the rest of humanity." 

Articles linked within the article:

"The Science of Safe and Healthy Baby Sleep" https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220131-the-science-of-safe-and-healthy-baby-sleep

"Mumsnet is driving fear of childbirth, expert warns" https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/mumsnet-is-driving-fear-of-childbirth-expert-warns-fztj8qlth

"Motherhood doesn’t have to mean misery Alienation, despair and boredom have become the default depiction of life after children. Where’s the joy gone, asks Rosie Kinchen" https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/motherhood-doesnt-have-to-mean-misery-cbqf3trjt

"I was only being honest: When author Rachel Cusk wrote A Life's Work, her disarmingly frank account of motherhood, she was shocked by the vicious reaction it provoked from other women. The experience forced her to question herself as a writer and a parent, as she records here" https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/mar/21/biography.women

"Postpartum Post Traumatic Stress Disorder" https://www.postpartum.net/learn-more/postpartum-post-traumatic-stress-disorder/

"Traumatic birth and post-traumatic stress disorder" https://www.nct.org.uk/labour-birth/you-after-birth/traumatic-birth-and-post-traumatic-stress-disorder

"This is Going to Hurt: What medical shows get right and wrong" https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220209-what-tv-medical-shows-get-right-and-wrong

"This Is Going to Hurt: misogyny on the maternity ward? Are claims that the BBC’s new hit is hateful towards women correct?" https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/this-is-going-to-hurt-misogyny-on-the-maternity-ward-wqllbj2t9

"Abortion: What does overturn of Roe v Wade mean?" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61804777

"Why The Handmaid’s Tale is so relevant today" https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180425-why-the-handmaids-tale-is-so-relevant-today

#motherhood #mothers #moms #mums #media reviews and analysis #female authors #postpartum ptsd #post partum #postpartum #post partum depression #postpartum psychosis #postpartum post traumatic stress disorder #ptsd #abortion #reproductive justice #abortion rights #pregnancy #childbirth #parenting #mothering #feminism #medical sexism #maternity #reproductive rights #BBC #babies #children #kids

[ausetkmt]

The economics of how structural racism damages us all – The Catalyst

One of the most influential events of 2020 was the death of George Floyd at the hands of Derek Chauvin, J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, and Tou Thao. Sparking nationwide protests, these events served as a stark reminder for the majority of Americans that the implicit racism that has always been intertwined with American society, and by extension its government, is very much alive.

With that being said, despite several months of protests and several criminal justice reform bills being passed (at a painstakingly slow pace with the issue being far from solved), the general public has seemed to once again have set the systemic racism issue onto the backburner.

Perhaps with the start of jury selection for the primary killer of Mr. Floyd, Derek Chauvin, however, the issue of American systemic racism will once again be recognized by the American government as the major threat to the American public that it is.

Unfortunately, with headlines such as “Derek Chauvin murder trial delayed for decision on extra charge” (The Guardian), and “Derek Chauvin Trial May Be Delayed Over Court Ruling on Third-Degree Murder” (The New York Times), it does not appear that the American criminal justice system has recognized the severity of systemic racism.

So why has this happened? It is almost universally agreed upon that racism is morally detestable, so why is our government so slow to act? Well, I, and probably many other fellow cynics, would argue that in our current society, money speaks louder than morals.

This assumption can be supported by the numerous cases of markets and governments becoming hopelessly intertwined. The post-2008 $700 billion bailouts of the banks are a perfect example of this.

While generally agreed upon (in moral terms) that the massive banks that caused the crisis should not be bailed out at the expense of the lower and middle classes, the size and power of these banks made it so that unless one wanted to see an economic collapse comparable to the Great Depression, a bailout was necessary to maintain relative economic well-being.

While the nature of the post-2008 world is an entire essay in it of itself, I hope that my brief examination of this topic has illustrated the relevance of my earlier assertion that in our current society money overpowers ideals.

This assertion is necessary for understanding the relevance of the rest of this article, as from this point onward I wish to address the issue of systemic racism. I wish to address it, not from a moral standpoint but rather from an economic standpoint.

Using basic economic theory (and several empirical cases to highlight my hypothesis), I hope to illustrate that a continued government failure to address the systemic racism issue is a real threat in the economic terms that our current political-economic system seems to value.

The idea that systemic racism is an economic threat is hardly a new concept to contemporary American politics. With the aforementioned Black Lives Matter protests in mind, the economic effects of structural racism against Black Americans are easy to find and distinct. A 2013 United States Department of Housing and Urban Development study concluded that prospective Black homeowners are shown 17.7% fewer homes compared to comparable white prospective homeowners.

Similarly, in 2011, Bank of America settled a $335 million lawsuit after acquiring Countrywide, amid accusations of charging 200,000 Black and Hispanic borrowers higher fees on the basis of race. Yet, while all these issues are incredibly problematic, they are also reflective a specific type of economic racism: supplier-based discrimination.

Supplier-based discrimination, as the name suggests, is discrimination on the part of the seller. While it is definitely problematic, according to market-based economic theory, supplier discrimination tends to sort itself out because charging a certain minority group more or hiring that group less invites competing firms to create specific policies that cater to the certain group and reap more of a profit.

In simplest terms, the market “sorts” out supplier-based discrimination in the long run. Now while that theory only applies if we presuppose that all actors in the market are solely profit-driven, (and aren’t influenced by inherent emotional factors like racism), there does appear to be some level of merit to this theory, as a study by Devah Pager provided some empirical support to this claim.

The center for American Progress, however, provided data that suggests that even near full employment, Black unemployment remains 2 to 1, when compared to white unemployment. Nevertheless, due to the ongoing debate over the “effects” of supplier-based discrimination, I believe that the supply side of the racial economic argument is a dead end.

Thus, I want to take another approach in spurring those with power to take decisive action. That approach is the other form of discrimination: consumer-based discrimination. As the name suggests, this is preference-based discrimination done by the consumer, and unlike its supply side counterpart, market economic theory doesn’t argue that the problem will solve itself. The logic is relatively easy to follow: if consumers don’t want to see or interact with a certain minority group then it is in each supplier’s best interest to enforce discriminatory policies. So, is this an issue? Is general American society really that racist?

While it is incredibly difficult to quantify a given society as more or less racist, I would argue the metrics we do have suggest that consumer-based racism can be a real problem. Harvard Implicit Bias tests suggest that about 68% of its correspondents have some level of subconscious preference for white-presenting individuals over Black-presenting individuals.

When we consider that notion with other general observations such as white supremacists hijacking Black Lives Matter protests and the continued existence of “sundown towns,” the conclusion that large sectors of our population might have an unconscious bias against Black Americans seems less and less outlandish. Now obviously this is a moral crisis, but if you remember at the beginning of this piece, I promised I would highlight how this is an economic crisis.

When minority inventors or future entrepreneurs face a heightened aberrance from consumers, they are naturally less likely to succeed and/or feel confident in their future economic prospects. Furthermore, when we consider that Black Americans face heightened resistance from our criminal justice system (according to a 2017 U.S. Sentencing Commission Study) it is easy to imagine that faith in these institutions begins to falter.

When faith in a society’s abilities to enforce and protect property rights begins to falter for a minority group, economic development suffers a hit as well. In more clear-cut terms, if you think you will become a target for racism by opening a business, or you do not trust the government to settle matters if your store is robbed, why would you ever open a business in the first place?

More importantly, the implications of this concept have devastating consequences. Lisa Cook, a researcher who studied the effects of racism on Black patent holders between 1870 and 1940, found that the wealth that America lost due to Black inventors being discouraged to innovate due to racism is equivalent to about a medium-sized European nation at the time. In other words, the American government’s general apathy to addressing societal racism, and reforming and increasing trust in our criminal justice system, heavily limits our GDP growth rates.

Now the conclusion I reached throughout this article might seem initially bland. I essentially concluded that racism is bad, a take that really isn’t that controversial. So why even take the time (and the length) to spell this argument out, and how exactly is it relevant to the Derek Chauvin trial?

To answer those questions I want to once again point to the concepts I laid out earlier. While it may appear cynical, we live in a world where money speaks louder than ideals. So rather it is not the “what” that I concluded but the “how” that I concluded that matters.

I truly believe that an argument that outlines why systemic racism has real tangible detrimental effects, not only for Black Americans but also for the rich and powerful, is thousands of times more effective than a simplistic moral “ought” claim. It quite literally sets a tangible basis for reparations and restoring what was stolen.

So, for the upcoming Derek Chauvin trial America is faced with a choice: will it continue to shoot itself in its own foot and turn its back on its citizens? Or will it finally take the first steps in restoring faith in a broken criminal justice system and repair the economic ruin that it has left far too long in its own wake?

With cases such as Laquan McDonald’s and Breonna Taylor’s in mind, I cannot say that I am hopeful, but I know for certain that this April I will be watching and demanding a long-overdue step in the right direction.

Related

The Privilege of Moving on: Racism Still Alive in Sports

A Letter from the Editor By SAMANTHA GILBERT & MICHAEL GORMAN As the MLB season comes to a close and the NBA season starts up, the public conversations surrounding the NFL’s protests during the national anthem have come to a halt. Players are still kneeling, sitting, and putting their fists…

November 9, 2017

In "20171109"

Black Lives Matter in an Almost All White Town

By Emma McDermott | Illustration by Xixi Qin My hometown, Wilmette, Ill., has a population of just over 27,000 and sits comfortably on Chicago’s north shore. It's where the Emanuel brothers grew up, where Rainn Wilson, who plays Dwight Schrute on “The Office,” lived during his high school years, and…

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#The economics of how structural racism damages us all #systemic racism #economic failures #american hatred costs

[squidhominid]

'Localization as an artform' Twitter thread, 7/10/2021

Hey, heads-up to any aspiring creators out there. This is from personal experience as a YouTube ghostwriter, so listen up.

Translation is a creative effort. There is no 'correct' way to translate something, any translation involves interpretation of meaning and some degree of localization and original writing.

In the past I wrote content for Lockstin, analyzing the Splatoon franchise and its lore. And, I didn't realize the above. I thought, translation is translation, the text is what it is, no matter the language.

In the course of my research, I came across what I think was some translated passages from one of the art books. I did what I usually did: I took what I needed, wrote it into the script, and put the source into parenthetical notes for whoever edited the video.

Up to that point, I was mainly using translations from places like Inkipedia, and I did credit my sources, but due to this specific translation being from social media, I put a lower value cost on it; after all, it was 'just a fan translating stuff for other fans'.

I saw it as a public good and a service. I overlooked the creative effort of translation. Ironically, even though I was active in communities like Legends of Localization, I had not fully internalized the understanding of how much creative effort goes into translation.

Since then, I have learned. I have made friends in more places, talked with people more in-depth about this sort of work, and consumed content on the subject. Of note, I can credit obskyr for opening my eyes to the fact that translation is, itself, art and creation of art.

I feel like this idea, this belief that translation is a 'service' and not a 'creative effort', is also why we have seen a groundswell, especially lately, of people criticizing official translations for the use of terms like 'sus' or 'cancel' or other terms deemed 'incorrect'.

People think there is one, objective, unitary translation of a text, and the translator's job is to achieve that as a platonic ideal, an endpoint. This is nowhere near the truth. A thousand translators can look at a piece of text and come to a thousand different, valid results.

The translation achieved is the result of that person's worldview, their understanding of the origin culture, their understanding of the target culture, and most importantly I feel, their ability to recognize when things don't translate. And so, they synthesize.

They take things from one culture and seek out analogues. Things that 'feel' the same as the original intent, even though they are not the same. Think of translating Pokemon names, for instance.

In Japan, 'Torchic' is called 'Achamo'. Of course, nobody in the English-speaking world would be able to figure out that 'Achamo' is 'akachan', or baby, + 'shamo', a breed of chicken raised for Japanese cockfighting. But they understand 'torchic' is 'torch' + 'chick'.

Think of the effort that went into coming up with that name. It wasn't in literal text. Someone created that. Someone spent time thinking of that. That was creative work. Translation is creative work.

Treat translators as artists. If you're creating a video or an essay, credit them as if they're artists. For that matter, credit artists too if you don't! And ask both for permission! Translation is not a service with a correct or incorrect outcome. It never has been.

At this stage in my career I have nowhere near the reach I used to, and the person I wronged is possibly one of the biggest names in the fandom, so I can't achieve much by doing this, but if you have any interest in Splatoon lore, you need to be following Rassicas.

I also want to thank MarzGurl, whose tweets about anime and manga localization helped crystalize some of the ideas I've gone over here.

I know this is...incredibly off-script for a V-tuber Twitter, but, cut me some slack, I've always been a pretty forward and opinionated person. I just wanted to put this out into the world because since finding out about my error it's been on my mind.

Now, if you don't mind, I feel incredibly ill and I need to find the person responsible so I can tell them to make the room stop spinning.

#localization #translated literature #translation #rambling #long post #Twitter thread archive

[sharans-math-science-dump]

Some notes I made on the philosophy of mathematics - though I’ve alluded to my interest in philosophy in the general, and the philosophy of science, too, I’ve on and off been interested in the philosophy of mathematics, an interest curbed by my limited knowledge of higher mathematics. Of course, that doesn’t always stop me.

I’ve tried, on and off, to read and learn about Albert Lautman - French Resistance hero, mathematician and philosopher, from his citation in a few places by Gilles Deleuze. I’ve skimmed a little through his Mathematics, Ideas and the Physical Real, a collection of his papers and essays translated by Simon Duffy.

Below are a bunch of notes, suitably edited, based on my reading of Jean Petitot’s To Remake The Timaeus on Albert Lautman’s work, when I read it around 26 December 2021. As is universal with all teenagers and almost-adults with an interest in philosophy, I’m sure that it probably comes off as somewhat pretentious - please blame it on the interest that the article aroused, and not on any (current) personal failings of mine - I’m suitably embarrassed by it now.

Comments on Jean Petitot's To Remake The Timaeus, on Albert Lautman

Perhaps we do not have to overturn Plato, or Kant fully — after all, as Deleuze says, it is right that the overturning of Platonism should have much in common with Platonism. What is this, Hegelian dialectical sublation? Though it could be.

Logic is the base grammar of mathematics: how we move on from one proposition to the next, as a method of determining correctness. But this is a logic of analysis: take a statement like 'All members of the set X are members of the set Y', and analyze it, break it down logically, and enumerate corollaries. The issue is that this misses the synthetic mode of mathematics, the mode of which is not logical, and it's silly to ignore it as the black-box production of statements that our logic-choppers can logically verify.

Mathematics too has its own concepts (sorry, Deleuze & Guattari) — you have your planes and real numbers and so on. Is there any sort of gap between, say, the notion of the plane as mathematicians have been using for centuries, and the modern construction: the cartesian product of the set of real numbers on itself?

Lautman is interested in the historical genesis, possibly a genealogy of the mathematical concept. Suppose we get down to, say, logic — something that we would consider timeless. But the judgements we have around logic (i.e what we consider valid, the situations we apply it in, our pre-philosophical/spontaneously philosophical judgements on truth, validity etc. in Stoic or Jain or medieval or Aristotelian logic) are relative: but this does not mean the results of logic itself are relative, or that it is purely human: it is conjunction with something non-human, the field of symbols and ideas immanent to matter for me, and the Platonic realm for a Platonist. (Plato: virtue, theology, physics, mathematics, politics, all in one.)

Geometric space is conventional — not empirical, not a priori necessary, like Kant's a priori synthetic and Euclidean geometry. We have to be able to link mathematics with reality, instead of falling back into quasi-nihilist logicism. Lautman believes in the fact that there is some ontological status to mathematics that cannot be reduced purely to logic. Somehow this is Hilbertian (I am not very familiar with Hilbert). There is a synchronic/structural and a diachronic/dynamic analysis of mathematical concepts. 

Our four levels: the real as constituted of 1) mathematical facts 2) mathematical beings 3) theories 4) Ideas. There's a dialectics in play here, a dialectics that is historical and mathematical. Our dialectic is a dialectic of problems in the Deleuzian sense, incomplete. Mathematical entities are ideal for Lautman, and therefore comprehension of them create real theories, as they are actualized in actual theories, the theories which dialectically cause their own existence. 

Lautman is hot on Heidegger and the ontic-ontological, beings-Being distinction. For Lautman, there is a connection between transcendent (Platonic?) ideas and the immanent nature of the logical structure of the solution of a dialectical problem. Now I'm thinking of a back and forth between the two, the rational Idea being immanetized in a mathematical problem, yes, but there's also a movement back, too. We are interested in genesis here, foundation (grounding, the urgrund) and origin — opposed to the Russellian program of deriving mathematics from logic, as was PM. Dialectics is not strictly mathematical — there is a sense in which there is a beforeness of the dialectics, which is the 'question' in relation to the 'response'. Ideas are transcendent to mathematics, yes, but at the same time due to the linkages between dialectical notions, are also immanent to the logical schema of the solution, the Idea qua intentional Idea. 

Lautman draws upon the Platonic tradition, the intelligible participating in the sensible, the Ideas being expressed in mathematical idealities. From the Kantian tradition, we have the relation between the transcendental aesthetic and the transcendental analytic.

Lautman tries to historicise the a priori being studied here. Lautman is Hegelian in this sense, and also in the sense that Lautman affirms contradiction as being the driver of the concept and the movement of reason. But the contradiction of the concept is inside the physical-mathematical, instead of being separate from it. Lautman is also into phenomenology ... and the transcendental logic, whatever that is.

1) Metamathematics and metaphysics

Metamathematics — the analysis of mathematical theories from concepts like noncontradiction, completeness, which are not at all defined within the formalisms that are applied to, transcendent to them, if I may say. Dialectical Ideas think mathematics — metamathematics in metaphysical terms.

2) Platonism: what reality do mathematical constructions have? Lautman says that they are real without being real in the sense of external/empirical perception, or inner sense, but are not meaningless well-formed sentences — there are facts that are true or false independent of scientific construction. But how do we conceptualize the conflict between realism and nominalism? If objectivity = transcendent exteriority, math is something independent of us. If objectivity = pure construction, we nominalists realise that it's all just language, to put it pithily.

But to problematize this antinomy, 1) these mathematical facts are dependent on the formal language, the axiomatics they are expressed in and for the latter, 2) mathematics depends on intuition, too.

We borrow our response from Husserl, the noetic-noematic distinction. Noetic — the intellect. Noematic — structure/object of thought. "The transcendence of objects is founded in the immanence of acts."

Okay, I give up now! Sheesh — lots to absorb.

#math #mathematics #philosophy #gilles deleuze #deleuze #continental philosophy