sssh! this is a working library.

Getting back to the nature of truth:

Moral judgements are as much candidates for rational argumentation as are the more obviously descriptive parts of our speech. For a realist, such normative statements purport to describe what is the case: these are ‘moral facts’ as well as physical ones, about which our judgements can be said to be either true or false. The Jews are inferior beings is quite as false as that Paris is the capital of Afghanistan; it isn’t just a question of my private opinion or of some ethical posture I decide to assume towards the world. To declare that South Africa is a racist society is not just a more imposing way of saying that I happen not to like the set-up in South Africa. Eagleton, Ideology (17)

Eagleton has this endearing metaphorical tick in his language: he reaches for a metaphor to illuminate a concept, and then reaches – again – for another example, just to make sure you really got it. In the wrong hands this could read like a stutter – awkward, self-consciously repetitive. But Eagleton’s sense of rhythm is so acute that it comes off like a rimshot instead. (Sometimes literally so – often the second metaphor is a Jon Stewart-esque jab.)

On the difference between conservatives and liberals, or, why conservatives lie through their teeth while liberals expect the truth to surface:

It is a typically conservative estimate of human beings to see them as sunk in irrational prejudice, incapable of reasoning coherently; and it is a more radical attitude to hold that while we may indeed be afflicted by all sorts of mystifications, some of which might even be endemic to the mind itself, we nevertheless have some capacity for making sense of our world in a moderately cogent way. If human beings really were gullible and benighted enough to place their faith in great numbers in ideas which were utterly devoid of meaning, then we might reasonably ask whether such people were worth politically supporting at all. If they are that credulous, how could they ever hope to emancipate themselves? Eagleton, Ideology (12)

This could less charitably be referred to as the difference between authoritarianism and democracy. I intend to continue to pitch my tent with the radicals.

On words

When language is undeniably beautiful, the beauty is evidence of the truth of the words.

There are many writers capable of composing phrases which, at first glance, seem beautiful. They are like plastic surgeons who excel at temporary beauty — that which lives and dies in the glimpse. A long, hard look destroys them both.

A writer who knows her words are beautiful will yet harbor doubts; accuse her of ugly writing and you will be met with silence. But direct the same accusation to a writer who knows the shallowness of his words and he will viciously protest. The depth of the protest is a measure of the truth of the claim.

In defense of truth:

Things have come to pass where lying sounds like truth, truth like lying. Each statement, each piece of news, each thought has been pre-formed by the centres of the culture industry. … The extreme case of Germany is instructive of the general mechanism. When the National Socialists began to torture, they not only terrorized people inside and outside Germany, but were they more secure from exposure the more wildly the horror increased. The implausibility of their actions made it easy to disbelieve what nobody, for the sake of precious peace, wanted to believe, while at the same time capitulating to it. Adorno, Minima Moralia (108)

And:

The conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power, a process that truth itself cannot escape if it is not to be annihilated by power, not only suppresses truth as in earlier despotic orders, but has attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false, which the hirelings of logic were in any case diligently working to abolish. So Hitler, of whom no-one can say whether he died or escaped, survives. Ibid. (109)

I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions about the timeliness of this post. I will say that it’s taking me an inordinate amount of time to get through Minima Moralia, not because it’s difficult (which it is) but because it’s so utterly damning. I keep pausing to survey the territory around me, somewhat surprised to find I’m still standing amid the ruins.

On being right:

When philosophers, who are well known to have difficulty keeping silent, engage in conversation, they should always try to lose the argument, but in such a way as to convict their opponent of untruth. The point should not be to have absolutely correct, irrefutable, watertight cognitions – for they inevitably boil down to tautologies, but insights which cause the question of their justness to judge itself. Adorno, Minima Moralia (71)

This is one of many instances when I’m not certain I completely grasp what Adorno is saying (though I’m convinced by the beauty of the construction that the fault lies with me and not with Adorno). But I’ll take from it what I will: that the job of the philosopher (or, in my interpretation, the critic) is not so much to be right as to be engaging. The former is like a race, while the latter is an exploration: one seeks an end in and of itself while the other is never ending.

A self-conscious experiment

Any intellectual endeavor is bound to be more interesting if it is unsure of itself. A supremely confident effort will only reach as far as necessary to confirm its assumptions; it will go no further, and it will not question its reasons for existing. By contrast, an insecure process will act out its doubt by exploring, looking for the ways in which it may prove to be incorrect or incomplete or even irrelevant. Instead of searching for tautologies that prove its own effectiveness, it will seek out every plausible way to be discredited and dissect them, one by one.

It’s an exercise in discomfort, but one which can be fruitful if you’re persistent.

I was intentionally abstract about the purpose and methods at work on this site when I started it, knowing that if I prescribed a path from the beginning it would be easier but less engaging. Now, a little more than a month later, some of that purpose is coming into relief – a few edges of a path that is still being carved. This act of tracking and responding to books – collecting the texts that strike me as holding some truth – is an attempt to sketch out the foundations of a personal critical approach, the first step of which is to define the shape of my own beliefs; from there, I can better explore and question them.

The critical approach questions: and it questions its own assumptions as part of a refusal to take anything unquestioned. There are no beliefs – not of a golden age, nor of transparent communication – that can stand free of these questions and doubts. In this way the critical approach will always live on, never quite satisfied. It is coloured by dissatisfaction, even melancholy: it lives in the contexts with which it finds itself, but questions the terms of those contexts and is often unhappy with them. Kinross, Unjustified Texts (361)

So, the process I now find myself involved in is one of definition (seeking out the source of my beliefs in the books I’ve read and reread) and simultaneous questioning (following these beliefs from book to book to see if they become clearer or merely dilute, turning them inside out as they pass through different writers) all the while paying attention to the language itself, cognizant (and accepting) of my prejudice for ideas that are articulated with beautiful prose.

I am also beginning to think more clearly about the relationship between design and criticism, whether it be of a criticism that itself addresses design, or of a critical approach that is communicated through design. When developing any critical method, you must consider why it needs to exist in the first place: what are we to learn from it? How will it reshape what we already know (or think we know)? Who does it benefit?

The reproduction and distribution of text is part of the life-blood of social-critical dialogue. The argument for openness and clarity in typography is made, most importantly, for this reason. Kinross, Unjustified Texts (362)

This part of the path is still woody and overgrown, but I can just make out an opening ahead: if typography is the means by which criticism is distributed, then criticism owes much of its existence to typography. And typography – when executed in such a way as to serve the text and not compete with it – is a participant in that criticism. It is the parameters of that participation that I am keenly interested in.

That, it seems, is the direction I’m headed; and I’m happy to say, I don’t know where I’ll be when I get there.

Further discussion of anti-theoretical language:

In private moments men like Blair defend themselves by saying that their critics (always labelled armchair critics) forget that in this less than ideal world politics is the art of the possible. They go further: politics is not for sissies, they say, by sissies meaning people reluctant to compromise moral principles. By nature politics is uncongenial to the truth, they say, or at least to the practice of telling the truth in all circumstances. Coetzee, Diary of a Bad Year (125)

They call them “armchair critics” because it connotes an image of leisure. The critic is maligned as a member of the privileged class, averse to hard work, spending his many hours reclining in a soft chair, a drink within arm’s reach. He knows nothing of the real world. Once this image of the critic takes hold, there is no need to engage the criticism that emerges from him; it becomes, a priori, irrelevant.

Supporting this image is the belief that physical action is somehow superior to intellectual actions such as speaking or writing. Nevermind that those who denigrate critics for being too soft in the middle, too unaware of the physical labors of the world (think farmers, construction workers, etc.), have themselves never broken a sweat over anything but the treadmill at the nearest luxury gym (a fresh towel nearby, afterwards a massaging shower and a $6 smoothie). In other words, an elite person in power waves aside criticism by attacking his critics with terminology that suggests it is the critic who is the true elite. Nothing short of brilliant, if it wasn’t so disastrously effective.

Where politics meets identity design:

In a paradigmatic encounter with Reagan in January 1982, Dan Rather sounded more like a publicist than an interviewer, talking about “perceptions” and “signals,” at one point making this assessment: “This is going to be a continuing problem for you, getting people to believe that you really do know what’s going on in the interior of your Administration” (emphasis added). Reagan’s not knowing what’s going on would seem to be our “continuing problem,” not his, and one of disastrous proportions; but Rather, with the assumptions typical of his profession, could see the danger only as a problem of packaging. Miller, Boxed In (87)

Set aside for the moment how depressingly familiar this all sounds, and consider the implications: television, as the principle means by which a commodity culture is upheld, supports a shallow and consumerist approach to citizenship. No surprise there (though it’s worth repeating it to yourself from time to time, as the medium is remarkably effective at making you forget its purpose). Subsequently, the vote is reduced to a consumerist choice between brands, on par with the choice between Wendy’s and Burger King. The medium of television (and, increasingly, that of the mainstream media on the web) is never going to look any deeper than that; but we have an obligation to investigate those brands, and not merely to understand the assumptions and emotions they are playing on (a revealing effort in and of itself) but to establish whether or not there’s any substance beneath the brand: whether the brand goes all the way down, or if it’s just skating on the surface:

The derision that began in 1986, while mildly gratifying, was – like the adulation that preceded it – too heavily concentrated on the man himself to constitute a real critical perception: TV…is given automatically to such extreme and trivial depictions. It is not Reagan’s so-called “management style” that now requires consideration, nor his near senility (aka “the age issue”), nor his many entertaining “gaffes,” but the true murderousness of his regime. Miller, Boxed In (92)

In other words, instead of focusing on the truth, television focuses on the branding; it does not matter what the candidate actually believes or does; it only matters how they package and distribute it.

And – perhaps more importantly – television intentionally diverts our eyes from anything that could lessen the consumer impulse – like, say, war, death, famine, etc. Terrorism has become the meme of the decade only inasmuch as we place shopping in diametrical opposition to it. The more they terrorize us, the more we buy expensive t-shirts with the word “red” in parentheses. (The parentheses are important; it makes the word look weak, coddled, especially quiet. In other words, not particularly demanding or threatening, and certainly not suggestive of the idea that, say, uncontrolled consumption and reducing world poverty are possibly not the best of friends.)

Here, then, is the critic’s eye turned towards something which would ordinarily be ignored, with revealing results:

“Family Feud” would seem the most straightforward family show on television.…And yet, in fact, it isn’t the familial bond that wins the prize on “Family Feud,” but the family’s successful self-erasure. Each of Dawson’s questions is a test of sameness, its answers based on tallies of “one hundred people surveyed,” well ahead of time, by the show’s producers. A “correct” reply is therefore not the smartest, but the least inventive answer, matching an alleged “consensus” expertly defined and validated by the show itself. Thus the irresistible appeal of “Family Feud” is also the attraction of TV, which tells us endlessly what “we” believe, thereby using our supposed group sentiments to reconfirm its own authority¹.…For all its seeming family pride, then, each group that plays on “Family Feud” does not come on to manifest its own discrete identity, but rather struggles to get rid of it. Miller, Boxed In (54)

This is why we talk of TV as being “mind-numbing”; why, after watching it, you can feel sapped or empty, or, like the narrator in Fight Club, even violent. By addressing “Family Feud” critically, Miller reveals the “truth” of it (there’s that word again). And he reveals his own perspective, namely, that television’s depression of our individual identities in the name of commercial success is a dangerous practice deserving of resistance. If we’re all unflinchingly in agreement, then the conditions for democracy have not been met; we have to be willing to assert our differences meaningfully if we’re to be effective citizens:

We retain the rhetoric of liberal democracy, but in concrete terms this supposed democracy gets enacted as the commodity culture, in which freedom of choice really means Wendy’s versus Burger King. Berman, Dark Ages America (73)

The first – and arguably most important – step towards resisting this phenomena is to bring it out from the shadows; that is the critic’s role.

1. Emphasis mine. ↩