Fear and War

ghostorballoons: interruptions: how is this man a public...

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:45:53 -0400

interruptions:

how is this man a public intellectual

like really though, he’s like one of the closest things we have to a public intellectual we live in a broken world

Chinese Restaurant? What kind of basic biological imperative is region-specific? Chinese checkers? Chinese New Year? What nonsense!

Jesus Christ.

This seems like the only appropriate response.

Professor: “This paper would be a lot stronger if you had more case studies from different...

Thu, 16 May 2013 14:23:34 -0400

Professor: “This paper would be a lot stronger if you had more case studies from different countries.”

Me: “Yeah, it probably would be, but oh well.”

thenoobyorker: By way of lareviewofbooks: Rebecca Liao reads...

Sat, 11 May 2013 16:00:52 -0400

thenoobyorker:

By way of lareviewofbooks:

Rebecca Liao reads Niall Ferguson’s gay-baiting career:

During a Q&A session last Friday at the Altegris Conference in Carlsbad, California, noted economic historian Niall Ferguson asserted that John Maynard Keynes did not think long-term because he was homosexual, childless and effete, preferring to read “poetry” to his wife rather than procreate. Outrage came swiftly, and Ferguson responded Saturday morning with an unreserved apology for his “stupid and tactless” remarks.

As far as public apologies go, many have noted the skillful completeness of Ferguson’s. Oliver Burkeman at The Guardian went so far as to say that it was too good to be true. He turned out to be right: Ferguson lambasted those who were unsatisfied with his first apology as “insidious enemies of academic freedom” in an open letter to the Harvard community (Link).

Trouble is, Ferguson has made the same sort of bigoted, non sequitur argument before about Keynes. In his 1999 book The Pity of War, he had this to say of the economist’s (wrong) prediction in late 1915 that Britain’s economy would collapse if WWI did not end soon:

Though his work in the [British] Treasury gratified his sense of self-importance, the war itself made Keynes deeply unhappy. Even his sex life went into a decline, perhaps because the boys he liked to pick up in London all joined up.

The suggestion is that Keynes had a particular hankering for the war to be over so that his pool of homosexual partners could be replenished.

Still, Ferguson should not be further punished for apologizing only after a public storm. Apology accepted. But no amount of contrition can close the door he had just opened to what were once merely disconnected and silent musings about the exaggerated masculinity of his work.

When a heterosexual man uses “gay” as a criticism, especially when leveled against a dead man, he is putting down another’s manliness as a means of beating his own chest. It does not help that the word “effete” would not make any sense in this context except to underscore how unmasculine gay people are. Ferguson therefore eliminated any chance to claim that he had meant for “gay” and “childless” to be redundant.

An unapologetic display of machismo has always been integral to Ferguson’s ideas. His gleeful provocation of leftists (i.e. the insufficiently strong and individualistic) began while a student at Oxford in the 80s with a Thatcherite hatred of “wet” Tories. He then strong-armed his way into intellectual legitimacy with a pro-imperialist economic history of the British Empire. His most recent book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, reaffirmed his paternalistic belief that British colonialism had a largely beneficial effect on the colonized countries, not least because it civilized them through economic development and brought them under the wing of British humanitarianism. As author Pankaj Mishra and many before him have pointed out, Ferguson has made these points while rationalizing the great loss of life, culture, and national resources in former colonies. Not to mention that the inherently debilitating effects of subjugation barely register in his assessment. His faith in the inherent benevolence of robust, muscular intervention in less developed countries has attracted many accusations of white-male solipsism.

He more or less carries on that mantle in his current preoccupation with the decline of the West. The geopolitical threat of the Middle East had him lamenting the West’s “pusillanimity,” though he denies that he is a hawkish neoconservative. On the other hand, despite expressing concerns with the stability of its authoritarian regime, he has looked on China with admiration, especially when it comes to the country’s economic success. Never mind the threat that also poses to Western supremacy.

It is not surprising that Ferguson would favor China since he confesses in Civilization that he left Britain for America because that is where “the money and power actually were.” Among his many talents is a knack for finding an amenable home for an aggressive instinct. He stated in an interview in 2011 that he took his current position at Harvard because the American intellectual culture glorified his brand of “excessive vehemence” whereas the British would not tolerate it. He made the right bet with America, and his broad-sweeping ideas and unshakeable confidence have made him a star on the Davos-TED-Aspen circuit.

It remains to be seen whether last week’s remarks will dull the popularity of his intellectual output among that glamorous circle. Of all possible hints Ferguson has offered over the years of a source for his many ideological loyalties, there has never been one so visceral, and therefore with the same ring of truth. To finally blurt such strong evidence of a powerful urge to assert his masculinity in his ideas is the crack of vulnerability he’d been trying to avoid all along. Without that crutch of authority, one wonders if, from now on, he will be searching for a new hint of indifference from his audiences.

— Rebecca Liao, May 11, 2013

Rebecca Liao [bio here] is a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books; her pieces on China’s 2012 yearbook is here; her piece on fashion here.

Glenn Greenwald wrote an article about the Islamophobia of New Atheists and afterwards remarked that...

Sat, 11 May 2013 15:45:33 -0400

Glenn Greenwald wrote an article about the Islamophobia of New Atheists and afterwards remarked that he had rarely received such narrow-minded and dogmatic feedback.

Yeah, that sounds about right for New Atheists.

Being sick sucks.

Thu, 09 May 2013 23:29:14 -0400

Being sick sucks.

Stop emailing me and asking why you’re failing the class. I can’t discuss grades over...

Thu, 09 May 2013 01:47:50 -0400

Stop emailing me and asking why you’re failing the class. I can’t discuss grades over emails and furthermore, if you don’t even know my name, that might be part of the reason.

Foucault’s Will to Know was delayed until June 4. I had planned on reading that on a trip in a...

Wed, 08 May 2013 20:29:46 -0400

Foucault’s Will to Know was delayed until June 4. I had planned on reading that on a trip in a few weeks. :-(

thenoobyorker: From Wiki, On November 17, 2011, Rovell sent a...

Wed, 08 May 2013 19:50:50 -0400

thenoobyorker:

From Wiki,

On November 17, 2011, Rovell sent a tweet to his followers on Twitter, asking them to come forward with stories about how their businesses were losing money during the 2011 NBA lockout. A high school senior named “Tim,” annoyed with Rovell’s behavior at the time, created a fake name and email account, telling Rovell online that he owned an escort service in New York frequented by NBA players, which was losing 30% of its business.^[5] Rovell failed to verify the authenticity, and ran the story in a CNBC column. “Tim” came forward with the story months later to the website Deadspin, because, he said, “he’s just such a [expletive] on twitter all the time [I] just got fed up.” Deadspin made Rovell aware of his mistake. On the same day, Rovell released an apology on CNBC saying, “there will always be people out there who want their 15 minutes of fame and not really care how they get there.”

"No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach I.Q. parity with whites, but the prediction that new..."

Wed, 08 May 2013 19:07:42 -0400

“No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach I.Q. parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-I.Q. children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against. From the perspective of Americans alive today, the low average I.Q. of Hispanics is effectively permanent.”

- Jason Richwine, who joined the Heritage Foundation in 2012 as a senior policy analyst after receiving his doctorate in public policy from Harvard University in 2009, focused his dissertation, “I.Q. and Immigration Policy,” on his view that the lower intelligence of immigrants should be considered when drafting immigration policy. (via le-kif-kif)

…Latina in a top tier PhD program would like a word with ur racist ass

(via rhizombie)

Honestly I can’t get over the fact that faculty at Harvard for real let someone write a dissertation on this subject and I’m getting kinda pissed just thinking about it. A fairly shallow, cursory foray into current research in intelligence testing, identity, and demography would tell anyone with half a brain there is A LOT irrevocably wrong with the basic premise of I.Q. as an accurate and unbiased measure of intelligence, as well as the basic premise of discussing “Hispanic” people as a monolith (considering that “Hispanic” usually encompasses all Spanish speakers, which is an extraordinarily geographically, ethnically, and culturally diverse group). How Harvard fails to see that allowing a student to base a whole fucking dissertation on a tenuous and racist connection between two shaky-ass concepts makes them appear racist, backwards, and out-of-touch is beyond me.

(via the-split-lark)

I’m as angry as everyone else but I guess I’m not surprised since Harvard is home of the economics department whose major intervention in contemporary economics was literally wrong because of a spreadsheet error so it’s not like they’re batting a thousand lately

but this is absolutely infuriating and disgusting

(via adornoble)

I keep finding quotes from Foucault and stuff that I want to post on tumblr, but then I think...

Wed, 08 May 2013 19:05:28 -0400

I keep finding quotes from Foucault and stuff that I want to post on tumblr, but then I think “Hmm, that would take a while to type. Oh well.”

So basically, I’m what’s wrong with this generation.

Hey, instead of having a two hour lunch during the presentations, why don’t we just fucking...

Wed, 08 May 2013 00:46:32 -0400

Hey, instead of having a two hour lunch during the presentations, why don’t we just fucking eat and present? That might shave off some time that I could use drinking.

I have a presentation to do tomorrow. I’m considering just reading the lyrics to “Black...

Tue, 07 May 2013 23:16:52 -0400

I have a presentation to do tomorrow. I’m considering just reading the lyrics to “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” and then staring the audience down for five minutes.

“Is he really that left wing?” “”Nah, he’s an anarchist. He...

Tue, 07 May 2013 01:48:10 -0400

“Is he really that left wing?”

“”Nah, he’s an anarchist. He doesn’t even vote.”

Conversation I overheard today.

The only upside of today was a professor telling me that my idea for a thesis is actually really...

Tue, 07 May 2013 00:53:22 -0400

The only upside of today was a professor telling me that my idea for a thesis is actually really interesting.

People talking about AFI on my dash. That brings back memories of high schools and wearing oversized...

Tue, 07 May 2013 00:17:45 -0400

People talking about AFI on my dash. That brings back memories of high schools and wearing oversized black AFI shirts.

"The recent efforts to promote lesbian and gay marriage also promote a norm that threatens to render..."

Tue, 07 May 2013 00:15:31 -0400

“The recent efforts to promote lesbian and gay marriage also promote a norm that threatens to render illegitimate and abject those sexual arrangements that do not comply with the marriage norm in either its existing or its revisable form. At the same time, the homophobic objections to lesbian and gay marriage expand out through the culture to affect all queer lives. One critical question thus becomes, how does one oppose the homophobia without embracing the marriage norm as the exclusive or most highly valued social arrangement for queer sexual lives? Similarly, efforts to establish bonds of kinship that are not based on a marriage tie become nearly illegible and unviable when marriage sets the terms for kinship, and kinship itself is collapsed into ‘family.’ The enduring social ties that constitute viable kinship in communities of sexual minorities are threatened with becoming unrecognizable and unviable as long as the marriage bond is the exclusive way in which both sexuality and kinship are organized. A critical relation to this norm involves disarticulating those rights and obligations currently attendant upon marriage so that marriage might remain a symbolic exercise for those who choose to engage in it, but the rights and obligations of kinship may take any number of other forms. What reorganization of sexual norms would be necessary for those who live sexually and affectively outside the marriage bond or in kin relations to the side of marriage either to be legally and culturally recognized for the endurance and importance of their intimate ties or, equally important, to be free of the need for recognition of this kind?”

- Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (2004; p. 5)

Today was one of those days where it took all I have to not say “Fuck all of you, I’m...

Mon, 06 May 2013 22:08:45 -0400

Today was one of those days where it took all I have to not say “Fuck all of you, I’m going to drink.”

Photo

Mon, 06 May 2013 22:07:46 -0400

"Frequently accused since Empire of underplaying the dark side of imperialism, Ferguson seems to have..."

Sun, 05 May 2013 21:57:10 -0400

“Frequently accused since Empire of underplaying the dark side of imperialism, Ferguson seems to have come up with a rhetorical strategy: to describe vividly one spectacular instance of brutality – he expends some moral indignation of his own on the slave trade – and then to use this exception to the general rule of imperial benevolence to absolve himself from admitting to the role of imperialism’s structural violence in the making of the modern world.”

- Pankaj Mishra on Niall Ferguson

This strategy is so key to how many historians and modern day apologists for empire/capitalism/racism work. Instead of grasping these concepts as structural, they look at them as acts of exception and thus dismiss the entire structural violence that their systems impose upon people.
(via fearandwar)

"Frequently accused since Empire of underplaying the dark side of imperialism, Ferguson seems to have..."

Sun, 05 May 2013 04:41:27 -0400