2008 January Archive at Joseph Scalice

Archive for January, 2008

Tan Malaka in the Philippines

Published on January 31, 2008 in Rizal, Indonesia, Communism, Southeast Asia, History and Philippines. 0 Comments

This fascinating political cartoon comes from El Debate, a Spanish language news daily during the American colonial period in the Philippines. Tan Malaka, Indonesian communist and cosmopolitan provocateur, was in the Philippines and the colonial administration was threatening him with a lengthy prison sentence. A number of prominent Filipinos came to defense.

Notice the towering figures of Rizal and Plaridel [Marcelo H. Del Pilar] and the approach of the guardia civil. The guardia civil was the loathed tool of repression under the Spanish occupation; here they represent the Philippine constabulary, the likewise loathed tool of repression under the American occupation.

I believe that, in life, Rizal was four feet, eleven inches tall. Here he towers over everyone, much as his statue towers today over every town plaza from the top of a pedestal.

pagsaulo

Published on January 23, 2008 in quotation, Philippine literature, poetry and family. 1 Comment

I have been working on memorization. There is not much else that you can do with your mind when a six-month old baby wakes you up at three in the morning.

While pacing between our darkened living room and the cold linoleum of the kitchen floor, Nathaniel and I have completed the periodic table of elements, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and are currently working on Florante at Laura:

Kung pagsaulan kong basahin sa isip
Ang nangakaraang araw ng pag-ibig,
May mahahagilap pa kayang natititik
Liban na kay Celiang namugad sa dibdib?

Yaong Celiang laging pinanganganibang
Baka makalimot sa pag-iibigan,
Ang ikinalubog niring kapalaran
Sa lubhang malalim na karalitaan.

Epicurus on Huckabee

Published on January 22, 2008 in greek and quotation. 1 Comment

‘Ασεβης δε, ουχ ‘ο τους των πολλων θεους αναιρων, αλλ’ ‘ο τας των πολλων δοξας θεοις πρσαπτων.

- Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus.

prophets and street names

Published on January 21, 2008 in quotation. 2 Comments

Just a thought, really, when faced with MLK day, MLK avenue, MLK Jr. High (and the occasional Malcolm X avenue or Cesar Chavez Park) - a verse,

You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your forefathers!
Matthew 23:29-31

Or perhaps I should let the wonderful Jonathan Kozol speak:

MLK “Dr. King is regularly presented to our students as a noble, decent, but incredibly predictable and rather boring human being, who did a certain amount of “good” for his own people, adhered at all times to peaceful means, and never became impatient with white people … Textbooks omit from the story of his life the only facts that make him genuinely great and worth our real respect.”

- Jonathan Kozol, On Being a Teacher, 35.

“There is, by now, a sequence by which historic figures of strong radical intent are handled in the context of the public school. First we drain the person of nine tenths of his real passion, gust and fervor. Then we glaze him over with implausible laudations. Next we place him on a lofty pedestal that fends off any notion of direct communion. Finally, we tell incredibly dull stories to portray his school-delineated but, by this point, utterly unpersuasive greatness.”

- Jonathan Kozol, The Night is Dark and I am Far from Home, 63.

“We honor decent people after they are dead: cowards, cynics and amusing people while they are still living. There is no danger that a dead man will arise to tell us that we are degrading his best work, or that we have been invalidating all its deepest worth.”

- Jonathan Kozol, The Night is Dark and I am Far from Home, 71.

wsws

Published on January 11, 2008 in socialism and News. 0 Comments

I have, for years, been a daily reader of the world socialist website (www.wsws.org). I have found their reporting and analyses of current events to be of unparalleled insight, cogency, and humanity. Today this article was posted: Notes on the political and economic crisis of the world capitalist system:

1. 2008 will be characterized by a significant intensification of the economic and political crisis of the world capitalist system. The turbulence in world financial markets is the expression of not merely a conjunctural downturn, but rather a profound systemic disorder which is already destabilizing international politics. As always, the weakest links in the chain of imperialist geo-politics are the first to break. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, the eruptions of civil wars in the Congo and Kenya, and the renewed tension in the Balkans over Kosovo are indicative of the increasingly explosive state of world politics … [continue reading]

I strongly encourage you to read the entire article.

Notes on David Marr’s Vietnam 1945.

Published on January 8, 2008 in notes, Vietnam, Southeast Asia and History. 0 Comments

David Marr, Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995)

David Marr’s Vietnam 1945 is an account of the end of the Second World War and of the August Revolution of 1945. Marr weaves together the historical narratives of a variety of actors in the events leading up to and immediately following August, 1945. China, Britain, Japan, Vichy and Free France, the United States and the various elements of the Viet Minh and the ICP all play prominent roles in Marr’s recreation of the various perceptions and actions in the vying for power until, “by early September 1945, the contest had already been narrowed down to two rivals: France and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.” (xxiv).

Marr is intent on avoiding what he terms the “teleological trap,” examining history in the light of later events and then ferreting out the causes to these events and thereby inadvertently robbing history of the sense of the possible. This, he claims, is but a short step from “crude deterministic expostulation.” (xxv) To this end, Marr has written a dense and remarkably well-documented account of the various forces and events that created the stage upon which it was possible for the August Revolution to occur.

I was put off, however, by the claim on which Marr grounds his anti-teleological agendum: “the only truth in history is that there are no historical truths, only an infinite number of experiences.” This felt strangely disingenuous one page after Marr spoke of the need to ‘routinely exclude’ the ‘deliberate mystification of the past’ that occurred under the ‘Communist Party imprimatur’ (xxiv). Here then was an account of the past that was ‘inaccurate’ because it failed to reflect ‘historical truth.’ Further, while I share Marr’s concern with a reductionist teleology historically retrojected as causal narrative, not all narratives of possibility are equally worthy of recounting. Granted there is not an historical telos to be expostulated; there are, however, actor-intentioned historical tele, whose viability are mediated by concrete historical circumstances. Not all possibilities are created equal and the historian’s concern should be to move from historically determined causes - determined in the etymological sense of ‘limited’ or ‘bounded’ - to their necessary effects.

the Enlightenment vision

Published on January 7, 2008 in quotation. 0 Comments

There was, in short, a long period in Western civilization when it was assumed that the universe was completely intelligible and that we were capable of a systematic understanding of its nature. Because these twin assumptions found expressing in a series of classic statements in the European Enlightenment, I propose to call them “the Enlightenment vision” …

Beginning in the early decades of the twentieth century, a number of events, intellectual and otherwise, happened to challenge and undermine this traditional optimism both about the nature of things and about our ability to comprehend that nature. My guess is that the greatest single psychological blow to the intellectual optimism of the nineteenth century was not an intellectual development at all but rather the catastrophe of the First World War. There were also a number of purely intellectual changes, however, to the Enlightenment vision. Both the intelligibility of the real world and our capacity to comprehend the world seemed to come under attach from various quarters.

First, relativity theory challenged our most fundamental assumptions about space and time, and about matter and energy … Second, the discovery of the set theoretical paradoxes seemed to challenge rationality of that very citadel of rationality, mathematics … Third, Freudian psychology was taken not as a gateway to an improved rationality but as a proof of the impossibility of rationality … Fourth, Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness proof seemed to deliver another blow to mathematics … Fifth, and worst of all, on certain interpretations, quantum mechanics seemed simply unassimilable to our traditional conceptions of the determinacy and independent existence of the physical universe … Sixth, in the late twentieth century the rationality of science itself came under attack from authors such as Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, who argued that science itself was infected with arbitrariness and irrationality …

I could continue this dreary list. For example, several anthropologists have claimed that there is no universally valid rationality, but that different cultures have different rationalities. Similar versions of relativism have become common in the intellectual movements known collectively as “postmodernism.” Postmodernists see themselves as challenging the enlightenment vision.

Just to put my cards on the table at the beginning: I accept the Enlightenment vision. I think that the universe exists quite independently of our minds and that, within the limits set by our evolutionary endowments, we can come to comprehend its nature. I believe that the real change since the nineteenth century is not that the world has become unintelligible in some exciting and apocalyptic way, but that it is a lot harder to understand for the rather boring and unexciting reason that you have to be smarter and you have to know a lot more.

John R. Searle, Mind, Language and Society: philosophy in the real world (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 4-6; emphasis added.

concentration

Published on January 6, 2008 in fromm, notes and quotation. 0 Comments

The capacity to concentrate has become a rarity in the life of cybernetic man On the contrary, it seems as if he does everything to avoid concentration. He likes to do several things at the same time, such as listen to music, read, eat, talk with friends…

Indeed, television is a good teacher of non-concentration, the audience becomes conditioned not to concentrate. When people are by themselves they also avoid concentrating on anything.

Concentration is such a rare phenomenon because one’s will is not directed to one thing; nothing is worth the effort to concentrate on it, because no goal is pursued passionately.

People are afraid to concentrate because they are afraid of losing themselves if they are too absorbed in another person, in an idea, in an event.

Finally, to concentrate requires inner activity, not busy-ness, and this activity is rare today when busy-ness is the key to success.

[People] think that concentrating is too strenuous an activity and that they would get tired quickly. In fact the opposite is true… Lack of concentration makes one, tired, while concentration wakes one up.

A paraphrased rendering taken from my notes on Erich Fromm, The Art of Being (New York: Continuum, 1999), 44-49.

a darkling plain

Published on January 5, 2008 in quotation and poetry. 0 Comments

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world …

And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

from Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach,” in Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold (London: MacMillan and Co, 1899).