A Whole New World of Theory and Research

It is a whole new world that I am entering, a whole new world about which I am writing, from which I am writing.

I have finished uni, forever (perhaps), a few weeks ago. I am writing now from a different position. I am yet to become a Working Man, but I am not a student - a fledgling academic. You might say that 'I' am not different, but my position is, and I know we all appreciate the importance of 'position'.

'Theory' therefore, is not what it used to be: I will still research and think, but I need to avoid doing so as an academic. Theory therefore, will be undertaken with respect to the goals I have drawn up for the coming year:

A. - Deveop a pragmatic practice (habit) of thinking, writing and engaging, which will live with me.

a0: Thoughts: either paper, or action.
a1: JSB website up and functioning.
a2. Ability to sell myself (development/confidence).
a3: esp: story, speech, communication as pragmatic.
a4: Business pragmatics: business 'prospects' etc.
a5: Work as lifestyle/serving purposes (not just 'because' or money: understand it)
a6: Pragmatic people skills: network ability; business skills; personal goal understanding; use of JSB.

B. - 'Know' Australia: construct a story of Australia (as home): book, other writing. (pragmatics?)(inc. checklists)

PRAGMATICS is the word of 2009

The blog will be both different and the same: it will still be 'theory and research', but they will be pragmatic.
With a little bit of luck and a tad more discipline it will hopefully be more regular too!

BIG WORDS
( Even though their value is being undermined.)

Saturday Night Fever

Good evening.
Some of you may be aware of the Saturday Night Fever that hits me occasionally. There have been emails. I hope there haven't been tears... Fortunately there is yet to be an AVO.

Anyway, this evening I am being more sensible than that. I have, however, been struck with some incorriguble mental knots which have made me occasionally unable to get much wordage done at all, and that shits me. I resolved, to write.

This next paragraph is what happens when four years of uni resolve to 'just write'. I will decide in the morning whether it is too ranty to be marked.

Aboriginal perspectives can also be viewed within an ['idealist'] tradition. The emphasis on accuracy which we have discussed – irrespective of its source – needs to be considered in the same way. Clinging to the superior accuracy of an Aboriginal perspective is not a form of resistance against White political authority. Perspectives like Phillips', or Mycak's (in []) need to be viewed not as a reversal of power, but as an appropriation of the position of authority which reinforces the system of power upon which inequality is dependent. Fanon's [] provides a powerfully lucid perspective on the dangers of appropriating the methods and structures of power which have been enforced by a colonial authority. He argues that an appropriation that retains the same power structures – even if they are exercised by previously unpriveleged social groups - is a recreation of oppression, and that the necessary paths of resistance need to involve a reconstruction of social relations which is not dependent upon systems of oppression. Arguments for the superiority of Aboriginal perspectives which are grounded in a basis of truth and authority reinforce the distinction between Aboriginal and White interests which is the basis upon which White authority is enforced. It will, moreover, only ever be possible to re-organise authority within small pockets of resistance []; power is hegemonic [], and a retension of the structures of White authority will retain the power attendent with the “knitted togetherness” [said] of White discourse. Opposition is a war, in other words, that Aboriginal writers cannot win.

Deconstruction as entropy

I had a neat thought just now - well recently enough - a beautiful wedding of the mathematical and literary nerds within. I didn't want it to die with the essay it's going into, so...

Entropy,
is a wonderful concept - half obvious (intuitive), half impossible to understand.

Heterogeneity is a concept I'm engaging with currently. Heterogeneity in literature, heterogeneity of story - of voices, histories, narratives... Heteronarrativity I think I'll call it.

The urge, mathematical in source, is to relate what the authors (Z. and A. Smith) are doing
to the concept of entropy (really I should probably say that it is relating the word to the concepts...).
Where 'what they are doing' is of course my reading of the books, but you can stick it up your arse and suck it if you have an issue with the vocab.

Not at the same time, obviously.

The idea of discrete (mathematics again), coherent, monolithic, distinct, self-identical... of Stories as things Singular, and not Other than themselves... is being challenged and undermined, being replaced by an understanding of voice as heteroglossic, of story as discursive, of history as rhizomatic. The partitions, regulations, potential differences of the structures and relations of stories - or unity of story, should we be blinkered well enough to not even see the other - are being hacked at, dismantled... deconstructed.
Deconstruction when you sit and think about it (decrease its entropy would you, you reactionary fascist!) it doesn't involve disprovals, contradictions, arguments against. Deconstruction is more like generic 'kicking', shaking, putting in the boot - applying pressure and degenerating a stressed, artificial order by speeding up the process of entropy.

Novoreligious rant

Okay, hello again. A little less 'home' talk this time, more pop-philosophy.

In a sense this isn't about writing, but it is certainly the kind of thought that would get expression in something creative. Or, if not expression, it would lie latently but significantly behind the motivation and valuations.

This is 'philosophy' in the non-academic sense of the word. The kind of philosophy that deals not with a view of the world but with the way one approaches the world. The kind of boat that religion gets thrown into (by all sensible non-theists like myself).

Background: non-theism. Happy non-theism, yet occasionally marked with the sense that there could be more, something else. Not necessarily something that is missing - in the sense that one would melodramatically say missing is Love - just not having a good thing.

A good thing? Theism?
Why not?

1. God is fucking awesome.
(Sometimes.)
I just can't make myself have faith in any sort of divine reality. Shame.

2. Theism justifies all sorts of otherwise aberrant yet possibly desireable behaviour. Like all sorts of violence, racism, generally being nasty or negative about people or groups of people. Me? I have no excuse, I have no choice. (Though I do have theoretical freedom, it's hollow freedom - I am in no position to be asocial.)

3. A rich texture of symbolism and semiotics (meaning). Imagine that all of the literary history you treasure was ascribed a (divine!) reality! Imagine its power!
I have a fetish for religious symbolism - a longing desire to be affected by it. Largely unsatisfied and generally marginalised for that reason.

Enough background. I know it doesn't interest you.

The textfile I am looking it is titled 'novoreligion' (pretensious enough without capitalisation I thought).
It excites me. The most exciting part is the thought that it may not be a pipedream.

More history: I decided a month ago that I am rich. (Details unimportant.) Since then I've bought whatever I want. It's great! (Always fresh bread!) The best thing, though, is not the buying, it's the not-thinking about the money. I don't want to think about money. I want to be able to use it, not think about it.

Money is a necessity, it is beautifully functional. It is 'neutral'. But it can promote sickness.

I don't want money-sickness. I don't want to be a person for whom money is important. Those people sicken me and draw my pity. Sometimes it seems like I'm sick, but really I have too little to be sick. It is a sign, though, a sign I need to be careful. I plan my expenditure, and have an annual budget for significant expenses. It's good in that it means I don't need to 'worry' about them. But it can't be extended to spending in general. That promotes sickness.

One of the things I like to do most when I'm rich is spend frivolously. To me, richness isn't about money (I always have money - I know I'm contradicting myself), it's about excess of it.

Frivolous spending is central to novoreligious thought. Frivolous spending is the means to conquering money, to immunisation against money sickness. Right now I'm quite healthy - I lost $100 the other day and I was shocked at how little it bothered me. I had the 'that's a bad thing' idea, but not the sensation. I also lost $300 on Cadel Evans (bastard!), but to be honest I felt better having lost this year's gambling gains than I did making them. There's no pressure in loss, only the aftermath, and as long as you're able to protect your bottom line that's nothing to be afraid of.
Me, I have always been anal, my bottom line will always be fine.

To contextualise, novoreligion was basically born of the idea that we are all filthy, filthy rich. Don't deny it, you're a rich fucking fat cat. Any and all 'necessities' of life are taken as a given. You eat, sleep, breathe, fuck, whatever, essentially without any stress.
I know as well as you do that that is lame consolation: our needs and desires are formed to such a small degree by our biological or other 'necessities' that they deserve to be ignored. And that I am all for.
It's what we do about the other needs and desires that we have that is the object of religion, of philosophy - novoreligion. Novoreligion is about awareness and denial of the 'necessity' of these, particularly the commercial ones.

Pot-smoking 'freethinkers' and anti-commercial types are well and good - I hope they're happy and respect their decisions.

Rejecting commercial and social imperatives is arduous, perilous, impossible. Our reality is constructed of the narratives that we form - and we does not mean you, it means everyone, and those with fat $$$$ shout louder than you or I.

The solution? Not anticommercialism, but hypercommercialism. Novoreligion is the embrace of the excesses of hypercommercialism as a route to superceeding and conquering the attached commercial imperatives.

She works, she spends, she loses, and is freed by her excesses.

Novoreligion. It might be a rant but isn't it nice?

Procrastination: thinking about the bush

Well I haven't written much, or done much, but I've been thinking about a few things.

I've been reading Zadie Smith's White Teeth, which is quite interesting if you like that sort of thing, the sort of question that it raises. And yes, I do.

It doesn't explicitly deal with 'home' questions, but the questions it asks are equivalent. If anything it's more specifically about identity, but identity AS an immigrant, in a certain place, with a certain past. More generally, it looks at questions of both the individual and place, both having history.

It's an interesting way of looking at things - very literary, very philosophical, yet also very subtle. The characters are searching for a 'neutral' place for two estranged brothers to meet. This could have been related in a range of ways, but it is described specifically in terms of 'neutrality' with regard to history - and when they meet, the room is rewritten in their conversation, becoming no-longer-neutral, as it gains connections with the past, with history.

What's interesting is that although its questions are nearly equivalent to questions of 'home', they are in a sense quite different. They cover the same territory without reverting to the idea of 'home' itself. None of the immigrants is ever not-at-home, nor at-home, merely in a place, with their specific history. You could say that 'home is where the history is', if you wanted to - but Smith doesn't want to. Why would you bother searching for home?

So, I ask myself the same question?
If I am going walking in the bush, I might be covering the same territory - unearthing, writing, creating history, and writing self and place - but need it be cached in the terminology of the 'home'?


Well that's my thinking.
Perhaps next time I'll look at 'home' itself, maybe. We'll see.

First Post

Well, here it is.
Is it here to stay?

First post in a blog, my blog. Hopefully not my affliction.

Had been thinking of blogging lately - or somethinging. Something to get me writing, to get words down on paper, somewhere to write whateverthehellIwant - but more importantly to compel me to actually do so.

First questions come first and will be addressed first, in part:
'An open-ended set of bushwalks' - look up '6 Walks in the Fictional Woods'.
Book starts well, becomes average. But the metafictional stance is interesting, and particularly the interesting meaning and metaphor of the title.
Open-ended because blogs aren't book length; they start, and they either get updated or not. Bushwalks because 'walking in the woods' is entirely inappropriate, obviously, and because my forests are not necessarily fictional. Though I wouldn't be surprised if often there are connections.

But then, as we know, there are always connections.

Til next time, I shall be thinking of something interesting to say.