2003-01-17 10:55 (UTC)

Harrassing Hobsbawm

Erik Stattin has a bunch of reviews of Hobsbawm's memoirs (all in English - be brave!), from which I have plundered gratefully.

The very Rightist New Criterion has a shrill and spiteful denunciation, which does at least manage to borrow a point:

Not long ago, on a popular television show, Hobsbawm explained that the fact of Soviet mass-murdering made no difference to his Communist commitment. In astonishment, his interviewer asked, "What that comes down to is saying that had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of fifteen, twenty million people might have been justified?" Without hesitation Hobsbawm replied, "Yes."

You might want to read the more sympathetic Guardian review for some context on his childhood in Berlin in the 30s:

"In Germany there wasn't any alternative left. Liberalism was failing. If I'd been German and not a Jew, I could see I might have become a Nazi, a German nationalist. I could see how they'd become passionate about saving the nation. It was a time when you didn't believe there was a future unless the world was fundamentally transformed."

Or you might not. I will confine myself to noting that the first quote reflects a commitment to an extreme form of utilitarian "rationality". This strikes me as one of the many good things of which you can have too much, but I'm not daft enough to ignore Hobsbawm's work on history in protest.

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2003-01-17 10:04 (UTC)

Scandiwegian Snogging Survey

In original Swedish and new Norwegish flavours!

The use of mouths and tongues appears to be favoured - you heard it here first! - but there is no mention of my pioneering work on transcribing kisses as duets in an extended version of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Possibly because I just made that up.

And while we're all sex och k�rlek (which Aftonbladet files under "kvinna", incidentally) a recent discussion on sci.lang turned up a spoof Aftonbladet article on the various X-bo terms in current usage. (Fascinating Swedish fact: the status of samboende (cohabiting) has legal implications in Sweden.)

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2003-01-16 09:19 (UTC)

Stopgap Sm�rg�spost

I'm intellectualled out for a bit, so here's some linkage while I recuperate. (Fear not, Swedish persons; I'm following the discussions closely.)

First, an interview with Banana YOSHIMOTO's translator:

I've never felt translating literature from Japanese is automatic. The words are so far apart. The texture of the language is so different - it's some hazy realm that's bordered by the two languages.

It turns out that it's her new translator; I haven't read any of the ones he did yet. This matters because there isn't really much to (my reading of) YOSHIMOTO's stuff beyond the superficial exoticism - it looks like generic Gen-X yoof-fic underneath. (Gedanken: Imagine someone was raving to you about a new author and said they were like "an American Banana YOSHIMOTO". Instant cognitive dissonance!)
[via wood s lot]

And here's a set of articles on the noble art of translation. Sounds rubbish, frankly, and not especially well paid, either, but the articles are interesting anyway.
[via the Enigmatic Mermaid]

Oh, and Gale tipped me off to the announcement of a release date for the fifth Harry Potter book. Refried PR available in kids' or grown-ups' sizes. Executive summary: it's released on midsummer's day and it's even longer. Choosing the summer solstice is surely a deftly-blown raspberry to the gibbering-for-Jesus krew.

There's kungligskvaller, too! This is just like old times, is it not so?

Vickan's bloke has moved to be closer to her. This would be all the sweeter if it hadn't been motivated by the security concerns of the Swedish police, but still. They've been together for an year, but the such talk as there is of engagements is that it is too soon to talk of engagements.

And the professionally-opinionated Belinda Olsson has a opinion about Madeleine:

I ny�rsintervjun stockade sig inte orden en enda g�ng och hon verkade s� s�ker p� sig sj�lv medan storasyrran m�ste fundera �ver varje ord s� att det inte blir fel men s� blir det fel �nd� och hon f�r inte sagt vad hon vill riktigt.

It's mostly a rant about Her Beigeness's career in over-privileged flouncing, but it's the first meeja attempt I've seen at an analysis of the fascinating Vickan-Madde dialectic. The Good Princess/Bad Princess routine does a marvellous job of emphasising Vickan's down-to-earth, dutiful and consciencious kunglighet, though, don't you think? Oh, and the Swedish for d�colletage is urringning. (That frock does seem to have encattened some pigeons, for sure.)

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2003-01-15 10:15 (UTC)

[Book Review] Hobsbawm & Ranger (Eds) The Invention of Tradition

I learned how to think about history from this book. (I abandoned school history at the age of 14, so that's not as strong a statement as it may sound.) To review it properly would take a long essay and I'm not going to write one. That said, here goes:

An important distinction is that between a science (in the broadest sense) of history and a kind of mythological history - the invention of tradition is often accompanied with a mythology claiming that it has been perpetuated Since The Dawn Of Time. Hugh Trevor-Ropers hilarious debunking of clan tartans and kilts as ancient Scottish traditions - they're 18th and 19th century innovations, with the connivance in the former case of textile manufacturers - is a brilliant demonstration of this.

How far it makes sense to try to replace popular (mythological) histories with more accurate accounts is an open question. (Scottish persons! About these "kilts" of yours? They're... They're... Um. They're very fetching, yes.)

But the meatiest bit of the book comes at the end, where Hobsbawm (who did the introductory chapter, too) comes back to discuss the mass-production of traditions in the period between 1870 and 1918. He argues that it's precisely the rapid social change of the nineteenth century that "called for new devices to ensure or express social cohesion and identity and to structure social relations".

You might ask why we need any such devices at all, but the only answer you'll get is that that's what people are like. This is very much history as social anthropology - an anthropology of dead people, if you like. Certainly, Hobsbawm is able to exhibit a variety of persons contemporary to his chosen period who are inventing the social sciences and falling out with the "rational actor" hypothesis: Janet, William James, Freud, Durkheim, J G Frazer (but not Friedrich "Laughing Boy" Nietzsche, who is presumably excluded as a mere philosopher), and goes on to say:

The intellectual study of politics and history was transformed by the recognition that whatever held human collectivities together it was not the rational calculation of their individual members.

(See, K, it's not just me.) This is the not at all the same as claiming that science is just another ideological construct - I have degrees in physics, maths and engineering, and I work as a programmer in a university maths department, so it's a safe bet that my tribal loyalties would prevent me from endorsing that point of view. It's also not the same as a social determinism that denies the existence of conscious actors (which I don't, of course). It's not even a denial that rational calculations or objective truth are possible.

But the whole history of the twentieth century suggests that it's important that we should find out what does hold human collectivities together, and whether it can be done without quite so many mass graves in the future. Simply insisting that people should be more reasonable hasn't been terrifically effective, so far.

In any case, an anthropology of dead people is always going to run into the problem of evidence, and while it's impressive what can be deduced from French municipal statuary during the 3rd Republic - the question of whether or not Marianne, the avatar of freedom, has her tits out turns out to be crucial - it's hard to surpress the feeling that this would be a lot easier with living people. (Although it wouldn't be history, of course.)

Hobsbawm has a solo book on nationalism, too. I can hardly wait...

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2003-01-14 14:56 (UTC)

The reality of sensible things

Well here at Luton it's a three-cornered contest between, from left to right, Alan Jones (Sensible Party), Tarquin Fin-tim-lim-bim-lim-bin- bim-bin-bim bus stop F'tang F'tang Ol� Biscuitbarrel (Silly Party), and Kevin Phillips Bong, who is running on the Slightly Silly ticket. And here's the result.
[Monty Python's Election Night Special]

Klippspringer retorts that "Folk kan visst �verkomma irrationella uppfattningar genom utbildning!"

Really? When do we start? And by the way, are you quite sure that's a rational belief?

Or is the ideal of an undeluded actor in an ideological vacuum just a better disguised myth than most?

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2003-01-14 09:50

Is that an unders�kning in your pocket ...?

Surveys in women's magazines are always top-quality entertainment, of course, but this one is even better than most:

Var tredje kvinna kan t�nka sig att ha sex med prinsessan Madeleine.

There's a completely ungratuitous photo of Madde "in" her redan klassisk Nobel dress to go with this entirely scientific observation, hoorah! Also,

�ver h�lften, 56 procent, av m�nnen k�nner likadant.

I dare you to pretend to be surprised that "[u]nders�kningen gjordes p� n�tet." Oh, go on - at least try.

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2003-01-14 09:59 (UTC)

Lightening Rods of Lunacy: Rehabilitating Royalty

Let's start with Hobsbawm's The Invention of Tradition.

A general hostility to irrationalism, superstition and customary practices reminiscent of a dark past, if not actually descended from it, made impassioned believers in the verities of the Enlightenment, such as liberals, socialists and communists, unreceptive to traditions old or novel.
[Hobsbawm, p9]

I need to know more of this Enlightenment (Upplysningstiden) thing - I seem be an impassioned believer in its verities, and I assure you that I don't say that to all the Enlightenments (Upplysningstiderna).

Of course, rituals and symbolism were and are tolerable - up to a point - as a spectacle for the Great Unwashed,

[b]ut a rigorous individual rationalism dominated not only as an economic calculus but as a social ideal.
[ibid, p.9]

Most of the criticism I get to hear of monarchies fits snugly into this pattern - they're anachronistic; they're contrary to egalitarian principles; they're expensive to maintain; they're irrelevant and they're surrounded by bizarre and irrational rituals and ceremony.

All of which is completely true, and I won't hear a word against it. But even on its traditional terms, the Great Unwashed argument hasn't lost much of its force: in the same way that an Established Church, such as the Church of England, can serve as more of an inoculation against more enthusiastic (in both senses, tee hee) forms of religion than a religion in its own right, a monarchy can help to preempt uglier displays of nationalist symbolism. (Let's play False Dichotomy: which is more offensive to your sensibilities - the Queen of England or John "Ayatollah" Ashcroft?)

So far, so 19th century. (Apart from the Witch-Finder General, at least.) As I wrote earlier last year, though, when it first started to become clear that my enthusiasm for prinsess gossip was not widely shared among the soi-disant intelligentsia,

It surprises and depresses me that, a hundred years after Freud and fifty years after L�vi-Strauss, leftists (including me) still expect to be taken seriously when they react to any hint of the Ceremonial by rebuking it for its irrationality.
[Cahiers In�dits, v. I]

This is what has changed since the 19th century - the belief that people can be educated out of their "irrationality" is no longer tenable, and if you appear to believe otherwise I may be forced to mock you. (In fact, I think I'm pretty much demanding that if we're going to be silly, can we - please! - at least be sensible about it, which probably serves me right.)

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2003-01-13 14:25 (UTC)

Gestalt! (Gesundheit!)

Det var bara ett h�l jag bodde i men jag trivdes med det. Visserligen �r det ju detsamma f�r en filosof om han trivs eller inte men ett bra h�l var det i alla fall.
[Bisamr�ttan i Kometen Kommet av Tove Jansson]

Ladies, gentlemen, muskrats, penguins and spiny anteaters - an optical illusions site; all the important ones are here. [Update: it's now dead. Arse!]

I ended up having to get Bertrand "Dirty Bertie" Russell to explain to me what "sensations" and "impressions" might be, so that Maurice "Maurice" Merleau-Ponty could insist that it's not like that at all, with the help of his Gestalt Psychology chums and their Celebrated Illusions ("You Won't Believe Your Eyes!"). Rereading Russell after so long is very odd - when he lets his scientism intrude everything gets very peculiar indeed - but he is good at clarifying what the great philosophers of the past would have meant if they had been trying to mean the sort of things he thinks ought to be allowed to be meant, which is substantially more useful than I may just have made it sound.

Oh, and here are some slightly belated Chinese propaganda posters [via The Ultimate Insult].

Whereof one cannot change, thereof must one mock, isn't it, Varied Reader?

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2003-01-13 11:18

Marginalia

Descartes disliked the cold, and seldom got up before midday. When he went to Sweden to serve as a tutor to Queen Victoria Christina [Oops.] at her preferred time of five in the morning he soon fell ill and died. (Source: Russel's History of Western Philosophy)

Nonetheless, if prinsessa Madeleine were to find herself curious about the phenomenological implications of the crisis of subjectivity arising from speaking a language that is always already that of the Other - as she so easily might - I would feel it my duty to make myself available to discuss the matter.

And I finally found my copy of Feynmann's astonishing QED, and thus the quote I've been after for ever-so-long. In the middle of a "historical" account of quantum mechanics, he pauses and says:

By the way, what I have just outlined is what I call a "physicist's history of physics," which is never correct. What I am telling you is a sort of conventionalized myth-story that the physicists tell to their students, and those students tell to their students, and is not necessarily related to the actual historical development, which I really do not know!

This point is one more often made (and intended as a reproof) by historians and philosophers of science, but it seems to me that it's an important characteristic of science that it can unproblematically endorse an account of history that is nonetheless explicitly acknowledged to be mythological.

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