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Who’s the fairest of them all?

In my interviews with Filipino bloggers , I would always ask them, “Who is your audience?” They’d often answer, “Oh, I really just write for myself.” I had difficulty understanding this, because if you’re writing for yourself, why bother putting your thoughts online in the first place?

Sarapen is my research blog. I set it up to communicate with the Filipino bloggers I was studying. However, it’s moved away from that ideal. There aren’t as many Filipino bloggers reading me as I expected. This is partly because I haven’t participated in the extended blogging conversations necessary to be drawn into a blogging community. I don’t have the time, and since my data collection is already done, there’s really no point, and it would just be extra work for me.

And as you may have noticed, this blog is becoming more and more self-indulgent. My titles have continued to be enigmatic, with the in-jokes largely apprehended by only myself. Or look at the subjects of my preceding posts: Zapatismo, anarchism, Japanese comics, free journals, and a short description of what I was watching on tv. Only two of the last ten posts have been on topic, and I’ve even set up Tangents as a new category to classify posts under (incidentally, I’ve just realized that as a classifier I’m a lumper and not a splitter). In other words, Sarapen is rapidly becoming about me instead of my research.

I’d like to think that the tangents I go on aren’t just intellectual “self-abuse,” as the Victorian British put it (that “it” being masturbation). Rather, my wanderings help me stay on track with my research by keeping my brain a lean, mean, analytical machine. Not only that, I get to think of something besides identity construction, which I think too much about these days. Regardless of that, though, Sarapen is no longer a tool for disseminating information on my research so much as a device for keeping my mind from getting tired.

So now I think I understand what my participants meant when they said they were writing for themselves. Frankly, I thought blogging would just be a necessary chore, but I really honestly have learned more about bloggers by jumping on the bandwagon. Instead of an intellectual appreciation of blogging, I have an embodied understanding of it. I compulsively check my blog statistics, I compose blog posts in my head when I find something sponge-worthy, I gleefully examine the map of my readers’ locations. I get it. Kind of.

Still, the idea of blogging for yourself reminded me of what Mikhail Bakhtin wrote about how dialogue works. As Bakhtin says, dialogue is only possible because the speaker not only addresses the other person specifically, but also keeps in mind that what he or she utters can be understood by a perfect audience, the superaddressee. Which is to say that misunderstandings can occur in any dialogue, but a speaker will attempt dialogue anyway so long as he or she believes that what was said can be understood perfectly by someone (whether that audience is God, history, reasonable people, or so on). So what if, in this particular kind of blog speech, the superaddressee is the self? The perfect audience who will understand perfectly what the blogger wrote is the blogger’s own self, whereas the specific audience consists of anonymous or not-so-anonymous others. Blog dialogue as semi-monologue, then?

The problem is that I only know enough about Bakhtin to be dangerous to myself. I can’t tell if what I’ve proposed really hangs together, especially since this stuff is tangential to what I’m actually working on. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I always knew being weak in linguistics would come back to bite me in the ass. People in sociocultural anthropology should really be more familiar with linguistics, especially linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics. But now I share it for posterity’s sake and in hopes that someone might tell me if I’ve embarrassed myself or not.

PS

Happy Turkey Day, Canada.

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Avengers assemble

Catfight! (Academic) catfight! Hmm, it doesn’t sound as sexy with the parenthetical qualification.

Yesterday I discussed David Graeber’s Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. In the new issue of American Anthropologist, David Graeber gets totally served in Rod Aya’s review of the pamphlet. Choice excerpts:

[Graeber] deems stateless societies anarchist if they are nonviolent – an Orinoco society where murder is “unheard of” is anarchist, an Amazon society where men gang rape women who “transgress proper gender roles” is not (pp. 27, 23) – and he expects that state societies split up into autonomous communities would be nonviolent as well . . .

The only violence Graeber considers is “symbolic” or “spectral” violence, meaning witchcraft . . . The “most peaceful societies” are “egalitarian societies” whose “imaginative constructions of the cosmos” are “haunted” by specters of perennial war” (pp. 25-26). Forget obvious counterexamples like E. E. Evans-Pritchard’s egalitarian, ultraviolent Nuer and hierarchical Azande where witchcraft occurs among equals. Forget the condescending reference to “imaginative constructions.” And forget that the theory is textbook functionalism . . .

Anarchist anthropology is realism itself compared with anarchist ideology, whose keyword is “counterpower,” meaning (for stateless societies) consensus through palaver and leveling through witchcraft, and (for state societies) “democratci self-organization” in “free enclaves” through “exodus,” not “seizing power” (pp. 60, 83) . . . Anarchist ideology predicts that millions will gladly forgo protection and income, and that the chief institution marked for abolition will perform an economic miracle. Cargo cult religion is sober by comparison (Aya 2006:591).

First, like I said before, Graeber’s work is just scattered fragments, it doesn’t pretend to theoretical coherence. Second, I think his proposals, while they can be criticized for being naive, should still be applauded for their boldness and optimism in contrast to the careerist quietism and unconstructive criticism inherent to much of academia. I’m reminded of David Harvey’s Spaces of Hope (2000), where, as the text on the back says, “Harvey dares to sketch a very personal vision in an appendix, one that leaves no doubt to his own geography of hope.” The main body of Spaces of Hope describes the injustices of globalizing capital; the appendix outlines what a truly just world might look like.

Marget Thatcher may have proclaimed, “There is no alternative” to neoliberalism; however, Harvey quotes the philosopher Ernst Bloch, who warns that there is “a very clear interest that has prevented the world from changing into the possible” (in Harvey 2000:258). Utopianism may be criticized not just for its naivete, but for the totalitarian excesses waged in its name (i.e., Marxism and liberal democracy), but when the alternative is to meekly accept the world’s ills, what is the alternative to this? The present is not the past, and today’s utopia’s are not yesterday’s, and believing that utopianism will inevitably lead to disaster is itself disastrous.

References

Aya, Rod (2006). “Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology: Review by Rod Aya”, American Anthropologist, 108(3): 590-591.

Graeber, David (2004). Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.

Harvey, David (2000). Spaces of Hope. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Marx went away but Karl stayed behind*

Just the other day I was in the lounge of my school’s student union building minding my own business when I suddenly found myself surrounded by Marxists. It turned out that the Marxism class had been overly popular and the professor had needed to accomodate the handful of students who were unable to attend the regular class. So they were there in the student union lounge holding their own little Marxism class. I figured out what was going on and asked to sit in. The prof readily agreed after first jokingly asking if I was a Mountie spy (as in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who are essentially the national, provincial, and local police force for much of Canada, and who rarely mount anything with four legs nowadays).

It was because of this that I learned that at one point, a third of the Communist Party in the United States was composed of FBI agents. In fact, the reds in the US were to a certain extent subsidized by the FBI, since FBI agents could pay their membership dues, as opposed to many of the party’s poorer members. Of course, as the prof pointed out, it’s not easy to fake a genuine commitment to Marxism, and how well run can a Communist Party be if it can be so easily infiltrated by those hostile to it?

Now, this prof is an old school Marxist. He is all about the original Marx. I mentioned that I’d actually read more Neo-Marxism than classical Marxism (which is rather common in anthropology) and he started going on about what he called academic Marxism and how it had in practice given up revolution. Fair enough, but as he went on I was reminded why Neo-Marxists started writing in the first place. The love affair with development and progress (making it kin to capitalism), the ordering of societies along a continuum from primitive to modern, the idea of the vanguard elite bestowing Marxist enlightenment upon the ignorant masses, and the ideological commitment to violence — these were all things that stuck in my craw. I was only a guest who hadn’t read the required readings and it would have been inappropriate for me to bring in more-sophisticated criticisms when the undergrads the class was designed for were still learning the basics, so I mostly kept my trap shut (though I was actually the second-most talkative person then even despite my self-censorship).

The prof mentioned anarchism as a competing ideology contemporaneous with early Marxism. He described it as a utopian project since it mostly rejected violent revolution. Rather, anarchists set up areas where they live as if the state did not exist and by doing so hope to inspire people to give up the state system by their example. Put that way, anarchism does sound rather naive, though it’s changed quite a bit since the 19th century.

I found the professor’s remarks interesting because I’d only recently read David Graeber’s Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. It’s a short little booklet outlining some ideas of what an anarchist world might look like given anthropological data on non-state anarchist societies. It’s not a scholarly work but a call to action and some proposals for anarchism. It really is just fragments of an anarchist anthropology and not a unified theoretical construct.

In Fragments, Graeber discusses hunter-gatherer groups such as the !Kung, who have — or rather, had — elaborate strictures and spiritual taboos designed to prevent the accumulation of surplus and the formation of hierarchy. He also brings in cases like Madagascar, where the government is so weak that in many places there exists an anarchist social order on the ground, while officially the areas are still under the control of the state. Graeber also discusses anarchism within industrialised state societies, especially in modern activism and Zapatismo.

Now, the more I study nations and the state, the more I get convinced that the state system is too inherently unjust to keep should we truly want to create a better world. I keep going closer and closer towards anarchism. So it was fortunate that a couple of days after my encounter with Marxism, I attended a talk given by my department’s new anthro prof about the Zapatistas and Zapatismo. One thing that I found particularly interesting was the elucidation of the relationship between Marxism, anarchism, and Zapatismo. Mexican leftists are of course quite steeped in Marxist thought, so when those cadres retreated to the jungles of Chiapas to foment rebellion, they tried to use Ye Olde Handbooke of Marxist Mobilization. Which didn’t really get them anywhere with the local people. The Chiapenos told them, “We understand your words but we don’t understand what you’re saying.” They could not see what kind of relevance to their everyday lives Marxist rhetoric could have. The leftist cadres had to change their strategy. What they came up with was Zapatismo.

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, the most visible of the Zapatista leaders, has referred to Zapatismo as an intuition. It is true that as a political philosophy it has no coherent theoretical whole. Rather, it seems to me that it is more like a set of general principles and methods. Zapatismo’s emphasis on practice over theory resembles some strains of anarchism, and its position that it will “Lead by obeying” certainly sounds anarchist (anarchy = “without leaders”). This is not surprising, since the Mexican leftists who helped found Zapatismo were also familiar with anarchism. However, the Zapatistas avowedly do not call themselves anarchists, but instead prefer to be simply called Zapatistas.

Zapatismo has of course spread beyond Mexico, becoming a symbol for the social justice movement in general (also called the anti-globalization movement by advocates of neoliberal globalization). It is not an ideological philosopher’s stone capable of healing all wounds and righting all injustices — in the talk on Zapatismo, for instance, my department’s new hire mentioned how women living in Zapatista territory appreciated the change in their lives: “Our husbands don’t drink as much and beat us less” — but I think it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

Anyway, that was what I did last week.

*This is the title of an ethnography by Caroline Humphreys about her work in post-Soviet Russia. It’s a joke made by one of her informants, who was referring to the sign of the farm she did her work in — the sign originally said “Collective Farm of Karl Marx”, but the famous last name had weathered away. I’ve only read the preface of the book, which is reprinted in The Anthropology of Politics: a reader in ethnography, theory and critique, Joan Vincent (ed.), Oxford: Berg, 2002, pp. 387-98.

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Sin vergüenza

It’s amazing how having constant high-speed Internet and cable tv means that one no longer has to go out as much. I’ve been doing my best to get caught up on watching cartoons, reading comics, and generally lounging about in sybaritic fashion. For instance, I spent last Sunday afternoon eating grapes and watching the dvd boxed set of Season 1 of Carnivale.

It’s wonderful to waste free time. And yet, time is not wasted when one’s mind is productive. Even when I’m not thinking about my thesis, I’m thinking about my thesis, and connections spring up during my relaxation in many delightfully surprising ways.

In this case, I’m talking about Eden, another Japanese comic book series (also known as manga) that I’ve recently come to like (thank you MangaProject). It’s about a young man living in a world where a pandemic has brought the world to the brink of disaster, and where a new world order has sprung up as a result. I have to tell you, in the following discussion of Eden I’m going to dispense spoilers like crazy. So read on at your own risk. There’s too much stuff to cover in one post so I’ll revisit the series again later. If you want my thoughts on Eden in a nutshell: Cyberpunk, biopolitics, near-apocalypse — rock! Read it if you need something to flip through when you want to pretend to yourself that you’re working.
A recumbent android girl is opened up and examined by lab technicians.
Anyway, the new disease is called the Closure Virus, which has killed 15% of the world’s population decades before most of the story’s action takes place. Bear in mind that 15% may not sound like a lot, but that’s still hundreds of millions of people dead, not to mention the many more that are implied to have died from the chaos that erupted. Governments collapse and a new organization exploits the power vacuum to put itself in charge — the Propater.

In the book, Propater is a neoliberal theocracy of federated nation-states controlling what we would call the “West” plus most of the Americas. I know, “Propater” sounds made-up. The name actually comes from Gnosticism, a religious movement from the same era as early Christianity. In fact, if you’ve got some knowledge of the Gnostics and of early Christian theology then you’ll be able to appreciate better some of the references in the series. I feel embarrassed I hadn’t caught on to the Gnostic elements until I’d read the series glossary, where it was all spelled out. Gnosia and agnosia, the aeons, God as insane: these are all things that are mentioned in the book, and they’re all important in some way to the story and its themes. Actually, googling around reveals that the major characters are named after Gnostic deities and they all play similar roles in the story as in Gnosticism.

The Catholic Encyclopedia (take that Wikipedia) says this about Gnosticism:

The doctrine of salvation by knowledge. This definition, based on the etymology of the word (gnosis “knowledge”, gnostikos, “good at knowing”), is correct as far as it goes, but it gives only one, though perhaps the predominant, characteristic of Gnostic systems of thought . . . Gnostics were “people who knew”, and their knowledge at once constituted them a superior class of beings, whose present and future status was essentially different from that of those who, for whatever reason, did not know. A more complete and historical definition of Gnosticism would be:

A collective name for a large number of greatly-varying and pantheistic–idealistic sects, which flourished from some time before the Christian Era down to the fifth century, and which, while borrowing the phraseology and some of the tenets of the chief religions of the day, and especially of Christianity, held matter to be a deterioration of spirit, and the whole universe a depravation of the Deity, and taught the ultimate end of all being to be the overcoming of the grossness of matter and the return to the Parent-Spirit, which return they held to be inaugurated and facilitated by the appearance of some God-sent Saviour.

However unsatisfactory this definition may be, the obscurity, multiplicity, and wild confusion of Gnostic systems will hardly allow of another. Many scholars, moreover, would hold that every attempt to give a generic description of Gnostic sects is labour lost.

Oh, and apparently Christian Gnostics were responsible for early Christian fanfiction:

The Gnostics developed an astounding literary activity, which produced a quantity of writings far surpassing contemporary output of Catholic literature. They were most prolific in the sphere of fiction, as it is safe to say that three-fourths of the early Christians romances about Christ and His disciples emanated from Gnostic circles.

Setting aside the fact that this version of the Catholic Encyclopedia is rather old and it’s often amusing to read the snide jabs at other religions, it’s interesting that anyone would structure a manga around Gnosticism. However, Eden isn’t the only manga or anime to take its inspiration from Christianity and related religions. I’ve never read the manga or watched the anime, but I know Neon Genesis Evangelion also explicitly explored themes from Christianity and Kabbalistic Judaism, though its treatment of such was apparently problematic. I did watch two episodes of Ninja Resurrection, a godawful anime miniseries about rebellious Christians in feudal Japan and the rise of the Anti-Christ or something.

Anyway, I think it’s fair to say that there’s a widespread fascination with Christianity in Japan, perhaps analogous to the fascination with Buddhism in the reified West. Perhaps this fascination comes from a desire for authenticity, with that authenticity being searched for in the foreign. So foreign = Other, Other = authentic, and conversely, domestic = Same, Same = inauthentic. This BBC article on one manifestation of Christianity in Japan presents an interesting but somewhat exoticizing view on the topic.

However, it’s debatable just how alien Christianity really is to Japan. It’s been in the country for 450 years, meaning that Christianity in Japan is almost as old as it is in South America. Christians have played major roles in Japanese history, perhaps most famously in the rebellion of Amakusa Shiro (depicted in Ninja Resurrection), not to mention the extensive meddling in feudal Japanese politics that Catholic missionaries engaged in. And as the BBC article shows, certain Christian sects are quite popular in modern Japan. So just how Other is Christianity really?

Oh whatever, I’m hungry and my rice just finished cooking. I’m definitely coming back to Eden, but see you some other time.

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Parte segundo de la traducción

Remember when I tried to explain the meaning of Sarapen? Well, ice_of_dreams, who I encountered on LiveJournal through our mutual appreciation (or former appreciation) of Ranma 1/2 and fanfiction thereof, has offered a more complete translation. Following is the comment left on my LJ:

World keeps getting smaller. I am Filipino too. 🙂 And you’re fortunate I still live in the Philippines and can translate. (and let me tell you these words are deep and aren’t used in daily conversation so I have to ask my dad and helper who’re from the Tagalog region to make sense of some of the words)

I hope you’re ready for this, this is long Continue reading “Parte segundo de la traducción”

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Stuff that is free

Free online access to SAGE journals until October 18
The announcement by SAGE Publishing:
“If your institution subscribes to one or more SAGE journals, free online access to ALL SAGE journals is available for you, your colleagues, and your students until October 18, 2006! No registration is required, so start accessing articles in your discipline on SAGE Journals Online today! Search leading SAGE journals covering a wide range of subjects in Business, Humanities, Social Sciences, and Science, Technology, and Medicine.

If your institution does not subscribe to any SAGE journals, click here to register for free online access to the trial today!”

They’ve got journals on ethnic studies, communication, history, sociology, and even one on video games (look under Media and Communication). I’ve mostly looked through the anthropology ones, I like Anthropological Theory and Critique of Anthropology.

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Jiggety Jig

I just realized that I haven’t mentioned this before, so let me tell you all now that I’ve finished my research and data collection. I’ve looked at the blogs, I’ve interviewed people, I’ve sat around and done analysis. All that’s left is the writing. So that’s what I’ll be doing from now on. Anyway, this is the abstract that I have so far for the thesis I’m working on:

My research focuses on Filipino bloggers and their expression of Filipino identity on blogs. Following from the data I gathered from bloggers both in the Philippines and overseas in a content analysis of Filipino-written blogs and from several interviews, my thesis begins from Stuart Hall’s conceptualization of identity as contingent and arising from difference. I explore the complexities behind the expression of Filipino identity on blogs and the numerous factors that such expression is contingent upon. I answer three basic questions in my exploration of this contingent identity: Why is Filipino identity expressed on blogs? How is it expressed? And why is there no single Filipino blogging community?

It’s clumsy here and there, but bear in mind it’s a work in progress. It gets the job done, which is telling the reader what the whole thing is about. I’ve also got an outline and some notes specifying what goes where, plus two notebooks full of analytical scribblings I’ll have to pore over, not to mention the notes I’ve taken on the books and articles I’ve read.

So what does the data I’ve gathered tell me about Filpino bloggers? I can only offer tidbits, of course, since there’s so much information to convey. Anyway, I’ve noticed that there seems to be five major categories of Filipino bloggers: Cosmopolitans, the Philippine Elite, Im/migrants, Second Generation Diasporic Filipinos, and Younger Filipinos in the Philippines. These are not absolute categories; there is overlap, and besides which, this is not the ultimate typology of Filipino bloggers which can be constructed.

Cosmopolitans are those Filipino bloggers originally from the Philippines who readily discuss such things as trips to Hong Kong and favourite restaurants in New York. They don’t speak of these experiences as extraordinary, but instead discuss them as normal and common. They live all over the world, though quite a few live in the Philippines. They tend to be neutral towards Philippine politics, at least judging by the fact that they rarely discuss such matters.

The Philippine Elite are Filipino bloggers based in the Philippines who – from the way they present themselves on their blogs – are clearly part of the ruling class. I don’t mean that they’re necessarily amazingly wealthy, but they definitely have power in the Philippines. They can be doctors, lawyers, journalists, and so on. They often discuss Philippine politics and they frequently display their nationalism in some way on their blogs. Cosmopolitans and the Philippine Elite are quite clearly connected to each other, and there is much overlap between the two.

Im/migrants also often discuss Philippine politics and make nationalist statements, but they also discuss things that the previous two groups do not. For example, Im/migrants often blog about adjustment difficulties to their new countries. They also speak of the Philippines in nostalgic rhetoric that Cosmopolitans and the Philippine Elite do not use (“I remember when I used to be a kid in the Philippines that we used to do x”). Blogs written by Im/migrants many times end up discussing those Im/migrants’ children as well. Many Im/migrants, you see, are mothers. This is because of the particular way that migration from the Philippines is gendered. The Philippines is one of the world’s leading exporters of trained female nurses, and I’ve found a few blogs written by such. I’ve also seen a couple of blogs written by what I suspect are mail order brides, which are another export commodity of the Philippines. The country is also a leading exporter of female domestic workers (maids), but I’ve yet to find one blog written by one, probably because maids tend not to have the time to blog, and seldom the resources.

The children of those Im/migrants also constitute another category of Filipino bloggers, the Second Generation Diasporic Filipinos. I’m also including under this category 1.5 generation Filipinos and those Third Generation and later, but it’s simpler to have the one title. Second Generation Diasporic Filipinos rarely link to blogs written by the preceding groups nor leave comments. More than the other groups, these Filipino bloggers discuss race and ethnicity. Im/migrants also discuss such things, but these topics seem especially relevant to the Second Generation, judging by how much they blog about race and ethnicity. I’ve noticed the same in my interviews.

Finally come Younger Filipinos in the Philippines. Generally, they don’t link to blogs written by Second Generation Diasporic Filipinos, even though they’re the same age and often have similar interests. They’re far more likely to link to blogs written by the other groups. However, Younger Filipinos and Second Generation Diasporic Filipinos do link to each when their blogs are hosted on bloghosting services that attempt to foster community. In contrast to, say, Blogger, where the focus of the service is more on the individual blogger who attracts readers to their blog, services like LiveJournal or Xanga make it possible to make a group blog or to form a blogring. A group blog is a blog written by multiple bloggers, while a blogring is a group of blogs linked to each other; both are organized around a certain theme. The theme can be something like knitting, but the blogrings and the group blogs I’m interested in are ones organized around being Filipino. Bloghosting services don’t want their users to use competing bloghosting services, and one of the ways they do this is to make it difficult for their users to link to blogs hosted on other services, while at the same time making it easier to link to blogs hosted on the same bloghost. What effectively happens is that self-contained communities form that are centred around the fact that they all use the same bloghosting service. So when someone should create a new group blog or blogring for Filipino bloggers, what ends up happening is that both diasporic Filipinos and Filipinos in the Philippines end up joining. Second Generation Diasporic Filipinos and Younger Filipinos in the Philippines thus end up in the same blogging groups, unlike their fellows who use individual-oriented bloghosts or host their blogs on their own paid servers.

I have more stuff about racialization, exclusion, nationalism, internalized norms, print capitalism, and technologies of the self and regimes of truth and power, but all that stuff is really too big for a blog post. But stay tuned and I’ll probably get around to discussing them eventually.

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Le mission civilatrice

Stages of sociocultural evolution

Finally, finally, I have cable tv and high-speed Internet at home. I have now passed from late savagery and skipped straight into middle barbarism. I don’t have a tv remote, so I’m still not civilized and bourgeois, but now I have a goal in my life. After a year of no tv, I can feel my brain rotting just from being in the same room as the infernal device.

UPDATE: Sweet Jesus, there’s nothing on. Bonanza? The Young and the Restless? I thought I got cable so I wouldn’t have to watch this. Oh look, it’s old episodes of The Weakest Link. My, it’s been a while since I’ve shouted at idiots on the tv, it feels so nostalgic. Lets see,

In Dante’s “Inferno,” which of these is not one of the three men being devoured in the lowest level of hell?’

A: Judas, B: Brutus, C:Nero, D:Cassius

Good thing I wasn’t playing, I thought it was Cassius. The answer was Nero by the way.