Coming on top of each other, the four seismic developments of the second half of the 1980s completed the alienation of the upper-caste Hindus from the Congress and the Janata Dal.
Nonsense! Had Rajiv built the Ram Temple he'd have returned to power. He had gained in shrewdness and would be on the qui vive for back-stabbers within his own Cabinet.
But what gave staying power to this shift was a simultaneous, and sudden, rise of insecurity in the intermediate bourgeoisie that industrialisation within a closed, autarchic economy had created in the previous half century.
This 'intermediate bourgeoisie' commanded little in the way of votes. Once Rajiv played the Ram Mandir card, he would himself be seen as 'Maryada Purush'. Indeed, the widow Sonia was seen as a 'pativrata' and commanded votes for that reason. Incidentally, after Rahul returned to India she announced that if Congress came to power, she would put the Sankaracharya who had performed her grha pravesh ceremony in charge of constructing the Temple, once the court case was decided.
This had begun almost surreptitiously with the removal of several restrictions on imports in 1978
remittances from the Gulf improved the balance of payments position and created a bit of fiscal headroom
and a relaxation of India’s industrial licensing laws in 1980 and 1981.
Because of the second oil shock and Sanjay- and later Rajiv's- lack of attachment to doctrinaire Socialism.
But the pace of economic liberalisation had accelerated dramatically in 1985
why did Rajiv get such a big majority? Does Jha think it was because the 'intermediate bourgeoisie voted for him in their hundreds of millions?' No. The answer was that Sikhs had killed Hindus and then the INC slaughtered Sikhs the way it had slaughtered Muslims back in 1947.
after Rajiv Gandhi became the prime minister. In his first budget, presented in February 1985, the government abolished industrial licensing for about half of all industrial production. In the next few months, it also took a large number of controls on industrial modernisation off the rule book, reduced duties drastically on the import of capital goods, and eased the import of new technology.
The problem with the 'license permit Raj' was that if officials don't turn up to extract bribes if the owner of the enterprise is a gangster- more particularly one who has become an MLA or a Minister. Why pay the 'Stationary Bandit' when killing his minions means you can extort money which would otherwise go to the Government?
This rapid shift away from the crippling controls of the previous three decades,
those 'controls' were a response to a hard currency crunch. But controls can be circumvented. The black economy grows. At some point the local gangsters can capture the local government machinery. Dynasties die nasty if their scions keep getting shot or blown up.
and the consequent return of modern industry into the consumer goods sector, fulfilled the essential economic requirement for the development of the fascist impulse,
Jha believes 'fascist impulse' is caused by eating nice things or having nice clothes to wear. As for people buying TVs or smart-phones- that will cause them to turn into Nazi Werewolves! Worse yet, the fucking Hindus might come to power! Queen Victoria would be totes not amused.
for it turned the seemingly solid ground that near-total import control, and a chronically shortage-ridden market, had created for the small and medium sized, owner-managed enterprises into quicksand.
Where? In Patna- where Jha was born? No. Jha is probably talking about Jharkhand which is known for its millions of SMEs run by members of the 'intermediate bourgeoisie'.
The shock this gave to it was almost as great as the shock that the onset of the 1930s’ Great Depression had given to the Mittelstand in Germany.
Very true. Jharkhand's Mittelstand was just like that of Germany. It also had great physicists like Albert Einstein and was famous for making Mercedes cars.
At first sight, India’s industrial landscape in the 1980s and ’90s did not look very different from that of other industrialised countries during the middle stages of their transformation into modern market economies.
India didn't have much industrial landscape and lots of it was shittier in 1985 than it had been in 1955.
There was the same sprinkling of large, professionally managed, multi-product firms at the top of the hierarchy,
Where? India had 75 percent rural population in 1980. Even in 1875 Germany had 67 percent. At that time, there wasn't a single 'professionally managed' conglomerate in the whole country. Its biggest company was Krupp which employed 13,000 people. Tata, which now employs over a million, had 100,000 employees in 1950. The plain fact is, India had a Managing Agency system which Germany did not. The first German conglomerate was only created in 1925. Jha is talking utter nonsense.
followed by a body of medium and small enterprises that grew wider as their size became smaller.
Jha is talking about Japanese style 'duality'. Compare India with Japan by all means. Explain why Nehru did not allow the wage-good sector- textiles in particular- to grow in the Japanese manner. Then talk about his failure to create a technocratic cadre which would function like the Japanese MITI. Finally explain that for poor people and poor countries, Budgets matter. Plans do not.
But the similarity in the size distribution of industry was deceptive.
Not if the comparator was a 'dual economy' with a large pre-modern or informal, low productivity, sector.
For while in countries where the growth of capitalism had been unhindered, or actively encouraged by the state (as in the “tiger” economies of East and Southeast Asia), the relationship between small and large industry had evolved naturally from competition to symbiosis.
Jha means there was 'dis-integration' such that Marshallian industrial districts were created. But for that to happen you need more subsidiarity. China can create 'sock cities'- i.e. a city which just makes socks- because the local Party leadership has more freedom of action and a high incentive to achieve success. India has a demoralized bureaucracy and a gangsterish political class.
As technology progressed and the minimum scale of efficient production expanded, small industry turned increasingly from producing final goods sold directly to the consumers to providing components, ancillaries and specialised services for supply to the large industrial companies that produced and marketed the finished goods.
This also happens in India so as to get round labour laws and militant Trade Unions.
In sharp contrast, the vast majority of small-scale producers in India continued to produce final goods for the market in direct competition with the now liberated large-scale enterprises till the very end of the twentieth century.
Karsanbhai Patel, a lab technician, started making and selling washing powder in 1969. He is now worth six billion dollars. He delivered his product on his own bicycle. The reason people bought Nirma washing powder was because he sold at 3 Rs. per kilo. Surf sold at 13 Rs.
The reason for this “arrested development” of capitalism was
A Gujju wasn't PM and a Sikh wasn't in charge of Economic policy. Instead you had useless, Oxbridge educated, Brahmins like Jha.
a singular, and in retrospect tragic, convergence of economic and political compulsions.
Fuck off! Nehru said in his Autobiography that he wanted to 'Brahminize' Indian politics- i.e. send the 'banias' (businessmen) packing. He got Congress to embrace Socialism and shitting yourself if the Chinese invade. This is very Brahminical. If only the Germans had shat themselves, Hitler- who was Austrian- would have fucked off to Vienna holding his nose. For Nazism to triumph, it is enough if Oxbridge educated Brahmins don't shit themselves incessantly.
Before 1957, the Indian government had followed a relatively open trade policy because it had accumulated large sterling balances during the Second World War, and therefore did not foresee the need to husband the use of foreign exchange.
Hilarious! You have some money in the bank. You don't foresee that it will run out if you keep pissing it against a wall. Still, so long as you shit yourself incessantly, you will be safe from turning into a Nazi werewolf. Why is Modi not shitting himself? Is it because he is actually Adolph Hitler? YES! Kindly listen to Rahul Baba. This is what he is trying to tell you in-between wailing for Mummy to come change his diaper.
Its first Five Year Plan (1952–57), therefore, emphasised infrastructure, community development and agriculture, and left industrial development to the private sector.
Nope. It reserved some areas for the small scale sector. True mill production did grow to meet the shortfall caused by the War but, by 1956, Mills were banned from installing new looms save against export orders. Clearly, Nehru feared that the financiers of the INC during the freedom struggle might switch support to some rival of his.
The bottom line is that India decided to defy three different economic principles
1) Comparative advantage. India should have specialized in labour intensive, not capital intensive, industies
2) Economies of scope and scale. India decided this was unfair to the small producer.
3) Budgets are 'constraints'. You can't do linear algebra or dynamic programming or other such mathsy stuff unless you know what the fucking constraint is ahead of time.
Economic autarchy was ushered in by the Second Five Year Plan, which emphasised self-reliance
i.e. begging.
and gave priority to the establishment of heavy industry.
by begging foreigners to come and set up steel plants for us.
This would have required tighter controls on non-essential imports anyway, but what really brought about a sudden and complete ban on all non-essential imports was a severe foreign exchange crisis in 1957 when the government belatedly realised that it had exhausted its sterling balances and was not exporting enough to carry on with its earlier liberal import policies.
They weren't liberal. Nobody had liberal policies back in those days.
Since this crisis occurred before the World Bank had shifted its focus from European reconstruction to economic development in the Third World, and before the era of liberal US economic aid ushered in by President John F Kennedy,
It began in 1958 under Eisenhower.
the government had no option but to pull down the shutters and ban virtually all but the most essential imports.
Fuck off! It could have stopped pissing money away on white elephant projects and a useless and stupid bureaucracy. Spend money on what earns you money. Simples.
The near-complete ban on the import of consumer goods that followed created the market space for the rapid rise of an intermediate industrial class in the country.
No. It created space for shitty products.
At that time, India produced very little for export except textiles, jute, tea and a few other simple manufactures.
It should have concentrated on textiles and leather goods. The world was much poorer back then.
Everything from lead pencils to liquor was imported.
India had started producing pencils in the Thirties. Liquor, too, was produced.
Importers had seen the foreign exchange crunch coming at least a year before the government, and had spared no effort to corner as many import licences as possible. When the government lowered the boom, these licences began to change hands at fantastic premia. Premia of 1,000 and 1,200 per cent were not unknown.
If that money was invested in manufacturing industry, no great harm was done. The fact is most countries had some sort of permit system back then because of the Bretton Woods strait jacket.
Those with import licences received a windfall profit of staggering dimensions overnight. Denied future imports, many of them asked their suppliers to help them set up manufacturing units for what they had previously been importing. Most manufacturers obliged, and sent equipment, often second-hand machinery that was to have been phased out, and took equity shares in the enterprise in return. In this way, commercial capital was converted into industrial capital overnight, and a new class of small and medium-sized enterprises was created.
The question was whether the momentum could be kept up. Unfortunately, Congress had committed itself to Socialism. Thus the feeling was that sooner or later the means of production would be Nationalized.
For the next ten years, hectic import substitution enabled industrial production to grow at an average of 9 per cent a year.
So, there was import substitution. The problem was quality and lack of incentive to tap economies of scope and scale.
By the time the foreign exchange crisis petered out, this new owner-manager class was firmly established and ready to make a bid for power.
Not really. It was content to seek a patron within the Ruling party. There was a drift to patrimonalism.
Its opportunity arose when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi abolished the privy purses of the princes and, in 1969, enacted the ban on company donations to political parties, described earlier, without creating an alternative mode of financing elections and electoral politics. Since political parties, including the Congress, still had to meet their expenses, they still needed large amounts of money, but now in cash. The intermediate class stepped into the breach and began to provide it.
So, the real problem was 'black money'. What created the black economy? High taxes.
The change in the financial patrons of the Congress party did not take long to get reflected in economic policy.
The question is why India decided to strangle the organized sector in Textiles back in the Fifties. There was no great policy shift. All we can say is that repeated hard currency crunches affected economic policy. The big change was the Green Revolution which empowered dominant agricultural castes. Indian politics was about power ebbing away from the Educationally forward Caste to the 'Backward Castes'. Charan Singh saw himself as the farmers' champion and considered his elevation to the top job as their victory.
Professionally managed businesses found it far more difficult to give unaccounted donations. When they said so, they were told openly by party treasurers and fundraisers to find ways of doing so “or else…”. The relationship between government and big business therefore, changed overnight from one of cosy co-operation to one of barely concealed hostility.
Money was less of an issue back then because you had populist leaders like JP who could mobilize the masses without spending any money. However, it was suspected that the RSS provided the organizational skills. There was some truth to this but backward caste leaders showed they were in the driver's seat.
The businessmen who found no difficulty in giving cash were the owner-managers of small enterprises and traders.
In other words, Politics was an extortion racket.
This class led an insecure existence at the best of times. Its control over the market was virtually non-existent; its access to bank finance at reasonable rates of interest was limited; its dependence upon the government for infrastructure – power, water, communications and transport – was total. Consequently, its “transaction costs” (the bribes it had to pay) were higher.
Guess who doesn't have to pay bribes? The Mafia Don. He can extort the extortionist. If the State is a 'stationary bandit', bandits will try to take over the state.
It lived in mortal dread of any policy change that would enable modern enterprise to enter the fields it had chalked out for itself. Mrs Gandhi’s ban on company donations to political parties, and its consequent need for clandestine donations, gave it the opportunity to convert its growing economic power into political power. Within a decade, the Congress had transformed itself from being an ally of modern, large-scale industry into an ally of this new, intermediate bourgeoisie.
Interestingly, in the mid Seventies, Communist MPs helped the Tatas fight off extortion attempts by local politicians in Jamshedpur. Still, growth in the organized sector was anaemic. Jha does not mention the elephant in the room- viz. remittances from the Gulf, etc.- which slowly but surely lifted the hard currency constraint.
Between 1970 and 1973, the Indira Gandhi government passed a spate of laws that cut all remaining links with big business, and turned India into an inward-looking siege economy. A Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act defined monopoly companies as those with total assets of more than $7 million and those that controlled more than one-third of the market for a product. An Industrial Licensing Policy amendment act barred “big business” from investing in any but the core sector, ie, basic metals, heavy engineering and chemicals industries. It permitted even this only when they could further prove that the proposed investment would not make them a monopolist.
This scarcely mattered to the vast majority of districts where there was no organized sector to speak off. In any case, labour militancy was quite capable of killing off industry all by itself.
By an amendment to the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, the government also banned foreign investment except in 100 per cent export-oriented ventures. Its most draconian enactment was a “conversion clause” that permitted investment banks to convert 40 per cent of their loans to any company into equity shares, at their discretion.
The obvious workaround was 'pyramiding'. Essentially, the industrialist put in very little money of his own while retaining control rights and relied on Nationalized Banks and the LIC for funds.
Since the promoters seldom owned more than a third of the equity capital of the company, and since all the three institutional investors in the country – the Industrial Development Bank of India, the Industrial Finance Corporation and the Life Insurance Corporation – were almost wholly owned by the state, the conversion clause became a way to nationalise private concerns by the back door.
Though, if they became 'sick' (i.e. insolvent) the Government would step in by the front door.
This sowed an enormous fear of growth itself in large industrial enterprises, which was heightened when these institutional investors began to convert the loans they had given to the most successful enterprises into equity instead of those given to struggling companies to keep them afloat.
Why keep struggling companies afloat? Let them sink or swim.
Not surprisingly, the conversion clause put an end to new large-scale investment by private companies for more than a decade.
The best of monopoly profits is a quiet life. If there is a ten year waiting list for your product, you don't need to come into the office more than once or twice a year.
As if all this did not give sufficient protection to small-scale industry, the government also explicitly reserved more and more products for manufacture exclusively by it. The number of such products rose from an already high 177 in 1972 to 837 in 1983. So comprehensive was this list that it virtually blocked any large company from entering the consumer goods sector.
Unless, like Ambani, they paid off the right people and pretended they were actually running a cottage industry.
From garments to electrical goods, to transistor radios and household appliances, virtually every Fast Moving Consumer Good (FMCG) was reserved for the small-scale sector. Thus, in the mid-eighties, this “intermediate” manufacturing sector had 853,000 industrial units, produced 5,000 consumer products, employed 9.6 million workers and, including the output of the public sector, accounted for over 40 per cent of total industrial output.
So, India was a 'dual' economy where the unorganized sector, with low productivity, was gaining ground against the organized sector. Consider Nirma washing powder. A Chemistry teacher started making soap powder in a bucket and selling it on his bicycle. Soon it was able to take market share from the big boys.
By 1984, therefore, the structure of Indian industry bore a remarkable resemblance to that of Germany at the end of the 1920s
No. Some German companies were the best in their field. No Indian company could claim this.
when the Great Depression began, and of Iran in the 1960s and ’70s.
Iran had an 'absorption problem'- viz. too much hard currency making it difficult to absorb imports. This was inflationary. India had the reverse problem.
In the 1980s, India had entered the middle stages of transformation into an industrialised economy.
That had happened in the Thirties. It was in the Fifties that policy decisions were made which would result in deindustrialization though this was not obvious at the time.
It had the same overt hostility towards big business; the same handful of favoured cronies among such businessmen; the same elaborate regime of controls to curb the growth of big professionally managed concerns;
Was Mrs. Gandhi wrong to end the Managing Agency system? Probably. An African American economist who studied them at the beginning of the Fifties found they were doing technology transfer and did enjoy economies of scope and scale.
the same xenophobia towards foreign businesses; the same autarchic determination to be self-reliant at any cost; the same benevolent attitude towards small enterprise; and the same elaborate structure of party middlemen to “fix things” with the government, that Germany had had in the 1930s and Iran in the 1970s.
Germany had a big 'shake out' before Hitler came to power. An LSE trained economist committed the unthinkable blunder of ordering a monetary contraction at the trough of the cycle! After that Rearmament restored full employment though there was repressed inflation. Some economists believe that the economy would have collapsed one way or another.
While this “intermediate class” was protected from competition by the Congress, and could rely on it to pass and maintain laws that would curb the growth of the large industrial houses and keep foreign investors out, it had no need to look for another patron.
Yet it did do so. Jha can't explain why Congress started to lose its grip on State after State. The rise of 'dominant' agricultural castes was the main factor. It is foolish to compare India- with a very small manufacturing sector in most Districts- with Germany in the Thirties.
Thus, Hindu nationalism remained without the third essential ingredient that had been responsible for the rise of fascism in Europe.
Jha is obsessed with Fascism. He doesn't understand that it only exists where there is a Communist threat and the Army supports an Il Duce or Fuhrer whose thugs will beat up the Commies on their behalf.
Paradoxically, that ingredient was provided by the success of Rajiv Gandhi’s partial liberalisation in 1985.
Rajiv was a Dynast. But his mother had used Fascist methods to establish Dynasticism. North Korea too was Dynastic. Ba'athist 'Secular, Socialist' parties too were trying to become dynastic.
This led to a burst of investment in industry that pushed manufacturing growth up from 4.9 per cent between 1980 and 1984 to 10.4 per cent between 1985 and 1990.
At a time of relatively low oil prices. Then came the Kuwait war oil shock.
The rapid growth of income, and consumer demand, that resulted from this jump in production softened the impact of the initial economic liberalization upon the intermediate stratum of manufacturers. But this proved a temporary reprieve.
Once again, it was the Balance of Payments which was the major constraint. The country ran out of hard currency. Fortunately, Manmohan was able to take advantage of the crisis to push through reforms. Edwin Lim of the World Bank was eager to offer low interest loans to finance infrastructure investment as he had done in China. Sadly, the activist 'andolanjivis' were able to block this with the result that Ambanis and Adanis used money from Nationalized Bank to do the needful and become very very rich.
Rajiv had lifted controls only upon the domestic market and left India’s highly overvalued exchange rate untouched.
This is the crux of the matter. Irma Adelman had persuaded the South Koreans to devalue at the beginning of the Sixties. India only did so when the UK devalued. In both countries, the administration became unpopular. India then had to double down on import substitution. Manmohan understood this was folly. By changing the focus from the exchange rate to the quantity of foreign currency reserves, he enabled India to start thinking in terms of export led growth. The success of IT and BPO was unexpected and had a big impact on the trajectory of some Southern States.
This kept Indian manufacturers out of the world market and ensured that little of the jump in production went into exports. The vast bulk – nine tenths or more – went into satisfying the pent-up demand of a growing middle class within the country
don't forget the role of remittances in this. The NRI became a dominant factor. Bollywood started churning out feel-good, consumerist, films for this market. The problem with Gandhian Socialism is that if people can run away from it, they do so with vim and vigour.
and pre-empted the further expansion of the small-scale enterprises.
Some grew and grew. Others remained small. Quality of entrepreneurship is a constraint on growth.
Almost overnight, therefore, the intermediate class lost a large part of the comforting, secure “economy of permanent shortages” that Mrs Indira Gandhi had created for it between 1970 and 1973.
Their sons and daughters had already run away to greener pastures. Anyway, investing in real estate was safer and more profitable. The good thing about living in a Malthusian shithole is that land become scarcer and scarcer.
But that was only the first blow.
The 'arhatiya' (agricultural middle-men) have shown the world that they can defeat even the great Narendra Modi who was obliged to scrap this reform of farm laws. The plain fact is that an economic interest group is not powerless in India. There is a lot it can do to fight back against even the most popular Prime Minister. On the other hand, if a particular economic niche is disappearing for technological reasons, there is very little politicians can do to protect the affected class of people.
As for bleating about Germany in the Thirties and the spectre of Fascism- that is simply silly. India had a choice between Dynasticism and Democracy. I don't say it chose Democracy. I do say that assassination tempers autocracy. Rahul is in no hurry to become Prime Minister because he vividly remembers what happened to his Granny and his Daddy.
The Wire.in, carries a different excerpt from Jha's book
Over the decade since Narendra Modi has been the prime minister of India, at the head of a BJP government supported by a few local allies in the states of northern India, he has worked diligently to complete the conversion of India into a fascist nation-state—a process that began during his tenure as chief minister of Gujarat in 2002.
A fascist state is a one party state. It has a dictator whose word is law. Modi is a popular leader of one party among many. True, the opposition has not been able to offer an alternative Prime Ministerial candidate, but that is because of Rahul's dog in the manger attitude. He doesn't want the top job, because he is afraid of assassination but he won't let anyone else have it either. Still, Kharge was able to organize pre-poll pacts with other parties and thus the BJP does not have a majority in this party.
The history of this transformation has been written in painstaking detail by scores of
ignorant blathershites.
academics, journalists and defenders of civil rights and democracy, several of whom have been languishing in prison without bail, but also without having been charged with any specific crime, for years.
The UAPA act was passed in 1967 and has been used by various different administrations. If Courts refuse to grant bail it is because there is a prima facie case against the accused.
How Modi has completed the journey to fascism is described in broad brush strokes below:
Modi took the first step towards dismantling the pluralist, ethnically diverse democracy that his predecessor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, had taken so much pride in,
He became CM of Gujarat under Vajpayee. Indeed, he was known as 'junior Vajpayee'. If Modi is a villain, Vajpayee must be one too.
within weeks of coming to power. His first step in this direction was seemingly innocuous: this was to instal TV cameras at the entrance to every ministry, and withdraw the PIB (Press Information Bureau) card which allowed special correspondents and other senior journalists to visit ministries and talk to civil servants without having to reveal their own, or their hosts’, identity.
In other words, Modi ensured that Ministers would not brief against each other. He avoided Manmohan's mistake. The Cabinet may have been divided but it appeared unified. That was a good thing.
The PIB card had been created deliberately by India’s first prime minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, to encourage public debate within an infant democracy by allowing senior journalists to explore different views on impending policy decisions within the government, at a time when there was virtually no opposition to the Congress in parliament.
He passed the First Amendment which reduced the freedom of expression.
The Modi government destroyed this freedom barely a fortnight after it came to power.
Nonsense! The fact is, we live in a technological age. You don't need to physically visit a person. You can 'Facetime' them.
A further amendment during his second term, that required the officer to also come to the reception desk and sign his or her visitor in, ended all communication between government and the public except what Modi wanted the latter to hear.
Did Modi confiscate smartphones from officials? No. They could 'Facetime' with anyone they liked.
Modi’s second step towards the centralisation of power was to create a system of monthly meetings between his departmental ministers and senior officers, and nominees of the BJP, in which the party would ‘oversee’ the functioning of the ministry. This transferred much of the decision-making power of government from the ministries to the party.
That is democratic. Political parties take political decisions. Civil servants implement policy.
Modi’s next target was the audio-visual media, which he tamed by using every instrument at his command, from the denial of advertisements to selected print and TV channels,
as has always happened
to the framing of never-proved charges of tax evasion and money laundering against their promoters, under which it ‘attached’ (seized) their passports, and all their property till as long as the case lasted. Prannoy and Radhika Roy, the founders of NDTV, India’s first commercial TV channel, were his first targets. Despite this, NDTV retained its independence till November 2022, but succumbed because by then all advertisers had deserted it, presumably under government pressure. Faced with imminent bankruptcy and the loss of the hundreds of jobs of its technical staff, the Roys resigned from the board of the company in November 2022, and allowed NDTV to be purchased by the Adani Group, Modi’s principal financial supporters ever since his days in Gujarat. Since then, NDTV too has become a mouthpiece of Modi’s budding fascist regime.
The fact that a case is not proved does not mean no crime has occurred.
Modi’s third target was the judiciary, which he corrupted through the offer of lucrative post-retirement appointments to High Court and Supreme Court judges.
Again, this has always happened.
These ranged from the unprecedented appointment of a former chief justice of the Supreme Court of India, P. Sathasivam, to the governorship of Kerala, which we discussed in Chapter 12,
Jha does not mention S. Abdul Nazeer's appointment as Governor of Andhra Pradesh.
to the appointment of former Supreme Court judge A.M. Khanwilkar to the post of India’s Lokpal, its chief vigilance officer.
What's wrong with that? Surely, the Lokpal should know the law?
Other judges of the Supreme Court whom Modi similarly rewarded with post-retirement elevations and appointments are Chief Justices of the Supreme Court Ranjan Gogoi and Sharad Bobde, and Justice Arun Mishra.
Jha won't mention Nazeer because that goes against his narrative of Modi as an Islamophobe.
Modi also made three other, more insidious and—over the long run—even more destructive moves, one deliberate and two defined by sustained avoidance. But all were expressly designed to undermine India’s infinitely varied ethno-national, federal democracy.
India is not a Federation. It is a Union.
The first was that in all his years in power, Modi never held a single press conference.
So what? Technology has changed.
The second was that in those years, Modi also never held a meeting of the National Development Council
which was formed to implement the 5 year Plan. But the Planning Commission has been scrapped.
, a council of state chief ministers that had become the main forum for coordinating central and state policies after the Congress lost its dominant party status in 1989. During Modi’s decade, communication between the people and their government, and between the central and state governments on policy issues became strictly one-way.
No. It remains two way. What has gone is the Planning Commission.
But his most insidious assault on India’s federal structure was his replacement of the Planning Commission with the NITI (National Institution for Transforming India) Aayog.
The Planning Commission concentrated power in the hands of the PMO. It has gone because it was shit.
On the face of it, nothing changed: NITI Aayog continued to work from the same building as the Planning Commission; none of its staff were dismissed and no new staff was added. The change of name therefore looked like no more than another, petty, manifestation of the BJP’s obsession with ‘Hinduizing’ India.
Newflash! India is largely Hindu.
Beneath that deceptively innocuous change, however, Modi took away the Planning Commission’s most important function, and vested it in himself.
The PM already controlled the Commission.
This was the annual allocation of central Plan grants to the state governments. Till he came to power, this had been done by the Planning Commission on the basis of the oft-revised Gadgil formula for allocation based on factors like population, per capita income, and fiscal performance, aiming to promote balanced regional development, recommended five decades earlier by D.R. Gadgil, then deputy chairman of the Commission. Modi turned this allocation into his personal prerogative, and began lavishing the lion’s share of these grants upon BJP-ruled state governments, at the expense of states in which the BJP had been unable to extend its influence.
In other words, he didn't bother with revising some silly formula. This means he is a Nazi. He has suspended the Constitution and jailed his opponents
I asked Copilot-
I asked Copilot 'what is Socioproctology'. Its answer was better than mine.
Socioproctology is a satirical term coined by author Vivek Iyer to describe a mock-academic discipline that critiques what he sees as the absurdities and pretensions of certain strands of social science and philosophy. The word itself is a portmanteau of “socio-” (relating to society) and “proctology” (the medical study of the rectum), suggesting a metaphorical investigation of academic “assholes.”
Rather than offering constructive theory, socioproctology revels in pointing fingers at intellectual posturing, especially in non-STEM fields. It’s intentionally irreverent, often targeting prominent thinkers with biting humor and exaggerated critique. Think of it as a kind of literary roast disguised as scholarship — a genre where footnotes might be wielded like daggers.
If you’re curious, the series Socioproctological Investigations includes titles like Virulent Wokeness, Agnes Callard vs. Magnus Mallard, and Amartya Sen & Maieutic Socioproctology, each blending philosophical parody with cultural commentary.
Would you like to explore how this concept could be visualized in Klimt’s gilded style? Or perhaps dive into one of its more mischievous critiques?
Derrida begins 'Grammatology' with the following 'exergue' - which is the inscription on the reverse side of a coin or medal.
The one who will shine in the science of writing will shine like the sun. A scribe (EP, p. 87)
Scribes can do well for themselves. They may get promoted to the executive cadre.
o Samas (sun-god), by your light you scan the totality of lands as if they were cuneiform signs (ibid.) .
Rulers scanned the accounts submitted to them by scribes. What both these quotations show is that writing appears for fiscal reasons in City States which may develop into Empires.
2. These three ways of writing correspond almost exactly to three different stages according to which one can consider men gathered into a nation. The depicting of objects is appropriate to a savage people;
No. It is appropriate for multi-linguistic trade networks.
signs of words and of propositions, to a barbaric people;
No. Ideograms may be used by a highly civilized people whose spoken languages are not mutually intelligible.
and the alphabet to civilized people. J.-J. Rousseau, Essai sur l' origine des langues.
Or to a nomadic people.
3. Alphabetic script is in itself and for itself the most intelligent. Hegel, Enzyklopiidie.
The Chinese will have overtaken America within a couple of decade. As for Hegel, he wasn't intelligent at all.
This triple exergue is intended not only to focus attention on the ethnocentrism which, everywhere and always, had controlled the concept of writing.
Nonsense! Ethnocentrism would militate for Missionaries not introducing scripts for indigenous tribes in far flung parts of the world.
Nor merely to focus attention on what I shall call logocentrism: the metaphysics of phonetic writing (for example, of the alphabet)
which didn't matter at all. The Roman and Chinese Empires were about equal in size, prosperity and territory even though they had completely different types of writing. Indeed, it was the Chinese who had the first 'Guttenberg revolution'. I suppose this is because they invented paper.
which was fundamentally-f or enigmatic yet essential reasons
false reasons. Derrida was simply ignorant.
that are inaccessible to a simple historical relativism-nothing but the most original and powerful ethnocentrism, in the process of imposing itself upon the world, controlling in one and the same order: the concept of writing in a world where the phoneticization of writing must dissimulate its own history as it is produced;
Fuck off! The Roman script did not displace the Greek script. On the other hand, Ataturk succeeded in imposing the Roman script and getting rid of the Arabic script in Turkey. It appears this did boost literacy and the spread of new technology and ideas. But, I suppose, the aim was to weaken the power and influence of the Muslim clergy. In no country was the introduction of a phonetic script done by dissimulation. Hangul was introduced by the King of Korea. Previously, the hiragana script had been introduced by the ladies of the Japanese court. They didn't pretend it was the gift of a magic dragon.
. the history of (the only) metaphysics, which has, in spite of all differences, not only from Plato to Hegel (even including Leibniz) but also, beyond these apparent limits, from the pre-Socratics to Heidegger, always assigned the origin of truth in general to the logos:
This is false. Plato has a correspondence theory of truth. Sadly, his 'forms' don't exist. It is a different matter to say that God, the Creator, is the Logos, is the son of such and such carpenter who is also the Pantocrator ruler of the Universe. Sadly, nothing can stop God from lying.
the history of truth, of the truth of truth, has always been
nonsense. Truth is important in Accountancy and the Law and Medicine and Science and Engineering. It isn't important when it comes to writing stupid shite.
- except for a metaphysical diversion that we shall have to explain- the debasement of writing, and its repression outside "full" speech.
Nothing of the sort occurred. The phrase 'give it in writing' means that writing was considered superior, because more effortful and deliberate, than speech.
3- the concept of science or the scientificity of science- what has always been determined as logic
Nope. Science is inductive and empirical. Math is deductive. A scientific theory can have a mathematical description though the math might not exist yet.
-a concept that has always been a philosophical concept, even if the practice of science has constantly challenged its imperialism of the logos,
Science is useful. Philosophy isn't. Science told Philosophy to fuck the fuck off long long ago.
by invoking, for example, from the beginning and ever increasingly, nonphonetic writing.
Which can be rendered phonetically easily enough. To be fair, there were some stupid people back in the Fifties who said 'the Chinese can never be great physicists or mathematicians because of the nature of their language.' Nobody is saying that now. We think Chinese people are likely to be better at Math than the rest of us.
No doubt this subversion has always been contained within a system of direct address [systeme allo cutoire] which gave birth to the project of science and to the conventions of all nonphonetic characteristics.
Nonsense! What gave birth to science was spare resources which could be used to find ways to raise productivity or predictive power.
It could not have been otherwise.
It was otherwise. Derrida was simply stupid and ignorant. This is because he studied nonsense at Uni.
Nonetheless, it is a peculiarity of our epoch that,
Scientists had figured out a way to land on the Moon. Meanwhile, this cretin was having kittens about some invention of the ancient Phoenicians.
at the moment when the phoneticization of writing —the historical origin and structural possibility of philosophy as of science,
This stupid cunt didn't know that China had a philosopher- Moh Tzu who was also a technologist. The fact that China was ahead in some philosophical and scientific fields shows that 'phoneticization' simply does not matter.
the condition of the epistémè—begins to lay hold on world culture, science, in its advancements, can no longer be satisfied with it.
Science had never had anything to do with this sort of stupidity. If some one said, 'the Chinks don't got no alphabet. They must be stoooopid.' Scientists said 'fuck off. Them guys invented printing and paper and gun-powder and all sorts of other very useful stuff.'
This inadequation had always already begun to make its presence felt.
Where? Meanly, Derrida won't tell us. I think it was Sartre's fart. He was a sly fucker always sneaking around letting out 'silent but deadly' farts.
But today something lets it appear as such,
Sartre's farts
allows it a kind of takeover without our being able to translate this novelty into clear cut notions of mutation, explicitation, accumulation, revolution, or tradition.
Derrida had no clear cut notions. Nor did Sartre. But he could cut the cheese something fierce.
These values belong no doubt to the system whose dislocation is today presented as such,
a system which presents itself as 'dislocation' isn't a system. It is a fucking car crash.
they describe the styles of an historical movement which was meaningful—like the concept of history itself—only within a logocentric epoch.
The concept of history is that it is useful to know what happened or what was tried in the past. No epoch was 'logocentric'. What mattered was the fitness landscape- which could only be discovered empirically. There's no point using logic to prove the earth is flat if guys who circumnavigate it keep getting richer and richer.
By alluding to a science of writing reined in by metaphor, metaphysics, and theology,
i.e. not reined in at all
this exergue must not only announce that the science of writing—grammatology —
which only exists to the extent that Socioproctology is a real thing.
shows signs of liberation all over the world, as a result of decisive efforts.
I suppose he meant that literature was turning to shit because of the vogue for 'experimental' novels. That fad soon faded.
These efforts are necessarily discreet, dispersed, almost imperceptible; that is a quality of their meaning and of the milieu within which they produce their operation.
Some stupid cunts pulled some stupid stunts. Meanwhile guys like Arthur Hailey were laughing all the way to the bank.
I would like to suggest above all that, however fecund and necessary the undertaking might be, and even if, given the most favorable hypothesis, it did overcome all technical and epistemological obstacles as well as all the theological and meta-physical impediments that have limited it hitherto, such a science of writing runs the risk of never being established as such and with that name.
Because most people learn to write by about the age of five. Similarly, the science of farting receives little in the way of funding from NASA.
Of never being able to define the unity of its project or its object. Of not being able either to write its discourse on method or to describe the limits of its field.
of being utterly shit.
For essential reasons: the unity of all that allows itself to be attempted today through the most diverse concepts of science and of writing, is, in principle, more or less covertly yet always, determined by an historicometaphysical epoch of which we merely glimpse the closure.
No concept of science- or of writing as practiced by guys who gained wealth or power and influence thereby- had anything to do with 'historico-metaphysical epochs'. Sartre, it must be admitted, was a good dramatist and got the Nobel prize. But so did Bertrand Russell and Churchill. It must be said, Russell was influenced by Husserl's Logical Investigations. But, like anal-tickle philosophy, that was a dead-end. Derrida escaped by writing modish nonsense whose great utility for drug addled, or just plain stupid, PhD students was that they could get a sheepskin by writing nonsense. But, this also meant that they were condemned to teaching kids stupider yet.
I do not say the end. The idea of science and the idea of writing—therefore also of the science of writing—is meaningful for us only in terms of an origin and within a world to which a certain concept of the sign (later I shall call it the concept of sign) and a certain concept of the relationships between speech and writing, have already been assigned.
Nope. People with diverse ideas about the origin of everything or any particular thing nevertheless do the same sort of science or the same sort of writing. Some concept which a cretin comes up can't assign shit to shit.
A most determined relationship, in spite of its privilege, its necessity, and the field of vision that it has controlled for a few millennia, especially in the West, to the point of being now able to produce its own dislocation and itself proclaim its limits.
and eat its own shit.
Perhaps patient meditation and painstaking investigation on and around what is still provisionally called writing,
or farting
far from falling short of a science of writing
or farting
or of hastily dismissing it by some obscurantist reaction,
e.g. running away when I fart
letting it rather develop its positivity as far as possible, are the wanderings of a way of thinking that is faithful and attentive to the ineluctable world of the future
the future isn't ineluctable. You can avoid it by dying.
which proclaims itself at present, beyond the closure of knowledge.
Derrida lived in a world where Time and Space were constantly proclaiming themselves present. This is because Topology was taking roll-call.
((5)) The future can only be anticipated in the form of an absolute danger.
Not if tomorrow is a holiday. Then it is anticipated in the form of getting very very drunk.
It is that which breaks absolutely with constituted normality and can only be proclaimed, presented, as a sort of monstrosity.
Because proclaiming and presenting your turd is only cool if it is of monstrous proportions or shows an uncanny likeness to Donald Trump.
For that future world and for that within it which will have put into question the values of sign, word, and writing, for that which guides our future anterior, there is as yet no exergue.
Because the future hasn't happened yet. That's why we can't proclaim and present the 84th POTUS. That person hasn't been born yet.
The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing
Books began some time after writing began.
Socrates, he who does not write*—Nietzsche
Socrates did write. Sadly, his disciples don't seem to have bothered preserving his writings. I think it was because he specialized in chick-lit.
However the topic is considered, the problem of language has never been simply one problem among others.
It isn't a problem.
But never as much as at present has it invaded, as such, the global horizon of the most diverse researches and the most heterogeneous discourses, diverse and heterogeneous in their intention, method, and ideology.
Stupid cunts, around that time, did gas on about 'linguistic turns' of one sort or another. But guys who went in for STEM subjects made money and changed the world for the better.
The devaluation of the word “language” itself, and how, in the very hold it has upon us, it betrays a loose vocabulary,
Language is totes slutty. I hear she gave Chemistry a beejay behind the bike-shed.
the temptation of a cheap seduction,
like buying Language a couple of Babychams so as to get a leg over- which is what Chemistry did to that retarded bint.
the passive yielding to fashion, the consciousness of the avant-garde, in other words—ignorance—are evidences of this effect. This inflation of the sign “language” is the inflation of the sign itself, absolute inflation, inflation itself.
France's worst hyperinflation was in 1795.
Yet, by one of its aspects or shadows, it is itself still a sign: this crisis is also a symptom.
Having your head chopped off is a symptom of not having a fucking head.
It indicates, as if in spite of itself, that a historico-metaphvsical epoch must finally de-termine as language the totality of its problematic horizon.
Why must it? The answer is that it will be sent to bed without any supper unless it does what this cretin says it must do.
It must do so not only because all that desire had wished to wrest from the play of language finds itself recaptured within that play
Language, like Derrida, played with itself too much.
but also because, for the same reason, language itself is menaced in its very life,
thankfully, Chemistry came to its rescue. That why Language gave it a beejay.
helpless, adrift in the threat of limitlessness, brought back to its own finitude at the very moment when its limits seem to disappear,
people use language. Their 'limits' don't disappear. Their hair may do so. Their teeth may do so, but their limitations tend to become more obvious and dispiriting with the passage of time.
when it ceases to be self-assured, contained, and guaranteed by the infinite signified which seemed to exceed it.
The infinite signified offered to guarantee a Bank loan for me. Sadly, the Manager told it to fuck the fuck off.
The Program By a slow movement whose necessity is hardly perceptible, everything that for at least some twenty centuries tended toward and finally succeeded in being gathered under the name of language is beginning to let itself be transferred to, or at least summarized under, the name of writing.
Actually, even dance had been reduced to 'writing' (Labonotation) What was more significant was the increasing importance of writing computer code. Fortran, Cobol & Lisp had been created by the end of the Fifties. That was the program smart kids were getting with. Stupid kids got PhDs in useless shite.
By a hardly perceptible necessity, it seems as though the concept of writing no longer indicating a particular, derivative, auxiliary form of language in general
that was only the case for court transcripts or the transcription of wire-taps. Otherwise, writing was separate from speech. Many people could write in Greek or Sanskrit or Arabic or even English or French correctly enough without being able to speak the language or understand what was said in it.
(whether understood as communication, relation, expression, signification, constitution of meaning or thought, etc.), no longer designating the exterior surface, the insubstantial double of a major signifier, the signifier of the signifier
which is itself. 'Red' signifies the word 'Red'.
—is beginning to go beyond the extension of language.
Language is intensional. Some 'intensions' (words) have well defined extensions for particular purposes. Others, don't because they are epistemic and radically impredicative. Still, for any useful purpose, we can proceed in a good enough, albeit arbitrary, manner.
In all senses of the word, writing thus comprehends language.
We know that isn't true because an AI can write our essays for us. But the AI can't comprehend anything- yet.
Not that the word “writing” has ceased to designate the signifier of the signifier,
It never did so. The signifier is designated as a word or a sign or a gesture (e.g. pointing). It is not designated as 'writing' save by metonymy.
but it appears, strange as it may seem, that “signifier of the signifier” no longer defines accidental doubling and fallen secondarity.
Neither of which exist because they are stupid shite.
“Signifier of the signifier” describes on the contrary the movement of language:
No. It is just a word or sign- generally the same one as that which it signifies.
in its origin,
we don't know the origin of language or whether our Neanderthal or Denisovan ancestors had it. What is certain is that it was useful in solving collective action problems involving coordination and discoordination games. David Lewis was on the right track back then by taking over Thomas Schelling's idea for his book 'Conventions'. Sadly, like other philosophers he became stupider and more useless as time went by. Mathematicians sometimes say 'without loss of generality' to mean that a simplifying assumption is not necessary for the the theorem. Philosophy's problem was that it didn't just lose generality, it lost any connection with reality, the moment it introduced an assumption.
to be sure, but one can already suspect that an origin whose structure
For all we know, an origin may have no structure. It is expressed as 'origin' not 'origin of the origin'.
can be expressed as “signifier of the signifier” conceals and erases itself in its own production.
Stuff was always either concealing itself from Derrida when it wasn't loudly proclaiming its own presence. I think this was because he smelled bad. The French, back in those days, didn't bathe very often.
There the signified always already functions as a signifier.
So if you say 'Red' when asked what colour your car is, the colour of your car functions as the word Red. This is why, when asked what colour hair Emma Stone has, your hit the person asking your question with your car.
The secondarity that it seemed possible to ascribe to writing alone
only if we are speaking of a transcript. In that case, a tape-recording would have superior probative value.
affects all signifieds in general,
Thus if I say 'Donald Trump' he becomes secondary to J.D Vance. That's why Vance calls out the Donald's name when in the throes of passion.
affects them always already, the moment they enter the game.
What game? Wittlesstein's? But Language is about coordination and discoordination games rather than 'following rules'.
There is not a single signified that escapes, even if recaptured,
if you are recaptured, you haven't escaped
the play of signifying references that constitute language.
No. Lots of things which were signified are forgotten. We might come across their 'signifier' in some obscure text but have no clue what the thing used to signify.
The advent of writing is the advent of this play;
No. We know of many cultures where writing was only recently introduced. It did not have any magical effect though, no doubt, total factor productivity rose.
today such a play is coming into its own,
there speaks the voice of paranoia. Put on your tin-foil hats, sheeple!
effacing the limit starting from which one had thought to regulate the circulation of signs,
You can make a profit or curb repugnant activities by regulating the circulation of money or commodities. We may also regulate signs or the use of language in the public interest. But this is does not 'efface' limits. Regulating and enforcing regulations uses up scarce resources. The relevant constraint is economic in nature.
drawing along with it all the reassuring signifieds, reducing all the strongholds, all the out-of-bounds shelters that watched over the field of language.
Also the Gents toilet abutting the field of language was vandalized. I think this was because Language refused to go ass to mouth with Chemistry and Chemistry got really angry and took out his frustration by smashing up all the urinals.
This, strictly speaking, amounts to destroying the concept of “sign” and its entire logic.
If this speaking strictly, what is loose talk? Shitting yourself while saying 'ba-ba, ka-ka!'
Undoubtedly it is not by chance that this overwhelming supervenes at the moment when the extension of the concept of language effaces all its limits.
Very true. It was not by chance that Language refused to give Chemistry a beejay. Everybody knows she has a crush on Geography.
We shall see that this overwhelming and this effacement have the same meaning, are one and the same phenomenon.
As shitting yourself while saying 'ba-ba, ka-ka'. Still, if that's what it takes to get through your viva, go for it.
It is as if the Western concept of language
which is the same as the Eastern or Southern concept
(in terms of what, beyond its plurivocity and beyond the strict and problematic opposition of speech [parole] and language [langue],
i.e. idiolect and 'i-language' (where i means 'ideal speaker', or, more confusingly, 'intensional')
attaches it in general to phonematic or glossematic production, to language, to voice, to hearing, to sound and breadth, to speech) were revealed today as the guise or disguise of a primary writing: 1 more fundamental than that which, before this conversion, passed for the simple “supplement to the spoken word” (Rousseau).
Rousseau was wrong about both masturbation and writing. Neither was a supplement. Both have a function which can't always be substituted for- e.g. giving a sperm donation or submitting a sample of one's writing to a graphologist.
Either writing was never a simple “supplement,”
It wasn't. It fulfilled certain functions better than any thing else.
or it is urgently necessary to construct a new logic of the “supplement.”
i.e. not necessary at all because the thing is stupid and useless. Fuzzy logic, on the other hand, turned out to be really useful. There was a time when Derrida was considered smart and Lotfi Zadeh was considered an eccentric. Then the Japanese started selling dishwashers with fuzzy logic chips.
It is this urgency which will guide us further in reading Rousseau.
It is not urgent to read Rousseau. 'Confessions', I admit, is very readable. But it is foolish to think the guy wasn't as crazy as a bedbug.
These disguises are not historical contingencies that one might admire or regret.
These disguises were created by shape shifting lizards from Planet X.
Their movement was absolutely necessary, with a necessity which cannot be judged by any other tribunal.
They were a figment of the imagination of a shithead teaching worthless shite.
The privilege of the phone
it has no privilege. Parrots can utter 'phones' but they still live in a fucking cage.
does not depend upon a choice that could have been avoided.
People may choose to change how they pronounce words. I began to sound like an American cheerleader after I watched Buffy & Angel.
It responds to a moment of economy (let us say of the “life” of “history” or of “being as self-relationship”).
Economics, as Samuelson pointed out, is ergodic. This means there will be convergent evolution and 'robustness'. A particular moment does not matter. Nor can there be, contra Chomsky, a magical mutation which propagates itself instantaneously across an entire species.
The system of “hearing (understanding) -oneself-speak” through the phonic substance—which presents itself as the nonexterior, nonmundane, therefore nonempirical or noncontingent signifier—has necessarily dominated the history of the world during an entire epoch,
No. It didn't dominate shit.
and has even produced the idea of the world, the idea of world-origin, that arises from the difference between the worldly and the nonworldly, the outside and the inside, ideality and nonideality, universal and nonuniversal, transcendental and empirical, etc.
This is pure supposition. Maybe, sixty years ago, it represented a tenable view for a layman to hold. But that is no longer the case. The plain fact is, Philosophy is shit. The French should have gotten it out of their High Schools sixty years ago.
With an irregular and essentially precarious success, this movement would apparently have tended, as toward its telos, to confine writing to a secondary and instrumental function:
It did the reverse. By the time of Euripides, there is evidence that much of the audience had read his play before it was performed. It seems participation in politics was a great driver of literacy in ancient Athens. What is certain is that sophists got paid very well to produce speeches which people could memorize and repeat before the Ecclesia.
translator of a full speech that was fully present (present to itself, to its signified, to the other, the very condition of the theme of presence in general),
Nope. As in the theatre, so too in the courts and assemblies of ancient Greece, people memorized written texts and reproduced them with appropriate gestures and emotions.
technics in the service of language, spokes-man, interpreter of an originary speech itself shielded from interpretation. Technics in the service of language: I am not invoking a general essence of technics
it has no such thing. That's why technologists don't bother looking for it.
which would be already familiar to us and would help us in understanding the narrow and historically determined concept of writing as an example.
There was no such narrow or historically determined concept in Derrida's day. COBOL or LISP were languages of a particular type. People who could write code were getting paid good money. Some would become very very fucking rich and powerful.
I believe on the contrary that a certain sort of question about the meaning and origin of writing precedes, or at least merges with, a certain type of question about the meaning and origin of technics.
It is the same sort of question as arises when we consider the meaning and origin of farting.
That is why the notion of technique can never simply clarify the notion of writing.
Yet it does clarify it. What Derrida does is obfuscate it or rather to tell grandiloquent, but deeply foolish, lies about it.
It is therefore as if what we call language could have been in its origin and in its end only a moment, an essential but determined mode, a phenomenon, an aspect, a species of writing.
Only in the sense that it could be considered a species of farting or hopping on one leg or biting off one's own head.
And as if it had succeeded in making us forget this, and in wilfully misleading us, only in the course of an adventure: as that adventure itself.
Just as biting off our own head can wilfully mislead us in the course of an enema which is that enema itself.
All in all a short enough adventure.
Or long enough enema.
It merges with the history that has associated technics and logocentric metaphysics for nearly three millennia.
There is no such history. Metaphysics has been religious or theological most of the time. But it was just stupid shite taught to affluent kids for signalling purposes.
And it now seems to be approaching what is really its own exhaustion; under the circumstances—and this is no more than one example among others—of this death of the civilization of the book, of which so much is said and which manifests itself particularly through a convulsive proliferation of libraries.
If there are more libraries, it means the 'civilization of the book' is burgeoning not dying. Derrida truly was as stupid as shit.
All appearances to the contrary, this death of the book undoubtedly announces (and in a certain sense always has announced)
again with the fucking 'announcements' and 'proclamations' !
nothing but a death of speech (of a so-called full speech) and a new mutation in the history of writing, in history as writing.
or history as the history of writing itself while masturbating and gazing wistfully at a bowl of pomegranates.
Announces it at a distance of a few centuries.
That is not an announcement. It is a prediction.
It is on that scale that we must reckon it here, being careful not to neglect the quality of a very heterogeneous historical duration: the acceleration is such, and such its qualitative meaning, that one would be equally wrong in making a careful evaluation according to past rhythms. “Death of speech” is of course a metaphor here: before we speak of disappearance, we must think of a new situation for speech, of its subordination within a structure of which it will no longer be the archon.
It has never been a fucking archon. True, speech under oath, or police caution, is given higher status but a written statement might be equally or even more authoritative.
To affirm in this way that the concept of writing exceeds and comprehends that of language,
is to talk bollocks.
presupposes of course a certain definition of Ianguage and of writing.
Nope. They may be Tarskian primitives- i.e. undefined.
If we do not attempt to justify it, we shall be giving in to the movement of inflation that we have just mentioned, which has also taken over the word “writing,” and that not fortuitously.
If we do not attempt to fart in a sceptical manner we will giving in to Cosmic inflation after the Big Bang.
For some time now, as a matter of fact, here and there, by a gesture and for motives that are profoundly necessary,
e.g so as to fart the fart of the signifier that is its own signification as the fart of Jean Paul Sartre's fart.
whose degradation is easier to denounce than it is to disclose their origin, one says “language” for action, movement, thought, reflection, consciousness, unconsciousness, experience, affectivity, etc.
No one doesn't. One has better things to do.
Now we tend to say “writing” for all that and more: to designate not only the physical gestures of literal pictographic or ideographic inscription, but also the totality of what makes it possible; and also, beyond the signifying face, the signified face itself. And thus we say “writing” for all that gives rise to an inscription in general, whether it is literal or not and even if what it distributes in space is alien to the order of the voice: cinematography, choreography, of course, but also pictorial, musical, sculptural “writing.”
Did this actually happen back in the Sixties? When somebody farted, did everybody go 'you have written a really smelly one today. Fuck have you been eating?''
One might also speak of athletic writing, and with even greater certainty of military or political writing in view of the techniques that govern those domains today.
One can speak of shitty writing and shitty thinking on the part of shitheads who teach stupid shite.
All this to describe not only the system of notation secondarily connected with these activities but the essence and the content of these activities themselves.
Nope. Derrida hasn't given us a description of anything. He has simply made some utterly foolish and ignorant claims. He wants us to believe that he had created a new 'Science of Writing'- 'Grammatology'. What he had created was a small cult- similar to Scientology- but only for shitheads teaching worthless shit to fucking retards.
It is also in this sense that the contemporary biologist speaks of writing and pro-gram in relation to the most elementary processes of information within the living cell.
Nope. They speak of copying or recombining elements. Writing is produced by a writer, or LLM based AI, with a certain degree of training in language use. Copying or recombination requires no such thing.
And finally, whether it has essential limits or not, the entire field covered by the cybernetic program will be the field of writing.
Coding, not writing. A code-monkey is not a writer and a writer is not a code-monkey.
If the theory of cybernetics is by itself to oust all metaphysical concepts—including the concepts of soul, of life, of value, of choice, of memory—which until recently served to separate the machine from man, it must conserve the notion of writing, trace, grammè [written mark], or grapheme, until its own historico-metaphysical character is also exposed.
Cybernetics is applied Mathematics. It is built on fundamental theorems of Godel, Turing & Tarski such that it restricts itself to intensions with well-defined extensions. It is useful. It doesn't try to shit higher than its arsehole.
Even before being determined as human (with all the distinctive characteristics that have always been attributed to man and the entire system of significations that they imply) or nonhuman, the grammè—or the grapheme—would thus name the element.
It might do. It might not.
An element without simplicity.
Is not an element. It can be further decomposed.
An element, whether it is understood as the medium or as the irreducible atom, of the arche-synthesis in general, of what one must forbid oneself to define within the system of oppositions of metaphysics, of what consequently one should not even call experience in general, that is to say the origin of meaning in general.
But the origin of meaning is not 'experience in general'. The thing arose those evolutionary and co-evolved processes.
This situation has always already been announced.
Again with the fucking announcements!
Why is it today in the process of making itself known as such and after the fact?
Because Derrida is a very special little boy.
This question would call forth an interminable analysis.
Which Lacan would provide- for a fee.
Let us simply choose some points of departure in order to introduce the limited remarks to which I shall confine myself. I have already alluded to theoretical mathematics; its writing—whether understood as a sensible graphie [manner of writing] (and that already presupposes an identity, therefore an ideality, of its form,
Derrida hadn't heard of Brouwerian choice sequences. Turing used them to good effect when he was in short pants.
By about the end of the Sixties, Category theorists were aware that 'naturality' (non-arbitrariness) was far to seek. Even if you have an objective function to maximize, the choice of the objective is arbitrary. In Math, an ideal is a special type of subset of an algebraic structure. But lots of mathematical objects lack any such thing. Still, a useful approximation may be made.
which in principle renders absurd the so easily admitted notion of the “sensible signifier”),
only if that principle is the headmistress of St. Trinians and doesn't actually exist.
or understood
by crazy people
as the ideal synthesis of signifieds or a trace operative on another level, or whether it is understood, more profoundly, as the passage of the one to the other—has never been absolutely linked with a phonetic production.
Or to a fart. This is because nothing has been absolutely linked with anything else.
Within cultures practicing so-called phonetic writing, mathematics is not just an enclave.
It was the same thing as it was for the Chinese.
That is mentioned by all historians of writing;
Nonsense! Historians of Chinese writing know that they had the same type of Math as everybody else. That subject burgeons or declines for economic reasons. The exponential growth of Western Math was caused by the ever increasing utility of math as applied to navigation, transoceanic commerce, as well as industrial applications- e.g. steam engines and thermodynamics.
they recall at the same time the imperfections of alphabetic writing, which passed for so long as the most convenient and “the most intelligent” writing
only among shitheads like Hegel.
. This enclave is also the place where the practice of scientific language
which is done in natural language not Wilkins's analytical language or some Liebnizian hieroglyphics from the hypothetical mathesis universalis or characteristica universalis.
challenges intrinsically and with increasing profundity the ideal of phonetic writing and all its implicit metaphysics (metaphysics itself ),
it has none. There is nothing beyond physics because magic isn't a real thing.
particularly, that is, the philosophical idea of the epistémè;
there are many conflicting 'philosophical' ideas about it.
also of istoria, a concept profoundly related to it
and even more profoundly related to fairy tales
in spite of the dissociation or opposition which has distinguished one from the other during one phase of their common progress.
Knowledge advances when and if it can 'pay for itself' by raising total factor productivity. Fairy tales may or may not do so. It is possible that the sagas of half starved Icelandic shepherds were superior to Tolkien.
History and knowledge, istoria and epistémè have always been determined (and not only etymologically or philosophically) as detours for the purpose of the reappropriaton of presence.
No. History makes great strides when there is a market it. So does every other type of knowledge. As for presence, nobody needs to appropriate or reappropriate it or get it out of hock with the pawnbroker.
Heidegger was a spoiled Catholic. Them guys might gas on about 'ousia' and the 'real presence'. Jews needn't bother- more particularly if they are atheists.
But beyond theoretical mathematics,
there is nothing- at least in theory.
the development of the practical methods of information retrieval extends the possibilities of the “message” vastly,
Nope. There is bound to be some degradation and added 'noise'.
to the point where it is no longer the “written” translation of a language, the transporting of a signified which could remain spoken in its integrity.
We don't know how Socrates pronounced certain words attributed to him.
It goes hand in hand with an extension of phonography and of all the means of conserving the spoken language, of making it function without the presence of the speaking subject.
There is still some degradation.
This development, coupled with that of anthropology and of the history of writing, teaches us that phonetic writing, the medium of the great metaphysical, scientific, technical, and economic adventure of the West,
was similar to the adventure of the Chinese. A hundred years from now some French philosopher, in between sucking off robot drivers at truck-stops, may explain that the non-phonetic, non-alphabetic, nature of the Chinese language gave them the advantage. It wasn't the case that our Universities turned to shit because imbeciles can get a PhD in nonsense while the East Asians only fund useful STEM type research.
is limited in space and time and limits itself even as it is in the process of imposing its laws upon the cultural areas that had escaped it.
It hasn't any laws and can't impose shit. However it can pronounce the announcement of its own presence to shitheads.
But this nonfortuitous conjunction of cybernetics and the “human sciences” of writing leads to a more profound reversal.
What it led to is AI's which can churn out Derridaesque crap so illiterate people can become tenured Professors of utter shit. But those same IQs can draft pretty good legal documents or summaries of scientific information of a very useful sort.
Sartre could write well when not strung out on speed. Derrida is but the fart of his fart signifying that the signifier is a fucking shithead.
