For Wine is a stone flung by the fist of the Moon
O Master of Madness, instruct me, Majnoon!
Tho' thy 'eye of a footprint' in 'a river of sand'-
Aglitter with tears- I... understand...
Wednesday, 13 March 2013
Tuesday, 12 March 2013
Faiz's- 'tum naa aae'e the'
What does Ghalib's 'khoon-e-jigar' mean in the context of Faiz's poem? My guess is that Ghalib is referencing a peculiarity in Bedil's theory of color which, because of its Sufi foundation, has a chilastic meaning. Ghalib, self-effacingly, mentions his use of astrology and philosophy to tart up his ghazals. Perhaps, the fact that the Marxist Revolution lives upon the memory of its doomed 1848 tryst, and the further eschatalogical fact that all trysts fail prior to the final conflagration, and that this interregnum is one peculiarly favorable to a hypertrophy of doomed trysts, for Faiz unites him to Ghalib and Bedil by reason of a common elision of the method of Zattali- which, after all, is what the genius of the language calls for.
'Fore flamed our tryst all was as has come to pass
Horizon's mist, Road's twist, Wine red in the glass
But now that wine cup, road and azure Sky
Are the color of my heart where blood goes to die
Like the cataract in an old shepherd's eye
Or the egg stain on a Joint Secretary's tie
Or some such recherche list rushing out of style
Till, to curdle our tryst, you tarry awhile
Or some such recherche list rushing out of style
Till, to curdle our tryst, you tarry awhile
Ah! my ragged song were, in Russian, Choral
Tho' in Urdu, now, just sloppy Oral
aasmaaN hadd-e-nazar, raahguzar raahguzar, shiishaah-e-mai,
shiishaah-e-mai
aur ab shiishaah-e-mai, raahguzar, rang-e-falak
rang hai dil kaa mere, "khoon-e-jigar hone tak"
champaa'i rang kabhii, raahat-e-diidaar kaa rang
sur'ma'ii rang kabhii, saa'at-e-bezaar kaa rang
zard pattoN kaa xas-o-xaar kaa rang
surkh phuuloN kaa, dahakte hu'e gulzaar kaa rang
zahar kaa rang, lahuu rang. shab-e-taar kaa rang
aasmaaN, rahguzar, shiishaah-e-mai
koii bhiigaa hu'aa daaman, ko'ii dukhtii hu'ii rag
ko'ii har lahzaah badaltaa hu'aa aa'iinaah hai
ab jo aa'e ho to Thahro kih koii rang, koii rut ko'ii shai
ek jagah par Thahre
phir se ik baar har ik chiiz vahii ho ke jo hai
aasmaaN hadd-e-nazar, rahguzar rahguzar, shiishaah-e-mai,
shiishaah-e-mai
English Translation by Naomi Lazard
Before you came things were just what they were:
the road precisely a road, the horizon fixed,
the limit of what could be seen,
a glass of wine was no more than a glass of wine.
With you the world took on the spectrum
radiating from my heart: your eyes gold
as they open to me, slate the color
that falls each time I lost all hope.
With your advent roses burst into flame:
you were the artist of dried-up leaves, sorceress
who flicked her wrist to change dust into soot.
You lacquered the night black.
As for the sky, the road, the cup of wine:
one was my tear-drenched shirt,
the other an aching nerve,
the third a mirror that never reflected the same thing.
Now you are here again—stay with me.
This time things will fall into place;
the road can be the road,
the sky nothing but sky;
the glass of wine, as it should be, the glass of wine.
Saturday, 9 March 2013
How Vegetarianism destroyed Germany
The year was 1915. German pigs were in the forefront of the battle to assert the historical destiny of the highly spiritual Teutonic races as the saviours of a World Civilization shackled by the crass materialism of the Bourgeoisie dominated British and French and American kakocracies.
However, faceless German bureaucrats- all demonstrably vegetarian, because had they eaten things with a face then they wouldn't have been faceless coz, u r what u eat, right?- were already planning a gigantic 'stab in the back' of the heroic German pig army in the shape of the infamous Schweinemord- the judicial massacre of up to 40 per cent of the German pig community on the grounds that they were 'co-eaters' whose continued existence endangered the food supply of their human brethren amongst the Kaiser's gadarening hordes.
However, faceless German bureaucrats- all demonstrably vegetarian, because had they eaten things with a face then they wouldn't have been faceless coz, u r what u eat, right?- were already planning a gigantic 'stab in the back' of the heroic German pig army in the shape of the infamous Schweinemord- the judicial massacre of up to 40 per cent of the German pig community on the grounds that they were 'co-eaters' whose continued existence endangered the food supply of their human brethren amongst the Kaiser's gadarening hordes.
The cunning of the Vegetarian clique is clearly shown by this outrageous calumny. Pigs don't feed on the sort of shite that fuels the votaries of such evil creeds as Nationalism, Socialism, Vegetarianism, Integral Humanism etc etc. The unconscionable massacre of the pigs led to a steep decline in grain production because pig manure was vital to agriculture, especially to marginal farmers. In consequence, over a million Germans died as a result of malnutrition and lack of bacon sarnies. As Swami Zizekananda said 'first they came for the pigs- and we did nothing. Then they came for the donkeys- and we were screwed.'
This is a picture of Vandana Siva.
She has all but come out and openly endorsed the evil Vegetarian 'co-eater' ideology which led to the massacre of patriotic German pigs in 1915, but which now endangers Holy Hindu Cows. Not that there isn't some nuance to her thinking- she admits that cows are our partners, especially in the Accountancy firms for which I worked- yet what her position cashes out as is 'LET THEM EAT GRASS!'
Oh the inhumanity!
Friday, 8 March 2013
Sanjeev Sabhlok vs Vivek Iyer
I will fuck you up- kill your family in front of your eyes and shove them all up your arse- or further up your arse- and I will do this because I am a patriot of Australia- the Earls Court Region having been annexed by Barry Humphrey 40 years ago- and your own arse being well known to be the largest coal producing mine in the world.
True, by my threats, I've tried to tighten your sphincter- but it was only to boost Australian diamond production.
Mind it kindly.
Who wrote that and to whom? Me to Sanjeev Sabhlok. Why?
Well, on his website he published allegations against himself and his father of (that time honoured past-time of the Provincial Bureaucrat from his particular caste and mentality) raping children- AN ALLEGATION HE DID NOT DENY- OR EVEN RESENT! No doubt, Sabhlok thought he was being very clever. He hadn't told a lie and believed that I could be prosecuted for threatening his life just because I said I'd fuck him over and smash his ugly face in and rip various organs out of his chest.
Sadly, the Law does not operate in the way Sabhlok thinks. It is entirely proper for me, a man whom he states in the same blog-post to have been very helpful and intelligent, to address him familiarly and to express my disgust and hatred for his and his father's raping of children. I said I'd kill him myself. As a Hindu, I believe it is usual for people of my station to use such terms as I employed to him to mark my extreme disapprobation of his conduct and my feeling of revulsion and hatred for him and his father.
Was Sabhlok- who tells us he automatically deleted my comments- being disingenuous when he stated that what I said to him in a comment on his blog was a 'Death Threat'? Or was there something more sinister afoot?
By my bringing the child rape charge out into the open now rather than when those best able to prosecute this cunt were fully prepared, was Sabhlok trying to minimize the damage to himself and his family?
If so, his strategy has backfired.
I am not a lawyer or a police-man nor have I the means or the empathic skills to counsel the victims of Sabhlok's crimes.
A senior person contacted me about Sabhlok after he published his unmanly anti-Iyer idiocy. He hastened to assure me that he had the lowest opinion of Sabhlok's intellect and integrity. But were the allegations true?
I append this email exchange with someone Sabhlok professes to admire and which, incidentally, I posted on Sabhlok's blog as a comment but, sadly, like everything not conforming to his World View, you won't find there now.
to xxxx
I received your facebook message today. Unfortunately, I can’t respond on Facebook immediately and so I choose to acknowledge your message by Email.
I regarded Sabhlok as a harmless nit-wit till he angered the son of a friend of mine, a distinguished lady who had made the mistake of trying to reason with that nit-wit on his execrable blog. Rather than let the younger man- an Economist currently visiting South Asia- get involved himself, I rattled Sabhlok’s cage with the sort of information which comes only too readily to hand for someone of my connections. I didn’t really have much hope that Sabhlok would be foolish enough to publish my comments as he edits out anything which is unflattering to himself. My gamble paid off, because it turns out he has a delusive self image as some sort of martyr of sufficient significance to receive death threats. I thought it worthwhile to pile on the pressure- not so much to make the coward squirm- but in the hope that he will be foolish enough to take legal action or issue a police complaint- both of which gives me locus standi and removes the danger of libel action for the third party I am concerned with. Since Sabhlok is literally incapable of telling the truth, any statement of his would be sufficient to convict him of perjury, bad faith and- since he is bound to dig himself deeper into the mess- a criminal conspiracy to defeat the ends of justice.
I suppose Sabhlok represents a particular type of what Alok Rai called the ‘damaged modernity- at once embryonic and addled’ or the provincial Indian Babu class. I recall reading a novel some ten or so years ago about an Indian bureaucrat- one engaged in extracting bribes out of Schools which don’t have the regulation amount of play-ground space- who is also a sexual pervert who preys on little girls. Perhaps, there is some deeper depth psychological connection between a hateful perversion of that description and Alok Rai’s comic ‘damaged modernity’. What is certain is that a man like Sabhlok does a great dis-service to the liberal cause by his antics. He is now a sort of chamcha of Baba Ramdev.
xxxx
02:50 (54 minutes ago)
I received your facebook message today. Unfortunately, I can’t respond on Facebook immediately and so I choose to acknowledge your message by Email.
I regarded Sabhlok as a harmless nit-wit till he angered the son of a friend of mine, a distinguished lady who had made the mistake of trying to reason with that nit-wit on his execrable blog. Rather than let the younger man- an Economist currently visiting South Asia- get involved himself, I rattled Sabhlok’s cage with the sort of information which comes only too readily to hand for someone of my connections. I didn’t really have much hope that Sabhlok would be foolish enough to publish my comments as he edits out anything which is unflattering to himself. My gamble paid off, because it turns out he has a delusive self image as some sort of martyr of sufficient significance to receive death threats. I thought it worthwhile to pile on the pressure- not so much to make the coward squirm- but in the hope that he will be foolish enough to take legal action or issue a police complaint- both of which gives me locus standi and removes the danger of libel action for the third party I am concerned with. Since Sabhlok is literally incapable of telling the truth, any statement of his would be sufficient to convict him of perjury, bad faith and- since he is bound to dig himself deeper into the mess- a criminal conspiracy to defeat the ends of justice.
I suppose Sabhlok represents a particular type of what Alok Rai called the ‘damaged modernity- at once embryonic and addled’ or the provincial Indian Babu class. I recall reading a novel some ten or so years ago about an Indian bureaucrat- one engaged in extracting bribes out of Schools which don’t have the regulation amount of play-ground space- who is also a sexual pervert who preys on little girls. Perhaps, there is some deeper depth psychological connection between a hateful perversion of that description and Alok Rai’s comic ‘damaged modernity’. What is certain is that a man like Sabhlok does a great dis-service to the liberal cause by his antics. He is now a sort of chamcha of Baba Ramdev.
xxxx
02:50 (54 minutes ago)
to me
Many thanks for your kind and lengthy email. I was asked yesterday by someone close to Sabhlok if I knew whether there was truth to your charges, I replied I did not know; I surmise from what you say that you have wished to merely provoke him.
Many thanks for your kind and lengthy email. I was asked yesterday by someone close to Sabhlok if I knew whether there was truth to your charges, I replied I did not know; I surmise from what you say that you have wished to merely provoke him.
Cordially,
xxxxx
Vivek Iyer
03:00 (43 minutes ago)
03:00 (43 minutes ago)
I am afraid that I can’t confirm that. My information is that there are files on this- remember child rape includes things which were not considered such (by reason of ‘habituation to intercourse’ proven by ‘three finger’ test etc)- but I can’t say that to anyone except him without the third party running the risk of getting done on a put-up case ‘libel’ charge.
I don’t give him a clean chit- but I’m not a policeman- it is not my svadharma to track him down and extradite him and so on. The reason I took this action was that a younger man might have gone down that road and he is not a citizen, he doesn’t have my background.
Don’t forget where Sabhlok served. Sooner of later these files are going to come out. At present there is some notion that he has a ‘Protector’- so that was what I was looking for- i.e. evidence of a Coal connection to here in London.
It does not exist- either because I’m too well known here or because Sabhlok is just a nitwit as I thought he was. He isn’t getting paid for making a fool of himself. He just is a fool.
Hope this clarifies matters.
I don’t give him a clean chit- but I’m not a policeman- it is not my svadharma to track him down and extradite him and so on. The reason I took this action was that a younger man might have gone down that road and he is not a citizen, he doesn’t have my background.
Don’t forget where Sabhlok served. Sooner of later these files are going to come out. At present there is some notion that he has a ‘Protector’- so that was what I was looking for- i.e. evidence of a Coal connection to here in London.
It does not exist- either because I’m too well known here or because Sabhlok is just a nitwit as I thought he was. He isn’t getting paid for making a fool of himself. He just is a fool.
Hope this clarifies matters.
Vivek Iyer
03:15 (29 minutes ago)
03:15 (29 minutes ago)
Dear xxxx
I should add- if your friend is interested in vetting ex-Babus turned angels for their sordid (hence black-mailable) past- I certainly know a few senior people, whose reputations speak for themselves, who could give assuarances if that is what is called for.
I’ve just turned 50 and I’ve developed my own way of sizing up people. In this case- I think the guy is guilty. But, he’s also stupid. He is easy to manipulate once you understand the root of his Messiah complex. He’s going to put his hands up to the statutory rape charge coz he thinks it’s like what Ayn Rand commands or something equally stupid. The problem is- it isn’t statutory rape- it’s fucking rape and deep down he knows it and his Daddy taught him to do it.
I should add- if your friend is interested in vetting ex-Babus turned angels for their sordid (hence black-mailable) past- I certainly know a few senior people, whose reputations speak for themselves, who could give assuarances if that is what is called for.
I’ve just turned 50 and I’ve developed my own way of sizing up people. In this case- I think the guy is guilty. But, he’s also stupid. He is easy to manipulate once you understand the root of his Messiah complex. He’s going to put his hands up to the statutory rape charge coz he thinks it’s like what Ayn Rand commands or something equally stupid. The problem is- it isn’t statutory rape- it’s fucking rape and deep down he knows it and his Daddy taught him to do it.
The problem for me is that I’m a Hindu- gunning for this idiot isn’t good karmically. It isn’t even good mental exercise.
best wishes
best wishes
Vivek Iyer
03:29 (15 minutes ago)
Dear xxxx
Incidentally, I just re-read my original e-mail and can’t see how you could possibly have come to the conclusion that I was simply trying to provoke him.
If I leave a comment on your blog saying I will kill you because you rape children would you publish that comment and then say ‘Iyer is very intelligent’ so- this is all part of some deep scheme- ergo it is a death threat!
No. If you were indeed provoked, you would say ‘I will chastise you for implying that I could ever do such a disgusting action’. You won’t ignore the disgusting part ‘child rape’ to concentrate on the purely phatic part ‘I’ll kill you’. This is because we use the phrase ‘I will kill you’ very often but the phrase ‘you and your father are both guilty of raping children’ very seldom.
I suppose there is a caveat I’d better make explicit. Neither you nor I are policemen. There is no point being manipulated by people who are or have been policemen because, for me, the suspicion will always remain that the fellow will get off lighter if I take action now rather than for the case to hang fire till the right prosecutor comes along.
03:29 (15 minutes ago)
Dear xxxx
Incidentally, I just re-read my original e-mail and can’t see how you could possibly have come to the conclusion that I was simply trying to provoke him.
If I leave a comment on your blog saying I will kill you because you rape children would you publish that comment and then say ‘Iyer is very intelligent’ so- this is all part of some deep scheme- ergo it is a death threat!
No. If you were indeed provoked, you would say ‘I will chastise you for implying that I could ever do such a disgusting action’. You won’t ignore the disgusting part ‘child rape’ to concentrate on the purely phatic part ‘I’ll kill you’. This is because we use the phrase ‘I will kill you’ very often but the phrase ‘you and your father are both guilty of raping children’ very seldom.
I suppose there is a caveat I’d better make explicit. Neither you nor I are policemen. There is no point being manipulated by people who are or have been policemen because, for me, the suspicion will always remain that the fellow will get off lighter if I take action now rather than for the case to hang fire till the right prosecutor comes along.
You say your friend is close to Sabhlok. Is his daughter in danger? Well- maybe. Sabhlok isn’t really aware of what he is doing any more. My recommendation- stay away from the fuckwit.
Cordially
Vivek Iyer
Cordially
Vivek Iyer
update
- Conversation started today
- Today
Thursday, 7 March 2013
Object oriented Ontology & Hugo Chavez's last horcrux
As opposed to my own entirely novel theory of ontological dysphoria, Object Oriented Ontology (OOO) is nothing new. In ancient Byzantium, according John Julius Norwich, it was believed that the soul of a thing or being might be distributed across a number of disparate physical entities- an old tavern sign, a mole on the face of a Chemistry teacher, a cart horse, a mulberry bush.
Similarly, behind the 'Masters of Suspicion'- Marx, Nietzche, Freud et al- lay even more profound Pundits of Paranoia and Sages of Schizophrenia for whom the horcruxes of the bourgeoisie were as much in the commodities they fetishized as in fetishes that led them to, as the Big Lebowski said, treat objects like women, and commoditize heteroclite conjunctions of things- the smell off coffee, eighteenth Century maps, the prose of Stevenson, being sodomized by Pinochet, the color of lianas in bloom, being sodomized by Pinochet, saying things twice, being sodomized by Pinochet, saying things thrice, the neighbor's cat who conspires with Mossad to steal my toothpaste replacing it with a product identical in every respect but up to three percent less effective in fighting plaque.
It is in this context that though Hugo Chavez is dead, for Object Oriented Ontology and the great mass of the Venezuelan people, his Revolution lives on for its horcruxes are to be found wherever an Industry is fucked over by bien pensant price controls and an Economy is sodomized in the name of Ecology or Egalitarianism or the Empowerment of Educationally Backward Cats wot are stealing my toothpaste.
Fuck you cats- I will get even.
Personally, I blame David Cameron.
That boy aint right.
Similarly, behind the 'Masters of Suspicion'- Marx, Nietzche, Freud et al- lay even more profound Pundits of Paranoia and Sages of Schizophrenia for whom the horcruxes of the bourgeoisie were as much in the commodities they fetishized as in fetishes that led them to, as the Big Lebowski said, treat objects like women, and commoditize heteroclite conjunctions of things- the smell off coffee, eighteenth Century maps, the prose of Stevenson, being sodomized by Pinochet, the color of lianas in bloom, being sodomized by Pinochet, saying things twice, being sodomized by Pinochet, saying things thrice, the neighbor's cat who conspires with Mossad to steal my toothpaste replacing it with a product identical in every respect but up to three percent less effective in fighting plaque.
It is in this context that though Hugo Chavez is dead, for Object Oriented Ontology and the great mass of the Venezuelan people, his Revolution lives on for its horcruxes are to be found wherever an Industry is fucked over by bien pensant price controls and an Economy is sodomized in the name of Ecology or Egalitarianism or the Empowerment of Educationally Backward Cats wot are stealing my toothpaste.
Fuck you cats- I will get even.
Personally, I blame David Cameron.
That boy aint right.
Monday, 4 March 2013
Bourdieu & Indian Politics
For many deeply provincial- i.e. foreign trained- Indian intellectuals, like myself, who came of age in the early Eighties, the writings of Pierre Bourdieu appeared not so much a revelation as a canonical expression of a previously 'unthought known'. At that time, it seemed obvious that historical processes are always structural and that structural transformations are only objectified at the level of subjective, individual, habitus. This enabled us to give content to Alok Rai's (whom I met at the durbar of a cartoonishly corrupt Iyer, U.P cadre, I.A.S officer) notion of 'damaged modernity- at once embryonic and addled' as defining 'the field' of Indian political culture such that Huma, the legendary bird, the touch of whose shadows confers Empery, hovers over but does nothing to hatch such foul-smelling egg-heads as Indians refer to as the progeny of the owl and who rule the roost in New Delhi because, as the last Moghul wrote-
Since India, Hindustan, Bharatvarsha, is defined, for Indians, as always constituted by a heterogeneity of 'dharma-as-karma-overcomings'- i.e. India, in so far as it exists, is an ideal marga of meta-hexis simultaneously paced, shoulder to shoulder, by every desi habitus- it follows that it exists only as a hopeful Utopia of the Ernest Bloch type to which, in articulo mortis, the concurrency deadlock that is its proper inertial property, only gives voice when the other Hirschman options of loyalty and exit have been providentially- i.e. by lying technocrats or military men manqué - foreclosed and rendered cheerlessly phantasmogoric.
The 'scandal' of 1968- for France, for West Germany- the stumbling block to faith in Scholastic Sociology represented by this Yahoo repetition of 1848 when History reached a turning point but failed to turn- though Adorno was routed from his lectern by the naked breasts of his (German, and therefore ugly) students- was, of course, for India, a scandal in the common, not theological, sense of the word. The one true and tiger breasted Desi Goddess, whose eagerness for bloodshed exceeds that of pallid PhD Poli Sci jholawallah students, revealed her intention to 'Garibi hatao' - remove Poverty- and indeed, within a decade, no politician in India was left who, if not feathering a familial nest, disdained corrupt practices of the most shameless sort on behalf of his or her Party, which increasingly was a solitary or entirely personal cultus.
In this manner, Indians became Bourdieusian avant la lettre and in their belated jumping on his bandwagon- witness this negligent piece of tosh- one too readily detects the double bind of Metropolitan condescension and patronage towards a benighted Francophone colon because, after all, for any Indian- 'Che Foucault, che Bourdieu ba pesh-e tu phus'- we have advanced on our progenitors in every degree of paranoia, and created a 'Gandu-nama' to which not Zatalli could hold a candle without risking more than his eyebrows.
A moment's thought will show this isn't really a paradoxical, or even a Socio-proctological, result because Bourdieu's field is heavily dependent on a particular type of epistemic reflexivity- a bit like Muth Rational Expectations or the Chomyskian notion of an i-language or Habermas's 'ideal speech situation' or Rawlsian rubbish- but, sadly, one bound up with a finitist Research Program- an inconsistently finitist one, as Nelson's recent debacle has shown- such that ontologically dysphoric positions are ruled out in advance, or diminished to sub-proletarian noise. In other words, what is banished from Sociology is precisely what makes a subject Sociological rather than purely Mathematical without, however, the salutary measure being taken of putting a lamed Politics out of its misery or profitably disposing of it to a glue factory. This wouldn't matter- and Cliodynamics wouldn't be silly- if people, in the main, didn't use language or the market or politics or whatever not to advance within the Muth Rational 'correct' theory of Reality but to mark their desire to emigrate from Reality, emigrate from inter-subjectivity, emigrate from that foundational aspect of Exchange which the genius of Graciella Chichilnisky has uncovered- viz. the necessity for Goldilocks preference diversity, not too little, not too much.
In this sense, the real world is like Rick's Casino in Casablanca- not only is the roulette table rigged, but the magnet is a strange attractor, it could go either way, it does go either way, till the qibla of Rick's hegira is finally decided for him and he emigrates into myth and legend and sophomore fantasies of Sophistication, stepping off the Warner Bros backlot.
Now it may be argued that 'ontological dysphoria' only exists in my mind and I'm just a drunken bum but, the problem is, most bloggers are drunken bums with ontologically dysphoric views of the world. Worse, most people, most of the time- even academics, even mathematicians- are exactly like me. We feel we are living in the wrong world.
Chomsky may see himself as following in the tradition of Plato's 'Meno'- where a slave boy is shown to have knowledge-as-anamnesis of Geometry- and thus his own individuating project, or reckless disregard for the truth, remains anchored, in some sense, in the real world- which is why he is ridiculous. However, such is emphatically not the case with my own preferred world, my own personal project of rendering myself fulminable from this, the infernal reality of my risibility, which gives rise to my patented brand of ontological dysphoria such that I am only at home in a world where Isosceles triangles relentless pursue a bitter blood feud with Vasco da Gama coz Virendra Fernandes stabbed me with his compass back in 1974 and, guess what?, Brother Morrissey caned both of us tho' Virendra was clearly the aggressor and the whole thing was witnessed by Isosceles who was only prevented from filing an f.i.r at the Gol Dhak-khana thana coz Pythagoras raped him but nobody believed him so he got a reputation as the choir-boy wot cries wolf all the time.
Why do I believe most people, most of the time are ontologically dysphoric? The answer has to do evolution- more particularly, the dynamics of convergent evolution. We can probably all agree that the reason there has been no genetic canalisation such that we are hard-wired for a particular 'universal' language is because the field dynamics of our out-of-Africa ancestor militated against the possibility. Hunter gatherer groups were simply too small- by reason of their mode of production- for the reverse to be the case. But, the fact that language use- at the neural level- is always convergently evolved- had other benefits and probably explains a lot about why we, as a species, think we are smart. But, this fact also means that all human communication has a big noise to signal problem since neither transmitters nor receivers are standardized. The advantage of having an ontologically dysphoric Lebenswelt is that all signal can be classed as noise till selectively 're-constructed'. But this means reflexivity- save in abstract areas, like price signals, which can be represented by a physicalist hexis- can't be founded in Bourdieuian 'habitus'. This is not to say something which looks like habitus aint ubiquitous. But it aint essentialist nor is it structural. It is ontologically dysphoric is what it is. 'Natural languages'- by Gold's theorem- are indeed unlearnable if our hexis, our habitus is Nature- thankfully; it isn't, we are ontologically dysphoric which is why the psychic cost of conforming is negligible, since there is no need to re-write any 'Darwinian algorithm of the mind'- i.e. re-program any context specific emotional-response-unit- and, in any case, the same convergently evolved mental module which detects Schelling focal points always, by default, provides enough points of similarity for the Socio-Criminologist to say 'lo! 'tis the same fingerprint, by Jove! Proof conclusive of the fine Italian hand of that bounder Moriarty!'
What has all this to do with Indian Politics?
Well, people of my generation were influenced by Prem Shankar Jha's Gramscian notion of an intermediate class which was, in essence, ungovernable and anti-national by reason of being chauvinistically casteist or communal or like chewing paan all the time and spitting all over the place.
Behind Jha, or Nandy, or other such soi-disant 'thinkers', was- we now recognize- a Bourdeiusian habitus dissimulating its virtuality in an attention-seeking manner at once hospitably histrionic and meretriciously manic.
In other words, as with Mill, Macaulay or Marx, Bourdieu too, in so far as he is taken up by Indians, possesses a revolutionary potential in the sense of permitting everybody to make a 360 degree turn- or not, if they used their compass to stab the boy in the next desk and it was confiscated by teacher.
Bulbul ne aashaiana chaman se utha liya
Uske bala se boom basay ya Huma rahay
(Now the nightingale no longer rests in garden bowers
Who cares if the owl nests or Huma hovers?)
Put less poetically, the Indian political 'field'- i.e. the arena for arbitrage operations between different types of Bourdieusian 'capital'- operates according to the laws enacted by a parliament of bird-brains impotent to hatch any greater mischief against the common-weal than that constituted by their own continued, craven and concurrency-deadlocked existence.
In this context, it would be natural to gas on about the 'habitus' of the Indian political class- though it is precisely this style of reasoning which, ab ovo, vitiates our public discourse before it ever even encounters- not its alterity- no, Caste being what it is, that was never on the cards- but, apotheosis, for, as Zatalli tells Bedil- Che ‘Urfi che Faizi ba pesh-e tu phus- what, facing us, now are the Pitr progenitors due the pinda oblation? So far have we advanced along their well trodden circuit, they are nothing save that flatus or anal eructation detecting which Gayatri Spivak consoled the sadly flatulent Matilal by quoting Derridera's assertion that upon the fart, at least, ontology can lay no brusque or bugger's hand.Since India, Hindustan, Bharatvarsha, is defined, for Indians, as always constituted by a heterogeneity of 'dharma-as-karma-overcomings'- i.e. India, in so far as it exists, is an ideal marga of meta-hexis simultaneously paced, shoulder to shoulder, by every desi habitus- it follows that it exists only as a hopeful Utopia of the Ernest Bloch type to which, in articulo mortis, the concurrency deadlock that is its proper inertial property, only gives voice when the other Hirschman options of loyalty and exit have been providentially- i.e. by lying technocrats or military men manqué - foreclosed and rendered cheerlessly phantasmogoric.
The 'scandal' of 1968- for France, for West Germany- the stumbling block to faith in Scholastic Sociology represented by this Yahoo repetition of 1848 when History reached a turning point but failed to turn- though Adorno was routed from his lectern by the naked breasts of his (German, and therefore ugly) students- was, of course, for India, a scandal in the common, not theological, sense of the word. The one true and tiger breasted Desi Goddess, whose eagerness for bloodshed exceeds that of pallid PhD Poli Sci jholawallah students, revealed her intention to 'Garibi hatao' - remove Poverty- and indeed, within a decade, no politician in India was left who, if not feathering a familial nest, disdained corrupt practices of the most shameless sort on behalf of his or her Party, which increasingly was a solitary or entirely personal cultus.
In this manner, Indians became Bourdieusian avant la lettre and in their belated jumping on his bandwagon- witness this negligent piece of tosh- one too readily detects the double bind of Metropolitan condescension and patronage towards a benighted Francophone colon because, after all, for any Indian- 'Che Foucault, che Bourdieu ba pesh-e tu phus'- we have advanced on our progenitors in every degree of paranoia, and created a 'Gandu-nama' to which not Zatalli could hold a candle without risking more than his eyebrows.
A moment's thought will show this isn't really a paradoxical, or even a Socio-proctological, result because Bourdieu's field is heavily dependent on a particular type of epistemic reflexivity- a bit like Muth Rational Expectations or the Chomyskian notion of an i-language or Habermas's 'ideal speech situation' or Rawlsian rubbish- but, sadly, one bound up with a finitist Research Program- an inconsistently finitist one, as Nelson's recent debacle has shown- such that ontologically dysphoric positions are ruled out in advance, or diminished to sub-proletarian noise. In other words, what is banished from Sociology is precisely what makes a subject Sociological rather than purely Mathematical without, however, the salutary measure being taken of putting a lamed Politics out of its misery or profitably disposing of it to a glue factory. This wouldn't matter- and Cliodynamics wouldn't be silly- if people, in the main, didn't use language or the market or politics or whatever not to advance within the Muth Rational 'correct' theory of Reality but to mark their desire to emigrate from Reality, emigrate from inter-subjectivity, emigrate from that foundational aspect of Exchange which the genius of Graciella Chichilnisky has uncovered- viz. the necessity for Goldilocks preference diversity, not too little, not too much.
In this sense, the real world is like Rick's Casino in Casablanca- not only is the roulette table rigged, but the magnet is a strange attractor, it could go either way, it does go either way, till the qibla of Rick's hegira is finally decided for him and he emigrates into myth and legend and sophomore fantasies of Sophistication, stepping off the Warner Bros backlot.
Now it may be argued that 'ontological dysphoria' only exists in my mind and I'm just a drunken bum but, the problem is, most bloggers are drunken bums with ontologically dysphoric views of the world. Worse, most people, most of the time- even academics, even mathematicians- are exactly like me. We feel we are living in the wrong world.
Chomsky may see himself as following in the tradition of Plato's 'Meno'- where a slave boy is shown to have knowledge-as-anamnesis of Geometry- and thus his own individuating project, or reckless disregard for the truth, remains anchored, in some sense, in the real world- which is why he is ridiculous. However, such is emphatically not the case with my own preferred world, my own personal project of rendering myself fulminable from this, the infernal reality of my risibility, which gives rise to my patented brand of ontological dysphoria such that I am only at home in a world where Isosceles triangles relentless pursue a bitter blood feud with Vasco da Gama coz Virendra Fernandes stabbed me with his compass back in 1974 and, guess what?, Brother Morrissey caned both of us tho' Virendra was clearly the aggressor and the whole thing was witnessed by Isosceles who was only prevented from filing an f.i.r at the Gol Dhak-khana thana coz Pythagoras raped him but nobody believed him so he got a reputation as the choir-boy wot cries wolf all the time.
Why do I believe most people, most of the time are ontologically dysphoric? The answer has to do evolution- more particularly, the dynamics of convergent evolution. We can probably all agree that the reason there has been no genetic canalisation such that we are hard-wired for a particular 'universal' language is because the field dynamics of our out-of-Africa ancestor militated against the possibility. Hunter gatherer groups were simply too small- by reason of their mode of production- for the reverse to be the case. But, the fact that language use- at the neural level- is always convergently evolved- had other benefits and probably explains a lot about why we, as a species, think we are smart. But, this fact also means that all human communication has a big noise to signal problem since neither transmitters nor receivers are standardized. The advantage of having an ontologically dysphoric Lebenswelt is that all signal can be classed as noise till selectively 're-constructed'. But this means reflexivity- save in abstract areas, like price signals, which can be represented by a physicalist hexis- can't be founded in Bourdieuian 'habitus'. This is not to say something which looks like habitus aint ubiquitous. But it aint essentialist nor is it structural. It is ontologically dysphoric is what it is. 'Natural languages'- by Gold's theorem- are indeed unlearnable if our hexis, our habitus is Nature- thankfully; it isn't, we are ontologically dysphoric which is why the psychic cost of conforming is negligible, since there is no need to re-write any 'Darwinian algorithm of the mind'- i.e. re-program any context specific emotional-response-unit- and, in any case, the same convergently evolved mental module which detects Schelling focal points always, by default, provides enough points of similarity for the Socio-Criminologist to say 'lo! 'tis the same fingerprint, by Jove! Proof conclusive of the fine Italian hand of that bounder Moriarty!'
What has all this to do with Indian Politics?
Well, people of my generation were influenced by Prem Shankar Jha's Gramscian notion of an intermediate class which was, in essence, ungovernable and anti-national by reason of being chauvinistically casteist or communal or like chewing paan all the time and spitting all over the place.
Behind Jha, or Nandy, or other such soi-disant 'thinkers', was- we now recognize- a Bourdeiusian habitus dissimulating its virtuality in an attention-seeking manner at once hospitably histrionic and meretriciously manic.
In other words, as with Mill, Macaulay or Marx, Bourdieu too, in so far as he is taken up by Indians, possesses a revolutionary potential in the sense of permitting everybody to make a 360 degree turn- or not, if they used their compass to stab the boy in the next desk and it was confiscated by teacher.
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