A short post on Virno

Some useful threads from Paolo Virno's Multitude: Between Innovation and Negation:

The potential dangerousness of the human animal is also what makes it possible to innovate.  The ability to imagine/create "that which can be different from the way it is" creates chances to danger and creativity. Truly radical evil has the same root as the good life. Institutions only protect us if they part of the same dangers they try to protect us from.

Contemporary political institutions function as a permanent state of exception. The multitude (the One of many) is the fundamental form of political existence. Virno proposes the ideas of the katechon (that which restrains and contains without destroying) as the institution that best adapts itself to the permanent state of exception.

He choose jokes as a model for creativity. Whoever coins a joke does something new. Every joke contains the norm and a fragment of the state of exception. He looks at Freud (jokes, dreams as source of information), Aristotle (phroneis, fallacies) and Wittgenstein (semisolid, semihard nature of rule that is the test and the rule) in depth.

He suggests the joke or the fallacy, which points to the rule/norm while breaking/changing/playing with it and points to the fact that whole meta structure of rules/norms, as a model for how political innovation might happen. The creative moment of the witty quip is also the same type of thinking that Virno wants for our politics. The creative political move can come up with a third way. To use his example of the exodus: not staying in slavery with Pharaoh, not rebelling against Pharaoh- but going out into the desert.

Explaining the political punching bag post

According to Dean, a stand-up routine is a series of loosely linked jokes on a central topic told with attitude. Each joke shares the same basic structure. There is a set up, which has a premise and a 1st story followed by a punch with a premise that shares a connector with the premise & 1st story of the the set up but that reinterprets it to tell a 2nd story that pokes holes in a target assumption. Jokes in routine often have tags that extend the work already done by the joke to get another bang for the buck or there may be transitions between jokes.

Following Dean's structure, I break down the first couple of minutes of Colbert's routine. This drains all the water out of the routine's swamp, but it allows us to take pictures alligators (with ticking clocks in their bellies), so we can build our bit/byte/bite of a routine.

Topic:  The bill introduced by Congressman Posey (Birther movement and its spawn)

Intro: The character of pundit allows for easier introduction of new routine as new bit of news. 

Joke

Punch premise: introducing a bill will increase rumors, and is a crappy/stupid thing to do

Set up premise: introducing a bill will quash rumors, and is an act of kindness

Set up: Bill’s bill was part of his plan to squash rumors that Obama was ineligible to be president

1st story: putting focus on something stops rumors

Target assumption: He was trying to help

Connector: focus on rumors

Reinterpretation: He didn’t help

2nd story: putting focus on something increases rumors

Punch: by getting those rumors into as many outlets as possible (this is a sarcastic punch- an obvious problem stated as if it is not a problem)

Tag: To quell rumors, demanding test to determine if FL congressmen are part alligator.

Joke

Set up: I’ve had enough with the reckless whispering

Punch: But the rumor is . . .

Joke

Set up: We’ve all been in the place of getting some hot gator love

Punch: Most of us remember to use protection

Segue: Bill couldn’t get a co-sponsor, interview with Posey

Political punching bag

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Illegitimate Grandson of an Alligator
www.colbertnation.com
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Baby Fat Facts

Baby Fat Not Be So Cute After All suggests that all the policy changes aimed at school aged children (reducing access to sugared sodas, revamping school lunches by adding salad bars) may be too little, too late. Research points to evidence that signs of childhood obesity, and the related health problem of diabetes, begin in infancy, even in the womb.

One of the most convincing studies on the link between gestational diabetes in the mother and diabetes in her children was done almost 10 years ago among Pima Indians. Siblings born after the mother developed Type 2 diabetes had a higher body mass index throughout childhood and were almost four times as likely to develop diabetes as siblings born before the diagnosis.

“The intrauterine environment of a woman with diabetes overnourishes the fetus,” said the study’s author, Dana Dabelea, an epidemiologist at the Colorado School of Public Health. And that, she added, may “reset the offspring’s satiety set point, and make them predisposed to eat more.”

There a many reasons that I find this research troubling, especially the ways in which it would be easy to blame fat women for harming their fetuses. In a Left Hand of Darkness sort of way, I could see a time in which fat women of breeding age were locked up into prison and made lose weight to insure a healthy, non-fat next generation.

But for some reason, in a non-logical tangential step sort of way, the idea that the battle to not be fat starts in the womb, that restraint and lack of restraint are issues from before birth, makes me think of Virno's equation of the dangerousness of humans with our capacity to innovate (Virno, 20).

It's Not Easy Being

It's Not Easy Being Fat Again by Alessandra Stanley is a review of a new reality show "Kirstie Alley’s Big Life." I posted this link without any commentary weeks ago in a bookmark for later sort of way. At the time, we did not yet have a clear picture of the tale/tail of Part II of the blog.  What interested me at the time was the sheer number of TV shows about obesity.

Gaining back lost pounds is every dieter’s nightmare, of course, and “Big Life” takes its place in a widening spectrum of obesity television. Ever more extreme seasons of “The Biggest Loser” are matched by myriad variations, which over the years have included “More to Love,” “Dance Your Ass Off,” “X-Weighted,” “Big Medicine,” “Honey We’re Killing the Kids,” “Bulging Brides” and “I Can Make You Thin.”

Stanley complains that Alley's second look at being fat is tragedy.  "The self-indulgence and denial that were hyped for laughs on “Fat Actress” are still in play, but without the same wit or satiric bite." She wants it to be comedy.


While there are plenty of problems with Stanley's positioning of the show (the stereotype of the jolly fat person that pokes fun at her own obesity to entertain us being just one), I think her desire for a more comedic flavor has much to do with wanting a show that is more hopeful than despairing. Laughing at and through your troubles, can be denial or well-disguised bitter self mockery, but often it shows resiliency, flexibility and an ability to tell a narrative about yourself that helps you keep on keeping on even with weighted down by things that are difficult to change or sustain.


Our creation of like-but-not-quite-joke-machines is a way to uncover the unthought rooted in the hopeful belief that it is possible to innovate. It is not that the comedic is truer than the tragic or that the comedic is inherently hopeful; much comedy is rather bleak about the human condition when we cut through its protective laugh layers. Yet the comedic attitude does offer a wider range of possibilities than the tragic. As we try to twist our thoughts out of shape to find new thoughts, we want the option that gives us the most flexibility. 

Just a little food for thought

From Democracy Now! headlines for Monday, March 15, 2010

Study Finds Link Between Childhood Obesity and School Lunch

A new study from the University of Michigan has found middle-school students who regularly eat lunch provided by their schools are more likely to be overweight and have higher levels of cholesterol than those who eat meals brought from home. Researchers said only six percent of school-supplied meals meet the nutritional requirements set by the US Agriculture Department.

Protecting the poor with policy

Just a link to a NYT editorial, Healthy Solution: Taxing Sodas on a proposed NY tax on sugary sodas and beverages. The comparison is made between the positive impact of taxes on cigarettes, which are said to have made a dent in the number of smokers, and a possible impact of a tax on soda.  The editorial is a disturbing plea to pass paternalistic policy to help the poor (alliteration, what a joy).  I agree with the tax, but I dislike the attitude that I am finding in more and more editorials.  This attitude suggest that poor people, like the children who also are the focus of much of the discussion of possible policy on sodas and junk food, need to be protected. There is an implied equation of the poor with children, as those who do not know and cannot choose better, so "we" have to know and choose for them. And while that is true to in some respects for our children; I do not think it is true for the poor.

My main problem is that it is not just the poor who are getting fat (off of sugary sodas, bad carbs, etc). The percentages are higher among the poor, but the problem cuts across class divides. Everyone is getting fatter (though there is some evidence that the rate of increase has stabilized recently). We have to be careful of position those that are fat as an other over there instead of us over here.

On a personal level, since I've cut out sugary soda as a daily beverage (I occasionally have a coke as a dessert like treat), and that is pretty much the only thing I've done in terms of my diet or exercise, I've lost 15 pounds that I have kept off easily.

Animal open to the would

I have read the first 32 pages of  Paolo Virno's Multitude: Between Innovation and Negation.  I will  do the obligatory sum up posts to try to capture central ideas that lead to instructions for the project after I've read more of the text.

Now, I want to let a give a few of the ideas stirred up by reading the text a place to stretch their legs. These musings are not directly part of the project, but they part of the zig zag path that leads me there.

I can only read theory a chunk at a time. I read a bit; then I have to set it down for a while. I have to give my brain space to deal with all the thoughts directly related to the text and the (often multiple) relay races down associative thought trails started by reading that chunk of text. If I don't, I won't be able to concentrate on the next chunk of text. My brain will be too distracted. The trick for me has been to learn how to productively use my inability to focus on just one idea. I still am finessing this system, but it seems to work best when I give myself some space for all the generative, associative thoughts and then spin them into a funnel, a spiral, through which I can look. All the spinning ideas create a focus point at their center.

So here are a couple of ideas spinning in the spiral of my thought tornado:

1. Having been involved in what many would call the radical (anarchist/socialist) left, I have often been frustrated with the assumption that humans are basically good. This leads to inefficient systems for decision making, bad decisions and a tendency to demonize people within the community who commit an act seen as bad/evil/wrong (sexual assault is a persist problem). If we are basically good, then we have to choose to do evil, which makes our sins more heinous. Even though many ascribe to the notion that it is the systems (of oppression, etc) that shape our behavior, somehow when it gets down to the individual level, people do not want to think that the potential for violence resides within them. The perpetrator is classed as other, as "not man."

2. I don't think we are basically good or basically bad. What I have thought for a long time is that every human (and human institution) has the possibility of acting in a many, very different ways (constructive, destructive) for all sorts of reasons (many of them not logical). A radical potentiality. I appreciate the way that Virno plots this out even if he equates it with the "innate destructiveness of our species" (24). I am overall sympathetic with the case he lays out, but I'm not sure if aggressiveness automatically equates with violence. It is outside the scope of this project, but I want to note that looking at how aggressiveness might be distinguished from violence could be interesting. Also, that not all violence is "bad." I appreciate the fact that Virno calls it "so called evil." I think that qualification is important.

3. This musing is completely tangential; just a thought about wit and public policy. Really this thought falls more within the realm of the Marchand reading, but it was more directly caused by reading the Virno. Right now in Gainesville, there is a campaign to get the city council to lift the absurd daily limit placed (and other such restrictions) on the number of meals that various homeless shelters can provide. It seems that what needs to happen is for all the restaurants and grocery stores to set a limit on the number of meals that can be provided to elected officials in any given day (let's say one). Obviously, would be impossible to carry out as an actual campaign move, most importantly because I'm sure many businesses downtown approve of the limit. But it could be filmed as a short comedy sketch. And posted online and spread through social networks.

Humor and its discontents

I am fascinated by the possibilities of producing modernist tableau(x) featuring the conceptual persona of the stand up somehow telling a vital anecdote relating to the concept of routine. I haven't read the Dean on stand up comedy yet (ah, spring break- a time to catch up and get ahead on reading, cleaning, writing), but I have some thoughts/musings/opinions already.

We have been told that following Virno (which we are just starting to read) to treat our public policy issue as a joke. The interesting thing about jokes, about humor, is that often at the core, are anxieties about important issues. Humor is a way to deal with anxiety. I discussed this in my post Selling chubby hubbies vacuums. Humor is one place we can play out behaviors and thoughts that are less socially acceptable. There are lines that we are not supposed to cross but getting damn close to those lines, crossing over them now and again, taking risks, is what marks the most memorable comedy sets/comics.

Bodily functions will always be a source of humor. Funnily enough, becoming more accepting of bodies and their functions and limits actually can increase our tendency to make jokes about the body. I think this is because even for those of us more accepting of bodies that fart and shit and belch and squirt and piss and smell and make all sorts of odd noises, there still is anxiety about how much we cannot control those functions.

Almost twenty years ago, over a Christmas holiday, I got sick with a dreadful flu that made me spend quality time in the bathroom for four days. My father got the same flu but only for two days. At the time, I made some joke about how he should have to suffer the flu for four days- this is not the sort of joke that would play for a crowd- it was a family, in crowd sort of a joke. And for years after that horrible Xmas shitfest, my father and I would make jokes about my jokingly serious, seriously joking anger that he only had the flux for two days.

All this discussion about bodies is important, because "fat" bodies often are the butt of the joke. We have anxieties about obesity; so as a culture we make (often cruel) jokes about fat, fat people and their behavior. My own family often has dealt with our tendency to pack on pounds (and not just 10 to 30 pounds extra, more like 100 to 300 pounds extra) by making jokes- often self deprecating, very earthy jokes.

A cookie less a day does not keep the fat away

at least according to this NYT article, In Obesity Epidemic, What's One Cookie.

The gist of the article is that the "small changes add up" campaign of first lady Michelle Obama is a misleading message. The "small changes add up" message basically says if you just cut or burn 100 extra calories a day, it leads to significant changes over time- 1 pound in 35 days, 10 pounds in a year.

The reality is, according to an article in The Journal of the American Medical Association, that the body's adaptive mechanisms almost always shift to compensate one way or the other for a small change like 100 calories; and unfortunately, our bodies are a bit better and more prone to help us keep weight on when we cut or burn 100 calories more a day.

Small changes in calorie consumption are not completely a waste of time. Those changes can help people from gaining weight.

The conclusion of the article is that obesity is not something that most individuals can tackle on their own. Quoting Dr. Ludwig, it suggests that a large scale shift in policy and education needs to happen. The last quote is interesting because while I sort of of agree with the premise that it is not a matter of self-will- it positions the poor as somehow more helpless than other groups (this is true to some extents but very troubling).

“If we just expect that inner-city child to exercise self-control and walk a little bit more, then I think we’re in for a big disappointment.”