Happy Holidays!

Taking the next 2 weeks off because holidays, have a happy and healthy end of year! See you in 2017!

Neoliberalism and Language

I just finished up my seminar on neoliberalism, and what amazes me is its impact through language. Neoliberalism is a system of economic and political theory where the market is seen as the only site of truth and is left unchecked. This system often employs the language of democracy in order to appear as democratic, when in reality it is anything but that.

Language is critical to the human experience, its how we form our world and make sense of it. This is related to the idea of a speech act. A speech act is any utterance that performs an act, which connects the verbal and physical. This is how people express themselves to each other.

This is related to performative theories about politics. Essentially we are always performing an act that is rehearsed throughout our lives as we are told how to act. This can easily be seen in how politics parallels the theatre. There is the sense that people are playing roles, such as the role of senator or a theatrical role. This continued to the point where early Shakespearians called themselves Macchiavells.

Language is then used in a certain way by economic theories such as neoliberalism. Neoliberalism centers around the free market and leaving the economy unregulated. However, that is not the only purpose of neoliberalism out there. Margeret Thatcher once said “economics are the method, but the object is to change the soul” with regards to neoliberalism. The movement has loftier aims with regards to changing the citizens of the countries that it is implemented in, beyond changing the policies. Since the focus on the market is paramount, what starts to happen is that the people are removed from the political scene.

An example of this is the crisis or representation. It is usually assumed that from representation follows democracy in politics. However, there is no guarantee of this. Instead what happens is the people participate in a kind of a sham election as representatives are put into power and then either stick to their promises or turn their back on them. This isn’t democratic, this is oligarchic, there is now a small subset of the population exclusively in control.

Government is defined by the philosopher Jacques Ranciere to be dispute between people and their discourse as it creates an egalitarian act. It consists of discussion between different groups of people, especially between those heard in government and those not heard. Centering government around the economy removes this discourse, fundamentally altering what it is.

However language can also be used to rebel against the state. This can be done through constituent power, which is akin to protests. Constituent power is the power of the people to stand before the government and demand their rights, which is what we see everywhere today. However, what inevitably happens is a similar government is put into place, and we are all back where we started.

What needs to be utilized instead is destituent power, which is where the people voluntarily remove themselves from politics and go elsewhere. They give up their own legitimacy since the system is so broken beyond repair. I don’t know how this would work in practical terms, but I think that is where our society is headed. We need to start looking for alternative spaces to be political in order to escape this cycle. 

It’s Time to Love

This is going to be a bit of a strange post, but I’d like to talk about this anyways.

So I’ve been having odd dreams lately, a sure sign that I am stressed. (This is related to this article, check it out if you have time. http://garnetnews.com/2016/11/28/the-age-of-anxiety/) These dreams range from a really melodramatic rendition of an everyday event to the end of the world, but either way the stakes have been high when I close my eyes lately. So I was really glad when I found that article and realized that I’m not the only one!

But we are reaching a new age of anxiety so to speak in more ways than one. Sure we’re all freaked out about the future, but also mental health in general is coming to the forefront. More and more adolescents are being diagnosed with disorders all the time, which could be due to more awareness of these issues or teens being put in more stressful situations, it’s hard to tell. Either way, as a society mental health is becoming more prominent. Unfortunately though, mental health is still highly stigmatized. People suffering from it feel alienated and alone, and the lack of understanding out there isn’t helping anything.

Put the two together (stressful situation and mental health), and we are in for a really rough time. I know people who have had really terrible times with their brain recently, and it doesn’t look like it is going to get any better anytime soon.

I’m going to propose that to counter the age of anxiety upon us, we try to usher in an age of love. Love to look after each other. Love to counter all of the hate we see. Love so we can take all of this energy and indignation and put it to positive use. We can’t lose sight of what is important here, or we are just as bad as the people currently giving us anxiety.

So look out for each other, and take care of yourselves. Now more than ever, we need a little love.

“A Wizard of Mars” by Diane Duane

I was an incredibly intense fan of this series in middle school, aka the Young Wizards series. It has a very probable portrayal of magic and wizardry in the “real world” that relies on physics and makes sense spiritually. It’s a great mix of science fiction and fantasy, which is really cool. This book comes after “Wizards at War” in the series which I thought was the last one, BUT IT’S NOT I’M SO HAPPY!

As you can see from the title, it’s about Mars, our red neighbor, and what the wizards are doing up there. Nita and Kit are the wo main characters, and the teenage wizard partnership that continually gets into trouble and barely makes it out of adventures. Nita is trying to learn more about being a visionary and seeing the future, meanwhile Kit is obsessed with Mars and wants to learn more about it. Camela (Kit’s sister) is featured as she deciphers Mars text, and there’s more about Kit’s family as well since Helena comes home from college in the middle of everything, and she isn’t a fan of his wizardry talents. Nita’s family also has a side plot as Dairine starts learning about stars from Roshaun’s family in an attempt to find him. (Sorry this explanation is bad, but to explain Roshaun’s story would take all day, just read the earlier books.)

Some other characters from different books like Ronan, S’reee, and Darryl also make an appearance, which I always like when reading YA novels as some authors forget about other characters that they wrote about. Not Duane though, you can tell that she likes all of the people that she has created since they keep coming back and making appearances here and there.

Anyways so Nita and Kit’s relationship is the main focus here, they meet Martians that are very similar to them which makes Nita jealous and suspicious. You can probably guess where this is going…

The portrayal of Mars and how the planet is seen on Earth and how those affect the actual planet is interesting, wizardry in the books is about persuasion so what you think something is can be as important as what it actually is. It’s an interesting idea, open to ambiguity which science hardly ever is. It’s also very similar to theories within philosophy of language which says that the words we use for things kind of become the thing itself to us. You don’t need to know something concretely in in order to get a sense of it.

So this installment isn’t my favorite in the series since it is mostly about Nita and Kit’s relationship and I liked them as friends, and it’s mostly setting up for future installments but hey here we are. I guess takeaway here is to read the rest of the series because it’s really good!