Oh, I hope it’s not as long as these country miles. I feel lost. I feel lost.”
-Camera Obscura
******
I will be returning to Missouri tomorrow. After about four weeks with my old friends and family, one single rather insignificant moment has shortened my sleep.
A couple days after I arrived in Kentucky, a group of us ate at El Mazatlan. As if no one had ever graduated college, found new jobs, moved to different states, or desired any place that wasn’t at the corner of Lexington and Harold Bishop, we snuggled three tables together and doused our chips in salsa. We reveled in the food service, still unmatched near our metropolitan apartments.
We sat facing one another in parallel lines: Mikey, of Glasgow, sat directly to my left. Colin and Sage, of Nashville, at that end of the table. Steven and Katie Frein, now of Michigan, across and to the left. Matt Garrett, of L.A., directly across from me with his new girlfriend. Heidi, of Louisville, between Mikey and Sage. Katie Garrett, of Franklin, sat to my right. Tony, of New York and to her right, leaned back in his chair and said, “Mike. “ I, of Missouri, turned my head. “Mike, don’t moments like this make you want to move home?”
I blinked at him, and said, almost under my breath, “Yeah. It does.” And I looked back at my lap.
Since that day, I’ve sat down to write this blog about ten times. But every time I start writing, I can’t figure out whether or not I was telling the truth.
******
When I’ve dreamt of old age, I woke every morning and had breakfast with this same group of people. For some reason, we’re in McDonald’s. It would be more appropriate for us to sit at the Great American Donut Shop or wake up later and have lunch after many showers and much debate. But it’s always McDonald’s, and I’m not sure why. Maybe I think all old people hang out in McDonald’s.
Or because all McDonald’s are nearly identical; the lobby where we drink coffee and read the paper could be anywhere. Maybe Tony wooed us all to New York or I dreamed us into Portland or maybe we all just settled in Louisville because it’s not quite perfect for everyone.
******
The dream above is complicated and perhaps doomed by this understated fact:
In Missouri, I’ve made friends. Because I’ve not blogged in the past two months, I’ve not talked about them much, but just as I’d like them to know about the meaning of my old home, I want my old friends to know the meaning of my new.
When everyone left me alone in Kentucky last week, I started thinking about how exciting (if somewhat stressful) that every day in Missouri has been. I am immersed: not just in my discipline, my specializations, and the sweets of academic life, but in the lives of a new city and of people I want to better know. When New York, Michigan, L.A., Nashville, Louisville, Lexington, and Franklin all regained one or two pieces of me and home seemed so empty, I remembered that Texas, Omaha, Florida, St. Louis, and Kansas City are to be found in my new place.
******
Friends. Job. Family. (in no particular order unless contextualized). I’ve lived near my friends and hated my job. I’ve loved sociology away from my friends and forgotten why sociology in the first place. I’ve never had my own family, really, but I’m finally old enough to dream about one.
Ideally, of course, I figure out the perfect job, I live near most of my friends, and I meet someone and raise children.
Practically, the new ideal is two of three.
When I left Louisville on Saturday and Lexington on Monday and Nashville today and then when I left Franklin, and Thursday when I leave Kentucky, and eventually if I decide to put an end to this graduate school nonsense, I will have been dissatisfied. The drive kills. Until I decide once and for all and settle for what I can and cannot have; in a sense, when I learn to prioritize or accept my own choices, or rather than looking before I leap, stop leaping all together, or until I think it’s okay to sacrifice one priority for the other or can learn to anticipate the future at the expense of the present (to the detriment of, I should say), I am lost.
This piece was inspired by the book Ghostly Matters by Avery Gordon. I actually wrote it as a response paper for my Culture, Difference and Inequality course. It's not complete; however, I haven't posted much lately, and I figured I need to keep people glancing my direction from time to time.
The book is about the hauntings of social science, of the way sociology-as-sciences misses almost the whole of humanity and that we feel ghost stories with the potential to remind us of their presence, even though our epistemologies and methodologies as they stand will never bring about their resurrection. The ghost, in the vein A Christmas Carol, is past, present, and future. Hauntings are the unfinished spirits of history and understanding, those figures erased by the powerful, but embedded and stubborn and consequential. They are not Ghosts; they are ghosts, and they are real. The piece is perhaps more blatant with the metaphor than I would like, but I hope you will hunt for ghosts in my future work.
A Ghost Story: or, when the dead are alive and the living are dead.
New Orleans is full of spirit.And full of spirits.I imagined this before traveling to the city for the first time.I knew that Voodoo marked its culture in a pretend sort of way, vanquished by the French and the Catholics and then manufactured by the tourist industry.I had never been to New Orleans, but I knew all these things about the city, commercialized specters that hummed outside our van as we touched.
It was my first year of graduate school, and I traveled to a sociology conference with the monsters of an awkward present:The baldest and ugliest siren who constantly theorized the dullest song, the spiky-haired brute, that lanky trickster with the personality of a slippery fish, the bitter and burdened hag.In a world of operationalization, they were graduate students, but in my dislocation, I felt only a terror.
Home hollowed a space in the van just at the edge of my skin.Home was a graveyard, a place I remembered the lost, a place that one visits from time to time, a place I somehow never manage to leave.When I think about my death, I find myself asking how much time I laid in my grave, waiting to live but encased by the ethereal walls of friendly bodies and solid headstones.The world I now inhabited wiped itself clean of ghosts, or at least it stowed them away with the Ouija, brought about at appropriate times but never taken seriously.
Living in a graveyard is life itself, the grounds watered in our blood and fertilized by our bodies; the soil is our soil.I loved the dead because the dead don’t have to comprehend the world around them; they comprehend without intention.Once you’re dead, you’re dead for the sake of death.The dead live in the graveyard.
I belonged dead in the graveyard.
Academic life is in many ways like taking the dead outside of the grave.Jarring settled specters into the land of cold, pale skinned monsters.I now dwelled in a world of plain tile flooring and cinderblock walls, of clean rented vans and sterile thoughts.In social science, we refuse to recognize the translucence or even transparency of the dead until they come to their senses and civilize and shape up into the opaque form we need them to be.In a sense, we bring the dead to life; we parade their decomposing bodies in celebration of our necromantic skills.We disrupt the graveyard, mangle the bodies of the dead and explain the spirit away.
The city of New Orleans was full of spirits.I could feel them dangling from gothic eves and filling the walls of French architecture.The stores expanded with the bodies of the living and the dead.The “haunted tours” that solicited tourists from their graveyards were redundant and ironic and patronizing to the dead, like reality television to the living.The cobblestone streets of the French Quarter were filled with people, though the living might be away.
“New Orleans,” I said “is the type of city where you could get chased by a dog.”The pause was pregnant with my own insanity.The trickster snickered. “No no, let me finish,” I pleaded.“It’s the type of city where you could get chased by a dog into an alley.You’d duck into some backalley shop, where you’d meet a strange woman who would give you something magical that did…something.”
For a moment, I was alone, except I was in the graveyard, speaking to the grave of my best friend and feeling, for a moment, a little less alive.
“What kind of sociologist are you?” asked the trickster.And the monsters all laughed.I breathed in the clear definition of life.
******
When the trickster and the hag posed my characterization of the graveyard to its dead, I was vindicated.I did not need to be alive to know other graveyards.I could be dead amongst the living.
******
Of one thing I am sure: it’s not that the ghosts don’t exist.
The theme of the conference was Diaspora, and we attended presentations on the racialized demography of the urban cityscape, of migratory patterns of refugees, of social dislocation and the importance of place.None of this was the beating heart of the city I had seen, the spirits sold in French Quarter stores and employed for minimum wage.I knew less the New Orleans graveyard than the haunted house at Halloween.
Yet while the exorcists spoke of the real graveyard, they could not bring themselves to call it by name.They described the headstones without their inscription; they flowered the grounds with polyester pedals.So I took a ride to the Ninth Ward to see this graveyard for myself.
Graverobbers had stolen the ghouls.
And the exorcist had said, “There’s progress.It’s not all wasteland.There’s bad rubble and there’s good rubble.Spirits are high.”
I thought back again to my own graveyard, looked down at my own green skin, claws and fangs and knew their spirits roamed the earth still, parched and alone, scattered by a living storm, both powerful and complacent, and knew they would wander until they wandered home.
I don't really understand what I'm going through right now.
I am unusually pleased with myself but not pleased with my life.
I am a transcendental spirit in a sociological cocoon.
I can procrastinate all day long and hate myself for it, but at the end of the day, I feel good about caring for myself.
The last several days, I've chosen to listen to music rather than talk to friends. I think I'm embarrassed that I have nothing to say.
I feel like I've lost several friends since I've lived here... and as a sociologist, I must recognize myself as the single underlying variable in all cases.
I haven't spoken with Colin in like two weeks. Frowny face.
I am attracted to myself right now...and yes, I mean in the physical sense. Vanity is a new experience, but I see you looking at me.
I must rectify the fact that I think I hate teaching, but I love building relationships with good students.
Matt, Sophie and I took naps in the living room this afternoon. It was strangely comforting.
My little brother is awesome, and I miss him. I bought him a CD today because he's got straight A's. He's yet to disappoint me, and I worry about the day that he does. He won't deserve it.
I was chilled to the bone tonight on my walk home. October filled me, andthe album A Certain Feeling by Bodies of Water harmonized with the season and my body. Together, they are the minor chord that plays the sound of my life.
This evening, I went looking for a piece of costume in the mall. I bopped into a few women's clothing stores for this item, and after a bit of flirtatious banter with one of the sales girls (who was likely a tad young for me), I decided that shopping for women's clothes is a good way to meet women.
Matt and I were driving to the mall. I crossed a large intersection because I had the green. A young woman pulled into the crossing, stopping her car a full length over the line. She had shoulder length dark hair, a station wagon and a presumably pretty face. As we drove through the light, I looked in her direction. She caught my eye. She opened her fingers from the wheel and covered her face with her hands. My chest fluttered.
After lunch, I caught the eyes of a girl in Uprise Bakery (my favorite cafe in Columbia now). She had pale skin with freckles (possibly the best kind of skin), a lip ring and hair that rolled brown to her shoulders. She danced the floor as if no one in the world was watching. I looked away. It's the respectful thing to do. But I stole glimpses of her hips swaying and her skin sweeping me with her as she passed through the door.
But I don't have much time to evaluate my actual state of mind. It's crunch time, folks. Here's a schedule of things I've been doing.
(starting Thursday, for some reason)
Thu 10/16 - Education debate in lab (which I got in trouble for), horrible discussion over The Female Complaint in CDI, Hockey Game in St. Louis with Matt and Joshua Fri 10/17 - Steven and Katie visit from Kentucky Sat 10/18 - My nephew's football game and niece's birthday in Moberly, MO. Sun 10/19 - See The Faint in Columbia. Meet The Faint (cause I'm in the in-crowd now). Mon 10/20 - Read Analyzing Narrative Reality Tue 10/21 - Read Inside Toyland: Working, Shopping, and Social Inequality Wed 10/22 - Finish Inside Toyland, write response, bullshit Freud in social theory, pumpkin carving party Thu 10/23 - Embarrass myself and a few students in my TA Lab because of an asshole hobbit. Fri 10/24 - Of Montreal show in St. Louis with William. Damn that shit is crazy. Achieve level 70 in World of Warcraft. Sat 10/25 - Apple themed fall party at a professor's house. Sun 10/26 - Grade 20 papers, conduct a lifestory interview, observe a natural lifestory telling, read Habermas' Toward a Rational Society Mon 10/27 - Finish Habermas, write Habermas paper, read Analyzing Narrative Reality Tue 10/28 - Finish Analyzing Narrative Reality, Read Alchemy of Race and Rights Wed 10/29 - Finish Alchemy of Race and Rights, write response paper over Alchemy of Race and Rights. Thu 10/30 - Collapse in a heap after class. Fri 10/31 - Halloween Party Sat 11/1-11/5 - Transcribe interviews, write paper paper over two life stories, grade 60 papers, VOTE, Ted Leo Concert, read my life away
I could keep going (or include more daily activities)....needless to say, I have little time for anything. I should be doing more. This is a crazy life. I've never had a schedule this planned out before. Some days I get up at six in the morning and work until midnight. Other days I lay on the couch watching TV literally all day. Either way, it's planned.
And planned with guilt embedded.
When people ask me how I'm doing, I can't really tell them I'm miserable because I have no time to be miserable....but maybe that is miserable. Hard to tell.
One thing I can say for this schedule. In mid-December, I drop everything and go home. I don't know if I'm more excited about seeing everyone or NOT having this schedule. Hard to tell.
I was bored in Narrative and Identity today. So I did what I did in undergrad when classes bored me, I wrote a....sort of poem. It's nothing fancy or complete. I like the idea, but I think I can play it up. Anyhow, I thought I'd share.
"Life is dramatic enough without drama."
a streetside performer hands on the cement webs of his finger streaked clean tattooed waste to neck.
he walked into traffic feet strung in the clouds and said "Life is dramatic
then spun on his palms.
car horns despaired their warden lifted one arm and shot from the hip a single finger.
enough I said.
His parabolic spine straightened and he turned his head I saw one blue eye and one green he retracted his finger and dropped his arm.
his feet, one and then two touched the black tar.
he flagged down a yellow cab leaned forward and said without drama." the driver nodded pedal to the floor.
I needed to write something....and since I have no current diatribes to speak of, we'll just see what comes up.
I think listening to an entire album, from intro to outro, melody to rhythm, pop masterpiece to transitioning instrumental, is like falling love.
Except I don't even know what falling in love is like at this stage of my life. So perhaps falling in love is like listening to an entire album from crescendo to decrescendo, chaos to cadence, lyric to growl.
I don't think I've been surrounded by women since I was a kid, living with my mom and three sisters. This past weekend, I attended a feminist burlesque show; a couple weeks ago, I watched a women's roller derby match; and if I had to count, most of the friends I have made in Columbia have been women. I can really only think of a couple men here who I hang out with on a regular basis. It's not such a unique situation to be friends with women. Many of my best friends check that category on the U.S. census (for lack of a more complicated definition of gender). But I don't know of a time in my life when my community was primarily ovarian.
Ovarian, hah. Are male groups "testicular"? Henceforth.
I've struggled with romantic relationships for a long time, that glaring absense conjured by my mind when I whitness couplings of any sort. October is the season of my lust, my misunderstanding of consummate love, and the painful reminder of mysogyny past. Where is that magical female companion who will resolve my despair? For all my feminist sensibilities, the influence of the very real women in my life evaporates.
I think there is something to learn from the intimacy I share with women, bereft of physical contact, sexual and otherwise. This is not a lesson particular to women themselves, but one that can only be gleaned from a feminized definition of companionship (and share with my male friends). This image is not drawn by physical appeal or carnal desires (which is not to deny the capacity for Just sexual pleasure or even the possibility that such acts intensify commitment and ease inadequecies of the body - all claims that I hold true). Rather, companionship is very much a sense of community without the a priori assumption of sexuality.
I don't have the intelligence to imagine this without a consideration for the women in my life who are not sexual objects. Of course, there is Sage and Katie, who I count among my very best friends, and Heidi, Emma, Katie F. There's Danielle and Kathleen from Lexington. And most recently, the likes of Lindy, Kathleen, Roslyn, Jenn (and Heather might fit, if only recently). When in the past, new women may have represented the potential for fetish, I am ashamedly suprised by my attitude toward these women as entirely human rather than gendered, by an ability to see them as sexual beings while not sexualized. The degree of abnormality is ironic and troubling for a practicing male feminist (perhaps pro-feminist is more appropriate), if not altogether hopeful.
It is with a great deal of effort that I recognize myself as a subject and agent of patriarchy. Even with my long time female friends, I worry that our relationship is assexual; that is, a desexualized biproduct of their partnerships with close male friends. To the extent that they are embodied and I italicize our distinct bond, I find the paradox of my own sexuality: an eros that comes alive with familiarity, but ought not always be present in the familiar.
In my greatest transgression of all, the one "long term intimate relationship" that I was fortunate enough to experience was ripe with a lewd, body-centered sexual coercion. Under the guise of love (a guise I believed, but nonetheless manipulated) and the force of expectations of sexual order, I imposed my newfound sexuality on the one person I loved. Against her desire for non-sexual physical intimacy, I turned my back (quite literally) and sculpted her insecurity. She cried in the bathroom until I "came to my senses." But pressure became the quality of our partnership beyond those moments, where I left her unsure if she could feel safe with me, a charge that I now associate with no smaller felony than rape.
I have a wonderful respect for you now because you stood against me, because you broke away despite any repressive forces telling you that I am a good guy. The very real pain of that relationship's end is an inadequate punishment. Perhaps my three years of guilt and relationship paralysis have been sufficient. I don't know if you will ever read this (and I hope if you do that you do not feel violated by my public penance), but as much as I have suffered from you removing yourself from my life, I am a well-warranted hypocrite. I hope you remember that it was I who did you wrong and not the other way around. Any time you offer to recoup our lost friendship is a precious and undeserved gift.
I hope the women in my life, both new and old, will tolerate and love me further as I stumble over my own unexamined privileges, their naive application and intolerable consequences. I don't expect all of you to understand the why's or how's of my plea. The most disheartening point of view suggests that I am one of the good ones. I fear for the future of feminism and social justice when the above statement is true, but I hope to remain critical of myself, perhaps at the expense of my own psychological health, but for the betterment of human companionship, private and beyond.
And then love might be more like I listen to music, because I do it all the time; it is a form of existence and not the occasional fancy.
Today on my walk home (approximately 30 minutes), I invented a little chant. I spoke this chant out loud for the entire journey. Spoken. Out loud. Entire journey. I think this marks the complete and utter destruction of my intellect over the course of the day.
Poop or the poop or the pee? Poop or the poop or the pee? Pee or the pee or the poop? Pee or the pee or the poop? (repeat 1oo'sx)
My walks have traveled restful of late. Despite the tendency to procrastinate on work or wane toward pangs of inadequacy, my daily and nightly travel is filled with a single, previously unidentifiable emotion.
Content.
For those of you who are new to my bloggings (or to me in general), you should know that these walks are often the most pleasurable part of any day. You'll find that against your better judgment, rain or chill, my vessel is these strong legs and not your charitable ride home.
I've always appreciated long walks, parentheses in an otherwise living run-on sentence. My early walks were sporadic, impulsive, and emotionally cathartic (following a similar trend as my personal writing). But when I started college, I learned to love the routine of daily bipedal travel. I lived at home with no car then. My high schooler body packed its share of baby fat, and it took only a semester to claim my current tiny frame. Beyond physical health, my walks became a scene of introspection, of reflection and self-criticism, where often I gave my pain a forum. I listened to music that gave that pain a tone, a mood.
When I started graduate school, both resentful and alone for the first time since I moved to Kentucky, I learned to trust my walk as a dear friend. The travel became a companion, and I stole time out of my busy graduate student life to care for that friend and nurture our newfound worldview. I quit sociology for 1-2 hours every day and gave myself to other matters. It became about love and longing primarily. With the lock click of my apartment door or the first step from Patterson Office Tower, I slid deep down into melancholy and just felt the world. The despair was lovely.
I lost the walk for a while last year. I moved back home; I had real interpersonal intimacy to care for as I lived with friends and family, and I channeled my feelings to them. I regained a social understanding of myself, a picture that could not be disassociated from those I loved. I walked less. I wrote less. I lived more.
Alas, I grew apathetic in my job, with my talents of writing and engaging the world stale, and so I chose to go back to school. What a cruel contradiction that the struggle between labor and intimacy must always swing one way and rarely both. I either cannot have my family (read as those I love), or I cannot participate in the world beyond in a way that satisfies.
But this new place, with all the stress of 450 miles, finds me of a different quality than my first foray into graduate school. It took a day or two, but when the routine walk settled in, the familiar pain did not. The unmanageable pressures that I lambasted in some of these blog entries, for the most part, are forgotten. For once, the walks not only refocus my priorities to include non-academic aspects of living, but now reorganize my experience to a new purpose, a new state of being: one of comfort, one of content.
Let us recount the historical antecedents of this new found ease.
I can actually mark a single moment when this frame of mind came to be. You might have read the pretext in my blogs "Imposter" and "Choosey grad students...." where I broke down in a near anxiety attack over the expectations of this life I've selected. The practical Mike came in, selected an appropriate course of action (namely, what work I could and could not finish). I concluded a paper that was the primary source of tension (I posted that too), and the moment I e-mailed this blubbery academic monstrosity to print on campus, the adrenaline drained, my body warmed and I felt good. Rather than read another book like I knew I should, I went to lunch with my friend William. I didn't care. I breezed through that day and the next day and the next week and then this week. I stood at the wake of a broken thunderstorm; destruction abound but a sense of hope renewed. I have accepted what I must do here to survive or maybe my body just collapsed, but the world has remained warm and sleepy ever since.
This was a potent moment - so much so that I can mark it as the origin of my October mood - but I think there are more important things at work. I have made friends here. Though I am not always enigmatic (and often awkward) in my new social world, I am proactive and quick to make people consider me. I've gone out every weekend, often with different people. Perhaps more important, I have not fret as I might have at UK. I've not worried that my new friends would find me unpallatable. I'm easy and relaxed, even if they are not.
It might seem commonsensical to say that these new folks are more fond of me as a result. It's hard to say. People tend to like honesty, right? Unfortunately, I still find myself out of place, while all the time accepting my new clique. Par for the course for any group but my family back in Kentucky, social events are mired with drunkenness. I'll save an exploration of that topic for later, but it is hard to find one's place as a sober individual among drunks. I maintain that social handicap, both frustrating and proud, which prevents connecting with the intoxicated as they might connect with one another. More than this, I find myself in a pre-existing network, forging relationships with individuals while forcing myself onto the group culture....a disjointed intimacy at best.
And these two observations hearken back home for me. A place where I've built my own community in the last decade. We (and I speak of Mikey's House) constructed a group dynamic from the ground up. I feel I had no small part in this. When I touch new lives and that touch is sensuous and invigorating, I pursue a relationship. I make things happen. For every single person I love back home, we share a unique understanding of one another, apart from the group itself. It's marked by that first intense moment of communicative intercourse (one that makes a lack of the physical sort more tolerable).
I remember one night after disc golf on the square when all my normal friends went home and some guy named Gordon remained. We chatted casually, and spontaneously, almost as if we'd sought each other all our lives, four in the morning rolled around and we were friends. And not just new friends; we were close friends, almost best friends. I knew it immediately. We are quite different, Gordon and I, but the worlds in common created something sweet (sorry if this is too homosocial for you there, Gordo).
And with these separate partners, I enter into triads (particularly with a couple and myself), and I become a peice of their bond. Sage and Colin, Katie and Tony, Steven and Katie, etc. I know them apart of course, and I could describe for you how Sage and I connect over absurd conversation and how my relationship with Colin comes alive when we share pop culture, listening to music or playing video games. But I could also tell you how I know us together, as one unit, with such a complicated (and in some places, embarrassing) history: all the times I've slept on their couch or we sang Alkaline Trio in the car or I listened to one complain about the other. And beyond this level, I could describe for you how the dynamic shifts when Heidi comes along or when Nick and Ross show up. Then I could tell you about Christmas or Thanksgiving, where 20 someodd friends, all of which as individuals share with me something peculiar and configurations of each bring a new style to my life, but in total, we convey something entirely fresh and simultaneously familiar. For my part, the assumption of sobriety, along with a corresponding disinhibition and humor toward everday life, brings solidarity. Solidarity with a qualifier no less powerful than familial.
And if you know my family history, this is a reactionary and quite intentional redefinition of family (though not to say I don't love those who are actually related to me).
My walk is also important because it gives me time to call home, to connect back to my family, natural and redefined. And with new boldness, security with myself and the friendships I'm forming in Columbia, I assume that the new will always and forever pale in comparison to those deep histories. My comfort comes in knowing that no circumstance will ever match my Kentucky life. I am so fortunate in my friends, and in these phone conversations, I've come to remember the most important quality of Mikey's House, one that my egotistic interpretation often fails to consider: reciprocity. I don't just depend on them; they don't just keep me sane and fill my life with meaning....I do the same for them.
A phone call from Tony, which started on my walk and lingered till five in the morning reminds me that I am needed, not just needy. I hear that New York City fills the void with no more success than Columbia, Missouri.
A shorter call from Colin about an Old Navy pants sale does not articulate mutual need so clearly, but unlike Tony and I, Colin and I do not always speak out our admiration for one another. Yet his yearning for family is no less salient in that conversation than my four hour dialogue with Tony. And Colin only told me to buy some pants.
Christ, I miss Kentucky. But I have chosen a path. I walked away from my home, and many of them may not understand why because I will never have anything as good as what we are, but I carry them with me in the soles of my shoes. I've finally become cognizant of that fact, and so the difficulties of my life in Missouri, the burdens of professional development and making friends in less than ideal settings, becomes a source of contentment. I face the world with a certainty and courage that is ONLY possible because I have so many wonderful people missing me back home and in their own treks abroad.
It's funny how every moment becomes an existential crisis, where our immediate demands disguise the experiences that make enjoyable life even possible; that beyond the terrifying present is a pleasant history, is a walker's retreat in poor weather, and good people to spend the rest of my life with if I tire of the walk all together.
All these two-dimensional yellow breasted sparrows centered carefully in a cookie cut sidewalk block. Five whole birds, flat chirpless worlds. Oh Columbia, what boot is so bitter? What hunter so callous? So inhuman in their swift stomp? What angry, trickle-down, color-blind sonovabitch tenderized ten summer wings at the dusk of their Missouri home?
And now that trees spread their autumn morning ashes, a eulogy to dawn songs and figure eight fly-alongs, dreaded bohemians in their tie-dye and burkenstocks, vegan mountain bikers, blasphemers, spread you thinner into your paved graves. You feathered, trusting, pedestrian centerpieces, I look down and wonder whose soles are more worn.
Kudos to Poop City for making my neat little banner. She is an amazing freelance graphic designer. If you ever need work done...she'll probably be too self-conscious to do it, but at least you'll raise her self-esteem a bit. Thanks, Heidi. ;-)
I'm still not sure about posting my old blogs on this site. If I do, they'll be pre-dated, so they will appear prior to all the blogs that are currently posted. I'm not sure if there is a point in doing this, since it doesn't really reflect the "Missouri" experience of this blog....but then again, I guess the theme is also "Misery" because I like to inscribe the pain onto myself when I write. I don't know. Until then, if you read my blog and would like to read anything else I've written, my older bloggings can be found at www.myspace.com/sociomike Or, you could ask me for poetry, thesis writing, memoir stuff, whatever.
I'm going to try to keep the habit of writing at least 2 blogs a week regardless of how busy I am with school. They take me out of academic stress for a little while....and whether they locate me in other realms of my social life or put my schoolin' in broader perspective, they make me feel like I'm in touch with other people. Intimacy has been sorely lacking from my everyday routine.
Is anyone else looking forward to October? I don't know that Missouri could possible be as lovely as Kentucky in the tenth month, but I'm seeing the warmer rainbow of autumn foliage even here.
I pine.
For those of you who don't know, I've long had a love affair with October. I've forgotten desire, forgotten the feel of a love-sick encounter, and something about this upcoming season leaves my body in a constant ache for contact, bodily or momentary communicative touching.
and I'm tired of my political life right now. I want my artist back. I want to remember that I can feel in love because living for work is a crotchety drudgery. The love might not be real, but it could be...feel?
Haven't recouped that poet just yet.
I need new music for October; something to move my moods with the color of leaves. If you think I've sounded depressed in my last few blogs....well, I assure you I'm fine. I just need love. A good album can help me love.
Ah, 19th century economy. It's much more interesting than 21st century breakdowns. I've spent this week thinking about the past, so as not to face the present crisis.
For the sake of not letting these papers I write fall into my documents file -never to be seen again- I thought I would post this silly little theory paper I spent so much time working on this week. It's about four pages of bullshit, but I'm pretty sure that's what the Professor Lo is asking for. Now, I don't expect anyone to understand this stuff (or read it all for that matter). I post it to illustrate the ridiculous expectations of the course. Clarence is a great dude, but he specifically asks questions that will torture his students. This question, while straightforward, forced us to sift through several hundred pages in two different books about the history of economic development in the Western world.
First thing to note, he expects us to make an argument explicitly through citations in the text. I have an average of about five citations PER paragraph. Now, this might be normal for history students, but this is some bullshit for sociologists. Our sense of knowledge ownership and production doesn't work like this. Secondly, this is not in my area. Though I have read quite a bit of Marx and it's certainly relevant, the enitre framework is outside the scope of the work I do. This is the question:
"Is Marx's critique of political economy in his later writings, and his theories of ideology and consciousness in his early writings, consistent with Polanyi's account of the rise of market ideology and "natural law" around the early nineteenth century?"
In case, for whatever reason, you decide to read the whole thing and are unfamiliar, here's a few definitions. Political economy implies the relationship between political and economic institutions throughout history. Ideologies are basically cultural explanations for the material world (people, money, land, food, etc). "Natural Laws" are a set of early 19th century philosophical explanations for the economy; they argued that human beings by nature are economic beings, and the economy as a social system must be allowed to function on its own without "human" intervention for the greatest benefit of society. The two historians, Karl Marx and Karl Polanyi (pause here to say that economic historians named Karl are dicks), basically think natural laws are bullshit explanations that ignore the importance of community and that we need to protect ourselves from economic threats. For Marx, this whole issue is about conflict between social classes and the ability for the "haves" (bourgeousie) to exploit the labor of the "have nots" (proletariat). Polanyi writes 100 years later in what I assume is a functionalist tradition. He also thinks natural law is bullshit (by the way, this includes the shit idea of "trickle-down economics" which is STILL the Republican solution to poverty despite a mass of evidence to the contrary), but Polanyi generally dismisses class and argues that the State (politics) must balance out threats to our society with "interventionist" measures. Marx sees the state as another bourgeousie aparatus to control the workforce (politicians being part of the wealthy/capitalist class). These are both arguments against what we would call neo-conservative economics (which are the "liberal economics" of the past). I did think it was interesting how this is all still relevant.....
Why the fuck am I writing about this? It's over. I just wanted to post about how much it sucked. Damnit. I'll write something else later. Anyway, here's that stupid paper.
Contradictions and Complements: Marx and Polanyi
The development of a capitalist economy has been interpreted in fundamentally different ways by Karl Marx and Karl Polanyi.I have sought out similarities, but these two texts are wildly different in approach.By the end of this paper, I will attempt to illustrate the Marxian notions of consciousness and ideology in Polanyi’s work; however, I come to the general conclusion that while technically correct, Marx would identify the use of these concepts in Polanyi as incompatible with a materialist conception of history.
Marx and Polanyi trace the development of modern capitalism through many of the same historical stages.In these specific similarities, the differences are glaring.Marx (p.467, par. 4) notes the importance of enclosures in the development of the proletariat class, and Polanyi (p. 36, par. 1) speaks of this period in terms of social dislocation.Marx addresses enclosures as an act of “robbery” where communal land is stolen for private ownership (Marx, p. 472, par. 1).Polanyi interprets their development as necessary and tempered by state intervention (Polanyi, p. 39, par. 1).Both also make remarks on the Speenhamland poor-rate (Marx, p. 470, par. 1).Unlike Polanyi, Marx takes a favorable tone toward the poor rate, suggesting that the “nation was obliged to recognize pauperism officially (Marx, p. 470, par. 1).”
These two examples point to distinct differences in Marx and Polanyi’s approach to political economy.The clearest statement of the Marxian model is the opening line of Manifesto of the Communist Party, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles (Marx, p. 203, par. 1).”He argues that the material world, the means of production, in any given historical epoch shapes the development of culture, family, religion, and most importantly for this discussion, the state.In a capitalist society, the state is separated from communal interests and becomes the “form in which the individuals of the ruling class assert their common interests (Marx, p. 184, par. 2).”It is an “illusory” social form, which masks the material struggles of the proletariat (Marx, p. 177, par. 177).For Polanyi, on the other hand, “history of nineteenth-century civilization consisted largely in attempts to protect society against the ravages of such a mechanism (Polanyi, p. 42, par. 2).” The state, in essence, protects the social system against the inherent threats of a self-regulating market.
In line with his criticism of Hegel (p. 159, par. 2), Marx might cast Polanyi as a bourgeoisie apologist.His later writings on the economy argue that the state encompasses bourgeois interests, which are “the national power of capital over labor (Marx, p. 510, par. 1).”Though Polanyi supports the social system through state intervention, he is intentionally uncritical of “sectional interests.”He describes class as the “natural vehicle of social change (p. 159, par. 4),” but he argues for a “double movement” interpretation of history, focusing on the complementary nature of the state system and the economic system (Polanyi, p. 138, par. 3).Marx actually echoes the double movement concept with what he calls the natural (material) relations and the social relations of society (Marx, p. 173, par. 1). However, while both critique civil society as defined by Marx (p. 179, par 4; p. 180, par. 1), Marx does not see the political state as a measure of self-protection, but rather a ruling class tool for exploitation (p. 180, par 2) and an “illusory communal life (p. 176, par. 3).”
Polanyi combats this critique from Marx in several ways.He argues that the exploitation theory of Ricardian class struggle was unable to account for a general rise in wages (Polanyi, p. 42, par. 1).He suggests that many state measures, sanitation for example, had nothing at all to do with economic interests (Polanyi, p. 161, par. 1).He draws on Owen as the only contemporary of the industrial revolution to correctly argue that the working class largely benefitted from moves made by the state (Polanyi, p. 134, par. 2)
Marx directly critiques Owen, as well as other scholars of early capitalism, as a reactionary ideologue who did not work with a mature version of class warfare and the state (Marx, p. 237, par. 3).For Marx, the state apparatus must fully develop for the population to grasp the antagonisms (or contradictions) laden in the capitalist economy.This would give the proletariat the tools necessary to bring about a new stage of human history (Marx, p. 193, par. 2).
I point to these disparities in their economic histories to support the argument that while consciousness and ideology may be apparent in Polanyi’s work, they are actually incompatible and contradictory to Marx.Consciousness, for Marx, is the “production of ideas... Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-processes (Marx, p. 169, par. 2).”In his formulation, consciousness is the awareness of individual life, but he also argues that consciousness arises out of interaction with other humans (Marx, p. 175, par. 3). This is an important distinction from notions of “pure” consciousness because it suggests that ideological processes can become “phantoms” of the material world (Marx, p. 169, par. 3) and therefore “facilitate the arrangement of historical material (Marx, p. 170, par. 170).”These “phantoms” –what we more commonly know as false consciousness- work to prevent the working class from overcoming the contradictions imposed by capitalist economies and bourgeoisie control of the state (Marx, p. 175, par. 1-2).
Polanyi, too, is concerned with consciousness. He argues through Robert Owen that the “reform of human consciousness” is “reached through the recognition of the realities of society (Polanyi, p. 133, par. 2).” This is not unlike Marx; however, the nature of these realities is debated between the two.Polanyi and Marx are both critical of “natural law” economics.In chapter ten of The Great Transformation, Polanyi details natural law theories from Smith’s humanist foundations (p. 116, par. 2) to Townsend’s explicit animalistic naturalism (p. 119, par. 2), the law of wages (p. 128, par. 4), and others.In “Birth of the Liberal Creed,” Polanyi explains how these natural laws became full-fledged ideologies acting against protectionist politics (p. 148, par. 2; p. 150, par. 2).
For Polanyi, natural law and the liberal creed are an ideological mythos used to defend against “collectivist” measures (Polanyi, p. 151, par. 3).Marx would agree with this assessment.He argues that these natural laws provide “an opportunity for the underhand introduction of bourgeois situations as irreversible natural laws of society in the abstract (Marx, p. 379, par. 2).”However, this is as far as the similarities can take us.For Marx, these natural laws are ideological tools used to establish class supremacy.Polanyi, however, equates Marxist economics with the liberal creed as yet another sectionalist interest, which denies the spontaneous balance between economy and state (Polanyi, p. 158, par. 2).In fact, Polanyi accuses Marx of bringing naturalist assumptions into his economic theory through his association with Ricardian economics (Polanyi, p. 131, par. 2), which continued to assume some tenets of natural law (Polanyi, p. 132, par. 3).
I believe Marx would counter this argument by suggesting that Polanyi’s elevation of the state is in fact an ideological justification for the current mode of production because Polanyi glosses over the interests involved in the state mechanism itself (Marx, p. 184, par. 1).This becomes a circular argument of whom is the ideological obstruction for whom.The character of Polanyi’s use of consciousness and ideology is quite different from Marx.Through Marx’s materialist approach, he seeks to emancipate the species-being from the alienating nature of all pre-Communist societies (Marx, p. 140, par. 2).Polanyi, on the other hand, is concerned more with the threats imposed by a self-regulating market on the total social system, disregarding class interests (Polanyi, p. 138, par. 3).While the two draw on similar historical events and, in fact Polanyi’s use of consciousness and ideology may have origins in Marx, the distinct modes of historical analysis lead us to two contradictory conclusions.
