scott on bakhtin
just some resonating quotes from reading-bakhtin emails – instigated and unless otherwise noted – written by scott thompson
mikhail bakhtin et al – rabelais and his world
notes/quotes:
[reading-bakhtin]
scott from nov 13 email:
The ‘spinning wheel’ of Bahktin’s philosophy of becoming, transformation, and unfinalizability
*‘Thanks to the duality of tone, the laughing people, who were not in the least concerned with the stabilization of the existing order and of the prevailing picture of the world (the official truth), could grasp the world of becoming as a whole. They could thus conceive the gay relativity of the limited class theories and the constant unfinished character of the world the constant combination of falsehood and truth, of darkness and light, of anger and gentleness, of life and death. The dual tone of the people’s speech is never torn away from this whole nor from the becoming; this is why the negative and the positive elements do not seek a separate, private, and static expression. The dual tone never wants to halt the spinning wheel, to find and outline the top and the bottom, the front and the back; on the contrary, it marks their continuous change and fusion.’ (RW432-33)
*the official truth – science scientifically vs ie: carhart-harris entropy law.. aziz let go law.. et al
**find the bravery to change your mind.. embracing uncertainty.. graeber can’t know law.. graeber unpredictability/surprise law.. et al
[note: rw 432-33 refers to rabelais and his world.. page numbers actual book numbers.. not pdf (457)]
notes from scott on reads/refs.. hope to parse out later: A lot of my reading of Taoism, including the idea of an indeterminate penumbral region, is based on Steve Countinho’s book ‘Zhuangzi and Early Chinese Philosophy: Vagueness, Transformation, and Paradox’ (2004), combined with other interpretations, such as ‘Beyond The Troubled Water of Shifei: From Disputation to Walking Two-Roads in The Zhuangzi (2019), and Chris Fraser’s essay ‘Finding a Way Together: Interpersonal Ethics in the Zhuangzi’ in the Springer Dao Companion to the Philosophy of the Zhuangzi (2022)
Mohists and Confucians relied on the use of *shi-fei distinctions that established a hard boundary between clearly defined opposites – this not that – with absolutely no room or margin for deviation, difference, interpretation, nuance, contrast, diversity, pluralism, which were all considered unclear, meaningless, and socially dangerous. Something is either affirmed or it is denied, either right or wrong, either true or false, either the same or different, self or other, **you are either one of us or you’re not, there is no middle ground or space in between, what is denied cannot also be affirmed, what is wrong cannot also be right, what is true cannot also be false, what is different cannot also be the same, what is other cannot also be one with us. Everybody had to know exactly what their allotted place was in relation to the unitary whole, and they were expected to cultivate and conduct themselves accordingly, not only outwardly, but inwardly, through the internalisation of externally imposed rituals and prescribed social roles – a process known as the rectification of names (zhengming) – and by following the model of moral exemplars (sages) and paradigms – ‘it is necessary to establish a model; giving commands without a model is like marking the hours of night and day on a turning potter’s wheel. The distinction between right and wrong, benefit and harm, cannot be attained and clearly understood.’ **Daoism, on the other hand, was extremely critical of this kind of externally imposed ritual propriety, which Laozi argued can easily become a coercive (if not outright totalitarian) tool for the suppression of the people, particularly when it is enforced by the violence of the state. Instead, Zhuangzi embraced the turning of the potter’s wheel as a way to relativise and equalise the assessment of things and different points of view. If the dao is a natural process or cycle of transformation, where ***everything is constantly changing and becoming other than what it is through a series of imperceptibly small alterations – as day becomes night, winter becomes spring, a sapling becomes a tree, we become other than who we were, life becomes death, and death becomes new life – ****there can be no hard boundary between things (at what point does a sapling become a tree?), *****only an indeterminate penumbral region where it’s not always possible to say whether something is this or that (it could be not quite this or not quite that, or both simultaneously, although of course at some point clearly the sapling does become a tree), and therefore there can be no absolute judgments, standards, norms, or criteria for resolving disputes, no fixed meanings, and no absolute congruence with heaven (tian) to justify an externally imposed ritual propriety (li).
*siddiqi border law ness of **us & them ness.. and so thurman interconnectedness law et al
**any form of m\a\p as coercion ness.. as structural violence
***the it is me
****again.. thurman interconnectedness law et al
*****indeterminate penumbral region between things – the ‘heavenly transitions’
As I understand it, the image of Nature the Potters Wheel (tianjun) is part of a two sided centrifugal process, along with the image of the Grindstone of Nature (tianni), that seeks to challenge and overcome the clearly defined boundaries of shi-fei distinctions by embracing the ubiquity of otherness and the indeterminacy of the penumbral region between things, with its uncertainty, ambivalence, paradox, and contradiction, by using parody, playfulness, and humour – what Zhuangzi calls ‘the Equalizing Jokebook’ – to affirm what they deny and deny what they affirm, and by combining or harmonising opposites – ‘Thus the sage uses various rights and wrongs to harmonise with others, and yet remains at rest in the middle of Nature the Potters Wheel. This is called Walking Two Roads’ (Z15) Whereas the Grindstone of Nature (tianni) wears or breaks things down, Nature the Potter’s Wheel (tianjun) takes that material and builds things back up into something new, just as a potter might reclaim the trimmings from the turning of a prior batch of pots, wet them down, incorporate them into a fresh body of clay, and then re-use them to throw a new batch of pots on the wheel. In other words, something that was considered a waste material, on the turning of the potters wheel, becomes the source material for making something new and useful – it is not simply this or that – just as what appear to be antagonistic points of view, on the turning potters wheel, move towards their opposing position and are blended together such that the boundaries between them become blurred and one point of view becomes inseparable from the other. It is the instability or motion of the revolving wheel that brings things down and makes them equal or build things up and gives them the metastable appearance of unity, fixity, stasis, and completeness, just as a potter depends on the centrifugal force of the wheel in order to centre a piece of clay and make a pot (movement precedes stasis). Like the centred piece of clay, the Taoist sage *‘remains at rest’ in the centre of the wheel while all the instability goes on around them, they use ‘various rights and wrongs’ (without identifying with any one of them) **in order to best respond to their changing set of circumstances and to negotiate a way – not simply their own way, but a way ‘with others’ – ***to move forward together harmoniously without any party feeling that they have had to abandon their own path. This is what is called ‘Walking Two Roads’, and it has been described as a form of interpersonal ethics, not all that dissimilar actually to ****the principle of consensus that David describes as a way of ‘managing a diversity, even incommensurability, which is seen as a value in itself’ (OP323), where there are ‘no strict rules’ (DP207), because ‘movements work best when they best adapt themselves to their particular situations’ (DP207), and *****‘everyone should be able to weigh in equally on a decision, and no one should be bound by a decision they detest’ (DP210). Where for David, in There Never Was A West (2007), ******democracy emerges from the spaces in between – what he calls ‘spaces of democratic improvisation’ (OP355) or an ‘intercultural space of experiment’ (OP353) – in the Zhuangzi the possibility of equality, freedom, growth, life, creativity, new learning, experimentation, agreement, pluralism, and differentiation seems to emerge from the indeterminate penumbral region between things – their ‘heavenly transitions’ (Z20) If the dao is constantly moving and everything is constantly changing, any agreement or solution can only ever be a temporary (metastable) lodging place like the ‘construction of a mountain hut with a different view every morning’ (Z61) Maybe not ‘every’ morning, because that sounds too much like hard work. Contrary to what some commentators have suggested, although the Zhuangzi is extremely critical of Confucianism, I don’t think it is opposed to ritual (li) per se, we can agree amongst ourselves to make certain distinctions and to repeat or reproduce certain patterns of action, values, norms, forms of knowledge, or ritual spectacles – seasonally, for example, as David argues in The Dawn of Everything (2021) – so long as we do forget that they’re not based on anything absolute, fixed, or permanent like the sovereignty of ‘the state’ (that’s how we get ‘stuck’) and remember that they are always subject to renegotiation, experimentation, and change? We can always make another pot on the wheel.
*to me.. need curiosity over decision making to get to legit ‘remains at rest’ ness.. need the unconditional part of left to own devices ness to see that dance dance (something we’ve not yet tried)..
ie: ‘in undisturbed ecosystem ..the avg individual.. left to its own devices.. behaves in ways that serve/stabilize the whole’ –dana meadows
we keep disturbing the ecosystem (the remains at rest ness in the seeming chaos ness) because we can’t seem to let go enough to see/try the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
**and one of the ‘disturbing’ (cancerous distractions) that we keeps us perpetuating the violence of that disturbance: any form of re ness.. (ie: ‘in order to best respond’); any form of m\a\p;..
legit freedom (remains at rest ness) will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
***brown belonging law.. maté trump law.. et al.. the dance
****graeber values law.. but to me ‘consensus’ ness of any form breaks/violates/violences that.. because public consensus always oppresses someone(s) with its finite set of choices..
*****again.. the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us
******any form of democratic admin.. still a cancerous distraction
Together the ‘negative and positive elements’ of grotesque realism, similar to the philosophy and ‘Equalizing Jokebook’ of the Zhuangzi, embrace ‘the unfinished character of the world’ (RW432-33) and the ambivalence or gay relativity of the spinning wheel – ‘the dual tone never wants to halt the spinning wheel, to find and outline the top and the bottom, the front and the back; on the contrary, it marks their continuous change and fusion’ (RW432-33) – and rather than ‘seek a separate, private, and static expression’ (RW432-33) they seek to harmonise or combine opposites – ‘the constant combination of falsehood and truth, of darkness and light, of anger and gentleness, of life and death.’ (RW432-33) L.E Pinsky, quoted by Bakhtin in a footnote, says the grotesque image ‘brings together that which is removed, combines elements which exclude each other, contradicts all current conceptions’ (RW32) ..As Bakhtin says ‘death is not a negation of life’, but an inseparable ‘part of life as a whole – it’s indispensable component, the condition of its constant renewal and rejuvenation . . . death is included in life, and together with birth determines its eternal movement.’ (RW50) It is only by embracing the spinning of the wheel and the indeterminate penumbral region between things – its ‘heavenly transitions’ – that we are able to *laugh at our fear of life and death, as well as ‘the stabilization of the existing order and of the prevailing picture of the world (the official truth)’ (RW432-33)
*thurman interconnectedness law: when you understand interconnectedness it makes you more afraid of hating than of dying – Robert Thurman (@BobThurman)
Bakhtin says the feast is ‘a primary form of human culture’ (RW9) that is ‘always related to time’ (RW9) and ‘the natural (cosmic) cycle’ (RW9) – ‘carnival was the true feast of time, the feast of becoming, change, and renewal’ (RW10) – does that mean rather than marking something ‘stable, unchanging, perennial’ (RW9) – this not that – it marks something more like what I’ve been calling the indeterminate penumbral region between things – the ‘heavenly transitions’ (Z20) – that can lead to ‘moments of death and revival, of change and renewal’ as well as ‘moments of crisis, of breaking points in the cycle of nature or in the life of society and man’ (RW9)?
to me.. need a sabbatical ish transition
________
scott from nov 16 email:
What the model of the empty vessel demonstrates for Taoism is the usefullness of emptiness (wu) or what Zhuangzi calls the *‘usefulness of uselessness’ – ‘Everyone knows how useful usefulness is, but no one seems to know how useful uselessness is” (Z32) – **which he turns into a practical philosophy for life, where what is considered useless or waste to one person can become the source of nourishment or value for another, enabling them to flourish or at least avoid harm and live out their natural years ..In other words, the tree has embraced the usefulness of uselessness and is knowingly pretending to play the ‘official’ role of a shrine in order to stay alive and avoid becoming a ‘commodity’ – in Paul Ambrosia and Hans Georg Moeller’s terms the useless tree is a ‘genuine pretender’ (2017) – Bakhtin knew something about the usefulness of uselessness, like many of the freaks, cripples, misfits, and madmen in the Zhuangzi, without the uselessness of his illness and disability he probably wouldn’t have avoided the forced labor camp when he was arrested in 1929 and survived to live out his natural years! He also knew something about genuine pretending, which is closely related to the important ‘theme of the mask’. (RW39)
*usefully ignorant.. usefully preoccupied (to me ignorant/preoccupied much like useless ness ish to other people.. so not tempted to perpetuate people telling other people what to do)
**rather.. to me.. it’s a means to keep out of the way (stop micromanaging et al) of the unconditional part of left to own devices ness.. it creates spaces of permission with nothing to prove
________
_______
______
_______
_______
_______
_______
be you. 