Xenu is Loose! Scientology the musical. // Bees make vase. One vase, one week, 40,000 bees. // Hawk versus deer. // Dub versus cornstarch. (H/T, Chastity Darling) // Norman Geras on God and being eaten by aliens. // Jeff Goldstein on “hate speech” and illiberal liberals. // Terrorism as a bourgeois vice. // Iranian and Egyptian cartoons. Humour not entirely obvious. // Man robs bank disguised as tree. (H/T, Ace.) // Via Coconut Jam, bubblegum cards. All of them, just about. // Type the sky. (H/T, Coudal.) // State-of-the-art eyelash curler offers “ultimate precision.” // Kitchen blender blends phones, toys, cans of cheese. (H/T, Dr Westerhaus.) // Stupid movie physics. Cars burst into flames for no apparent reason. // Larry Niven on the problems of human-kryptonian intercourse. Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex. // New polymer for armoured, flexible suits. (H/T, Warren Ellis.) // Robotic toilet provides “family environment” and discourages “homosexual activity.” // Balloons + lawn chair = beer at 13,000 feet. (H/T, Ace.) // Cute and moody mini-drama by Isaak Fernandez Rodriguez. But how does it end? // Holy conceptual nightmare, Batman! The Riddler sings. (H/T, EQ-ualiser)

In the comments to this, a reader, Vitruvius, posted an extract from Alan Charles Kors’ 2003 essay, Can There Be An ‘After Socialism’? I think it’s worth sharing, as it touches on a number of recent comments here, most notably with regard to oppositional posturing, redefinitions of prejudice and the ideological denial of reality.

“Until Socialism… is confronted with its lived reality, the greatest atrocities of all recorded human life, we will not live ‘after Socialism.’ It will not happen. The pathology of Western intellectuals has committed them to an adversarial relationship with the culture – free markets and individual rights – that has produced the greatest alleviation of suffering; the greatest liberation from want, ignorance and superstition; and the greatest increase of bounty and opportunity in the history of all human life…

The cognitive behaviour of Western intellectuals faced with the accomplishments of their own society on the one hand, and with the Socialist ideal, and then the Socialist reality, on the other, takes one’s breath away. In the midst of unparalleled social mobility in the West, they cry ‘caste’. In a society of munificent goods and services, they cry either ‘poverty’ or ‘consumerism’. In a society of ever richer, more varied, more productive, more self-defined, and more satisfying lives, they cry ‘alienation’. In a society that has liberated women, racial minorities, religious minorities, and gays and lesbians to an extent that no one could have dreamed possible just fifty years ago, they cry ‘oppression’… 

In the names of fantasy worlds and mystical perfections, they have closed themselves to the Western, liberal miracle of individual rights, individual responsibility, merit, and human satisfaction. Like Marx, they put words like ‘liberty’ in quotation marks when these refer to the West….”

The full essay can be read here. Related, this and this. Let the rumblings begin. And, of course, feel free to make a donation.

Time for something boisterous and groovy, methinks. Here’s Mohammed Rafi’s Jaan Pehechan-Ho, from the 1965 film Gumnaam and which subsequently featured in Terry Zwigoff’s rather lovely Ghost World.

It’s the masks that do it. It’s like a swing party for off-duty superheroes. Mp3 here.

Further to my post on the mental contortions of middle-class Communist Seumas Milne and his disregard for facts, here’s another example of wilful delusion, suitably debunked. Over at Harry’s Place, David T (no relation) launches a fine broadside against Guardian regular Madeleine Bunting and her fanciful grasp of history and Islamist ambition. The piece is a little too long to summarise, but well worth reading in full:

“It is pernicious nonsense for Madeleine Bunting to seek to understand clerical fascists like Qutb and Mawdudi as ‘anti-colonialists’, whose rhetoric was sometimes a bit fruity. Mawdudi, as we’ve seen, was an advocate of murderous sectarianism within Pakistan, and whose philosophy had more to do with persecuting religious minorities and rival nationalists, than with ‘anti-colonialism’.”

More here. Laugh at other Bunting wisdom here and here.

Further to yesterday’s post on Judith Butler and her opaque prose, I thought I’d add a few thoughts. One commenter, Dr Dawg, has argued that Butler is making a point, albeit badly:

I think this misses an important point. The issue, I think, hinges on whether you regard the opacity of Butler’s statement, and of many others I’ve highlighted, as a result of ineptitude or something more deliberate. Is it a mistake, a technical necessity, or a stylistic affectation and convenient camouflage? It seems to me that mere clumsiness doesn’t explain the prevalence and uniformity of those “mistakes” among leftwing PoMo academics. It seems much more likely that this habitual and remarkably uniform obscurantism is a determined effort – specifically, an attempt to hide the slightness of certain ideas and their various assumptions and contradictions.

The issue, as I see it, is one of bad faith. Hiding a small and tendentious idea, or no idea at all, inside Very Big Language is not a promising indicator of good character, honesty or wisdom. As I’ve argued elsewhere, one might suspect that the unintelligible nature of much postmodern ‘analysis’ is a convenient contrivance, if only because it’s difficult to determine exactly how wrong an unintelligible analysis is. In this respect, one might see the PoMo phenomenon as not so much a loose collection of often disreputable ideas, but more as a rhetorical tactic employed by narcissists, ideologues and academic shysters.

Thanks to a disaffected reader, Louis Proyect, I stumbled across the website of the philosopher and critic, Denis Dutton. If my recent pieces on Carolyn Guertin and Jacques Derrida were of interest, Dutton’s site is well worth exploring. There’s an amusing broadside aimed at Baudrillard and his admirers, and a shot at deconstruction. There’s also this piece on professional obscurantism and attempts to browbeat unsuspecting students: 

“The pretentiousness of the worst academic writing betrays it as a kind of intellectual kitsch, analogous to bad art that declares itself ‘profound’ or ‘moving’ not by displaying its own intrinsic value but by borrowing these values from elsewhere… These kitsch theorists mimic the effects of rigour and profundity without actually doing serious intellectual work. Their jargon-laden prose always suggests but never delivers genuine insight. Here is… Prof. Judith Butler*, from an article in the journal Diacritics:

‘The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.’

To ask what this means is to miss the point. This sentence beats readers into submission and instructs them that they are in the presence of a great and deep mind. Actual communication has nothing to do with it.”

As Dutton argues elsewhere, the objective here is to induce anxiety and play the rube – to exploit the trust of people who stare at such things, find nothing of significance, and assume the fault is theirs. I realise the idea that such a thing can happen, and happen frequently, is taboo. To recognise bad faith of this magnitude requires an unseemly kind of honesty. But, as we’ve seen, these things happen nonetheless. And they continue to happen precisely because the very idea is unthinkable.

*Judith Butler is Professor of Comparative Literature and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a “leading queer theorist” and has been described as “one of the superstars of 90s academia” and “probably one of the ten smartest people on the planet.” Related, this and this.

I know, I know. I said I’d be away until Monday. But I felt strangely drawn to the latest efforts of embittered Communist Seumas Milne. Still misinforming Guardian readers with undiminished zeal, Milne once again reheats his “root causes” schtick and denounces Ed Hussein and Hassan Butt as “NeoCon poster boys.” (I’m guessing he’s not too keen on Tawfik Hamid, Tanveer Ahmed or the dissident exile Tahir Aslam Gora either.) Apparently, we mustn’t listen to what jihadists and ex-jihadists tell us about their own motives, because – pah – what the hell could they know? In MilneWorld™, Tariq Ramadan is best described as a “liberal academic” and when middle-class Muslim zealots try to kill innocent people – and nightclubbing women in particular – this must be “retaliation” against imperialist “oppression”. And nothing whatsoever to do with nihilistic fantasies, sexual resentment and an urge to be a player in an Islamist psychodrama. 

With eerie seriousness, Milne argues that,

“If the bombers’ real focus was, say, sexually liberal Western lifestyles, they would presumably be attacking cities like Amsterdam and Stockholm.”

Setting aside the murder of Theo Van Gogh, the effective exile of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the numerous death threats against half a dozen Dutch authors, artists and politicians, I suppose we should simply ignore the arrest of nine would-be jihadists in Denmark in September 2006, and before that another four in Stockholm and Malmo in April 2004. And I guess we should overlook the planned terror attacks on a church in Uppsala, and disregard the Stockholm mosque selling cassettes calling for “holy war”. Perhaps Seumas Milne is somehow, conveniently, unaware of the rapid rise of fundamentalist Islam in Stockholm and the sustained campaigns of violence and intimidation against bus drivers, paramedics and firefighters in “Muslim only” areas of several Scandinavian cities. And presumably we should avert our eyes from the repeated targeting of London nightclubs, where “sexually liberal Western lifestyles” would no doubt be in full hedonistic effect.

Regular readers will, of course, remember just how credible and trustworthy Comrade Milne can be.

I’ll be taking a short break for the rest of the week. Meanwhile, those with a taste for the fleshy artwork of Dave Cooper should look over his Flickr photo sets, some of which document the gestation of his unwholesome yet fascinating handiwork.

Cooper’s books are available via Fantagraphics. But his toys are harder to come by. (H/T, Drawn!)

Back Monday 9th.

From yesterday’s Observer: 

“When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy… By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the ‘Blair’s bombs’ line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.”

More via Norm and Harry’s Place. Related: this and this.

Further to this, here’s a little more from Keith Windschuttle’s lecture, History, Truth and Tribalism:

“One reason I chose to cite this passage from Bhabha* was because… it contains terminology such as ‘synchronic’ and ‘diachronic’, which no self-respecting, theoretically correct postmodernist would use today. For these are terms that derive from the now out-of-date theory of structuralism, which has since been completely superseded by the theory of poststructuralism. One index of the achievements of academic theory today can be gauged by its waste matter; that is, the range of concepts and methods jettisoned along the way to its present position. The great majority of these concepts were adopted not because of their intellectual weight or clarity but because they were mouthed by whoever was the then prevailing theoretical guru…

No-one bothers any more with once solemnly-made distinctions within the field of semiotics between the ‘signifier’ and the ‘signified’ or between ‘denotation’ and ‘connotation’. Indeed, whatever happened to semiotics? All these concepts are now museum pieces. Yet in the 1980s, each was taught as gospel by the same people who are now recommending a postmodernist or a cultural studies approach as the definitive word on their subject. One can only feel terribly sorry for the generations of humanities students once forced to dutifully learn and regurgitate these now dead and useless concepts.”

*Homi Bhabha, former professor of English at the University of Chicago and a “leading voice in post-colonial studies.”