May 27, 2007
On Attitudes: What is to be done with Indifference?
(ongoing)
· What is indifference, and what does it mean to be indifferent?
· Who are the indifferent—or are we all infected with indifference?
· Is indifference a problem that needs to be solved?
· Are there occasions when indifference is appropriate?
· Can indifference be a strategy to effect change?
Yesterday evening at the Goethe Institute, Lisa Le Feuvre and Edgar Schmitz of the Serpentine Gallery held the final “Sweatshop” in their latest series of critical conversations, “On Attitudes.” The topic for discussion revolved around the question “What is to be done with Indifference?” Addressing an audience of around 70-80 people were three speakers:
- Sylvère Lotringer http://www.columbia.edu/cu/french/department/fac_bios/lotringer.htm
- Adrian Rifkin http://www.gai-savoir.net/
- Eric Alliez http://www.mdx.ac.uk/www/CRMEP/STAFF/EricAlliez.htm
The entire event took place between 7 and 9:15pm.
Lotringer spoke for the longest length of time (no less than 45 minutes), perhaps upstaging the others, as he seemed prepared to make more challenging and interesting statements about the topic at hand. Lotringer’s comments, and some of the concerns I have with what he said last night, constitute the basis for this piece of writing.
Before I proceed with commenting on Lotringer’s discussion, however, I’d like to explore the term at issue, “indifference.” What is indifference, and what does it mean to be indifferent?
There are obvious associations with the term, “indifference,” and some of these are more useful than others. As I was planning this piece of text, I accidentally started using the term “disillusionment,” as though I’d fused this terms together with “indifference,” or had even thought I’d spent an evening listening to speakers discuss “disillusionment.” At first I just brushed all the ideas I’d come up with aside, and then I soon realized that there might have been a reason why I conflated the two terms. Of course, I realize the terms are not the same, nor do they mean the same thing, but they are not entirely disconnected.
When I was on the “disillusionment” track of thinking, I started to think about its opposite, as I often find this a useful way of approaching a problem: what would it mean or look like for this not to be the case? If one were not “disillusioned,” would that mean that one was “illusioned” (which my spellchecker wants to change into “illumined”) – that is, steered by illusions, perhaps even “deluded”? If so, why is “disillusionment” seen as such a bad thing? Surely it would be better to be steered by reality rather than the chimerical. Alas, the “disillusion” I’m referring to may have less to do with “illusions” and more to do with “hope.” This was not cleared up, however, upon seeing two rather contrary synonyms (read usages) for “disillusion”: one, “to bring down to earth;” the other “to disenchant” or “to let down.” Though not the same, it is easy to see how one could draw some correlative relationship between disenchantment and disillusionment.
This kind of conflation is something Lisa Le Feuvre committed during her summing-up, and it seemed all the more vexing because her conflation wasn’t articulated as a problem, nor was her conflation made transparent as an intentional act. One can only guess that she wasn’t aware of the conflation. Instead, while attempting to organize what the speakers had said into some kind of coherent hole, Le Feuvre spent very little time saying about anything what had just been offered by the speakers; instead she launched into a description of “Bartleby, the Scrivener” – an overly abridged description with which David was most unpleased, he confessed later over a glass of wine at the Polish club. The reason for this, I accept, could have been because Eric Alliez French accent made it difficult to decipher what he was saying, and at the risk of completely omitting him from her summation, Le Feuvre opted to ignore all the speakers. My sense is that she intended to proceed as she indeed did, since her rendition of Bartleby was neither improvised nor unscripted, and she read something which sounded conspicuously like the Wikipedia entry for “Bartleby.”
Having not read Melville’s “Bartleby” myself, I didn’t take issue with this aspect of Le Feuvre’s presentation – her reduction of the story’s essential elements. Instead, I was bothered by the unannounced and unwarranted employment of one term in exchange for another, which, in my opinion, became quite problematic. Rather than staying with the term “indifference,” Le Feuvre exchanged it for the term “withdrawal,” implying through this linguistic sleight of hand that the two terms have the same meaning, which they do not. One may withdraw without being indifferent, and one can even be indifferent without withdrawing. In a sense, through passive resistance, Gandhi withdrew, but he was most certainly not indifferent. In fact, it was his very lack of indifference that led him to withdraw in a most particular and successful sort of way. Conversely, politicians participate in social decision-making processes all the time, some of which they know or care almost nothing about, and in such circumstances could be described as “indifferent” to those whom their policies affect. It should be noted that one can withdraw as a consequence of indifference, but substituting the term “withdrawal” for the term “indifference,” without any sort of explanation, is problematic.
With that out of the way, I can focus on my concerns related to Lotringer’s talk., which I have sectioned into three main categories: capitalism, chaos, and perversion.
CAPITALISM
After the evening was wrapped up at the Goethe Institute, a number of those in attendance proceeded next door to Ognisko for a post-Sweatshop drink at the Polish Club. Situated in an Exhibition Road building, the Polish Club houses an elegant lounge and restaurant – a refreshing departure from the usual pub atmosphere. After a couple glasses of French Sauvignon Blanc, we were the last of our group to leave, and as we approached the door, we crossed paths with Lotringer. Somewhat tipsy, I took the opportunity to tell him that I enjoyed his talk, but that I recognized several problems with it, and proceeded to outline what they were. One thing led to another, and as we got onto the topic of the Holocaust, as I do, Lotringer mentioned that he had a painful connection to that period of time. He didn’t elaborate, nor did I ask him to, but he mentioned it more than once. I momentarily forgot how to pronounce his name, and accidentally referred to him as “Lestranger,” which made him smile, and when I mentioned Camus I pronounced it correctly, and started saying how much I loved France, and then Sylvère mentioned that he is not actually French, but a Polish Jew by birth, who, after the Second World War, immigrated first to Israel and then to France. He said he didn’t realize Zionism was a political movement until he had already been a part of it for a few years, at which point he promptly moved from Israel to France. He seemed anything but apolitical this evening.
According to Lotringer, indifference is a byproduct of capitalism. The tacit argument, I would assume, goes something like this. In order to function and flourish, a capitalist system requires an urban or semi-urban environment in which to operate. Large numbers of communities converge to combine talents and labor for the creation of goods and services, thus forming urban centres. The mechanism feeds itself, for the more people that join the urban centre, the more people that are required for the operation of its internal mechanisms. The city-dweller is a working machine; overwrought with stimulus, and allocated less space than one’s rural counter part, smaller living quarters necessarily require a division of the family unit, making the extended family a thing of the past.
As family ties are loosened and sometimes severed through distance, work, and the reduction of spare time, the urban individual becomes more and more isolated. With the invention of new technologies, workers find and lose jobs more frequently, and consequently relocate to areas closer to work. Work is one of the primary places that people seek to be near when looking for a new home. People come and go, transience becomes the norm, and the concept of “neighborhood” has more to do with shops and architecture than people. The familiar face is unfamiliar in reality, and since capitalism engenders competition, there is little to be gained from befriending one’s co-workers.
In a capitalist society, it does not “pay” to care. Looking out for the “other” comes at a cost, either to one’s own safety or to one’s success. There is nothing in it for the concerned; it pays to be indifferent.
The problem with this analysis of capitalism is simple: if capitalism breeds indifference, what are some people not indifferent? What accounts for degrees, stages, or phases of indifference? If, as Lotringer describes, we are all indifferent, why do I feel non-indifferent about a number of issues? Am I deluding myself?
CHAOS
As a way to release or deflate indifference, Lotringer suggests that social chaos is a productive way towards disempowering it, that it’s a “healthy” way of dealing with indifference. This sounds uncomfortably like Bataille’s “general economy,” and I’m not sure I can recommend this as a solution. SAY MORE
PERVERSION
Way of mitigating indifference.
MORE TO COME…
May 25, 2008
Today was a holiday in the UK, but the weather was terrible. Over here they call it a “bank holiday.” Does that mean that money takes a holiday, or that only bankers do, or that bankers take a holiday with everyone else’s money?
The next long weekend isn’t until some time in August and it seems rather cruel to me to space these days apart in such an uneven way. Yes I realize holidays commemorate or represent certain events, but their placements can at times be as arbitrary as the placement of a statue — based on convenience more than anything else. One of the few days that is placed where it is in the calendar for a specific reason is Easter, and yet every year I hear about attempts to standardize that day — one more way to create “order” and assert “control” over the unpredictable, or at least something which takes some effort to calculate. I hear summer and winter might be changing days too….
I’m surprised that leap year still exists. Seems a bit unruly.
May 21, 2008
Similar opinions to yesterday, but perhaps more mellow. It was the moon, almost full, bright, lit up the sky on the drive home from Thame, a little village outside Oxford with not much going on, and I liked that.
May 20, 2008
Today I have no opinions.
I spent it all on my new word, “politis” — which seems to me a greater problem in the United Kingdom than anywhere else I’ve been. This is in part evident in the observed behavior of Brits in positions of power who get “upset” and seem unable to process or sublimate feelings of frustration without inflicting disempowerment on others. Or is this just a human problem. Either way, people know their place over here, I’ve noticed, and there is very little boat-rocking. The political totem pole is standing tall, and no one is attempting to chop it down. And no one will lend you their axe if they know that’s what you’re going to do with it.
Politis: Bureaucratic civility syndrome; heartless disease; extreme/overly polite behavior characteristic of those with political power that is unmatched by genuine concern for the individual. Observable in institutions and power structures such as governmental bodies, universities, and large corporations ultimately interested in “the bottom line.”
Signs & Symptoms: frustrated membership within an organization, particularly experienced by those on the “lower ranks”; cohesive, contained, usually loyal, yet unapproachable power structure or political body; slow administrative processes (usually part of the ubiquitous stall tactics employed by the power structure to assert greater control); fear within power body’s membership to make independent decisions; indifference, ennui, and apathy which increases as one approaches retirement; individual bullying within power structure, which may in turn be inflicted on individuals outside the sphere of power as a means of sublimating feelings of inferiority and powerlessness within the power sphere; exclusive meetings; non-transparent decision-making processes; tendency to refuse requests without sufficient or logical explanation; acephalous unaccountability. DENIAL of diseased state.
Treatment: Treatment for Politis varies from case to case. Recommendations include obedience, transgression, whistle-blowing, towing the party line, shit disturbing, requesting explanations, quitting, and temporarily removing oneself from the environment. It is inadvisable to display one’s emotions, as those infected with Politis tend to react adversely in such circumstances, and emotional displays have been known to aggravate this condition.
Cure: Although much research is being done, there is so far no known cure or treatment for Politis. Part of the problem with the on-going research is similar to that of the leper colony: those seeking to find a cure or alleviate the problem of Politis must come into close contact with the disease itself, as well as the diseased. This puts the originally well-intentioned at great risk of contracting Politis.
For more information, do not see your doctor.
