Altered Selves

This is my bag.

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Face to Face

How does genocidehappen when it violates the "otherness" of the face that is the other?

The face speaks. It speaks, it is in this that it renders possible and begins all discourse.... The first word of the face is the “Thou shalt not kill.” It is an order. There is a commandment in the appearance of the face, as if a master spoke to me.

Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, conversations with Philippe Nemo, translated by Richard A. Cohen, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985, pp. 86-87.  

Yet genocide does happen. This week, find an article about a past genocide that addresses the underlying cause of this historic event that goes against this basic human obligation. You review these two articles to get you started:

• Michel Chossudovsky (2003). Chapter 7: Economic Genocide in Rwanda. The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order. Retrieved from http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/East_Africa/Rwanda_EconGenocide_GPNWO.html
• Anthony F. Beavers. Introducing Levinas to Undergraduate Philosophers. Retrieved from http://faculty.evansville.edu/tb2/PDFs/UndergradPhil.pdf

"The Travels of the T-Shirt" as a simulacrum of a captialist free market

Here is the definition of simulacrum from an online dictionary:

sim·u·la·crum
ˌsimyəˈlākrəm,-ˈlak-/Submit
noun
1.
an image or representation of someone or something.
"a small-scale simulacrum of a skyscraper"

Although, Baudrillard in has so much to say about present day society that is of interest, I would like to focus for this discussion on the following quote about the nature of the free market:

And all that recrimination which replaced revolutionary thought today comes down to reproaching capital for not following the rules of the game. "Power is unjust, its justice is a class justice, capital exploits us, etc." - as if capital were linked by a contract to the society it rules. It is the left which holds out the mirror of equivalence, hoping that capital will fall for this phantasmagoria of the social contract and fulfull its obligation towards the whole of society (at the same time, no need for revolution: it is enough that capital accept the rational formula of exchange). 

Capital in fact has never been linked by a contract to the society it dominates. It is a sorcery of the social relation, it is a challenge to society and should be responded to as such. It is not a scandal to be denounced according to moral and economic rationality, but a challenge to take up according to symbolic law.  (Baudrillard Simulations and Simulacra)

Retrieved from http://kareneliot.de/downloads/JeanBaudrillard_Simulations_and_Simulacra.pdf

Then examine the various stages of the travels of the T-Shirt and how its travels perfectly represent this nature. Here is what the New York Times Business Section has to say about it:

The protests occurred on "a cold day in February 1999." Ms. Rivoli was watching as students gathered at the gothic centerpiece of Georgetown to demonstrate against the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and other putative villains of international trade. The crowd, Ms. Rivoli noticed with characteristic acuity, had "a moral certainty, a unity of purpose" that permitted it to distinguish black from white and good from evil "with perfect clarity." One woman seized the microphone and asked: "Who made your T-shirt? Was it a child in Vietnam? Or a young girl from India earning 18 cents per hour? ... Did you know that she lives 12 to a room? That she shares her bed and has only gruel to eat?"

Ms. Rivoli did not know these things, and she wondered how the woman at the microphone knew. But she decided to find out. In the rest of her narrative, the author tells the story of "her" T-shirt, which she purchased for $5.99 by the exit of a Walgreen's in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "It was white and printed with a flamboyantly colored parrot, with the word 'Florida' scripted beneath." A company in Miami had engraved the front, after buying the shirt from a factory in China. The Chinese manufacturer had purchased the cotton used to make the shirt from Texas. Eventually it will end up as part of a large but little-known market for used clothing destined for resale in East African ports.

Read more of this review at: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/21/business/yourmoney/21shelf.html

Can you find other examples of the free market at work with surprising results? Please find an article to support your findings. 

Will Robots Create or Eliminate Jobs?

Source: Anon. (Jan., 18th, 2014). "The future of jobs .The onrushing wave." <http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21594264-previous-technological-innovation-has-always-delivered-more-long-run-employment-not-less>.

There are arguments both ways. This week you need to find an article supporting one viewpoint and post your reaction on this blog. I am starting the discussion with an article that appeared in The Economist. It says:

A new wave of technological progress may dramatically accelerate this automation of brain-work. Evidence is mounting that rapid technological progress, which accounted for the long era of rapid productivity growth from the 19th century to the 1970s, is back. The sort of advances that allow people to put in their pocket a computer that is not only more powerful than any in the world 20 years ago, but also has far better software and far greater access to useful data, as well as to other people and machines, have implications for all sorts of work. 

Read the full article at:

Anon. (Jan., 18th, 2014). "The future of jobs .The onrushing wave." <http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21594264-previous-technological-innovation-has-always-delivered-more-long-run-employment-not-less>.

The Moral Implications of Income Inequality

According to Pope Francis in an interview with Bill Moyers, income inequality goes against the principles of Christianity. He said that the rich need to share their wealth:

“Just as the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills,”

“How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure but it is news when the stock market loses two points?”

http://billmoyers.com/2013/11/26/pope-francis-calls-unfettered-capitalism-tyranny/

Please post at least one example of income inequality in a country outside the US. You can start with this list of articles by the PEW Foundation, if you need some ideas or direction: http://www.pewglobal.org/topics/income-inequality/

The Nature of Distraction in a Democracy

Badiou’s Plato translation.  

Democratic man lives only for the pure present, transient desire is his only law Today he regales himself with a four course dinner and vintage wine, tomorrow he is all about Buddha, ascetic fasting, streams of crystal-clear water, and sustainable development. Monday he tries to get back in shape by pedalling for hours on a stationary bicycle; Tuesday he sleeps all day, then smokes and gorges again in the evening. Wednesday he declares that he is going to read some philosophy, but prefers doing nothing in the end. At Thursday’s dinner party he crackles with zeal for politics, fumes indignantly at the next person’s opinion, and heatedly denounces the society of consumption and spectacle. That evening he goes to see a Ridley Scott blockbuster about medieval warriors. Back home, he falls to sleep and dreams of liberating oppressed peoples by force of arms. Next morning he goes to work, feeling distinctly seedy, and tries without success to seduce the secretary from the office next door. He's been turning things over and has made up his mind to get into real estate and go for the big money But now the weekend has arrived, and this economic crisis isn't going away, so next week will be soon enough for all that. There you have a life, or lifestyle, or lifeworld, or whatever you want to call it: no order, no ideas, but nothing too disagreeable or distressing either. It is as free as it is unsignifying, and insignificance isn't too high a price to pay for freedom.

Comment on the nature and role of consumerism, distraction and the inability of citizens to focus on governance in democratic societies. Do you think this is a phenomenon in in democracies besides the US? Can you find examples?