Techne Writing - Persuasive Craft

After her Asian upbringing of numbered aunts and uncles, Maybelle realizes that Real Canadian Superstore gets customers with a similar “naming approach” 😅
Turns out Superstore’s act of hailing customers to buy their products (“if you’re Canadian, shop here”) is an example of French philosopher Louis Althusser’s concept of “interpellation:” a process in which one attains subjecthood by being hailed at by institutions (or as Althusser calls it, “ideological state apparatuses”.

Junaid attempts to explain neoliberal (and also just liberal) rage 😾 against Noam Chomsky and Slavoj Žižek. Both philosophers criticize the Western world’s lack of concern for Gaza and the Palestinians, yet also come across as not strong enough on other issues (including LGBTQ2S+ rights, anti-semitism, the Ukraine war, Khmer Rouge atrocities).

The answer kind of comes down to ideology: Chomsky and Žižek are here to resist the ideology of state and capitalist systems, and therefore will be skeptical when neoliberals get excited about woke causes that seemingly support minorities and other underrepresented and underserved groups.

Sources:
Jacques Lacan, Écrits 1966, p. 827; Écrits, p. 324
Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent
Slavoj Žižek, Debate with Jordan Peterson

Normally a dude so tied to leaders in the US, Israel, the gulf states and other big time capitalists wouldn’t befriend Noam Chomsky — an intellectual critical of ideology & American foreign policy, and a leader in leftist thought. So why’d Epstein try to be buds with Chomsky?

It’s pretty common knowledge now that donors and interest groups determine the policy directions and actions of both Democrats and Republicans in the United States — but this Epstein stuff is revealing just how removed elected officials are from serving those who voted them in. It’s also showing us the paradox of Western democracies: political candidates are anxious anxious about their public image (popularity contest) but are also super down to be influenced by ppl who give them 💵 The perfect conditions for a manipulator like Epstein.

This one’s for Dr. Thomas Loebel at York University, with whom Maybelle studied literary & cultural theory many moons ago. 👨🏼‍🏫 Dr. Loebel was a real one who understood the price of knowledge. His first words in class were: “Welcome to graduate school. You are all masochists.” 💔And the question of why suffering is pleasure has haunted Maybelle ever since.

It’s common ground that grad school has always been suffering… but why do we still do it, beyond wanting respect, beyond delaying adulthood? 🧸Is white liberalism (woke culture), common in academia, really just about finding pleasure in our own renunciation? Why is living like a medieval monk–poor, isolated–its own enjoyment? And what does grad school say about the way we understand pleasure and institution today? 📚🏟️

Readings:
Slavoj Žižek, Debate with Jordan Peterson
Gilles Deleuze, Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty
G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit

Maybelle asks what Slavoj Žižek (anti-capitalist philosopher) ⚡️ might say about Andy’s cerulean sweater in Devil Wears Prada 👠 Comparing fashion to “stuff” (and in a sense, garbage) reveals how ideology and belief systems shape our lives. 🚮 It’s this mix of high critique with low culture that exposes the workings of ideology🪞

Andy thinks she’s resisting the system by wearing a lumpy blue sweater that isn’t high fashion (and that she seems to genuinely enjoy), but Miranda reveals how Andy still participates in the pile of “stuff” that she ascribes to fashion 🗑️ and so at the moment Andy thinks she’s above fashion, she’s actually inside it.

And is there a relationship between the detritus of fashion and the detritus of Coca Cola (Žižek’s beloved drink)? 🥤

Junaid compares two cities that are deeply rooted in the Western collective consciousness: London and Paris. In his search for cities that come across as chill 🌬️rather than workaholic 🏭 he was immediately impressed by Paris and the aesthetic beauty of their buildings + lack of skyscrapers. London did have more of a workaholism feel (you can kind of sense that this was the place the industrial revolution was born 😮‍💨), but at the same time, London offered a sense of community, especially in the neighbourhood of Whitechapel where he stayed.
CONTEXT: I’m a North American from Toronto visiting London and Paris for the first time. Also, prior to travelling, ppl told me that Paris was kind of a dump and Parisians were snooty lol. Only other European countries visited: Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.

Maybelle returns to our boy Slavoj Žižek⚡️– to reflect on how the political left and the political right construct their enemies 👻👻 For instance, because the right idealizes property rights and individualism, its enemy is the excluded or marginal figure who “enjoys” what the everyday individual should enjoy instead.

Meanwhile, the left constructs another enemy that’s an inversion of the former… the capitalist who enjoys all, at the expense of the universal. 💸 And his is an issue because the universal is a pretty major form in which we exist and are subjects. Does Animal Farm ring a bell? 🐷🔁

Readings: 
Slavoj  Žižek, The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology
G.W.F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Spirit (Jena Lectures 1805-6)