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Saturday, December 4, 2010

On Being Called Upon To Speak Mandarin

A white colleague asked me today for what she called a "totally non-gay favor." Intrigued and always eager to please (or at least eager to appear eager to please) I said sure, what is it?

She had, she said, during her casual carpool, met a man who was facing some problems at work, possibly because of his race or language. He had also, during the car ride, been speaking with another passenger in some kind of Chinese dialect. When she asked him whether he had been speaking in Mandarin or Cantonese (because she could not tell the difference), he told her he had been speaking both.

"You speak Mandarin, right?" she asked me.

I felt a kind of fear rising in me. Being asked whether I speak Mandarin or another Chinese dialect is a fraught question and to me always carries overtones (intended or not, conscious or not) of "you're actually Chinese, aren't you?" Not only that, but even after being told by the man that he had spoken in both Cantonese and Mandarin, my colleague continued to assert that she did not know what dialect he was speaking. BOTH! I wanted to shout. JUST LIKE HE TOLD YOU! Instead I said "sometimes my parents speak in a mixture of dialects, or switch between them. Cantonese and Hokkien." I also felt that I should say that I didn't really speak Cantonese. Just to manage expectations, you know.

She said it seemed to her that he was not that comfortable speaking with her in English and would I speak with him in Chinese and give him contact information for some organizations she had found that might help him (two API legal organizations in California).

Umm sure I said.

Did I want to make the call together at my desk or at her desk?

In fact my first feeling was that I didn't want to make the call together at all. I hate being watched as I speak Mandarin, whether by a speaker of Mandarin or not. I feel like my very identity as a Chinese person is under examination. Maybe, I wanted to say, you could just give me his number and I could call him in my own time, by myself. I didn't say that, though. Instead I said let's make the call in my office.

Before that, though, we had a series of meetings to attend. I was distracted throughout, rehearsing in my head my Mandarin vocabulary, unable to completely focus on the subject of the meetings. What would I say? How would I say it? How would I not appear completely "Americanized" (which is to say white, which is to say unable to fluently speak Mandarin) in front of this stranger and my colleague? In short - how would I preserve and defend my image and identity as an ethnically Chinese immigrant from an Asian country?

We prepared for the call, sitting together in my office. I suggested that it would probably be best if my colleague spoke first so he wouldn't have the experience of a complete stranger calling him seemingly out of the blue. Also I wanted to have a little time to read his accent and determine the various things one sometimes "read" in an accent - native dialect, class, fluency with English.

As I listened to the ringtone, my senses keened. Everything in the room came into sharp focus. Sounds were crisper and clearer, and time itself seemed to slow down. I was acutely aware of my colleague's expression, the information on my computer screen, the papers on my desk, the feel of my new t-shirt on my chest.

He picked up, and my colleague introduced herself as the person whom he had met in casual carpool. Then I introduced myself as Ming and said I was her colleague. What's your surname, he asked. Wong, I said (or Huang, since we were speaking Mandarin). I quickly transitioned into giving him the information my colleague had prepared, unable to really make small talk, and again, aware the whole time of my colleague watching and listening to me. I started out with a disused bicycle feeling. Wobbly, uncertain. It got a little better as his reactions to my speech seemed to be comprehension and some amount of attentiveness. When he told me a bit more about his situation, I was surprised by how much I understood. Will there be people at these organizations who speak Chinese, he asked. I told him I was pretty sure there would be. He ended the call by thanking us in Mandarin and English (overly profusely, I thought, but maybe that's an immigrant trait coming out. I'm actually sure I do the much same thing - being unreasonably grateful for the smallest and most incompetently rendered of favors).

After the call, my colleague said she had learned the words for "zero" and "five" (digits that were repeated in the phone numbers I gave him), and that she guessed the word for "Yes" was "dui." I explained that I didn't think there was a direct gloss for "yes" in Mandarin, and that there were at least three distinct words, "dui," "shi" and "hao" that conveyed different aspects of what the word "yes" conveyed in English. I then summarized what I had talked about with the man. We went back to our day. I was flushed, relieved. I felt I had passed. Passed as Chinese enough. At least for the day.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Little Death

The French rendering of the orgasm as 'les petite mort,' or the 'little death.'

Within a discourse of heterosexual reproduction as the normative vision of Life's pursuit of immortality... "I" begets "I" in genetic replication, through heterosexual union, pregnancy, enjoining of seed and egg, sperm and ovum, strands of DNA mixing only superficially from two parents... more expansively, each zygote inherits the entire history of its genetic ancestry from infinite number of parents of parents of parents stringing all the way back, all of which involved the jizz of so many little male ejaculatory deaths.

Perhaps then, this reproductive, orgasmic rendering of sexuality is both heteronormative and somewhat counterintuitive to true immortality or longevity. Each satiation post-orgasm is not truly satisfactory. Some of us become more needy for affection, some of us simply roll over and snore. The affliction here is the sudden death of motivation; Here the pleasure principle meets the death drive and the cycle becomes addictive. Addiction to pleasure, or addiction to a subtle masochism of many little deaths with a myriad of partners (or images), while each way along the way, immortality (or the permanence of the reified Self) remains elusive......


Immortality

I believe that this primordial drive for immortality (in part symbolised by the fetishism of fertility in Goddess cults, or in fundamentalist obsessions with the heteronormative centrality of reproduction in the sexual encounter) is made possible only because we intuit the plausibility of immortality in our experience of living.

Who has not experienced the tantalising, timeless eternity of erotic tension, the 'enlivening' (and hence, 'longevitising') rush of passion, inspiration and poetry from the lavish promise of union? Most of us too, have tasted the joys of youth, with its lush fields of seemingly limitless libidinal drive and infinite possibility, the 'forever'-ness of many days and nights, pregnant with potential...

It is for these and many more reasons that immortality is conceptually possible. Even if it is only ever lived vicariously through our children, our children's children, or the memory of our own youth... These are reminders of the 'forever-ness' of one's self through Legacy and Melancholy...


Libidinal Alchemy

But what if... There was the possibility to experiment with a different vision of immortality...? One that is neither contingent on romanticising the past (with more libidinal drive) nor clinging to hope for better futures (where we may nurture our progeny as products of our drive)? Instead, what if there was the opportunity to simply work, alchemically, with the drive itself?

Instead of assuming that the only logical outcome of the libido is its culmination in a little death, I want instead to experiment with Daoist theories of circulation, recharge, share and exchange... Rather than the end goal of orgasm as an outcome of the libidinal drive, I instead relish the beauty of my partner(s) indefinitely, without goal, simply to cherish the pleasure of their Being without grasping onto the simulacral reality of pornographic "fucking" and "seeding"... A greater goal awaits... A Mission, a Purpose;- One to Beauty itself, one to Divinity it/her/him/themself(ves), made manifest in the world through so many beautiful people, the interplay of order and chaos...

I do not intend for Catholic repression of sex, but I do not wish either for the false liberation of sexual excess... I intend for a Buddhist middle, a post-modernist, post-colonial, Madhyamikan transmogrification of libido into more careful consumption, where one focuses on subtlety of taste, the company of friends, and the fresh virtue of cuisine, rather than the utilitarian, capitalist obsession with nutritional content, speed, novelty, and planned obsolescence.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Faeries, Bears, and Leathermen



I am currently reading a book that my friend J lent me, called "Faeries, Bears, and Leathermen: Men in Community Queering the Masculine" by Peter Hennen.

The basic idea is that three uniquely gay/queer male cultures, in particular the Radical Faeries, the Bears, and the Leathermen cultures, have partially been constructed as responses to, reactions against, and/or repudiations of the ways that gay male sexuality has historically been linked with effeminacy.

These three groups engage the 'problem' of stereotypic gay male effeminacy in three different ways. For the Radical Faeries, it has been through a deep embrace of the feminine through adorning dresses, communal-Goddess worship, female-kitsch (e.g. the sacralisation of Barbie dolls), etc. For the Bears, it has been the embrace of a 'regular joe' type of masculinity, with the fetishisation of larger, hairier, beer-drinking bodies, and with the Leathermen, it has been through the re-appropriation of costumes and sometimes sado-masochistic impulses historically associated with violent masculinity.

Hennen is careful to avoid pathologising any one of these response-styles, and is quite clearly grateful for having been given the opportunity to participate in the various social spaces and rituals of belonging that each community has constructed for its members. At the same time, Hennen hints at a deeply troubling dialectic that underlies the ways that these gay male communities and identities have been constructed. In particular, with regard to the fact that they, at least in his North American experience, these three groups tend to be disproportionately White, and are concurrent with many other male-centric movements that organise around the 'reclamation' or glamourisation of masculinity without either questioning the fear of the feminine or any other unconscious roots of their undying loyalty.

I am personally troubled by hegemonic masculinism in gay culture(s). I am nervous about the way that gay male culture in general has conflated manhood with the repudiation of the feminine, and indeed, with the repudiation of even our own association with 'gay,' as it has historically been linked with effeminacy. Thus the ubiquity of "str8-acting" as a self-descriptor or as an identity deeply invested with gay male desire.

Secondarily, I am also interested in the way that whiteness is also hegemonic in these communities in the USA which, unlike masculinity, Hennen has largely not interrogated. White masculinity seems far less rooted in ironic play or reclamation.

Questions/Crises of masculinity have occupied me for awhile. In a Euro-centric hierarchy of masculinity, the Grecian male model has been somewhere at the top, whereas, in my experience, the hairless Asian body has been feminised and placed somewhere at the bottom.

I long for spaces I might comfortably exist in. Spaces which do justice to my gendered/racialised identity and body, and in which I can explore a self-communal expression with others in a shared, sacralised experience of sexuality. Spaces which allow for and embrace my capacity & need for critical awareness...

A monastery for colonised whores?

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Buddho-Erotik

an old post...

1
Dancing as religious ritual, the slow uprooting of anxieties (self-consciousness, other-consciousness) into endorphin blissful rush of collapsing dualisms. Drug-free Ecstasis! Body as its own narcotic, all capacity for empowerment and godhead rushing forth from within, neither monotheistic nor pantheistic, neither solely under the jurisdiction of aboriginal cosmologies nor postmodern psychonautic fetishisms of altered states of consciousness. Dance as the primordial movement, the Soul (if indeed, it is YOUR convenient metaphor) as shaken And stirred. Drink That!

2
Or else the surprise a man has, after 20 years of marriage, in finding out his wife has professional, emotional, spiritual, and yes perhaps even Sexual desires beyond his capacity to fulfill. The tragic misnomer of (civil)Marriage mistakenly Romanticised without thought to its materialist history (woman as property of man, man as 'breadwinner,' utilitarian legalisms with little care for the romance behind courtship). Forget MARRIAGE, we need a generation of Lovers!

3
The phenomenon of wanting to know more about a porn star: When objectification (primarily root-chakra sexual orientation) isn't enough. When personality needs to be thrown in the mix. When love must become involved. Or worship. Porn stars as our contemporary Gods and Goddesses, sex celebrities, all springing forth from the same imaginations that created Zeus, Inanna, Kali.
Ejaculation as the Anti-climax, if indeed there was no Play prior, nor love between lovers. Surely we are not only bodies, as we are not only minds, nor even only souls. Dissolve dissolve, and we no more need porn stars as we might need a caffeine fix (some addiction necessary to fuel some other addiction, to Manhood? Productivity? Or even our attachments to secret shame!); Forget it! We might imagine a new myth!

4
Music as love making, the melding of players that transcends Sexual orientation. Instead, music taps into the latent masculinities/femininities hidden under sexed bodies, transmutes the urge to orgasm into lovemaking. Plays on aggression and submission, sound and silence, assertions and refrains, repetitions and innovations... Hence: The Bliss of making music as PROCESS, rather than performative product. Nothing wrong with theatre, clearly, for indeed that is a catharsis in its own right. But within the privacy of a relationship, there is generative power in music as interpersonal communication, rather than preparation for Objective display. "Let's jam!" I say, from the Me that is Lovemaker-Sage... I let the Bard speak his truth at some other convenient time.

5
"The Matrix" as theology. Neo as Bodhisattva figure, realizing the futility of samsaric existence within The Matrix of the mundane. Morpheus as Buddha-figure (the first to discover the truth of samsaric-Matrix), transmitting his teaching to those who may be prepared to forgo this illusory world for the higher consciousness, breaking free from the bonds of cyclic existence. BUT THIS IS NOT BLISS! Neo is not Happier with Truth, simply Ennoblised by this. But is this ENOUGH? Like the dude who WANTS to return, to taste the steak, to feed on illusion; We too are addicted, we forgo truth everytime, no matter what our intuitions may tell us, simply because it is TOO DAMN HARD. What support might we look for? How may we Re-program, so we too might dodge bullets with ease?

6
Language is the original colonizer, with its grammatical pressures, its dogmatic vocabularies, its limits within the technologies of throat or papyrus. We must learn to speak if we are to interact, but then we forever lose our touch with the solitude of silence. But even here I have been thoroughly colonized, for that I have even a CONCEPTION of silence is conditioned by my capacity for Language. There is no PRE, no prior, no before language. And any mystic would dare tell us that there is no During, nor After, even. Language itself cannot be spoken of (nor kept silent on) without continued inculcations into further illusion. So forget the goal, and just play with poetry!

7
Where does loneliness reside in the body? Is it in the heart? Or perhaps in clammy extremeties, hands wrung in nervous tics, The Longing to Grasp, without the wisdom to learn the freedom of the Ungrasp (for there is nothing beautiful to be Held without our fathoming equally the beauty of Letting Go). The foolishness in us that wants a Love Permanent is the same foolishness in us that takes all we already have for granted!
Unconditional Love? There is no-thing unconditioned, no-thing without cause. I cannot HAVE unconditional love for another; I can only invest, indefinitely, in creating the causes and conditions from and in which love might more easily arise, 'effortlessly'! I must not, however, mistake those rare, precious moments of spontaneity as springing from some romantic Unconditioned!

8
In a prior life, I was a Diamond. But a single carbon atom wanted individuation, wanted to break free from the boring familiar, wanting to procreate instead with exotic elements, wanting to form new molecular civilizations, wanting new bondage (double-bondage? triple?).

9
Why make love? Love can make itself! My only job is to breathe as much as I can, consciously, until finally I expire.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

First as Tragedy, Then as Farce




The Solution indicates the Problem

I love this video.

In it, Zizek suggests that the systems we have created around charity are contingent not only on 'working with' the existing capitalist economic superstructure which sustains inequities in the first place, but indeed, in a significant way, may well strengthen or support this very system!

I am reminded of this event:
I occasionally sit Zazen and do walking meditations at the Zen Open Circle, a Zen meditation/discussion group based in Camperdown on Friday nights.

One evening, the teacher Susan spoke about the non-duality of Good and Evil (something I believe Zizek is hinting at), and the importance of non-attachment to either extreme in this respect. Any idea of the Good is intimately dependent on an idea of the Evil, and the two are thus inseparable.

One of the group members then raised the question or paedophilia. About how there is no way, absolutely no way whatsoever, to think of a "paedophile" as someone with any redeeming qualities. Immediately, the group was triggered into this chaotic groupthink of uncritical agreement.

"Paedophiles are disgusting."

"Sick."

and so on.

Now, I have no love for paedophilia as such, but I feel far less hateful toward the "paedophile." In Buddhist terms, all phenomena are empty of their own inherent existence, and require the right causes and conditions before they can even arise. Concerning paedophilia, and this is a line of thought first brought to my attention by manoverbored, I started to wonder about the causes and conditions which sustain paedophilia, and the ways that we are complicit in maintaining these causes and conditions.

For example, here in the industrialised, Anglo-phonic "first world" (Australia, USA, as examples where the authors now live), if any of us WEARS SHOES, then the chances are very high that these shoes were made possible through the exploitation of child labour. The factories and, of course, the wider global economic structure that gives rise to these factories (for example through the outsourcing of labour from American shoe companies), have incredibly fucked up and problematic conditions which exploit the bodies of children.

Is this NOT paedophilia? If I wear shoes, does this not make me complicit in the tragedy of the exploitation of children's bodies for the purposes of my own (adult) consumption?

So what is Zizek's proposed solution?



Non-duality of Solution and Problem

From a Zen perspective, a first step is to break out of the victim-perpetrator dualism... Of course victimisation happens, and there are people who perpetrate victimising attitudes and behaviours that impact all of us very negatively.
At the same time, it is important to do the hard, spiritual labour of dancing between identification and dis-identification with the solution and problem, victim and perpetrator. There are no ultimate victims as such, nor ultimate perpetrators.

Thich Nhat Hanh clarifies this point in his poem "Call Me By My True Names"...


Call Me By My True Names
by Thich Nhat Hanh

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to
Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea
pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my
people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Suicide and alienation

The pattern of young queer suicides continues in the news, a deadly erratic drumbeat, summoning... what?

It seems to me these suicides are an extreme form of the escapism and self harm that homophobia and transphobia drive us to. It seems to me these suicides are an inevitable result of the alienating machinery of patriarchal capitalism and colonialism, a social human sacrifice, that our culture believes is acceptable and necessary to keep the gears of production and reproduction moving. It is the same hand that ties nooses around our children's necks, that pushes them out of airplanes into war, that chains them to factory floors performing endless muscle tearing tasks, that hands them their first and, much later, their last cigarette, that pumps them full of desire and disease, that slams them against walls and humiliates them for something they've said or thought, that closes the door on them in forgotten cells in forgotten islands for long forgotten reasons.

Unlike the acceptable escapisms of consumerism, alcohol, narcotics, overwork, and beating your children, suicide is a clarion crisis call. Its fatality is its fatal flaw. If one could survive suicide, it would be just, as the expression goes, another cry for help. And what, we wonder, stops children from literally crying for help, and what, we should ask, stops us from hearing those cries?

No form of escape is as illusory as suicide, though they are all illusory. Suicide also holds out another promise - that of real change, which is not an illusion, but is nevertheless tragic in its implication.

Those who commit suicide successfully will never see the better world they could catalyze. The classic fantasy, to be present at one's own funeral post-suicide, neatly captures this paradoxical but human desire. To make them sorry, to wake people up from the inhuman devaluing of young life that doesn't quite fit into the the machine, this is another desire imperfectly expressed through suicide. To be a martyr means never making it to the promised land. For the suicides to stop, we must need no more martyrs, and we must instead seek only miracles.

What kinds of miracles are needed? Compassion is one, and hope is another. Compassion for the suffering of the bullied and the bullying, who, regardless of age, are as much victims as those they target. Hope for each other that refuses to die, despite our seemingly individual failures, and despite the overwhelming omnipresence of the machine. Because of course, that machine is us, and, as, one by one, erratically, we withdraw our consent, its cruel grinding will stop, and there will be no more young bodies, there will be no need for the blunt instrument of the ultimate "no."

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Coffee at Night

A naughty pleasure:
Coffee at Night...

Coffee in the morning has the quality of a 'maintenance' drug... One drinks it in order to be productive: I wake up, drink coffee, go to work, behave as an upright citizen would...

But coffee at night? Ah...
that is for ruminating, scheming,
poetry...
Coffee at night is for old friends,
acquaintances,
new lovers.
Coffee at night is for imagination,
music and mayhem...

Coffee at night is a guilty pleasure,
but how quickly my guilt fades as inspiration spills clear thoughts
onto a canvas made of darkened skies.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

respect

my mind draws a blank.

no need to judge. no need to rush thoughts. no need to force inspiration. still... there is the fear... the wish to impress. my spiritual colleagues. my brother. my friends. the fraternity inside my mind whose approval i seek.

in my mind is a posse of intellectual gangsters who watch from Foucaultian panopticons that are buried deep in bubbling, murky waters of my eternal subconscious. they discipline and punish me with royal pronouncements threatening Action, if i do not participate in self-imposed, self-flagellatory hazing rituals of ever-smart delivery...

who are these bullies? they are my internalised patriarch, voice of my 1st generation university educated father: hard-hearted, strict, punishing. they are my scientist-mother: exacting, skeptical. they are my university peers, the queers who battled politics while drunk on booze and skunk. they are the san francisco hipsters who always had more tattoos than me. they are the suburban white kids who blitz bmezine.com with a litany of lazy canadian cool... they are my older brother whose grades were always higher, more gifted, whose smarts set the benchmark for years of my own savvy teenage angst.

these are the bullies that elicit both my awe and my envy...
and in turn, i move beyond their panoptic gaze when i transmute this emotional fizz into respect. respect. respect.

to cultivate respect from awe
and respect from envy.
to rejoice in my own gifts
and not succumb to defeatedness... this is the goal of this erotic psychonaut. whose project is to see that my talent and my need for improvement are not two, not two. to see that these bullies and my own subjectivity are not two, not two.

that poetic transformation of raw drivel into Truth comes from the drive of this warrior, this witch, this wuss. these are not three, not three... they are but a few facets of me.

come in and see!

Friday, September 17, 2010

Pomo Kopi



This is a simple nasi lemak, with the nasi (rice), sambal (chili paste), ikan bilis (fried small fish), and a small slice of thin omelette. The otak otak (fish cake) was extra. This particular nasi lemak was served on a banana leaf, and purchased from Kopi O, one of a number of new second (or third) wave Kopitiams.

Kopitiams (literally "coffee shop" in Malaysian/Singaporean Hokkien) are small self-seating eateries that serve a traditionally very limited menu (coffee, tea and Milo with various combinations of condensed milk or sugar, kaya toast, soft boiled eggs, and some cooked food items like nasi lemak).

The first wave of kopitiams were independently owned, non-airconditioned shopfronts that were ubiquitous in the commercial streets of the Singaporean "heartlands" (any place outside the Central Business District or CBD). Generally, the kopitiam was frequented by locals, and developed a reputation based on the quality of its coffee, and its kaya toast (it really takes a tour of kopitiams to realize how many variables must go into making a good version of the "simple" dish of kaya toast, which is basically kaya - a pandan flavored egg curd - with a pat of butter between two slices of toast).

This current wave (more on whether it's third or second wave later) of kopitiams are often set up by owners of particularly successful versions of the original kopitiams, retaining the names, limited menu, and, usually, the kaya recipe and probably coffee roasting technique, of the first instantiation, as well as the generally low prices (around $1 for kopi, and $1.50 for kaya toast) but in chain form. These new kopitiams have appeared in air-conditioned malls all over Singapore, and are fast approaching (and perhaps in Singapore have surpassed) the blanket coverage of foreign coffee chains like Starbucks. In addition to changed locations, generally the furniture is different (wooden or metal chairs instead of plastic) and the menu is printed up on pearlescent paper or a wooden board rather than on A4 laminated paper or a backlit plastic board.

The new wave of kopitiams offer a slice of "heartland" life for nostalgic second- and third- generation Singaporeans and PRs (children who were born well after Singaporean independence), and their indulgent parents, who might well be just as comfortable in the non air-conditioned versions with plastic chairs, but are happy to tag along to the cooler - literally and metaphorically - mall, and have a familiar kopi while their kids ask them questions about what's so special about Malaysian/Singaporean coffee that gives it that unique taste (turns out they roast the beans with sugar and wheat or corn).

As for whether these are second or third wave, it's arguable that the foreign cafes (e.g., Starbucks, Coffee Bean) were a "second wave" of coffee shops, though there is only a vague resemblance to the menu of the traditional kopitiam (espresso instead of coffee, no local hot foods, an abundance of pastries), and the prices would scandalize ($5 for a latte? $3 for a biscotti?!) first generationers.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Ecology as ideology

It's really the implicit premise of ecology that the existing world is the best possible world, in the sense of it's a balanced world that is disturbed through human hubris. So why do I find this problematic? Because I think that this notion of nature - nature as a harmonious, organic, balanced, reproducing almost living organism which is then disturbed, perturbed, derailed through human hubris, technological exploitation and so on is, I think, a secular version of the religious story of the Fall. And the answer should be not that there is no Fall, that we are part of nature, but on the contrary, that there is no nature. Nature is not a balanced totality which then we humans disturb. Nature is a big series of unimaginable catastrophes.
- Slavoj Zizek in The Examined Life, dir. Astra Taylor

It is difficult to hear this bit of thinking from Zizek and not immediately jump to its refutation (this is not true because...) or a Plan For Action (if this is true, we should do...). However, I think it may be worth taking time to unpack "nature is a big series of unimaginable catastrophes," especially the "unimaginable" and "catastrophes" part.

Unimaginable

Zizek elsewhere has noted that there are two kinds of events that we are incapable of imagining. He borrows some terminology either from Freud or Rumsfeld. I shall inject a third frame/metaphor, that of sight and distance, just because.

There are "unknown unknowns" (Rumsfeld) or "trauma" (Freud) - as I understand it, things that we cannot possibly imagine because they are too far outside our field of vision and are in fact blocked from our vision. It is the nature of the geography of our thought that render them unknowable. They are beyond the horizon.

There are also "unknown knowns" (Rumsfeld) or "the unconscious" (Freud), things that we adhere to or know that we cannot see, that are right in front of our nose, or perhaps even behind our noses. Unlike the unknown unknowns, which are geographically hidden from us, these things are unseeable because of our particular physiology. It is theoretically possible that with a corrective step (a pair of glasses, or therapy) we might be able to see them.

So I think it's worth noting, when Zizek says that the catastrophes of nature (or Nature?) are "unimaginable," he may mean both that they are unforeseeable and/or that they are completely foreseeable, if only we had the right attitude or orientation.

Catastrophes

There is something about the word "catastrophe" which is both terrible and wonderful. It is very much focused on results and not on causes. By which I mean that a "catastrophe" is something huge and possibly irremediable that happens to people, and fundamentally contradicts our values, disrupts our way of life, and ruins our institutions. However, there is nothing in the word "catastrophe" which suggests its source, which is left deliciously ambiguous (unlike say "massive fuck up" or "act of God" or "horrible accident" or "unspeakable evil" - which convey both the scope of an event's effects and define its source).

After all, "nature" is constructed by us, and is not fully outside us. It is fitting that it be a series of "catastrophes" which could be read as coming spontaneously through no fault of our own, or advertable, our responsibility to prevent, or at least prepare to mitigate.


Sunday, September 12, 2010

Coming Out / Inviting In

Jamil and Hassan

I feel inspired after reading this piece by Lebanese Muslim Australian narrative therapist Sekneh Hammoud-Beckett. The piece explores her work with gay Lebanese Muslim "Jamil" and his (str8) brother Hassan. Hammoud-Beckett explores the problem with the model of "coming out" as the normative framework through which gay men are expected to express or experience authenticity in their lived sexual identities. She explores a different framework: "Coming in" or "Inviting in," which is a way that Jamil repositions his experience of sexual identity in order to reconcile with his brother.

As Jamil speaks, as quoted from Hammoud-Beckett's piece, "Even if I don’t tell certain members of my extended family about my sexuality, I don’t view myself as in the closet, in a dark place that I must escape from. Far from it, this ‘closet’ is full of precious things, like things you could never afford to buy! It’s my treasure chest. The way I see it, rather than me needing to move out of the closet, to make my sexuality public to everyone, including my grandparents, instead I get to choose who to open the door to, and who to invite to ‘come in’ to my life."

I LOVE this idea. Of being complete in and of myself, already fully integrated (not visioning my life from a perspective of victimization). This feels especially true in my own exploration of some of my own multiple, 'core' identities; in particular, being gay, Asian, and Buddhist. The normativity of the idea of "coming out" has, over time, lost much of its meaning for me.


Staying In

Perhaps it can be 'inside here' that I choose to remain, where liberation can be found. It's raining outside... I'm not 'closeted' per se, but private... being close to the source of Me and cherishing it as a treasure. Only few will get to see, and only those I invite into my life, this 'treasure chest' of my sacred self. This, of course, does not pertain only to my experience of my homosexuality, even though that may seem, of all the facets of my identity, the most obvious one I would choose to be more calculative about either 'outing' or inviting people in to see...

The pressure here becomes less of my need to 'come out' and encounter stereotypic, pre-set ideas of what it means to be Me in all my myriad forms... whether it be the politically conservative, non-English speaking, "Asian" community, or the sex-crazed, drug-obsessed, limbic-driven "gay" community, or the gender-bashing, hyper-leftwing, anarchistic "queer" community, or the quietist, insular, pacifistic "Buddhist" community, or the privileged, elitist, self-indulgent "uni" community... etc. etc. etc.

There is no "out there" to come out to that can be the most accurate reflection of my selfhood. Indeed, there is no inherently existing self that can "Come Out" anywhere to begin with. That is part of this (urban) myth of coming out as authentic self-expression.

At least as interesting is to "invite people in." Not so much to 'see the true me,' but rather, to co-construct a space in which the interaction of the expedient Self and Other becomes a synthesis of identities in a framework of intimacy, rather than ostentatious publicity. Inviting my non-Buddhist queer friends to see the part of me that experiences my sexuality in stillness, and that imagines their own receptivity beyond defensive, ironic posturings... inviting my straight friends to see the part of me that holds another man's hand, while cherishing the opportunity to imagine their own relational vulnerabilities... inviting my Buddhist friends to understand my ambivalence (at best) toward heteronormative spiritual spaces while seeing that they too, like myself, are doing their best to alleviate one another's sufferings... inviting my American friends to see my life in Australia, while understanding each other in shared vernacular...

In each circumstance, some new part of me is revealed ('outed'), and yet, the very rubric by which I am measuring these encounters is precisely that of an invitation to create something new together, on terms that assume my wholeness to begin with... The house has already been built...

And when you are invited into someone's home, it is not at all appropriate to insult the host.

Intellectual Masturbation

This metaphor:
Of "intellectual masturbation."
As an insult...?

I’d like to work through this metaphor, in a sort of intellectual masturbatory exercise in itself. However, my intent here is not to jerk my brain off to some sort of epiphanic jism, but instead to revel in a more Daoist circulation of intellectual, libidinal energies; A meditative “edging,” a love-making with the holographic delineations of my own consciousness that has not conclusion, decision and execution as its goal, but rather the pleasure of ruminating as alone reason enough for beginning.

Here the ‘conclusion’ is the process of the rub and tug of mental play, ‘decision’ the diversity of pause and periodic punctuation across and in between sentences, and ‘execution’ the beginning of this rumination that has no end. Indeed, on some level, intellectual auto-eroticism (sometimes with a friend or few) without the dogmatic certainties of ego-orgasm (we know well the violent excesses of fanaticism and fundamentalism), may well be the very ‘yes!’ of life. To engage in wistful brain-play, to be constantly challenged, to always have our preconceptions de-stabilised (yet that we are relaxed), to always be stimulated by the fresh (without undergirding our fidelity to our previous lovers), to be tired but not drained, calm and yet enlivened.