Unceasing consumption induces indigestion, and so, I feel compelled to return to this blog and reverse the flow of information, however insignificantly, in utter disdain of the endlessly proliferating obstacles to such frivolity. Has it been a while? It could have been worse ("Behold, I come quickly ...").

And if the process of writing another post, although effectively contributing nothing to my short list of accomplished things, brings relief, it should not, I hope, be read in light of what I just wrote about the sickness that comes with the consumption of texts which I have neither the time nor the energy to absorb.

It would be entirely unoriginal to characterize the world's scholars as a herd of ruminants, busily reconstructing their fodder into the only production of which they are capable. I can only hope to be so prolific. As far as the usefulness of all this creation, perhaps it is no better than the metaphor toward which I have been tending with a feeling of delicate revulsion. Or maybe it is even worse, for nothing sprouts from it - except more bovines, perhaps.

But if academics don't do anything useful with those brains of theirs (and for all the noble defenses of the humanities I could mount, there is a difference between preserving the "treasures" of "civilization" and endless self-extirpation in the interest of projects which only pretend to have contact with political reality), then this is at least in part because academia is, whether accidentally or intentionally, a repository - an institution, no less! - for those dangerous and altogether undesirable elements of society which might, if deprived of the opportunity for unceasing busy-work, busy themselves with certain, more concrete, forms of criticism.

[Please note, this is conspiracy theory No. 2 regarding the purpose of academia: there are those who are merely processed by the system, i.e. die Studenten, and those who are contained by it and do the system's processing, i.e. die Professoren. See also conspiracy theory No. 1]

And as far as the first category - the blessed students for whose ostensible sake this whole structure exists - the perpetual complaints and polemics regarding the always-already irrelevant humanities and the constant demands for practical skills - the expansion of the university to accommodate those who were always destined for the meat-packing plant in one form or another brought with it, quite naturally, a new set of requiremetns. The humanities never mattered to the people who did; it is simply that the universities did not have to produce high-level cashiers and managers of cashiers, and the rich people who rebelled by becoming professors could continue to dispense healthy portions of the refrigerated high culture which those who would assert their superiority to the mob which they exploited needed to pass the time (and show that they needed something with which to pass the time).

[One is reminded of the contemporary notion of exercise. Those who do not need to work need to demonstrate that they have enough idle time to pretend to look like they have to work - but no one would ever confuse those who work and those who work out! The latter is a demonstration of one's superiority to compulsion].

To put the matter briefly, if reading Marx in an academic environment makes me sick at the thought of the utter pointlessness of the excercise of reading Marx in an academic environment, anemically discussing texts which were, at least once upon a time, intended to provoke action, then perhaps there is still some hope for me as a human being. On the other hand, it would be much easier just to give in and feel the comforting waves of contented cretinism wash over me as I settle into even the minimally tolerant lifestyle of a "contingent" academic. But if not cretinism, then what? What is to be done? Write stupid books, starve, wait for the inevitable (the unpredictable).

Style

It should, of course, come as no particular surprise that one approaches the task of writing very differently in the morning than one would at night. My principally nocturnal contact with this blog has left its mark upon the tone of everything I've written - a tone which I could not possibly emulate as the morning sun warms my back.

But just as we are always already in a mood, and that mood always already influences the constitution of the world we perceive - guides our priorities, alters our perceptions, subtly modifies the contours of the world and our interactions with it - so too does writing always occur both within a context of contingent (but often consistent) environmental factors as well as within the confines of the activity of writing itself. That is to say, tautologically, that one cannot produce writing without engaging in the activity of writing, and that activity, doubtless, alters the words we commit to the page. And if I cannot imagine Walter Benjamin buying groceries, it is only because I mistake his writing, or even his character as it emerged while he was writing, for him in his totality. And if Proust astutely observes that we, just like Swann, find it exceedingly difficult to imagine that other people do not always behave in the same way as they do in our company, then it becomes necessary to acknowledge, even if it is impossible to conceive of concretely, that even Walter Benjamin was not always like his authorial voice, and that my writing is, perhaps, not a very good representation of me, or, alternatively, an indication of the vagueness of me as a coherent concept.

This leads to diverging strains of thought: the deceptiveness of letters, which we take somehow to be a 'true' expression of a person's voice, somehow rescued from the innumerable and contingent factors which influence everyday activity (simply because we do not see these factors); and the nonexistence of anything that I can meaningfully like an enduring, consistent self. But since the latter is a subject I bring up too often (and somehow, precariously, hint at my own refutation in this demonstration of idiosyncrasy), I will concern myself briefly with the former question.

It is difficult for me to sense, while writing, how the tone of this completed piece will come across when read. Writing extemporaneously is almost like writing automatically, in that the completed entry will confront me as a somewhat mysterious text, a work of uncertain authorship and interpretation. Nonetheless, I anticipate that the extreme difference in time will not impact my style all that much. Too many factors remain consistent: isolation, ambient silence, the habitual memories which return - bearing with them all manner of concerns, ideas, anxieties, and inclinations - every time I sit down to write. This consistency of context lends consistency to my style. However, that does not make it 'mine' in the sense that it is somehow more authentic than the even more extemporaneous speech that I would produce if suddenly addressed.

If Nietzsche distrusted any thought that came to him sitting down, he still had to sit down to write that thought, and even his potent and vigorous style is probably the product of a man sitting in a chair with a pen in his hand. Ideas that I have while trying to fall asleep, or eating dinner, or walking in the woods take forms which I cannot reproduce at the writing table. I could trick the process by talking to myself and recording everything, but like those mysteriously indeterminate particles which seem to choose a concrete location only when observed, I will not be able to capture those fleeting ideas without altering them. There is therefore something necrotic about writing, and, perhaps, about those who devote their lives to it.