'Orientalism' by Edward W. Said

Early on in the book Said boils down his critic to that of ‘historical authority’ which in the case of Orientalism was that of ‘personal authority’ in regards to the east that nether the less became absolute fact. Said’s background in literary criticism thus focuses on primarily English and French writers, thinkers and journalist, from the time of Napoleon, through colonization and as within his introduction right up to the most recent Gulf War. For Said the style of these writers to saturate the reader with immense generalized information is what he describes as ‘without depth, in swollen detail’. From the beginning Said is clear in his purpose, do examine and critic the study of the ‘Orient’ within western literary culture, his survey is by no means an accurate representation of the Orient and by his study he does not give the east a voice as such but rather seeks to dismantle the whole concept of the ‘East’, and the ‘West’ for that matter; ‘this book has tried to demonstrate, Islam has been fundamentally misrepresented in the West—the real issue is whether indeed there can be a true representation of anything, or whether any and all representations, because they are representations, are embedded first in language and then in the culture, institutions, and political ambience of the representer.’

In the afterword Said responses to the criticism of his book and the many unfortunate misrepresentations of his work which in some circumstances was seen to deepen the divide between the ‘east’ and the ‘west’. Such interpretations are not only damaging but miss Said’s point entirely, to even use the words such words to describe places and people, as if there is a tangible line that separates the eastern part of the world from the western, is a fallacy. If nothing else Orientalism should be thought of as a fiction, something created and yes sometimes believed but like many other myths and legends from history we now study it for his culture value rather than its communication of objective historical facts.

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'My principle operating assumptions were—and continue to be—that fields of learning, as much as the works of even the most eccentric artist, are constrained and acted upon by society, by culture traditions, by worldly circumstances, and by stabilizing influences like schools, libraries, and governments; moreover, that both learned and imaginative writing are never free, but are limited in their imagery, assumption, and intentions; and finally, that the advances made by a “science” like Orientalism in its academic form are less objectively true that we often like to think. In short, my study hitherto has tried to describe the economy that makes Orientalism a coherent subject matter, even while allowing that as an idea, concept, or image that word Orient has a considerable and interesting cultural resonance in the West.’

'The Crimes of Love' by the Marquis de Sade

Prompted by the thoughts of Foucault, I picked up Sade in order to understand for myself the most infamous heathen of the modern era. Despite the evolution of his character through-out history, such as the inclusion of his name in describing complicit acts of sexual violence, it seems on a broad level that he is poorly if not completely misunderstood. The book is a collection of short stories written early in Sade’s career at which time he still occasionally conceded to the prevailing morals of the time. The narratives for the most part and formulaic and repetitive, there is the noble young lad, his pious virgin, their doting parent and naturally the libertine scoundrel who ruins all in the chase to satisfy his ravaging desires. The bad guys want revenge for being duped and the good guys will blindly kill themselves for love. The exceptions of this are Sade’s essay at the beginning, the allegorical tale in the middle and the incestuous romp at the end. These three are by far the most enjoyable (if you can say such a thing), including fatality which is too hilariously convoluted to miss, though more importantly they are works of depth that pay finer tribute to the secular and realist aims of Sade’s argument.
Perhaps because it is one of his early works and he had not yet sunk to the level of horrendousness which has made him both mad and famous, for the contemporary reader who daily withstands pornographic ads on the net and MTV video clips the works provocative punches seem somewhat less then packing. Despite the lack of shock in the aesthetics of the novel Sade’s ingenious in the debunking of soppy sentiment, useless manners, conservative ideals and pious devotion are as fresh and relevant than ever. It is from this thought that the likes of Freud, Degas, Picasso, Bataille, Sartre and Camus have continued to explore and all of whom reinforce what is natural to humans: to fuck and to shit.
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‘But the man who, by dint of long study and sober reflection, has succeeded in training his mind not to detect evil in anything, to consider all human actions with the utmost indifference, to thing, to regard them all as the inevitable consequence of a power – however it is defined – which is sometimes goods and sometimes perverse but always irresistible, and gives rise both to what men approve and to what they condemn and never allows anything to distract or thwart its operations, such a man, I say, as you will agree, sir, may be as happy behaving as I behave as you are in the career which you follow. Happiness is an abstraction, a product of the imagination. It is one manner of being moved and depends exclusively on our way of seeing and feeling. Apart from satisfaction of our needs, there is no single thing which makes all men happy. Every day we observe one man made happy by the very circumstances which makes his neighbor supremely miserable. There is therefore nothing which guarantees happiness. It can only exist for us in the form given to it by our physical constitution and our philosophical principles.’

'Madness and Civilization' by Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault pioneered a form of historiography which he called cultural archeology and as with the standard form such of any technique it is thorough and rigorous, such that it produces a unique and brilliant criticism of subjects previously deemed mundane. ‘Madness and Civilization’ was Foucault’s first complete novel based on such a practice, it details the chorological progression of society’s relation with and too ‘mad’ people and the condition of ‘madness’. This begins with the seclusion of madness from within society, as it is firstly ostracized into travelling companies, moving on to become to stable communities in particular sections of a city, then to confinement and often imprisonment and finally the establishment of institutional asylums. In amongst are descriptions of different aspects of madness as well as its relation to doctors and the wider community.

Foucault illustrates that the reason the behind the increased aggression towards madness is a result of the dominance of rational thought, which was the defining feature of the enlightened gentleman. From this he develops the theory of madness as ‘dazzled reason’, in which ones reason is liberated, able to experience the freedom of nothingness, which dazzles and overwhelms rationality like a bright light. In this way madness becomes the ultimate existential subject, battling against the standardised bad faith of acceptable society in the search for truth, yet is denied transcendence through confinement and ultimately rendered to an eternity of non-being.

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‘To say that madness is dazzelment is to say that the madman sees the daylight, the same daylight as the man of reason (both live in the same brightness); but seeing this same daylight, and nothing but this daylight and nothing in it, he sees it as void, as night, as nothing; for him the shadows are the way to perceive daylight. Which means that, seeing the night and the nothingness of night, he dose not see at all. And believing he sees, he admits as realities the hallucinations of his imagination and all the multitudinous population of night. That is why delirium and dazzelment are in a relation which constitutes the essence of madness, exactly as truth and light, in their fundamental relation, constitute classical reason.’

'No Logo' by Naomi Klein

Klein’s book is a thorough and passionate study of the effect of globalization, focusing on the rise of mega-brands and the devastating effect this has had on labor conditions, international trade and freedom of speech and space. She does not shy away from highlighting the culpability of our western consumerist drive in fueling the exploitation of sweatshop labor, yet even from the beginning Klein is not a merely finger-pointing pessimist, but clearly focuses on the stirring the embers of resistance sparking into the fight against global corporatism. I took comfort in the few reference of Australia, the success of the Sydney ‘Reclaim the Streets’, Marrickville councils boycott of Burmese products and the closing down of McDonalds in Newtown, and though I am sadden that I missed such events I am encouraged to create my own.
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‘They are instead challenging systems of centralized power on principle, as critical of left-wing, one-size-fits-all state solutions as of right-wing ones. It is often said disparagingly that this movement lacks ideology, an overarching message, a master plan. This is absolutely true, and we should be extraordinarily thankful.’

'Swallow the Air' by Tara June Winch

A small story about the childhood of May Gibson, a half aboriginal girl whose traumatizing up-bring is hazily recounted through a mixture of dreamtime legends and heroin induced fantasies. With a father who abandoned her at a young age, a mother who took her life from grief, a Aunty who finds comfort in a bottle as a means of escaping her boyfriends fists and a brother who goes half-mad from it all, one easily sympathies with May in all her innocent beauty as she wanders the continent in search for home. Perhaps then it is her unbelievable purity in amongst tragedy and corruption which stops the novel from being a straight memoir, but rather a dreamlike exploration of finding one’s place in the world after suffering accumulative loss; ‘it was then I felt Aboriginal, I felt like I belonged, but when Mum left, I stopped being Aboriginal. I stopped feeling like I belonged. Anywhere.’

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‘I didn’t know it then, but the man would no longer be there and the mangoes would’ve all been packed and sent away in dusty oversized trucks. They would all be bought and eaten, the skin and seed rotted, the yellow dew leather chewed through by worms. Fruit flies would have flown to new flesh. And the dark finger leaves would’ve grown over in pink wax scale, the hibiscus turned black and sweating fragrance of caustic sap and sugar long been buried with the season.’

'People First Economics' edit. By David Ransom and Vanessa Baird

This is a collection of essays, speeches, interviews and general critics of current international concerns, ranging from the need to improve environmental sustainability, to demythologising the causes behind the global finical crisis. The title ‘People First Economics’ may appear a tautology yet as its contributors demonstrate governments and corporations have increasingly pushed for objectives that maximize profit and control, sidestepping being accountable to the global or even their specific national community. Reoccurring themes include the Green new deal, banning tax havens, closing the gap between wealth inequality and distribution on an international level and the incorporation of indigenous traditions in reducing carbon emissions, promoting sustainability and respect of the land. As I read it the Copenhagen Climate Summit was exceeding even the most cynical expectations, with even the blame of its failure causing more division. Whether it was an act of sabotage by the Chinese or the arrogance of the first world, the most talked up event of the year lead to broken promises and ‘arbitrary’ target objectives, meeting the expectations of Danny Chivers predictions in the book. Despite this, the feeling of anger amongst the general public at such a pathetic outcome is encouraging as it prompts those who care to take action into their own hands and communities, in which this book is a worthy and helpful guide. ..............................................................................
‘Rather than assuming that we are stuck with levels of self-interested consumerism, individualism and materialism that must defeat any attempts to develop sustainable economic systems, we need to recognize that these are not fixed expressions of human nature. Instead, they reflect the characteristics of the societies in which we find ourselves and vary even from one rich country to another. At the most fundamental level, reducing inequality is about shifting the balance from the divisive, self-interested consumerism driven by status competition, towards a more socially integrated and affiliative society.’

'Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948' by Tanya Reinhart

I was in my young teens when the Second Intifada begun in September 2000, before then what little I had of a social, global or political conscious was undeveloped and combined with my Christian education I was quite easily believed the one-sided portrait of the evil Palestinian Muslim Suicide bombers. The closest thing I got to an objective view was my stepfathers ‘crazy Arabs bombing up each other’. I don’t blame him, it was better to think of it as their problem. After September 11 words such as terrorist, Al-qaeda and Taliban started to bombard current affairs, not knowing better I automatically linked it with the only other chaos I knew of in the region. As innocent as my conclusions were they were not so far off the truth, Reinhart explains how the Israeli government harnessed the United States war on terror to legitimize their own terrorising of Palestinians an excuse to put into action a well formulated plan of ethnic cleansing, in doing so shattering the peace proposals between the East and West. Reinhart’s book is but the beginning of my own education and participation into one of the most unjust and devastating conflicts of the 20th c., which will equip me to carry on the fight for peace in the next.

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‘Indeed, how easy it is to submit to the feeling that the Palestinian problem is no longer Israel’s, because the Palestinians have their own postage stamps and flag, police and travel documents. How easy it is to submit to the hope that the dynamics of things will work out on its own. Meanwhile, we shall sit at home and trust the government, because, after all, it’s a peace government.’