Althouse: "The body of the woman is the overwhelming triumph of flesh. The woman is a concrete universal; she is a world..."

August 4, 2020

"The body of the woman is the overwhelming triumph of flesh. The woman is a concrete universal; she is a world..."

"... not an externalized world, but under the world, the warm interiority of the world, a compressed internalized world. Whence the prodigious sexual success of women: possessing a woman is possessing the world."

Wrote Gilles Deleuze, quoted in "To Fascinate and Unnerve/The philosophical leftovers of Gilles Deleuze" at The Nation.

I just thought I'd drop in over at The Nation to see what was going on. I do that now and then, maybe once a week at most. That "Fascinate and Unnerve" business seemed more promising that the other headlines I saw. For example: "The Deaths of 150,000 Americans Are on Trump’s Hands/Trump and his lackeys are guilty of criminal negligence, if not far worse. Who will hold them accountable?" Such evil pot-stirring.

But that Deleuze is something. Decades ago, one used to encounter so many statements like that, presented as impressively intellectual. They're funny now. I'd say the challenge is: What are we taking seriously that will be plainly ridiculous in 50 years?

48 comments:

Howard said...: "The overwhelming triumph of the flesh"

Indeed.; 8/4/20, 5:27 AM
tim maguire said...: That sounds like something I might have said while stoned (back in the day) and, emotionally, I totally meant it, but still cringed the next day thinking back on it. If I wrote it down, I'd burn it.; 8/4/20, 5:40 AM
tim maguire said...: I can think of all kinds of things society accepts now that will be seen as ludicrous later, mostly things I hate, of course. But if you want me to guess what I would say that later society will think ludicrous, nothing, obviously. I'm too smart for that.; 8/4/20, 5:43 AM
Rusty said...: Democrats. We're treating them seriously when it has become obvious they are not rational. 50 years from now your grand children will be saying,"You burned down a city for what?"; 8/4/20, 5:44 AM
stevew said...: TDS. Critical Theory and Social Justice. Covid response. Social Media (Twitter, FB, Tiktok). Politics at the National level.

May not take 50 years.; 8/4/20, 5:45 AM
mezzrow said...: The kind of people who read The Nation, and then tell us how to live our lives.; 8/4/20, 5:50 AM
traditionalguy said...: Woman as the missing piece to a good life. Is that out of date now? Not around here.; 8/4/20, 6:00 AM
Jeff Gee said...: Depends on who you mean by "we."; 8/4/20, 6:07 AM
rhhardin said...: It's an intellectualization of man's problem of getting laid in a world of feminists.

I prefer Phillipe Sollers's _Women_ for timeless adaptation and density of zingers.; 8/4/20, 6:20 AM
Mrs. Bear said...: I used to think that I was stupid, when I did not understand quotes like this. Now I think that I was stupid, when I assessed this as anything other than meaningless.; 8/4/20, 6:27 AM
Oso Negro said...: Laugh if you will, Althouse, but I am backing nature over feminism. 50 years from now, men will STILL foolishly exalt the female form. It's what we do.; 8/4/20, 6:33 AM
iowan2 said...: "such evil pot stirring"

So show me again how to find that box on the ballot to vote straight Democrat.; 8/4/20, 6:33 AM
MayBee said...: It's on his hands in this way...if Biden is elected we will stop hearing about it.

Remember when Bush was president, and we got the nightly news report of the soldiers who had died in Iraq and Afghanistan? The grim milestones? Then Obama was elected, and we never heard about the wars any more. The press that had fought so hard to be able to cover the flag-draped coffins never really did. It will be the same with COVID.; 8/4/20, 6:38 AM
Josephbleau said...: "... not an externalized world, but under the world, the warm interiority of the world, a compressed internalized world. Whence the prodigious sexual success of women: possessing a woman is possessing the world."

Oh no, they left out the prodigious sexual success of gay men, and their warm interiority. Racist, such vaginointeriorcentricisim. I guess possessing a gay man just doesn’t pay the bills.; 8/4/20, 6:57 AM
Leland said...: I see The Nation still objectifies women. That should be handy for Bill Clinton's latest defense efforts.; 8/4/20, 7:22 AM
Rick said...: IT's revealing the governors make the decisions but Trump gets the blame. In fact they laud the person most responsible for increasing the death toll here in the US simply because he's a Democrat. Sometimes I think the left media judges all events by whether they are ideologically allied or opposed to those involved.; 8/4/20, 7:30 AM
Kai Akker said...: PC is what they will ridicule in 50 years. How could rational humans have believed any of that?? How could people who said they loved freedom try to fight it so tediously?? Oh, my, what idiots they must have been! How could they have pretended that everyone was exactly the same??

Just as the first half of the 20th century ridiculed the Victorians' attitudes.

The difference is that there were some wise kernels in the Victorian views. I can't think of any in PC.; 8/4/20, 7:30 AM
Darrell said...: Number of deaths: 2,813,503
Death rate: 863.8 deaths per 100,000 population

--CDC 2017 data

You were saying?; 8/4/20, 7:30 AM
tim in vermont said...: Basically everything that men do, from creating great art to performing concerts, from building business empires to building political/military empires, on and on, are display behaviors aimed at attracting women, at a pre-conscious level perhaps, it’s built into our DNA. Even gay men do it, though they may not know why and happily it works to attract mates for them too if they are good enough.

This is why feminism is kind of absurd. It’s an exercise in point missing. As if the little flock of birds of paradise hens decided to cut the feathers off of the male and wear them themselves. They would then be left wondering where the magic of the feathers went.; 8/4/20, 7:33 AM
Temujin said...: "What are we taking seriously that will be plainly ridiculous in 50 years?"

-Climate Change as an imminent threat to humanity in 12 years.
-Defund the police.
-Open borders.
-Universal healthcare + universal public schooling + social security, all paid for by a shrinking labor force.
-Antifa, Black Lives Matter (as we'll suddenly realize that- yes- all live matter.
-Critical Theory.
-Democrats (I can hope, can't I?); 8/4/20, 7:33 AM
Rick said...: Kai Akker said...
PC is what they will ridicule in 50 years.

This is unlikely. We ridiculed PC in the 80s. Leftists responded by committing their lives to talking over the institutions which could enforce it. Who is going to commit their life to taking control away from the far left? And even if they did could they be successful against determined opposition? After all when leftists took them over they faced effectively no opposition because the liberals sided with the far left.

To give one example Antioch college passed a version of the misleadingly named affirmative consent rules which required parties engaging in sexual contact to receive verbal consent for each level of escalation during an encounter regardless of other circumstances. So a spouse kissing from behind became sexual assault. In the 90's they were subjected to such ridicule Antioch rescinded the rules.

https://www.thefire.org/antiochs-infamous-sexual-assault-policy/

State law now mandates those same ridiculed rules on every campus in California and many other states. This is how activism works.; 8/4/20, 8:12 AM
JPS said...: ""The Deaths of 150,000 Americans Are on Trump’s Hands/Trump and his lackeys are guilty of criminal negligence, if not far worse."

Curiously, if you add up the populations of Spain, France, the UK, Italy, and Germany, you come very close to ours, within a couple percent. Our death total is recently insignificantly larger than theirs. Maybe that will change, we have a recent flood of cases who haven't had time to die of it yet. But for now I'm unimpressed with The Nation's reasoning, if you want to call it that.; 8/4/20, 8:17 AM
Tommy Duncan said...: "What are we taking seriously that will be plainly ridiculous in 50 years?"

At rate we are currently erasing our history this question will be meaningless in 50 years.; 8/4/20, 8:18 AM
rcocean said...: I think pretty much everything "We" think now, will be thought of as Silly 50 years from now. That's because what "we" believe is so obviously stupid and/or untrue. Or goes against 2,000 years of Western civilization. We will look back on these times with amazement and horror like the Russians looking back at the USSR.; 8/4/20, 8:47 AM
rcocean said...: The Panic over CV-19 is the first thing that comes to mind. SHutting down an economy over a virus has never been done before, and I doubt it will be looked upon well by people in the future. Why were they such stupid cowards, they will ask. They will be amazed that a POTUS candidate spent his days in his basement with a mask on, and even more amazed that the American people made him President.; 8/4/20, 8:49 AM
Known Unknown said...: So he saved 10,840,000 lives? Wow.; 8/4/20, 8:59 AM
Known Unknown said...: So he saved 10,840,000 lives? Wow.; 8/4/20, 9:00 AM
chuck said...: Trump and his lackeys are guilty of criminal negligence

Lackeys? Nation writers are so last century.; 8/4/20, 9:09 AM
Ken B said...: “ What are we taking seriously that will be plainly ridiculous in 50 years?”

Anything that was plainly ridiculous ten years ago.

Here's a partial list
- sex is not binary
- only whites are logical or diligent
- drugging 8 years olds is a great idea
- slave camps and genocide in China are none of our business
- “cruel neutrality” is neutral; 8/4/20, 9:16 AM
Michael said...: The short list:

1. Socialism
2. The New York Times; 8/4/20, 9:55 AM
Kai Akker said...: --- ... unlikely. We ridiculed PC in the 80s. Leftists responded by committing their lives to taking over the institutions which could enforce it.... Antioch college passed a version of the misleadingly named affirmative consent rules which required parties engaging in sexual contact to receive verbal consent for each level of escalation... In the 90's they were subjected to such ridicule Antioch rescinded the rules. State law now mandates those same ridiculed rules on every campus in California and many other states. [Rick]

Thank you, Rick, good points. In reply, there is always the case of Prohibition, in which even a Constitutional amendment was not too far to go for our society to correct an awful idea.

I don't know exactly how the changes will occur to make our excesses apparent to those who follow in a couple generations, but they always do. Yes, the left took over a lot of institutions; but think of the schools, the churches, and the government bureaucracy itself.

They are usually among the last adopters of ideas and behavior trends -- the very last! So I would call them lagging indicators. They will change one day, too. Other forces are also at work. Antioch itself was so super-left that its internal policy contradictions led to a financial crisis that finally closed the college in 2008. It reopened after a few years but is barely clinging to existence with virtually no enrollment; it appears doomed.

On a broader scale, public schools, pre-college level, are getting a big catalyst right now, as a consequence of this unforeseen pestilence. Private schools that open may be flooded with enrollment and they are not such captives of liberal-left PC conformity. A good outcome from my viewpoint -- assuming it comes to pass in that way! But, one way or another, the social cycle will change, as history tells us.; 8/4/20, 10:01 AM
readering said...: That statement about woman quoted was from 1945 when he was 20 years old. As the reviewer out it, virginal.; 8/4/20, 10:29 AM
PM said...: Male birds have outrageous feathers and exotic dances to attract females.
All men have is steadiness, a stupid grin and ready shoulder.; 8/4/20, 10:29 AM
Greg Hlatky said...: "Trump and his lackeys are guilty of criminal negligence, if not far worse. Who will hold them accountable?"

They misspelled "Andrew Cuomo".; 8/4/20, 10:47 AM
Earnest Prole said...: The body of the woman is the overwhelming triumph of flesh.

The word he's groping for is embonpoint.; 8/4/20, 11:29 AM
n.n said...: Woman as the missing piece to a good life.

Equal and complementary. Also, happy wife, happy life, and its corollary: happy life, happy wife, is a credible maxim. That said, keep the feminine, lose the feminism (i.e. chauvinistic ideology). Reconcile.; 8/4/20, 11:31 AM
n.n said...: The Deaths of 150,000 Americans Are on Trump’s Hands/Trump and his lackeys are guilty of criminal negligence,

At least 1/4 to a 1/3 are attributable to Planned Parent. A suitable Planned Pathogen protocol, including HCQ (Zn, Az) administered before disease progression, would have reduced the total deaths. The proper, not universal, use of masks (and goggles), may have reduced infections. Also, controlling immigration (e.g. foreign tuition students) would have controlled trans-national spread.; 8/4/20, 11:37 AM
n.n said...: I see The Nation still objectifies women. That should be handy for Bill Clinton's latest defense efforts.

Keep women barefoot, available, and taxable is the mantra of feminists and masculinists.; 8/4/20, 11:39 AM
Biff said...: "Decades ago, one used to encounter so many statements like that, presented as impressively intellectual. They're funny now. I'd say the challenge is: What are we taking seriously that will be plainly ridiculous in 50 years?"

I think a lot of people decades ago thought that the "statements like that" were just as ridiculous then as they seem now, but they probably weren't French philosophers.

On second thought, they probably were.; 8/4/20, 12:03 PM
Rick said...: Kai Akker said...
Antioch itself was so super-left that its internal policy contradictions led to a financial crisis that finally closed the college in 2008. It reopened after a few years but is barely clinging to existence with virtually no enrollment; it appears doomed.

Which is why activists in education worked with government allies to ensure all universities adopt the policies at the same time. This method denies consumers a choice unless they are willing to forego a degree entirely.; 8/4/20, 12:27 PM
RMc said...: What are we taking seriously that will be plainly ridiculous in 50 years?

We're taking seriously a lot of things that are plainly ridiculous NOW, let alone in 50 years.; 8/4/20, 1:13 PM
Kai Akker said...: @Rick..... So you believe that, enshrined in law, policy cannot be changed. Do I have this part of your argument right? Or you might say, is unlikely to be changed. I agree that wherever these particular conditions with college sex policies exist, the consumer faces an obstacle.

But aren't those the conditions in which competition springs up? Thwarted consumer desires lead to new opportunities for innovation. Also, the marketplace can change. The college marketplace is sure changing right now. We all knew the internet was going to change higher education, but those changes seemed limited and occurring mostly at the margin.

Now? We will see. And institutions that adopt screwy policies tend to get themselves into various other problems, like Antioch. I don't think Harvard is going under, no; but I think even Harvard will feel the pushback at their exorbitant rates and their PC policies, which include discriminating against Asian-Americans.

As for government, as we've seen, some policies can be reversed as readily as they were instituted. Moreover, the government is in such deficit that it would not surprise me to see a re-elected Trump eliminate the 25% of government that we weren't paying for in our budgets even when the economy was strong. If so, so much for the power of unelected bureaucrats.

Maybe I'm an optimist; it is hard not to believe that the absurdities one has to swallow to accept PC doctrines and the often silly assumptions that underlie them can last much longer in a free-thinking world. The moral-superiority angle and the assistance of the mainstream media the PC crowd exploited seem to have drastically weakened over the past four years.

So I am assuming we will be living in a free-thinking world. While it's scary to consider the ramifications of a Biden victory, what about the possibilities of a Trump victory? Especially one that can bring the House of Rs back under Republican leadership? What might Trump undertake when he knows he has only the next four years to get objectives accomplished?; 8/4/20, 1:15 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: "What are we taking seriously that will be plainly ridiculous in 50 years?"

I think about this every day. I won't be sharing my list because of how seriously the things on it are taken now.; 8/4/20, 1:36 PM
mikee said...: Communism was understood to be such a failure, so bad an idea, just a few decades back that the Chinese Communist Party stopped trying to implement it, and let its enslaved populace go capitalist, while maintaining a totalitarian, kleptocratic control over the country.

Here's my certainty that the local, US Marxists will age out of their delirium. Their red-diaper babies will grow up supporting those most like Reagan, Thatcher, Walesa, and John Paul II in the 2070s.

Presuming the successor to Winnie the Pooh doesn't start a world war as his country implodes due to its communist government, despite having a capitalist economy, China can also join the civilized nations of the world. After that all we need to do is reform Islam to bring in a Pax Aeternitatis by 2100. Look for an Israeli being named UN Sec-Gen as a sign of success.; 8/4/20, 2:02 PM
tim in vermont said...: People took the Spanish Flu so seriously at the time, but we all know now with the benefit of hindsight that it was just a big joke.

One thing I always admired about Steve McIntyre is that he says that if he knows he wants to believe something, he triple checks his facts.

Those two sentences are connected, BTW.; 8/4/20, 3:27 PM
Rick said...: Kai Akker said...
@Rick..... So you believe that, enshrined in law, policy cannot be changed.

No. But laws change as a result of institutions. And since essentially all our public institutions are under far left political control how will the requisite pressure for change be generated? Remember this has been going on for 40 years and only a small portion of the public thinks it's a problem. Most people will continue to avoid the issue.

But aren't those the conditions in which competition springs up?

We can't develop an effective alternative to the entire university system. How many students do the current facilities which see themselves in this role serve, .01% of students? The only way competition can come is if an existing group of schools decide to move this direction. But this is very unlikely since almost every college professor is a left-sider (leftist or liberal). We can judge from the current campus environment where liberals are subordinated to note they prefer this to opposing the left.

So change cannot come from within. What evidence is there any group of trustees is willing to enforce this kind of change against the will of university faculty and administrators? None I can see - and we had Title IX as a pretty good test case. The one professor who took this on (KC Johnson) is essentially ignored. I'm sure there are others who agree with him but aren't willing to do anything about it. What's going to change this dynamic?

As for government, as we've seen, some policies can be reversed as readily as they were instituted.

I don't see much evidence for this. The belief Title IX addresses sexual conduct by students was invented out of thin air. Instead of eliminating the enforcement apparatus entirely Devos changed a handful of the most egregious rules, but we're still left with a left wing enforcement apparatus moving more into thought control (via claims of "harassment") all the time. And this is probably the most successful reform. DACA was created with no legal authority but courts claim it cannot be similarly undone. Obamacare was the same - illegitimately created via Reconciliation while repeal was ruled ineligible for Reconciliation. This is what happens when the left controls how the rules will be applied. In fact we see it is incredibly hard to undo anything when elements of government have been weaponized to oppose it. This is our current environment.

What is the plan to change that? I don't see one. If anything people graduating today are even more militantly left than the people who got us unto this position. And while not everyone graduating is a leftist those who aren't will build cars and write apps - they won't dedicate their lives to politics the way leftists will. Even if they wanted to the left discrimination would ensure they never come close to controlling enough institutions to create a competing voice.

Meanwhile everything that Trump staves off in his term will be undone by the next Dem via bureaucratic fiat or sue and settle corruption.; 8/4/20, 3:44 PM
readering said...: A few years ago HBO did a film of LBJ in 1964 played by Bryan Cranston. President Johnson on Civil Rights legislation held up pretty well after five decades. But not to this president in that HBO/Axios interview:

Trump: "I did more for the Black community than anybody with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln, whether you like it or not."
Swan: "You believe you did more than Lyndon Johnson, who passed the Civil Rights Act?"
Trump: "I think I did, yeah."
Swan: "Lyndon Johnson! He passed the Civil Rights Act."
Trump: "Ask, ask: how has it worked out? If you take a look at what Lyndon Johnson did. How has it worked out?"

I don't think he even knows what's contained in the Civil Rights Act. He was just graduating from military school, after all, on his way to Fordham. I won't be around for a movie portrayal of Trump as president in five decades, but I hope it can just portray him as ridiculous.; 8/4/20, 3:48 PM
Nichevo said...: Readering said...

Swan: "Lyndon Johnson! He passed the Civil Rights Act."
Trump: "Ask, ask: how has it worked out? If you take a look at what Lyndon Johnson did. How has it worked out?"

I don't think he even knows what's contained in the Civil Rights Act

PDT exceeds my expectations every time I hear his words unfiltered. This is SO true. Simply refer to the work of Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Ann Althouse said...

Decades ago, one used to encounter so many statements like that, presented as impressively intellectual. They're funny now. I'd say the challenge is:

1) to provide evidence that this is funny or otherwise wrong or objectionable. Why don't you diagram his words to illustrate the badthink?

2) to realize that it's not a matter of decades, you spend the majority of your time fellating leftist pieties to this day. When will you realize what a dumbass you were and are for giving Obama one iota of credibility?; 8/4/20, 6:01 PM