Moral hazard occurs whenever an agent makes a decision to assume more risk and the potential cost of that risk is outsourced to another agent. Moral hazards can vary. For example, consider various arguments about the agency dilemma, or bailouts, or insurance. Moral hazards are a type of epistemological hazard insofar as moral hazards are… Continue Reading Three types of epistemological hazard
Notes on Althusser’s Machiavelli (1)
At the end of the first chapter of Machiavelli and Us (“Theory and Political Practice”), Althusser gives his take on a classic question that structures much Machiavelli scholarship: “whom, then, does this work serve?” (29) Answers to this question are legion, ranging from “the devil” (as the early “anti-Machiavels” were wont to accuse) to the… Continue Reading Notes on Althusser’s Machiavelli (1)
Forensic reason
Ordinarily, we aren’t very clear about what we’re talking about when we talk about reason. Hence, rationality in particular gets invoked in largely economic terms (e.g., to behave rationally is to maximize economic self-interest). Hence, reasonability gets used interchangeably with plausibility, albeit with slightly more normative force than the latter term. Hence, reasonableness gets praised… Continue Reading Forensic reason
Depression and time
Time has a profound enemy, and that enemy is depression. Depression is the enemy of time because it exhausts time. It expends your time without remainder. Depression results in the deletion, or the depletion, of time as a finite, lived quantity through which the richness of the world takes shape. Unlike consuming or wasting time,… Continue Reading Depression and time
Long live the new flesh: reflections on Videodrome (1983)
According to David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983), we live in the midst of an occult or psychic war – “the battle for the mind of North America.” Underlying the epiphenomenal worlds of economy and sexuality, there are actually two philosophies in conflict, each vying for control of the future. Call the first Videodrome; call the second… Continue Reading Long live the new flesh: reflections on Videodrome (1983)
Rereading Lord of the Flies
Rereading William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, I couldn’t help but notice the degree to which the received interpretation of the novel has relatively little to do with the substance of the novel itself. The received interpretation emphasizes the inevitability of social breakdown that supposedly attends the withdrawal of authority or constraint. Without the “men… Continue Reading Rereading Lord of the Flies
The pulp critical
The pulp critical is a minor analytic mode in which genre tokens are interpreted as arguments or ontological operations in their own right. Hence, it’s important to refuse the conventional terms of any standardized hermeneutics. The emphasis on “pulp” echoes the use of the term in literary history, where it refers primarily to popular fiction… Continue Reading The pulp critical
Analytic notes on Roberto Esposito (Esposito 1)
There are three major substantive claims in Esposito, and they’re reciprocally intertwined. They concern his core terms – communitas, immunitas, and the munus. It may seem like I’m going backward here. However, although Esposito begins Communitas by discussing the munus, the trajectory I trace follows a necessary logic of emergence and justification. Claim 1 (communitas):… Continue Reading Analytic notes on Roberto Esposito (Esposito 1)
Consider the Retronomicon
Retronomicon [/ˌɹɛkɹəˈnɑmɪkən/]. Noun. 1. Any nonexistent media artifact that serves as the imagined or imputed retroactive source for a field of meaning or sense (e.g., a genre, a mode of aesthetic production, or a school of thought). 2. Hyperstition. A network site of increased hyperstitional activity or productivity that operates more effectively by not existing.… Continue Reading Consider the Retronomicon
Notes on digital personae (1)
We need to get over the fantasy that the complex, temporally distended symbolic performances we call “online identities” really have anything much to do with personal identity at all. A digital persona is structurally analogous to the commodity form insofar as both are fungible media of transaction. Engaging in communication or symbolic action online involves… Continue Reading Notes on digital personae (1)