2 October 2009: "Will a crocheted penis take my male brand to the next level? #cock_crafts #crocheting"

This post is about phallologocentrism. Carles' concern about the patriarcal order always reverts to the dilemma presented by the supposed aggressive evolutionary quest for mates in the male: "Feel bad for women in 2day’s society since a lot of men just see them as ‘fuck dolls’ without realizing it. Sad that men just think with their peters and hurt women and hurt themselves." But is this biological imperative in fact a phenomenological apparition, a product of the perception of an epiphenomenon in the wake of promiscuous expression?

To rephrase in the terms Carles chooses to explore this thorny question, is it inherently patriarchal to write of the penis in the context of craft, traditionally the preserved domain, the liminal space in which femininity blossomed free from predation by masculinist lawgivers? Domestic crafts such as crochet flourished in the gendered space set off by the sexual segregation predominant in Western bourgeois society. The yarn phallus is at once a parodic taunt at the patriarchal order and a manifestation of its hegemonic grip. As Luce Irigaray wrote in Ce Sexe qui n'en est pas un, "It is only through the pleasure of the 'body' -- of the Other? -- that [perpetrators of the phallic economy] might articulate something. But men would understand nothing about it, because what they enjoy is the enjoyment of the organ: the phallic obstacle." The crochet penis, as Carles has adroitly observed is the material sign of that obstacle and its trace. "It’s always a good sign when u wonder if something could make ur life better," he remarks about the phallus, cleverly punning on the word "sign." And the wonder at the sign's usefulness, whether it effaces the body or lifts it to the level of meaning within a phallologocentric libidinal economy, whether the yarn phallus itself inscribes us into language objectively and subjectively, is a "good sign" indeed. But the question is a pregmant one: is our entrace into subjectivity via the phallus an "improvement" over the prelingual state conceptualized by Kristeva and lauded in The Newly Born Woman (La jeune née) by Cixous and Clément in these terms: "We know this perfectly well: it happens that women talk, that they step out of their function as sign...woman is in a primitive state; she is the incarnation of origin."

Carles is certainly thinking of these words when he proposes an inverse penis envy, in which one yearns not for the world-ordering phallus to anchor meaning in a biased language but the artificial phallus that can unfix meaning and free it to circulate, enabling the return of lalangue and pure expression -- the abject, the onanistic, the polymorphously perverse and the joyous scatology of the prenatal: "It’s chill to have a ‘real penis’, since u can do stuff with it like urinate or ‘tug off’, but sometimes I feel like there would be less pressure on men if they had some sort of yarn-based art+craft generated penis." Out from under the onus of the phallus, men would rediscover the body as it exists outside the domain of inscription/proscription. "I think life might be better if we could have some sort of ‘replica peens’/sexual organs." This would usher in the possibility of the conception of an egalitarian order beyond the Law, since "Most men just see penis size as a social status symbol."

After pointing out the metaphoric cancer that the genital sign system imparts to human society, Carles concludes by drawing together the stray threads of his argument, linking phallologocentrism with consumerism and the post-ironic pursuit of signifiers that retain their power to denote the self in the shadow of the Other: "Much like ‘unEarthing a buzzband’, early detection is critical." But we can only find a mirror in our critical scrutiny, and a return to the primordial substance, the earth. And the Earth mother?

7 October 2009: "Horrorcore is bad for society/humanity. Horrorcore must die."

This post is about the powers of horror. Carles contrasts two musical subcultures to investigate two possible escape routes available to disaffected or disenfranchised groups who either will not or can not abide conventional mores and the expectations of citizens in a consumer society. One might suspect that those who reject mainstream identities will have done so to avoid being implicated in its social class structure, but Carles demonstrates that the attempted mode of escape from the mainstream is perhaps more decisively indicative of class aspirations.

On the one hand there is the indie culture that Carles frequently documents (and subjects to critical scrutiny), which here he chooses to laud as a "healthy form of expression, celebrating ideas and themes the right way." The "right way" is a loaded term, redolent with hints of entitlement and class privilege, a point that becomes abundantly clear when indie is contrasted with horrorcore, which Carles veritably describes as anti-indie music. Horrorcore, Carles notes, is one of those "musical genres" which "are bad for society/inspire terrible people to perform terrible things". That is, it maintains coherent identity by setting itself in opposition to society, helping that society clarify its own values and strengthen their general appeal at the expense of the volunteer outcasts. This makes the would-be rebels dupes, useful idiots for the mainstream, which is why Carles confidently declares that "only ‘very stupid people’ would listen to [horrorcore]".

So indie music is in fact a distillation of mainstream values that allows people to internalize its codes of success without feeling coerced, or as though they have sold out and conformed. Horrorcore, though, is a moronic rebellion that props up those values while denying the success they offer to those propping them up. Horrorcore adherents become sacrificial lambs, which helps explain their lyrical preoccupations with gratuitous murder. This is the obverse of their own freely offered self-sacrifice, removing themselves from society so that it can function better in oppressing people like themselves.

The horrorcore fans both serve as the abject, as theorized by Julia Kristeva, for society and confront the abject at a more fundamental level in their practices. Carles notes that their "cries for understanding/empathy are ‘completely retarded.’ Probably ’subhuman’ cries for attention, since they are not yearning to be in touch with humanity." They grapple with the liminal to shore up the definition of humanity and in the process surrender their own. As Kristeva writes, "the more or less beautiful image in which I behold or recognize myself rests upon an abjection that sunders it as soon as repression, the constant watchman, is relaxed." Horrorcore activates that repression for the rest of us, inspiring a repulsion we direct against the abject residue within our own psyche. Note the vehemence of Carles repudiation: "These horrorcore songs really make me ‘feel ill’, I think.... I even find the Dirty Projectors to be insanely more listenable than Horrorcore."

The cartoonish Kabuki corruption and evil of horrorcore -- so amply illustrated by the Juggalos that Carles carefully documents -- functions as a distraction, a mask for the inherent corruption embedded in capitalism and embraced as bourgeois values by the respectable classes. Horrorcore is Celine for the 21st century.

4 October 2009: "Is ‘bullying’ natural selection?"

This post is about Martin Heidegger. Unusually earnest, Carles declares that "in this blog post, Carles will controversially suggest that bullying is natural selection," but longtime readers of his should immediately comprehend in his third-person self-reference his favorite distanciation strategy -- of all the characters rhetorically adopted in his philosophical investigations, none is more of a fictional device than "Carles." His intention here is to show how an otherwise sensible thinker might be drawn into endorsing a baldly fascistic ideological position championing violence as a means for purging society of weakness and striating society into castes.

Purporting to draw inferences from nature, "Carles" proclaims that since "animals in the wild are ‘bullies,’" it is a matter of adherence to natural law to "find a way to intimidate the weak, kill them off early and eat them 2 stay alive." Species survival is thereby conflated with sadistic cannibalism, but Carles does not suggest anything so radical, though it would be the logical end of the assumptions he is testing. Instead he offers a strategy similar to that which guided the interment of the Jews in 1930s Germany: "It seems like we might need to keep the bullied alive so that they can perform ‘menial jobs’." But unlike the Nazis, who pursued a program of racial extermination under the auspices of species "purification," Carles maintains a more utilitarian line, picturing a Brave New World style system where different castes are prepared for different unpleasant but necessary fields of social work. "They learn how to ‘take shit’ so that they can prepare for being at the bottom of society when they are older/are trapped in their lives’." The view Carles espouses here is in some ways worse than the Nazis' murderous program in that it presents violence as serving somehow for the victim's own good. Though he is not afraid of adopting Nazi propaganda techniques, demonizing those singled out for abuse with loaded epithets that are somehow proved by the unwarranted attacks directed at them: "It seems like it is reasonable to conclude that all of these kids are ‘fucking pussies’ or possibly ‘fucking fggts."

But despite the obvious Nazi overtones, Carles demonstrates that peer violence flows not from a wellspring of inner fascism so much as it comes from anti-egalitarianism, a tribalistic fear of cosmopolitanism: "If every1 had money/the same colour skin, the world would not be a better place–there would be way 2 many issues 2 deal with."
In other words, the same fears of urbanism and modernism that led Heidegger to Nazism threaten to make anyone who thinks seriously about identity issues in contemporary capitalist societies, with their mandated but inequitably distributed division of labor, become a bit of a fascist, endorsing violence as expedient and usual as the ultimate form of branding. "Seems like sometimes u need to ’step on other people’ to make sure ur brand is strong + authentic." This helps explain the enduring appeal of the swastika as insignia, carrying with it the inherent power relationships embedded in branding within a stratified society. It also presents bullying as convenient: "Is it really cost/time effective to ‘worry about EVERY1’s feelings’?" Bullying works to streamline our emotional economy.

Carles then sees the argument through to its ultimate conclusion, bullying should be branded, since it is a profitable and necessary social service proffered by private firms: "I feel like my internet website might be some sort of bully. Perhaps a ‘cyber bully.’ Maybe I should ‘trademark’ that term since the internet is about to get really popular so that I can ‘make mad money’ in case it becomes a catchy buzzword." What Carles is concerned with is the ease with which he can make plausible arguments in favor of fascism and its modern consumer-capitalist equivalents. He sense defects in his own philosophical practice that greases the propagandistic sleds. He asks a serious of questions at the end of the post, but these only intimate the question he doesn't ask but which is everywhere posed, as it were, in the shadows of his discourse: Can he continue to speak? Can he ever speak in his own voice? Or is it too dangerous?

27 September 2009: "My little brother is turning alt. Should I stage an intervention?"

This post is about the tutelary complex. In The Policing of Families, French sociologist Jacques Donzelot uses the term tutelary complex to describe the strata of social workers that have emerged in 20th century states to facilitate the socialization of working-class children along mandated lines determined politically. The system effected "a redistribution of the market in maladjustment," Donzelot notes.

Carles, in his expression of concern for teenagers in this missive, illustrates not only how the composition of the minions of the tutelary complex has shifted -- to well-meaning members from within the family and members of peer group ("the Ranoff community"), prone to a more naked use of coercison ("Should I ‘beat the shit’ out of my brother/sister 4 being an ‘inauthentic piece of shit’?") -- but also how the stakes have changed: What is feared now is that youth will empty the meaning from the poses adopted by their elders, draining the earlier generations of their sense of self while in the process of finding their own. Maladjustment is now a matter of staking a positionality in regard to the current matrix of trends imposed by the consumer-goods industry. Identity (i.e. "authenticity") becomes a zero-sum game. "Are old ppl ‘naturally alt’?" Carles worries, or do they merely become strange, estranged, losers in that struggle, doomed to alienation? Are they inauthenticated by the aggressive moves onto the territory they have staked out by up-and-coming "alts"?

A deeper problem is the ways in which the tutelary complex is no longer preoccupied with forestalling delinquincy but instead focuses its interventions on guiding the development of a marketing-oriented subjectivity, a self-as-brand. Carles, imagining himself as such a social worker, complains, "I feel like I could help him become an authentic alt, but I don’t know if there is a ‘roadmap’ towards altdom that he could follow." He reveals how the consciences of those intervening are reconciled: "I guess I should just be happy that they are searching 4 meaning, attempting 2 be alt… attempting to express themselves… I guess ‘alt blood’ sorta runs in the family." Family bonds justify an intrusive prescription of identity, ironically in the name of enabling creativity and self-expression. But self-expression is the mere alibi for conformity to a more entrenched set of mores.

29 September 2009: "RAVE OR DIE: 2K9 Edition"

This post is about ecstasy. Carles is concerned about the politics of ecstasy, the class divisions that regulate it and perhaps provide the conditions for its spontaneous irruption. In particular, Carles, in his ethnographer modality, analyzes the popular youth gatherings known as raves to tease out and define the field of ecstasy, its contemporary social milieu, and draw some anthropological analogues that can perhaps guide his readers toward disruptive strategies to upset the parameters that close off large segments of excluded, demonized populations (the Agambenian exceptions?) from the possibility of pleasure in the unrestricted sense. "sometimes it is good to experience ‘lower class’ events," Carles jests drily.

As Carles frames his investigation: "Who are these ppl/teens/Mexicalts in Southern California who attend raves? What do they want out of life? What personal brand are these ‘ravers’ attempting to implement?" Is their pleasure contingent on their assumption of marketing prerogatives inculcated by their culture, or is their adoption of infantilizing tropes ("It seems like ppl are trying to ‘return to their childhoodz’ by utilizing images+products from youth [via bracelets, necklaces, other trinkets, and even backpacks]") an effort to reclaim lalangue, the primitive prelingual expressions of a pleasure unco-opted by sociocultural aims and other hegemonic appropriations?

Ecstasy, in rave circles, refers to the psychoactive drug MDMA, but Carles also deploys it in a metaphoric sense, as any deliberate instrumental means for inducing states of euphoria on command and also as the potential for jouissance. It allows the forbidden to remain protected even while it is performed: Carles ascribes this thought to a inebriated youth: "Got rlly ‘fucked up’ on E and gave DJ 420 a ‘beej.’ Regret it kinda." That "kinda" performs a great deal of semiological work -- regret is help in suspension as the forbidden, possibly homosexual pleasure is remembered, enjoyed and relished. Carles adds, "But srsly… have u ever fucked while on ecstasy? (they say u can never have an orgasm without it 4 the rest of ur life)" -- the concern here is the ideological conditioning that makes for pleasure, that enables it. Without certain constructs, crutches or props, pleasure itself becomes impossible -- there can be no release, orgasmic or otherwise. Carles means to warn us: Once you accept the pleasure that capitalist society offers, your capacity for pleasure is permanently altered by it. "I feel happy knowing that society is getting better and every1 is able to celebrate and be free," Carles notes sardonically, as it is precisely unfreedom that enables celebratory ardor.

In response to a photograph of two youths who appear to have ingested the drug, Carles notes, "I think that it means some1 is ‘mad fucked up’ when their pupils are dilated" -- a deceptively dialogic statement, as fucked up refers both to the state of intoxication and to the ideological conditions that transform intoxication into a phenomenon to be pejoratively dismissed with a ribald reference to coitus.

12 September 2009: "Authentic Alt Worth Blogging About."

This post is about legitimation crisis. Crisis, of course, in the social-scientific sense, as a normative concept implying an inherent destablilizing force in the structure of ordered concepts themselves. The definition of "authentic", of "alt", the oppositions used to secure their meanings as the gale-force winds of dialectical change gust through the superstructure. Social integration is the chip on the table as the roulette wheel of semiotics spins. As Carles declares, "as internet-centric humans, we are in a neverending search for ‘the best way 2 express ourselves’ via the internet." The quest is never-ending because the socially ratified meanings are always in the process of simplifying themselves, encrusting meanings around a kernel concept that becomes loaded with ambiguous and contradictory implications. The introduction of social networking capacity through mass reciprocal electronic communications has only accelerated this process of continual change. In the process, Einlösbarkeit is forfeited.

In such conditions, individual identity is provisional and the desire to end that provisionality perpetual: Some, Carles, notes, will search for an escape through a return to the sensual, to the body:

Just want 2 put on my most authentic outfits
show the world who I am
free spirited, open 2 new ideas and life experiences
and get my dance on

In the freedom of movement and the rituals of vanity is an abortive effort at self-legitimation, though the paradox is that the mirror can never recognize you. All efforts at vanity imply the Other who threatens always with psychic annihilation.

Alternatively, one can fall back on the traditional mode of legitimation in capitalist society: money: "Do u plan on making ‘tons of ad revenue’ via Google Adsense Ads?" Carles asks, neatly knitting the pervasiveness of marketing, the machinations of the world's largest corporation, and the aspirations of millions of atomized individuals lost in anomie. Under capitalism, authenticity is ultimately married to the cash nexus.

10 September 2009: "Does my life ‘make more sense’ now that PitchforkMedia.coms have reviewed the Beatles?"

This post is about convertible securities. Contemplating the purpose of rating the reissues of the long-playing albums by the pop-music group the Beatles, Carles notes that these ratings create a vertiginous comparability among otherwise unlike items from different cultural periods. The numeric rating for the records as imposed by the self-appointed critics (a will to power Carles impishly mocks: "My mind is free / I am a music critic / I honestly believe that my ‘taste in music’ is a direct reflection of the ‘best music’ in the world") renders a false exchangability akin to the way money functions in the world of commodities. The ratings, in a sense, begin to function as currency, as prices, and the value of a rating point, like currencies, float between publications and time periods. A "9" in Pitchfork in 2007 is quite different from a "9" in Spin or even a "9" in 2009. The problem is that points are inconvertible; ratings are not liquid. The records do not circulate to make the value of the ratings realizable. Carles notes that this means a kind of Bretton Woods for ratings systems is required:

it is our duty as ‘die hard music fans’
who are the most ‘culturally connected’ ppl in the world
to find out which albums are better than others
and create a forum for like-minded people to rally around them

Such an international governing body might in theory establish rates of conversion for the various aesthetic quantification modes.

But until then, we are in the dark, blindly wandering in search of comprehensible standards. The ratings have putative value but are in effect and in practice worthless. Carles is caustically sarcastic about this state of affairs: "My perception of the world finally makes sense. Like I finally ‘get’ music history since I can compare the Beatles to modern indie hits." In fact the attempt to compare these objets d'art in terms of inscrutable numbers makes the task of criticism Sisyphian.

As Marx writes of money in Capital, "the possibility of a quantitative incongruity between price and magnitude of value ... is inherent in the price-form itself." This creates an ambiguity where the number was a critic's attempt to fix a value. Carles draws the inevitable conclusion about how the attempt to complete the item being rated with its rating only makes the item more uncertain: "Just searching 4 perfection. Not all albums were created equally." The false equivalence implied by ratings prevents any thorough understanding of a given work's value. It merely adds another symbolic layer to decode, another occasion for méconnaissance.