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The Unmarked Font of Metaphysics and Truth: Helvetica
K-vond has an interesting analysis of the font Helvetica, following his viewing of the eponymously titled film, arguing that the metaphysics of the “Marked” and “Un-marked” (Helvetica belonging to the latter) operates at the basis of today’s contemporary ideologico-political fantasy of neutrality.
While I agree that to some extent with this view, especially as it’s found in the film Helvetica, I don’t think we should be so quick to throw (modernist) minimalism away. I think that it has a certain power to strip away baroque, Imaginary “meaning” and to reveal beneath it the pure mathematical formalism underlying design: to this extent, I think there is a certain radical aspect of minimalism, what we might call “militant minimalism” (as opposed to today’s self-contradictory ideology of what I would call “romantic minimalism,” as exemplified by the trite works of Malcolm Gladwell).
As a broader point, I think typography is just as worthy a domain of ideology critique as art and architecture, perhaps much closer to the latter insofar as we spontaneously interact with it, yet nevertheless operates at various levels: political, aesthetic, social, economic, etc. In so far as it materializes at the aesthetic level our unconscious, ideologico-political fantasies, typographic critique can function as an important element in the overall critique of ideology.
And as a side note, I just wanted to compliment the Lenin’s Tomb’s header image.
Against Self-Organization
Steven Shaviro just posted a very cool critique of the “mythology” of self-organization and draws a number of surprising connections between the popular “Gaia Hypothesis,” Friedrich Hayek, and even Brian Eno. As a general remark, I think there is definitely a case to be made about the intimate link between structure, aesthetics, philosophy, and political organization, and this post does a great job of tying all of these topics together in a coherent manner. I’d also like to note that one intriguing alternative to the Leninist Vanguard Party model (itself the opposite of spontaneous self-organization) is Kojin Karatani’s semi-lattice structure.
Fascism: 1975 and 1993
According to Dead Horse, the definition of “fascism” has made an odd shift between 1975 and 1993, with some interesting parallels to the recent bail-out. Here are the two American Heritage definitions:
From 1975: “A philosophy or system of government that advocates or exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with an ideology of belligerent nationalism.”
From 1993: “A system of government marked by a totalitarian dictator, socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition, and usually a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.”
Dead Horse writes:
Notice what’s missing in the 1993 definition? “[M]erging of state and business leadership…” And that fascism is an extreme right phenomenon. By removing “extreme right” from the definition clowns like Goldberg were free to write “Liberal Fascism”, a most moronic combination of two antithetical terms.
An addition to the 1993 definition is “socioeconomic controls”. What form of government doesn’t have socioeconomic controls? Sweden has socioeconomic controls. Someone who didn’t know anything about fascism could grab onto “socioeconomic controls” and presume that fascism was against free markets, you know, like liberals.
Of course, fascism is against free markets. But then most people who proclaim that they are for free markets are against free markets. The question is never about the existence of socioeconomic controls. It’s about what kind of controls and who benefits. The same class of people who benefited from fascism in Germany and Italy are the same kind of people who benefit from the execution of Paulson’s plea.
It’s the merging of state and business leadership that is becoming official with this proposed bailout.
(Via A Tiny Revolution.)
Conditions of Receptivity
Dr. Sinthome:
At what point do certain statements, certain declarations, certain assertions, take on the capacity to resonate and produce effects in a receiver? What are the conditions for the possibility of being heard? … I became capable of receiving a message where before I was not. But how and under what conditions? Likewise, under what conditions do certain political positions and declarations begin to resonate within the social field? This question is at the very heart of social change and is not secondary or ancillary to questions of critique. For without adequately answering these questions, adequate strategies of producing change cannot be formulated. However, a glance at the history of political transformations also seems to indicate that while these shifts are cultural in character, they also seem to involve material transformations that problematize the cultural sphere, calling for new institutions, new group formations, new ways of feeling, new subjectivities, and new ways of living.