Michael Yates
Michael Yates
>
> Why do you imagine a world of "emotional barrenness" when you hear someone
> say that communism might make possible "the beginning of pleasant surprises
> & lasting friendships"? When I wrote the phrase, I was thinking of my
> favorite writer Oscar Wilde's "new Hellenism" in his essay "The Soul of Man
> under Socialism" in particular, and more generally Marx's remark in the
> Communist Manifesto: "an association, in which the free development of each
> is the condition for the free development of all." I also like Foucault's
> suggestions concerning friendship, since I agree with him that the modern
> notion of "sexuality" as the "truth of the self" is a problem:
>
> ***** Another thing to distrust is the tendency to relate the question of
> homosexuality to the problem of "Who am I?" and "What is the secret of my
> desire?" Perhaps it would be better to ask oneself, "What relations,
> through homosexuality, can be established, invented, multiplied and
> modulated?" The problem is not to discover in oneself the truth of sex but
> rather to use sexuality henceforth to arrive at a multiplicity of
> relationships. And no doubt that's the real reason why homosexuality is
> not a form of desire but something desirable. Therefore we have to work at
> becoming homosexuals and not be obstinate in recognizing that we are. The
> development towards which the problem of homosexuality tends is the one of
> friendship....
>
> They [homosexuals] face each other without terms or convenient words, with
> nothing to assure them about the meaning of the movement that carries them
> towards each other. They have to invent, from A to Z, a relationship that
> is still formless, which is friendship: that is to say, the sum of
> everything through which they can give each other pleasure....[The image of
> homosexuality that people have today] annuls everything that can be
> uncomfortable in affection, tenderness, friendship, fidelity, camaraderie
> and companionship, things which our rather sanitized society can't allow a
> place for without fearing the formation of new alliances and the tying
> together of unforeseen lines of force. I think that's what makes
> homosexuality "disturbing": the homosexual mode of life much more than the
> sexual act itself. To imagine a sexual act that doesn't conform to law or
> nature is not what disturbs people. But that individuals are beginning to
> love one another -- there's the problem. "Friendship as a Way of Life,"
> _Foucault Live_ *****
>
> Now, Foucault may be "mistaken" or "utopian" in the above, if his remarks
> are applied to the way gay men or lesbians relate to one another at
> present, since they are not, nor can they afford to be, free from "sexual
> identities" (or "sexuality" as the truth of the self). However, Foucault's
> suggestions -- friendship as creative work & a way of life -- are worth
> taking very seriously once we become free from capitalism, and in a society
> free from gender oppression, his suggestions do not have to be confined to
> "homosexuals."
>
> It's possible that you think of the ideas of Wilde, Marx, Foucault, etc. as
> "emotionally barren." None of them thought, however, that working on
> friendship as a way of life in a society where you are free to enjoy
> pleasant surprises (since you are much less dominated by unpleasant
> surprises when you are free from unemployment, lack of health care, etc.)
> is "dull." So, your disagreement is not with me, but with Wilde, Marx,
> Foucault.
>
> I wonder, however, where your interpretation of communism as a world of
> "emotional barrenness" comes from. Perhaps your inspiration is Aldous
> Huxley's _Brave New World_:
>
> ***** A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main
> entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and,
> in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY....
>
> ...Their wanderings through the crimson twilight had brought them to the
> neighborhood of Metre 170 on Rack 9. From this point onwards Rack 9 was
> enclosed and the bottle performed the remainder of their journey in a kind
> of tunnel, interrupted here and there by openings two or three metres wide.
>
> "Heat conditioning," said Mr. Foster.
>
> Hot tunnels alternated with cool tunnels. Coolness was wedded to discomfort
> in the form of hard X-rays. By the time they were decanted the embryos had
> a horror of cold. They were predestined to emigrate to the tropics, to be
> miner and acetate silk spinners and steel workers. Later on their minds
> would be made to endorse the judgment of their bodies. "We condition them
> to thrive on heat," concluded Mr. Foster. "Our colleagues upstairs will
> teach them to love it."
>
> "And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret of
> happiness and virtue-liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at
> that: making people like their unescapable social destiny."...
> <http://www.ddc.net/ygg/etext/brave.htm> *****
>
> Perhaps in your view, (1) "the beginning of pleasant surprises & lasting
> friendships" = (2) "mindnumbing happiness forcibly made 'free' from fear,
> jealousy, anger, sorrow, etc." = (3) the Brave New World. I don't think
> that the first equals the second and the third, nor do I think that
> "happiness" (work of art) is dull or mindnumbing.
>
> Yoshie