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| pix Credit here--Obatala Ceremony |
For the last several years, and with no particular purpose other than a desire to meander through reflection, I have taken the period between Christmas and New Years Eve to produce a s summary of the slice of the year to which I paid attention through epigrams and aphorisms. It follows an end of year tradition I started in 2016 (for those see here), 2017 (for these see here), 2018 (for those see here), 2019 (for those see here); 2020 (for those see here); 2022 (for those see here).
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| Pix Credit here |
And 2022 did not disappoint. It was a year when the firmer the pull toward rationality, toward authoritative structures, toward management and control the more exposed its irrationality and failures. Obatala speaks of the simultaneous apotheosis and rotting of the ideologies around which rational science is constructed, constrained, instrumentalist, and corrupted. Indeed if 2021 was the year in which what appeared to be new forms of collective management were undertaken (and the rage it was meant to contain), 2022 exposed its corruption--manipulation of social media in the US in the service of elections, abuse of discretion of the sort that exploded even the fig leaf of rule based containment; the corruption of religion by its ministers against its own devout communities. 2022 was the year that just as everything looked like it was going right, it went wrong. And it was a year of violence; of seeking to recreate a 19th century imperial state even as post global empires are forming. It was the year of doing and undoing.
And it is in that spirit, the spirit of 2022, that the epigrams and aphorisms that follow are offered. Each aphorism links to a essay written during the year. This first set focuses on history--from its etymological roots: too see; to know (to signify). It is in the context of seeing and knowing, and putting them together, that the highs and lows of 2022 begin to emerge.
Links to the 2022 Year End Ruminations here:
Part 2, War, huh, yeah; what is it Good For?
Part 3: Words, huh, yeah; what are they good for?
Part 4: "de Sade's Theater as Performed by the Inmates of the Global Asylum"
Part 5: Good intentions gone bad; bad intentions made farce
1. Borders are dangerous places; the places into which one crosses even more.
Challenges to the Application of the Chinese State Secrets Law Abroad as Sword or Shield--A First Cut in In Re Valsartan, Losartan, and Irbesartan Products Liability Litigation (US DC NJ). The issue, then, is one of fundamental incompatibility of approaches to the relationship between legal rules and their administration by functionaries. One does not speak here merely of the travails of blocking legislation in the context of the U.S. system of dispute resolution (that is old news and one which the U.S. system has already well internalized in its dispute resolution mechanisms as the Opinion nicely evidences). Rather the problem (for the Chinese authorities) is the construction of blocking legislation that meets it internal policy objectives (a principal role of the State Secrets Law to be sure) but that can be effectively translated into a workable system of protection compatible with the legal systems into which China directs its economic enterprises (or at least permits them space for engagement). That failure, under contemporary conditions, will likely reduce the effectiveness of the blocking potential of mechanisms like the State Secrets Law and serve instead (perhaps desired) political consequences.
2. A historical event is a blank slate; it is the quality of how it is depicted that varies wildly.
"习近平 "加强党史军史和光荣传统教育 确保官兵永远听党话、跟党走" [Xi Jinping, "Strengthen the education of party history, military history and glorious traditions to ensure that officers and soldiers always listen to the party and follow the party"] .The excerpts end where they start: a strong military is one whose members are tightly ideologically controlled--or better, managed. It is the role of the civilians to ensure that necessary socialization. But not just socialization, but the inculcation of the fundamental vales of Leninism that then opens the individuals from the lowest ranks up top the principles of Marxism developed by the Leninist leadership organs and expressed as its Basic Line. One does not just create a loyal military but a Marxist one as well. But then that is precisely what liberal democratic military establishments are considering as well (eg confederate monuments, gender stereotypes, etc.). . Yet the modalities of that inculcation present substantially different challenges--one that it is not clear that is especially important to senior military bureaucrats or their civilian supervisors at the current time."
3. An event acquires its character only on retelling; a great event acquires its historical character through repeated performances.
""Remember Remember the 5th of November": President Biden's Remarks During Ceremonies in Remembrance of the Events of 6 January 2021. Today, people will remember the events of 6 January 2021 when a group of persons briefly occupied the grounds of the Capitol Building of the United States, chasing away legislators and others and causing death and destruction. Its ramifications continue to be felt, and its signification constructed. (See, e.g., The January 6 attack on the U.S. Capital: One year later). In the process, the conspirators will be discovered, and the nation made right (and perhaps eventually whole) again. In the meantime it is possible to approach the anniversary of these events in a variety of ways. One would focus on the dangers and threats to the Republic that lurk not just abroad but very near its heart. One would worry about the fragility of the political order and the seen and unseen forces that may destroy that fragile enterprise. Another would instead focus on the strengths of the institutions of the Republic that could now repel such threatening forces successfully and punish those involved. One can celebrate the strengths of a Republic that can easily meet and repeal any threat to its integrity or viability. One approach mourns; one celebrates. One worries about weakness; the other continues see strength in overcoming threat. Mourning is certainly necessary; threats must always be sniffed out and suppressed; and appropriate proscription lists must be drawn and executed. However it is and will be celebrated/signified in the future, the first tentative steps toward its embedding in the ceremonial calendars of the Republic are already underway. "
4. Victories require their own history; yet every history invites a retelling from the shadows.
"Victory Requires its Own History: Chinese State Council White Paper: "Hong Kong: Democratic Progress Under the Framework of One Country, Two Systems." “一国两制”下香港的民主发展》白皮书. Victory requires its own narrative. And that narrative must in turn express a fidelity to the core values of the victor. History must be understood as the expression of that narrative and those values in time. Progressive history presumes that values and ideology move from a stage of birth and challenge to one of victory. Hong Kong now has its history. That history was conceived in the great transition from ancient empire to contemporary vanguard leadership as it was performed in China's colonial peripheries. It was born in the streets and nurtured in the victory of what for the central authorities were the inevitable movements of peoples and social forces under the guidance of the vanguard and through the actions of its patriotic front. It now comes into its own--reimagining its past, and building a shared official vision of its present that will sharpen the lens through which the future may be seen clearly and approached correctly."
5. Official histories are like fashionable clothing; both require periodic change; fashion houses and the writers of official history understand that if they are to remain authoritative they must lead the change rather than chronicle it.
Socialize the People to the New Era Official History and the Project of National Rejuvenation Under the Leadership of the Vanguard!: 深入领会新时代的历史性成就和历史性变革 [Deeply understand the historic achievements and historic changes of the new era. The "'Deeply Understand' essay, like many that will be written around it (and the "Resolution"), is focused on two audiences and thus speaks at two tonal levels. The first and simplest "tone" is the effort to popularize the sometimes more complex and subtle weaving of more than a century of theoretical-political development in ways that may be more easily conveyed to, taught, and absorbed by the masses. The more nuanced tone is directed toward Party cadres, especially at the lower and middle levels. That too, will produce additional teaching materials that will also be targeted to the different levels of the Party. Without the mechanics of communal meaning making, without the policing of a common lens through which the world can be seen and understood, the integrity of the masses and the leadership of its core may be weakened. There is a third audience that appears on the sidelines. That audience includes foreign friends (for whom these materials are meant to make the curation of history more accessible and better understood as part of the Chinese Marxist-Leninist project). But it also includes foreign competitors and opponents, for whom these materials are meant to develop a justification for and a legitimization of the the Chinese Marxist Leninist project in history, and, through history, to its authority in contemporary times.This projection is a critical element of the development of Chinese ideological internationalism."
6. History can get stale but it is never fully digested.
"Territorial-Political Reorganization" and the Current "Conversation" Around the Ukraine; The Contemporary Discursive Power of the September, 1939 Secret Supplementary Protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact. "Still, old discursive patterns retain some power, even if the conditions under which they produced effects have changed somewhat. Perhaps to better grasp the mentality it may help to go back to a different generation and a different set of arrangements about spheres of influence between imperial heartlands. . . They unveil the language of a view of the relations between great and lesser powers that appear to continue to have great authority. One seeks peaceful accommodation with peers; one arranges such accommodation through agreement requiring territorial-political reorganization of dependent spaces organized as states but subject to adjustment by imperial heartlands. One speaks of spheres of influence and of the recognition that while the globe is organized as states, many states must be understood as spaces through which imperial heartlands engage with each other. For Poland, the Baltic States, and Finland, the consequences were quite dramatic--some of which remain drawn on the maps of that region today. For the Ukraine, one might think it was 1939 all over again, discursively at least.But we do not know what is going on behind closed doors. International law provides a useful means of memorializing not merely the core premises of this worldview but also the terms of accommodation at every stage of global historical development in the modern era. And indeed, it ought to be remembered that it was this very territorial-political reorganization that was then affirmed by and became part of the"eternal" map of Europe after 1945. . . .or at least until 2014. All of this might be useful to consider in evaluating both the risks and likely arc of development of the current situation along the current borders of Ukraine; and perhaps beyond."
7. Humans are obsessed with the idea that a thing is not itself but something else.
The Semiotics of the Russia-China Bloc--Annotated Text of the "Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development" (4 February 2022). The danger with such approaches to analysis is that it may read into the statement (and thus reveal) what is of great importance to the analyst (and their analytical lens) rather than what is signified by the parties. In other words, analysis here may increase the risk that the signifier projections themselves into the document (and words) signified. The consequence is mi-communication in the sense that the significations expressed by those producing the statement does not match with the signification of those word by those who read (and analyze) it. The result is the production of lots and lots of meaning--but much to it (from both sides), largely incapable of doing more than projecting themselves into their reading of the other. That certainly is not a purely American failing. The Statement itself is a model of the failures of its writers to avoid projecting their own sometimes parochial or ideologically distorted lens to understanding the world around them (and the opportunity or threat that it represents)
8. Sometimes change reinforces continuity; and sometimes the protection of continuity requires change.
America First in the Trump-Biden Era: "Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States" (February 2022). The Trump-Biden Era continues to develop the America First project, though under President Biden in a less provocative and more inclusive way. The Biden portion of the Trump-Biden Era has taken the original insight, similar to that of the core of leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, that the era of global convergence is over, that it is nece4ssary to define and protect the imperial core and develop its peripheries, and that such development-protection strategies must be built around a rationalized markets driven, civil and political liberties model with the United States at its core. That effort is aided by the actions of other centers of imperial core-periphery frameworks built around China (more successfully) and in a more antique and 19th century way around Russia. Also ‘A sea change’: Biden reverses decades of Chinese trade policy.
9. Organizing the past is the necessary predicate to signifying the future.
The Refinement of Theories of Post-Global Empire: Thoughts on Jiang Shigong, Trade and Human Rights (Part 2): Sino-US Competition in the Context of World Empire ( 强世功｜贸易与人权 (下) ——世界帝国背景下的中美竞争 ) . "Jiang uses the lens of the state as the centering element of analysis. That sets the perspective for the opening paragraphs. But it also limits the possibilities of analysis. If one starts with the presumption of the state at the center--and of empire as an expression of the projection outward of state power. Then the only thing that remains is to determine (1) historical successions of state empires, that is connecting empire in history and (2) taxonomies of empire, that is the way empire manifests. . . But consider re-centering the analysis away from the state and to markets as the driving element of post 1945 empire. The logic of markets and states are not the same. Putting markets at the center does not change the importance of the American construct but does change its focus. . . Ironically, this is precisely what was understood, if only unconsciously by the Trump Administration, when in rejecting the imperium of production, it sough tin the American First project, to return to what China had already gotten a jump start on--the constitution of state centered post-global empire.
10. There is only the thinnest line between the historical, the oracular, and the prophetic.
The Stories One Tells Incarnated in Rituals of Blood Sacrifice: Alexander Dugin as Storyteller to Russia and China in the New Era. "To some extent, then, to understand the current situation in Russia and its Ukrainian meaning-lusts; to understand the appealing power of this meaning-lusting by certain elements in China, it is necessary to delve into the meaning-world, the relational meta-verse, that Alexander Dugan is spinning from past, to present to a necessary future. These are creation stories--of the weaving together of peoples from the distaff of history. These are the stories concocted from the weaving of the Norse Norns--Urd (that which must be--fate), Verdandi (that which is ), and Skuld (that which must be) --fashioned on the frame that is called Russia. Its power, now, is measured in the blood of its people and those it would absorb. Its triumph is counted in the distance and deference of others to the power of these centering and relational stories."
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