“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Friday, August 26, 2016

Althusser Defines Stochastic Terrorism

And the word he uses is much more elegant than the phrase "stochastic terrorism." It's

INTERPELLATION

This is a chance for us humanities scholars to help people by disseminating this. Come on!

1 comment:

John T. Maher said...

One wonders what is the stochastic descent rate for stochastic terrorism. Probably the NSA has an algorithm for this.

Question time: How is this different from any remote use of agency to awaken an encoded but somewhat randomized call? If Facebook or Google inserts a subliminal message or skews upward the search result outcomes for the words "Hillary" and "vote" in Ohio and Florida this result in a variance in electoral vote outcome, is this not stochastic terrorism of a structural nature? So are the great unwashed all dulled-consciousness zombies waiting to be awakened (such as in the case of the Hitler era slogans deutschland erwacht!) to be drone perpetrators of violence? If so, is this really different from the Hive-Hydra thingy posted on other cool blogs recently? Doesn't almost everyone who does not think deeply have that capacity especially if it involves a popstmodern violent act such as an automobile? Can the theraputic state prevent this with mass doses of corporate tranquilizers and mood equilibrium drugs? IS the cry to rise and storm the centers of power wrong?

One can not disagree with the "stir the pot" post in ST but it is somewhat anecdotal and common sense slice of life and veers from Althusser or even A through Derrida on violence and responsibility. I prefer the remark of Reggie Jackson, the former Oakland/NY Yankee star in baseball (I mean cricket) who described his catalytic role as the "straw that stirs the drink".