I have, finally, managed to get a decent draft complete. I’m actually really quite happy with this draft. It reads well and I think that it raises some genuine questions. I need to be a little self-critical, though, as it should not have taken me so long to have written. While my writing schedule is very regular (I write everyday), the amount that I actually manage to get out is pretty low. So that’s something to focus on improving.
It’s worth noting that the sort of procrastination I indulge in, touched on last week, is often an avoidance of ‘hard’ work; I’ll do a little bit of work then hit a small snag and say to myself: “Well, I’ve done more than nothing. There’s no shame in taking a break”. This was effective when I was building an initial habit, but it’s starting to get in the way now. I’ve run into this sort of problem before — most notably when I was teaching myself to program as a teenager. Then, as now, I needed to reassess what my goals are, so that I can make sure that I’m not just circling the same sorts of problem. This probably sounds very self-helpy and annoying, but it is unfortunately helpful to think about it so explicitly.
Anyway, I would like to post the essay here. I am proud of it and I am embarrassed by most of what I’ve put online. Making it public might go some of the way towards reducing my embarrassment… The essay touches on some points that I will likely cover in my thesis, though, so I want to make sure that I’m not creating potential future problems for myself with plagiarism, etc.
As for reading, I’m taking another look at pragmatism. I’ve been working through some more John Dewey this week. If you think that there’s a gap between his work and what I’ve been reading over the past month or so (emotions, incommensurability), you would be wrong… His work, in ethics and politics, was really centrally concerned with questions of human nature (psychology and emotions included!) and its relationship to social organisation. That’s probably underplaying it a little, he sees humans as constitutively social beings and this has obvious consequences for how our individual experiences play out. And, of course, the pragmatist tradition was centrally involved in early questions about emotion and its study, mainly through William James’s work.
For leisure, still reading Marx, but I’ve also started to try and work through Edmund White’s work (RIP). His prose is incredible. He was also a brilliant painter of a social period and milieu that has changed dramatically over the past few decades. At some point I will need to figure out how to organise and balance these reading projects. My habits always end up looking a little baggy.
A few interesting articles from the web this week. I’ve decided to start putting them here, rather than just down below (though I really ought to redesign this website a little).
First, Tareq Baconi’s piece in this week’s London Review of Books. Here’s an excerpt:
Israel’s efforts since 2007 to use the civilian population to put pressure on Hamas have consistently failed. The Israeli security establishment understands this: it’s the reason it negotiated with Hamas in the years leading up to 7 October. And Hamas knows that were it to fulfil Israel’s demands that it disarm and leave Gaza, the genocide would probably continue: within days of the PLO’s capitulation and exit from Lebanon in 1982, more than a thousand of the Palestinian refugees left behind were slaughtered in the camps of Sabra and Shatila. Hamas is in many ways a red herring. In carrying out the genocide and annexing the West Bank – on 11 May, the government announced that all land in Area C, which makes up 60 per cent of the territory, will now be subject to Israeli land registration processes, essentially revoking Palestinian ownership – Israel’s goal is to complete the unfinished business of the Nakba.
And secondly, an article from VAN Magazine about a sitar player and composer Jasdeep Singh Degun by Joseph Asquith:
“Indian classical music is a complex improvised tradition based on raag and taal, which is melody and rhythm. There isn’t the harmonic development of Western classical music,” Degun said. His approach to writing is rooted in counterpoint: notes from a raag were identified and harmonized, ensuring the elaborate melodic framework of the raag was supported by a harmonic consonance in the orchestra. “I’ll compose the melodic line based on the raag and then use that as my cantus firmus,” he said.” I only use the notes of raag and the pathway of raag for each individual line and therefore build harmonic content that is palatable to a Western listener.”