Techne Writing - Persuasive Craft

Normally a dude so tied to leaders in the US, Israel, the gulf states and other big time capitalists wouldn’t befriend Noam Chomsky — an intellectual critical of ideology & American foreign policy, and a leader in leftist thought. So why’d Epstein try to be buds with Chomsky?

It’s pretty common knowledge now that donors and interest groups determine the policy directions and actions of both Democrats and Republicans in the United States — but this Epstein stuff is revealing just how removed elected officials are from serving those who voted them in. It’s also showing us the paradox of Western democracies: political candidates are anxious anxious about their public image (popularity contest) but are also super down to be influenced by ppl who give them 💵 The perfect conditions for a manipulator like Epstein.

This one’s for Dr. Thomas Loebel at York University, with whom Maybelle studied literary & cultural theory many moons ago. 👨🏼‍🏫 Dr. Loebel was a real one who understood the price of knowledge. His first words in class were: “Welcome to graduate school. You are all masochists.” 💔And the question of why suffering is pleasure has haunted Maybelle ever since.

It’s common ground that grad school has always been suffering… but why do we still do it, beyond wanting respect, beyond delaying adulthood? 🧸Is white liberalism (woke culture), common in academia, really just about finding pleasure in our own renunciation? Why is living like a medieval monk–poor, isolated–its own enjoyment? And what does grad school say about the way we understand pleasure and institution today? 📚🏟️

Readings:
Slavoj Žižek, Debate with Jordan Peterson
Gilles Deleuze, Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty
G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit

Maybelle asks what Slavoj Žižek (anti-capitalist philosopher) ⚡️ might say about Andy’s cerulean sweater in Devil Wears Prada 👠 Comparing fashion to “stuff” (and in a sense, garbage) reveals how ideology and belief systems shape our lives. 🚮 It’s this mix of high critique with low culture that exposes the workings of ideology🪞

Andy thinks she’s resisting the system by wearing a lumpy blue sweater that isn’t high fashion (and that she seems to genuinely enjoy), but Miranda reveals how Andy still participates in the pile of “stuff” that she ascribes to fashion 🗑️ and so at the moment Andy thinks she’s above fashion, she’s actually inside it.

And is there a relationship between the detritus of fashion and the detritus of Coca Cola (Žižek’s beloved drink)? 🥤

Junaid compares two cities that are deeply rooted in the Western collective consciousness: London and Paris. In his search for cities that come across as chill 🌬️rather than workaholic 🏭 he was immediately impressed by Paris and the aesthetic beauty of their buildings + lack of skyscrapers. London did have more of a workaholism feel (you can kind of sense that this was the place the industrial revolution was born 😮‍💨), but at the same time, London offered a sense of community, especially in the neighbourhood of Whitechapel where he stayed.
CONTEXT: I’m a North American from Toronto visiting London and Paris for the first time. Also, prior to travelling, ppl told me that Paris was kind of a dump and Parisians were snooty lol. Only other European countries visited: Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.

Maybelle returns to our boy Slavoj Žižek⚡️– to reflect on how the political left and the political right construct their enemies 👻👻 For instance, because the right idealizes property rights and individualism, its enemy is the excluded or marginal figure who “enjoys” what the everyday individual should enjoy instead.

Meanwhile, the left constructs another enemy that’s an inversion of the former… the capitalist who enjoys all, at the expense of the universal. 💸 And his is an issue because the universal is a pretty major form in which we exist and are subjects. Does Animal Farm ring a bell? 🐷🔁

Readings: 
Slavoj  Žižek, The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology
G.W.F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Spirit (Jena Lectures 1805-6)

Maybelle watches Devil Wears Prada 2 👠 and feels compelled to share an irony that is inherent to capitalism: how, despite the mass consumption and plenitude of goods to sustain us many times over, we must embody a relentless drive that pits us in competition against others — in a system where wealth and success for one = possible poverty and failure for others 🏭

The movie actually reveals this to us in the decision Andy faces when she has the chance to make money at the expense of Miranda.

Junaid gets intercepted in the woods and has to quickly answer the question of who he is 🌲😫

He says he went to grad school to study Don DeLillo and humor philosophy, taught the Advanced Placement English Language and Composition course and finished writing a novel about the apocalypse, which is sort of about conspiracies and zombies, and sort of about ppl who maybe don’t mind the end times or the destruction of systems, but I guess we’ll learn more about that later.

Oh right, to survive in capitalism, he works as a technical writer to make his living 😅 he helps academics, scientists, engineers and other high complexity ppl communicate their work so that non-experts can understand them 🙂‍↕️

Junaid ends up at the Globe Theatre in London and thinks back to some anti-elitist talks he used to have with his students.

Much of what we can glean about Shakespeare comes from his audience, who consisted mainly of groundlings aka penny stinkers aka penny stinkards - these were people who worked menial, often smelly jobs (things like dock worker, refuse cleaner, etc.) and paid one penny (which was ⅓ or ¼ of their daily wage) and went to the theatre to cheer the hero, boo the villain, heckle, jeer, and generally be a hooligan 🤪

Rich people attending the theatre were in fact not really into the show. They were there to sit close to the stage so that they could show themselves off to everyone who had less money than them 💀

Hamnet, the movie about the death of Shakespeare’s son, featured a separate reconstruction of the Globe Theatre - they do a pretty good job of showcasing these class dynamics.