Radboud Philosophical Facutly Journal

Categorie: Book Review

  • Into the Mirror World

    Naomi Klein’s new book, Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World (2023), begins with Klein sharing an incident on social media where she was mistaken for Naomi Wolf, a feminist thinker who shifted her views to becoming a conspiracy theorist and engaging with very right-wing thinkers and public figures. This all took place around when the COVID-pandemic hit the world. Throughout the pandemic, Wolf propagated online and in a book that vaccines and public health measures were part of a scheme orchestrated by a “transnational group of bad actors” with intentions ranging from sterilization to transforming children into drones and undermining the Constitution.

    The confusion between the identities between Naomi Klein and Naomi Wolf got so bad that it practically became an internet meme. Naturally, it was disconcerting for Klein, who is known for her serious works like No Logo (1999) and The Shock Doctrine (2007), to be associated with a figure like Wolf. No Logo explores the impact of globalisation and corporate branding on culture, society and the economy. It delves into the rise of multinational corporations and the increasing dominance of branding in consumer culture. In the book, Klein argues that these corporations exploit cheap labour and tax regulations in developing countries, while also homogenising culture and undermining local economies. The Shock Doctrine explores the concept of disaster capitalism, a notion in which economic elites exploit crises to push policies that would not be accepted under normal circumstances. Those policies often involve privatisation, deregulation, and cuts in social services. This push benefits the wealthy at the expense of the poor.

    Initially, Klein attempts to disregard “Other Naomi,” finding the humour in the mix-up and categorizing it as one of those things that are confined to the domain of the internet alone. However, she eventually becomes fixated on Wolf’s ascent in what she terms the “Mirror World” of conspiracy theories and right-wing paranoia. During the pandemic, Klein isolates herself from her family to closely follow Wolf’s discussions on Steve Bannon’s podcast. This transforms her analysis of her “doppelganger” into a meticulous exploration of online culture and political duplicity. Rather than giving in to the urge to dismiss Wolf and others in the Mirror World as strange people that should not be taken seriously, Klein undertakes a thorough investigation into their concerns and what makes them so appealing to some.

    By looking into what caused the transformation of her namesake and examining other instances of online paranoia that flourished during the pandemic, Klein traces what caused the gap between well-intentioned liberals and anti-vaxxers. She observes that we distinguished ourselves from one another, yet increasingly found similarities, even to the extent of deeming each other as non-persons.

    Her writing in this book remains clear and dynamic even though the subject matter is incredibly confusing and has so many layers. The book is therefore a nice easy read even though the contents could easily be confusing. It is a personal story which makes abstract issues in the political realm concerning conspiracy theorists and anti-vax movements into something tangible. Though Klein explains every step clearly, not expecting the reader to know everything about her, knowing something about who Klein is and the books she has written before adds an extra layer to the story.

    While Klein’s language may feel sensationalist sometimes, using terms like “Mirror World” and “doppelgangers”, it is exactly this use of words that makes the book so captivating and fun to read. By using the language of psychological thrillers, she brings her occasionally dense or theoretical content truly to life.

    The result of the whole ordeal is that Klein finds herself feeling less attached to who she is perceived as online. She finds it silly, looking back how serious she once took her online persona. In result, she now feels liberated from her public self. This book precisely documents a journey that is an example of so many of these stories that unfold in this day and age. Klein’s story is a testament to the last couple of years of our world. It tackles socio-political issues that have grown during the pandemic, mostly to do with polarisation, and it adds dimensions of social media and its effects on the public debate. Klein shares her story, in which we can all relate to certain aspects, and puts forward interesting observations and ideas that one can philosophise further about, academically and privately.

    References

    Klein, Naomi. 1999. No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. London: Picador.

    Klein, Naomi. 2007. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Henry Holt & Company.

    Klein, Naomi. 2023. Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World. London: Penguin Books Limited.

  • Whispers of Vanity: Unmasking the Hopes and Dreams in Wilde’s Classic

    Book Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray

    “He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul.”

    The Picture of Dorian Gray is an aesthetic book that is a treat for anyone who enjoys philosophy, literature, and the arts. The book goes into all of these in great detail, while providing the reader with some of the most intense internal conflicts in classic literature. It is a fascinating, absurd, and horrifying story about how a person’s individual interests and vanity can affect not only their life, but that of everyone around them. Oscar Wilde’s focus on beauty, ugliness, youth, old age, and all that comes in between makes this one of his most important pieces to date as well as an essential book to read; by putting all of the reader’s own desires, hopes and dreams in the spotlight, the book calls out our own morality and the importance that we attribute to the vainer things in life, while comparing it to the frivolous, majestic, bon-vivant and careless lifestyle of the careless, the vexed, the one and only: Dorian Gray.

    To understand how this wonderful book relates to the hopes and dreams that are attached to our mode of living, we must first and foremost know what the story is about. The story begins when the artist Basil Hallward presents Lord Henry, his close friend, to Dorian Gray, his most recent muse and fascination. Dorian Gray is captivating young man, known for his remarkable looks and charming way of being. This beauty not only captivates Basil Hallward, who decides to dedicate a large portion of his time to painting Gray, but also Lord Henry, a man of high society who is equally fascinated by Dorian’s youth and beauty. Lord Henry is a very philosophical man, always keen on presenting his interlocutors with debates and creating turmoil within every conversation he has, promoting in himself a sort of intellectual superiority for having access to the greatest books. But despite this interest in intellect, he is still a mere mortal and therefore also very focused on appearances. In fact, he influences Gray, on one of their first encounters, to realize that “when one loses one’s good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything, [(…]) Youth is the only thing worth having” (Wilde 2012, 26).

    Upon this encounter, where the artist is painting the young man, Basil realizes that this is the best painting he had ever created, and therefore gives the piece to Dorian, his muse. Upon reflecting on the painting, Dorian realizes how truly beautiful and young he is, and wishes to never age himself, and let the man on the painting age and wither away. Locking the painting away, deciding to never see it again, Dorian moves on with his young, promising, desirable and beauty-filled life.

    Fast forward some time, with a formed friendship between Dorian Gray and Lord Henry, one filled with debate and conversations, Dorian falls in love with a beautiful, young actress with the name of Sybil Vane. Vane plays several different classical characters, all of which with such love, sincerity, beauty and earnest that Dorian proposes to her, on a whim. He soon finds out, however, that the person he was in love with is not the innocent Sybil, but the characters she plays. Hurting her to her core, he breaks off their engagement in a very blunt, coarse way.

    Once he returns home, in a fit of introspection, he decides to take another look at the mighty painting that Basil Hallward had painted. Upon this, he finds that the man on the canvas had become uglier than before, forcing him to realize how harshly he has treated the poor girl and attempts to repent. However, the next morning, on preparing to meet her and apologize, he hears that Sybil Vane has tragically died, assumedly taking her own life, due to the heartbreak. Sybil Vane, a girl whose personality was not half as vain as her name, was destroyed by a man who many could consider to be the vainest of them all.

    Indignant with all that had occurred, Dorian attempts to move on with his life when Lord Henry offers him a book, one which soon becomes Dorian’s Bible. The book follows the story of a Frenchman who lives life attending to his every whim and desire, seeking pleasure and new sensations above all else. For the next two decades, in a life full of sin, disgrace, shame, pleasure, bliss, luxury, thrill and immorality, Dorian travels to several places in order to live a life filled with new sensations, as Lord Henry and the book had advised him.

    He returns to his home in London once he is more prominently talked about within his circle. Although he is the object of gossip, people can never truly hate him because his beauty and youth are unmatched and purely supernatural. While his body rejoices and remains the same as 18 years ago, the picture locked away in the hidden room withers and turns as hideous as one can be.

    Eventually, his old friend Basil confronts Dorian on his new ways of life and is aghast when Dorian shows him the painting in his ugliest form, demonstrating Dorian’s true soul. Basil begs Dorian to repent for his sins and to find morality in an immoral life. In a sort of tantrum of agony, rage and frustration, Dorian stabs Basil to death, refusing to forgive him for having created such a horrible creature as the one in the painting.

    He then calls on another friend of his, a doctor, blackmailing him to help dispose of the body. Giving the doctor the time and space to take care of the body he had violently killed, Dorian goes to an opium den. Here, he enters a minor conflict with Sybil Vane’s older brother, James, who tries to avenge his sister’s death. Scared, for having killed a man and been threatened by another, Dorian Gray flees to his estate, where he expects peace and quiet. Dorian eventually finds James there, waiting and lurking on him, prepared for anything. However, in a hunting accident, before Dorian can do anything to protect himself, his own hunting party accidentally shoots James Vane. This finally provides safety for Dorian. While this happens, the doctor friend finds no way of coping with what he had done for Dorian and he, too, takes his own life, for what the bon-vivant had forced him to gruesomely do.

    Once Dorian Gray returns to his home, in a huge house filled with only him, his servants, and an obnoxiously painful reflection of his own life in a locked room. The room is his crime scene, the murder location of one of his closest, oldest friends. Dorian confronts himself, realizing all that he had done, counting all the people who had died because of him. Realizing all the blood that lies on his sinful hands, Dorian picks up the same knife he had used to kill Basil Hallward and tries to destroy the painting. Upon hearing a crash, his servants enter the forbidden room and find their master, with a knife in his heart, uglier than ever before, lying absurdly on the floor, putting an end to an unbearable, insufferable, despicable life.

    In a strangely horrifying way, Wilde has managed, in this short novella, to present us with an incredibly internally tortured man. This is a man who pays no attention to his consequences, who lives his own life searching for that which he and only he desires, without moral concerns, and freely and candidly attending to his own dreams and hopes to live a carefree life.

    The biggest message to obtain from The Picture of Dorian Gray seems to be quite cliché in a much more sophisticated, philosophical, and beautiful way; something which can essentially be summed down to “be careful what you wish for”. We learn that although each one of us has, indeed and rightly so, their own aspirations – which in this case was to do certifiably nothing – there are other things to consider in the life we lead. There are people who walk with us in our life, like the young innocent Sybil Vane, who are hurt by the words we speak. There are friends of ours, like Basil Hallward, that take an interest in us and genuinely care about our wellbeing. There are people like Dr. Campbell, who get unwillingly involved in our own messes and for some reason end up having to clean them up all while dealing with their own internal conflicts – and sometimes, like Dr. Campbell, they do not survive them.

    Of course, a short paragraph on the ongoing theme of beauty and ugliness is also worthy. It is significant to understand how beauty has always played such an important role in our societies. From 19th century society where word of mouth was the main way of communication to now, where we are constantly bombarded by information and pictures of beauty, we can acknowledge that Dorian Gray would never have survived in the 21st century. This is because he would never be able to properly hide the dreadful picture: the digital footprint in today’s day would never allow one to fully hide away a picture which unsettles one as much as the painting did for Dorian Gray. His constant efforts to hide a picture which, to him, symbolizes the deterioration of his own soul ends up corrupting him, for fear of how ugly he could become. In reality, he was already becoming an ugly creature by hiding it in the first place.

    At the end of the day, it is about the importance we give to people like Lord Henry, to the pretentiousness of living a grand, dreamy life, without a realistic vision of what life is actually like. There are certain dreams, hopes, and wishes that are better off in our own heads, because sometimes they catch up to us and, like they did Basil Hallward, eat us up, day by day, until there is nothing left.

    It is a magnificent piece that makes each of its readers carefully rethink their past actions, thinking about their own existence and what role they play in life. Are you a Basil Hallward, a Sybil Vane, a Lord Henry, a Dr. Campbell, or perhaps even, a Dorian Gray? If you fit in with the latter then I pray that you can recollect yourself, change your ways, read this novel, and let Wilde’s incredibly philosophical statements reinvent yourself, hopefully for the better.

    On his first encounter with Lord Henry, the tragic day, Dorian claimed that “when I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself” (Wilde 2012, 26) and indeed he did. Only, at that time, he probably did not yet know all the people, the hopes, and the dreams who would be killed along with him.

    Bibliography

    Wilde, Oscar. 2012. The Picture of Dorian Gray. London: Penguin Books.

  • Reviewing Timothy Morton’s Being Ecological

    As the title suggests, Timothy Morton’s Being Ecological is a book about ecology. However, in a sense, the book tries to do more than simply presenting a philosophical, anthropological, or biological perspective on ecology. It tries to give an expansive critique on the way in which a lot of ecological thought is structured, and why this way of thinking is faulty. Morton adds that it is this faulty way of thinking that got us into (climate) trouble in the first place. Within the book, Morton also aims to provide us with a conceptual toolkit that may remedy our faulty ways of thinking. Each chapter follows a relatively similar structure, wherein Morton notes a problem, explicates it, and critiques it. The final part tries to provide a new way of thinking that may remedy this problem. For clarity’s sake, I will also follow this structure in my analysis of the book.

    Factoids, Objects and Neolithic Thinking

    One of the main points Morton argues in Being Ecological is that our way of perceiving reality is fundamentally wrong. While this may seem a somewhat large claim, Morton does provide ample argumentation for this throughout the book. In the introduction, he writes about the way in which we present ecological information to ourselves. Information about climate change is often presented as a compilation of data that must convince us of something – namely, climate change. Morton states that small chunks of data are presented as holding a fact, which he calls “factoids” (Morton, 2018, 8). These factoids appear to factually tell us something about reality, and therefore hold some kind of truth. The reality is that factoids are only interpretations of small pieces of data and are therefore not facts, but only fact-like, as Morton states. A lot of ecological thought is concerned with the idea that if we can compile enough factoids, we will ‘get’ climate change and will be able to act upon it. Morton relates this scientific perspective to the way in which human beings think about reality at large. We perceive ourselves as a rational subject that is independent of the world and can perceive and ‘grasp’ things around it, be that via sight, sounds, or scientific analysis. Objects exist outside of the human psyche and are there to be analyzed, grabbed, utilized, etc.

    This idea of the human psyche being independent of ‘things’ is a symptom of ways of thought that originated in the Neolithic period (Morton, 2018, 50). Morton states that historically, since the move from hunter-gatherer to agricultural society, humans have started to create conceptual separations between animal-human, culture-nature, master-subject. They claim that this idea of human beings being able to rationalize and divide the world has, in turn, led to industrial capitalism and the problems that have arisen from it.

    OOO

    Morton presents his answer to the problem of Neolithic thinking in the form of object-oriented ontology (OOO). Object-oriented ontology is a way of thinking about ‘things’. It proposes that all things exist in the same way, thus there is no way in which human existence is more important than the existence of any other thing. Additionally, it maintains that there are infinite ways of accessing things in the world, such as grabbing, throwing, talking to, drawing on, etc. Therefore, you can never exhaust the way in which things can be accessed. This means that things remain fundamentally independent and can never be fully grasped.

    This also means that all things, animal, plant or stone, cannot be reduced to the way humans perceive them. In this way, OOO can help in combatting anthropocentric ways of thinking, including those that privilege the position of humans above animals and objects. In summary, Morton thus states that ‘being ecological’ is “acknowledging in a deep way the existence of beings that aren’t you, with whom you coexist” (Morton, 2018, 128). This means that we accept the fact that we cannot fully grasp the essence and existence of beings around us, but we also accept that these beings exist, nevertheless. Being ecological is therefore a way of opening up and letting the existence of other beings into our own lifeworld.

    Assessment

    In general, this work is great at tackling the issue of anthropocentrism and presents an original critique and a strong response in the form of OOO. The work goes beyond simply diagnosing the problem in the form of socio-political structures that cause climate change. However, one point of critique that may be raised against this work is the fact Morton writes quite erratically. Morton often begins a chapter by expanding on a certain idea or thought, but then suddenly switches to another subject, leaving the explanation of the idea unfinished. This is a reemerging pattern in the work, and it significantly harms the readability of Being Ecological. Regarding accessibility, I therefore argue that although this work is accessible for a wider public, base-level knowledge of philosophers like Kant and Heidegger is necessary. The reason for this is that, while Morton does explain the ideas these philosophers hold, they are often brought up quite spontaneously in the text. Nonetheless, despite these shortcomings, this is a strong public philosophical work that provides an original narrative about ecological thought, which also serves as a good introduction to Timothy Morton’s further body of work.

    Bibliography

    Morton, Timothy. 2018. A Pelican Introduction: Being Ecological. Pelican Books.

  • What You See, When You Close Your Eyes

    Book Review of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

    I would have liked to begin this story in the manner of a fairy tale.

    I would have liked to write:

    ‘Once upon a time there was a little prince

    who lived on a planet scarcely bigger than himself,

    and who was in need of a friend…’

    To those who understand life,

    that would have a much greater air of truth.

    (De Saint-Exupéry 1995, 18)

    Come on, come on, hurry, or we might miss it! Take bigger steps than you ever thought possible, push back against the wind slowing you down, and set your lungs on fire! Let us run barefoot through tall grass and over warm sand until every inch of our body aches, feel the pain and laugh out loud, because you know, we know, we will not be late. There is no time to catch your breath. This is important and we cannot miss it: the sunset. We are here! The sun paints the sky in the most magnificent oranges, yellows, blues and pinks. Rays of light write words in the clouds that read like poetry, grass tickles our toes and the sun kisses, caresses our skin. Let your eyes drink in the sight, as the day draws its last breath. The day has to die to make space for a new one to be born. During such a moment, you can either mourn the day that was, wish it to come back, or you can find joy and excitement in the day that will soon arrive. Can you even imagine that there is a planet where the sun sets forty-three times a day? Where you do not have to make haste as we just did? Where you only have to move your chair a little to see the next one? Believe it or not, it exists.

    Now that the sun has gone to sleep, we might be able to catch a glimpse of this planet. Light makes space for darkness waking up the moon. The stars wipe the sleep from their eyes to show their faces. If you lay down on your back you can see them better. The world disappears from view, all you see is the sky showing off its glittering treasures. There it is, the planet I was talking about. It’s a tiny planet, not much bigger than a house. If you squint your eyes you can spot it. The little prince lives there, with his rose, his three volcanoes, and the baobab trees. ‘‘Asteroid B 612’’ (15) is what the planet is called, or at least it is what grown-ups call it, since they just love numbering, systemising and explaining beautiful things that have no number, do not fit in a system and are inexplicable. The little prince did not always stay on his asteroid. He left it for a while to travel to other planets, one of these was our home planet: Earth. That is where he met Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who was a pilot stranded in the Sahara desert after his plane had crashed during a record flight. While he was trying to fix it, he heard a little voice saying: ‘‘If you please draw me a sheep!’’ (5). This is how he met the little prince. Six years later, in 1942, De Saint-Exupéry wrote a book about his experience, named after the little prince himself.

    De Saint-Exupéry writes about what the little prince tells him about his life on Asteroid B 612, about the rose he has to protect, about the volcanoes he has to clean to stop them from erupting, about the baobabs he has to uproot to make sure they do not destroy the planet, and about the countless sunsets he can watch by just moving his chair a little. He also talks about how he has travelled to other planets. On the first planet he visited, he met a king with no subjects, then he continued to a planet inhabited by a conceited man without any admirers, his journey took him further to a planet where a drunk was drinking to forget how ashamed he was for his drinking. Again on different planets, he met a businessman, who fancied himself the owner of the stars, a lamplighter, who could never rest, and a geographer, who has never travelled. After visiting these planets, he came to the planet Earth, inhabited by ‘‘one-hundred-and-eleven kings […], seven thousand geographers, nine hundred thousand businessmen, seven-and-a-half million drunks, three-hundred-and-eleven million conceited men… In other words, approximately two billion grown-ups’’ (77). During his visit he met several animals and people, who showed him what life on earth is like. The first animal he met was a snake, a small animal, who wields greater power than any king. The snake explained this power to the little prince: ‘‘Whomever I touch […] I return them to the earth from whence they came’’ (82). Moreover, the little prince met two people, first he crossed paths with a railway pointsman, who told him about the people in the trains, rushing from one place to the next, never satisfied with where they are, never knowing where they are going, always on the go. ‘‘Only the children are flattening their noses against the window panes. […] They’re the lucky ones’’ (104). After this encounter, he met a fox who taught the little prince how to tame him. A process which transforms something, or someone from being ordinary to being unique and one of a kind. Now, in the Sahara desert, after all his travels, the little prince longs to go back home, to his planet, to his rose, to his sunsets. He remembers what the snake told him and asks the animal to bring him back home. He will go back, leaving behind the old shell that is his heavy body. The pilot is sad to see the little prince go, therefore he ends his narration with a request for anybody who meets a boy with golden curls, a boy that never answers any of your questions, to alert him that the little prince has returned.

    This story about the little prince fits well among classics like Aesop’s and Jean de la Fontaine’s fables, Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and more recent works like Carlie Mackery’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, James Norbury’s Big Panda and Tiny Dragon and Toon Tellegen’s fables. I can only describe it as a poetic modern fairy tale with an incredible philosophical depth to it. The story warms my heart, time and again. I certainly recommend reading and rereading it, not only because it is a short book that does not take too long to read, but especially because it provokes its reader’s thoughts and pushes them to reflect on it. The Little Prince wants to be shared and discussed. I myself have read it several times now, and every time I read it I discover something new: a new quote I had not really noticed before, a new meaning hiding just behind the words, a new thought I had not yet stumbled upon.

    Once you have read The Little Prince, it will take hold of you and never let you go. Time and again, I realise just how strong the hold of this story on one’s heart is. When I worked in a bookshop, customers, many a time, bought a copy of the book and told me with proud smiles on their faces that they collected copies from the different languages of the places they had visited. They showed me pictures of their The Little Prince bookshelves, which were way more than just a display of different copies of the book in different languages. These shelves, told stories of the journeys these proud owners had been on, what they had seen, the people they had met along the way. There is so much more beneath the surface, for those who are willing to look further than a picture, further than a children’s story about a little prince, for those who actually see that this book is trying to teach us a certain way of life.

    This way of life is important for all grown-ups. De Saint-Exupéry dedicated this book to children and to the grown-ups that can still remember they once were children, even though he thinks few of them do. The Little Prince teaches us to tap into our inner child, the child that has been silenced over the years, but that is still alive in each of us. The child that can forget all the systems, numbers, figures, and binaries we have forced our world into. The child that keeps asking questions without giving up, without preformulating the answers, without prejudice, without reasoning from an existing paradigm. The child that does not simply put labels on the people, animals, nature and other entities in this world, but actually looks at them with wonder, curiosity, and imagination. It sees everything as if for the very first time since it can still be in awe of the world. On page 101, De Saint-Exupéry (1995) lets us in on a secret: ‘‘very simply: you can only see things clearly with your heart. What is essential, is invisible to the eye’’ (101). There is so much more than our eyes can see, there is more behind the numbers, definitions, systems, divisions and binaries. The world is more complicated and more beautiful. Let us close our grown-up eyes that have been shaped by paradigms, prejudices, and labels in order to enable our children’s eyes to be opened. Those are the eyes of our hearts that look at the world with wonder and without judgement. Let us take the time to fill the pockets in our heads and in our hearts with the sights these eyes give us.

    The stars shine bright tonight. The skies are clear and Asteroid B 612 is visible. If one day, in the future, you look up at the night sky and you cannot see it, that is fine. Now you know it exists, you will see it everywhere, even when it’s invisible. If you listen closely you will hear the little prince’s voice: ‘‘At night, you will look up at the stars. Mine is too small to point out to you. It is better that way. For you, my star will be just one of many stars. That way, you will love watching all of them’’ (122).

    Bibliography

    De Saint-Exupéry, Antoine. 1995. The Little Prince. Translated by T.V.F. Cuffe. London: Puffin Books.

  • Reviewing Owen Jones’ Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class

    While discussing unfortunate misrepresentations within British society, Owen Jones’ Chavs: Dehumanization of the Working Class (2011) is highly applicable to the media coverage of working-class people in many Western societies. Jones uses the term “chav” (2011) as symbolic of the most common portrayal of the working class – comparable to the derogatory Dutch epithet, “tokkie”. These distasteful terms can be understood as relating to anti-social behaviour and raise negative connotations of less affluent members of society as lazy, criminal and rude, among other depictions. The terms ultimately result in the harmful stereotyping of the working class and – as Jones puts it – their “demonization” (Jones 2011).

    As he writes on a subject rarely tackled in mainstream media, Jones provides an effective entry-level analysis of the representations and realities of the British working class over the span of the last thirty years. It is important to consider that his argument does not concern the act of labelling the working class as “chavs”, but instead targets the underlying mechanisms that created such class contempt. Using a range of examples, including interviews and case studies, he demonstrates that working-class organisations and communities have eroded.

    One of many striking cases seen within the titular Chavs concerns the broadcasting of the BBC televised programme The Future of the Welfare State, presented by well-known interviewer John Humphrys. The show claimed that “Britain was living in an ‘age of “entitlement’” (Jones 2011, 24), alongside other controversial claims. This statement in question reinforces the connotations surrounding the working class as greedy and reliant upon the welfare state to avoid employment. As the programme was later found to have violated the BBC Trust’s regulations of impartiality and accuracy, Jones illustrates the media’s indulgence of biased sources. This indulgence includes the broadcasting of overemphasised cases of working-class individuals faking health conditions to claim welfare benefits. The sad truth is that these cases are far more uncommon than the media portrays. From decreases in payments given to the unemployed and sick to the reduction of industrial and mining sectors, Chavs sheds light on the ever-growing narrative of the “lazy” chav that “lacked aspiration” (Jones 2011, 28), despite the reality of incomes falling behind in an ever-growing social housing crisis.

    In addressing the complexity of the working-class struggle, Jones places significant emphasis on Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government of the 1980s. As Jones puts it, “Thatcher’s assumption of power in 1979 marked the beginning of an all-out assault on the pillars of working-class Britain” (2011, 10). Hence, his analysis illustrates the deindustrialisation of Britain under Thatcher’s government, marking the dissipation of the traditional working-class community. While she worked toward an ideological campaign for a consumer-based, individualistic population, as seen in the initiation of marketised education, Jones’ analysis allows readers of all backgrounds to understand the impacts these ideals had and continue to have on industrial and welfare policies today.

    Despite Jones’ approach lacking an academic nature, the text opens the arena of discussion to the general reader while employing statistical evidence in explaining his main arguments. Illustrating the reality that lies behind the data on wealth disparity and the relations between immigration and wages (to name a few), Jones tackles the ineffectiveness of both Conservative and New Labour governments that have maintained and created a commonplace for the narrative of the lazy unemployed. A similar notion is seen within Katz’s Undeserving Poor, where the American titular portrays the view of poverty as personal failure (Katz 1989). However, unlike Katz, Jones pays particular attention to the media’s representation of outrageous events – from child disappearances to the collapse of trade unions – and the role it played in the fragmentation of communities. While both critically acclaimed works approach issues of blame-the-poor politics, cases such as the aforementioned BBC violation of accuracy allow Chavs to draw an unforgettable image of elitist media representation, thus bringing the issues closer to home than Katz’s analysis from 33 years ago.

    Overall, Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class is persuasive and passionate, alongside being accessible to a wide range of viewers within and outside of the political and academic arenas. This insightful work, although focused on the realm of British government, is applicable to societies beyond the UK. By bringing the prominence of middle-class-centred policies and media coverage to light, Jones tackles processes that maintain misrepresentations of the working class while illustrating the reality of struggle hidden behind the curtain.

    References

    Jones, Owen. 2011. Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class. London: Verso.

    Katz, Michael B. 1989. The Undeserving Poor. New York: Oxford University Press.

  • Wie is er bang voor Simone de Beauvoir (boek) – recensie

    Deze recensie is geschreven in de vorm van een briefwisseling door Cas Buijs en Esmée van den Wildenberg. Samen bespreken zij een aantal centrale thema’s en vragen die in het boek aan bod komen, waaronder of de De Tweede Sekse een psychoanalyserend werk is en welke rol De Beauvoirs persoonlijke leven speelt.

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  • Going Nowhere, Slow (book) – review

    In Going Nowhere, Slow: The Aesthetics and Politics of Depression Danish scholar Mikkel Krause Frantzen studies the psychopathology of depression as it is represented in four major cultural works of the past 30 years. For Frantzen, depression is not “just” an individual psychopathology – albeit with moral, political, and economic implications – but a fundamental cultural and philosophical problem as well. Depression, he argues, is inextricably linked with the problem of time. More specifically, he views depression as “the pathological feeling that history has come to an end, that the future is closed off, frozen once and for all” (6). And indeed, one major symptom of depression is the feeling that there is no improvement possible, no cure available. Phrases like “it will pass” or “tomorrow will be better” become incomprehensible. One feels stuck in a torturous present that extends into the future indefinitely. Or, as Frantzen says, the future becomes a thing of the past, a fait accompli. Frantzen connects this conception of depression to the situation of Western society in general. American philosopher Frederic Jameson has said that it has become easier to imagine the end of the world than an alternative to capitalism. This perceived impossibility to even imagine a future that is different from the present, that is not merely a continuation of structures already in place, forms the basis of this book. The examination of the fiction of Michel Houellebecq and David Foster Wallace, the installation art of Claire Fontaine and Lars von Trier’s film Melancholia occurs along these two lines: how do they represent the individual, affective dimension of suffering from depression, and how is this linked to a sense of being stuck in time, a loss of future for Western society as a whole? But also: what do these works tell us about a possible solution? Is there a cure for depression, both on the individual and the societal level?

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  • Waarom de liefde eindigt (boek) – recensie

    Scharrel, twarrel (twijfelscharrel), kwarrel (kwaliteitsscharrel), mingle (mixed en single), rela (relatie), prela (pre-relatie), een situationship,seksrelatie, of een open relatie, fuckbuddy, friends with benefits, zipless fuck, hook up, casual sex, cybersex of sexting – wie zich vandaag op de liefdesmarkt begeeft heeft haast evenveel keus aan soorten (seksuele) relaties als aan merken hagelslag in de schappen van uw lokale supermarkt. Dat is volgens de Israëlische socioloog Eva Illouz geen toeval. In haar boek Waarom liefde eindigt geeft ze een diepgravende en geëngageerde analyse van de manier waarop romantische en seksuele relaties anno 2020 vormgegeven én verbroken worden in een speelveld waar de consumentenmarkt, de therapeutische industrie en de sociale media de dienst uitmaken. Illouz’ hoofdstelling is dat deze drie sociaaleconomische krachten de opkomst van een nieuwe sociale categorie mogelijk hebben gemaakt: de ‘negatieve relatie’ die zich kenmerkt door ‘de keuze om niet te kiezen’. Daarmee opent ze het onderzoeksterrein van de liefde die vaak al afgebroken wordt voor ze goed en wel van start is gegaan; van relaties die steeds instabieler, informeler en onzekerder worden; van seksuele vrijheid die onze emotionele zekerheid belemmert en van bindingsangst die intimiteit en romantiek verdringt; tot aan eigentijdse fenomenen als sologamie, incels, dickpics en ghosting. Het enorme vocabulaire dat we inmiddels hebben opgetuigd rondom deze nieuwe amoureuze praktijken – die vaak benadrukken dat er vooral geen sprake is van een traditionele relatie – laat zien dat Illouz de tijdsgeest weet te vatten.

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  • A Theory of the Aphorism (book) – review

    As Andrew Hui remarks in the introduction to A Theory of the Aphorism, the aphorism is a literary and philosophical format that has remained “curiously understudied” (1). There exist plenty of studies on the historico-methodological characteristics of, for example, the dialogue, the treatise and the novel, but the aphorism, despite its persistent ubiquity throughout the world and the ages, has not yet been subjected to such analyses. Hui, a scholar who specializes in the reception of antiquity in the Renaissance but is interested more generally in the transmission and reception of ideas, takes it upon himself to provide an account of the nature of the aphorism. His aim is not to provide a comprehensive historical overview, but rather to examine various characteristics of the format through a close-reading of a handful of aphoristic writers.

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  • Hoe schizofrenie zich redt (boek) – recensie

    Hoewel ‘waanzinnig’ een overwegend positieve connotatie heeft, wordt ‘waanzin’ veelal gebruikt om aan te geven dat iets geen goed idee is. Daarnaast kan ‘waanzin’ ook verwijzen naar een psychische staat die meestal begrepen wordt als onwenselijk, abnormaal en ziek. Hoe schizofrenie zich redt plaatst waanzin in een ander licht, namelijk ook als productief in plaats van enkel destructief. Aan de hand van een bespreking van Deleuze en Guattari’s discussie met Freudiaanse psychoanalyse laat Moyaert zien hoe we waanzin ook op deze positieve manier kunnen begrijpen. Een tweede inzet is therapeutisch, wat wil zeggen dat Moyaert zich afvraagt welke handelingen waanzin gezonder kunnen maken en of er een gezondheid in de waanzin mogelijk is. De waanzin die wordt besproken in Hoe schizofrenie zich redt is die van een schizofrene problematiek, zoals naar voren komt bij de (in de literatuur veel besproken) psychiatrische patiënten Wolfson en Schreber. In beide gevallen zijn de patiënten gediagnostiseerd met schizofrenie en hebben een eigen manier gevonden om zich door de werkelijkheid te bewegen. Wolfso doet dit door het vervormen van taal aan de hand van klanken, door hemzelf uiteengezet in Le Schizo et les Langues, terwijl Schreber zichzelf staande houdt door zijn problematiek te verschuiven naar God. Schreber gelooft dat hij uitverkoren is door God, een geloof wat hem in staat stelt de vele beproevingen die op zijn pad komen te doorstaan. Deze overlevingstactieken laten zien, aldus Moyaert, hoe schizofreen gedrag meer is dan enkel een gevecht met het leven, dat waanzin in staat is tot meer dan herstel naar een eerdere staat van organisatie. De schizofreen zou namelijk in staat zijn om zich terug te trekken van eerdere organisaties en nieuwe connecties creëren. Dit perspectief op waanzin is gebaseerd op, en vereist een begrip van, ‘het lichaam zonder organen’, zoals besproken in L’Anti-Oedipe door Deleuze en Guattari.

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