Synaxis TV

Bourdieu recycles the example of the soccer game from Merleau-Ponty to point to the way that we are not immersed in this constant state of calculation regarding our actions, but instead our actions emerge from an embodied experience of the game.

When I was trying to reconcile Bourdieu’s way of thinking with his critique of rational choice theory I thought about this example a lot. In particular it only seems to capture a certain set of experiences. Yes, in a soccer game there is little time (resources) to go into any extended thought about the actions you should take. If one were to do so then the game would quickly pass you by and any thought put into action would be lost.

But there are other games. For example, what about chess? If we were to use this example, would we come to different conclusions? As it should be and probably is obvious, I believe so. Chess is a primary example of a game in which an extreme amount of thought about the ramifications of particular actions are put into each movement, sometimes considering hundreds of possible iterations into the game’s future.

So, what is it that is different about these games? Soccer, on the one hand, is not parsed out into moves the same way that chess is. Instead, soccer is a synchronous analog game where numerous agents interact at once. Chess, on the other hand, is an asynchrounous digital game that can be stretched out over months or even years.

I am not trying to argue for the use of one game example over the other — they both have their place. And Bourdieu does admit that there are occasions when individuals do engage in the type of activity that falls under the countenance of rational choice theory. But at a minimum I do not feel that Bourdieu pays heed enough to the role of iterative games in our daily experience.

Perhaps the best metaphor is something that lies somewhere between soccer and chess — such as Foucault’s agonistic war metaphor — which, in many senses, is yet another game.

One question I must further consider is the role that the body plays, in terms of providing regulatory sensations, in each of these games, and how this comes to bear on the way that we play and experience each of these games.

In a section titled “The Vertigo of Consciousness” Sarte (1965:54) said, “Transcendental consciousness is an impersonal spontaneity.”

In support of this Sarte gives the example of Janet, who, while sitting at the window in the absence of her husband, was suddenly overtaken by the fear of “soliciting the passersby like a prostitute” (Sarte 1965:55), a fear that could not be explained by any experiences in Janet’s past.

Sarte describes this experience as “a vertigo of possibility,” where “this vertigo is understandable only in terms of consciousness suddenly appearing to itself as infinitely overflowing in its possibilities the I which ordinarily serves as its unity.”

This reminds me of the constant state of discovery we are in with regards to pleasure. Whenever we engage in an attempt to manifest a particular desire, it is always already an act of discovery, because our action is inspired by a prediction that may or may not come to fruition. Thus, all acts of pleasure are experiments, where we discover the irrational contours that constitute us as embodied discursive subjects, and find our own borders as drifting nations of meat and joy, however ephemeral these shifting footholds might happen to be.

This also reminds me of the strange experience of having other foreign ideas come to mind, such as things you would never say because they are too hateful. I suppose we are all just a little bit schizophrenic.

Cumming, Robert Denoon, ed. 1965. The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. New York: Random House.

• 04/04/07 10:13 AM – Damn. I don’t ever remember hearing my alarm. Not good.
• 04/04/07 06:43 PM – Where does the time go… I’ve just been sitting at this computer all day. I started formatting the teaching evaluations signup website, worked on questions for gender across cultures, spent much more time working on the website again, put this other thing up for Evie, and then disappeared for a long time into the universe of customization — cell phone, laptop, and applications, oh my.
• 04/05/07 02:39 AM – Oh day, why do you hate me? It’s hard to say exactly what I’ve done since that last message. At some point I finally worked on my Japanese speech. Admittedly, it was cut with more random attempts at customization, but I did turn down an offer to see Blades of Glory (Hubert said it wasn’t so great). I suppose it isn’t a terrible thing that it is taking me so long to finish, especially since it’s terribly late at this point. I enjoy finding the limits of my ability to translate. It certainly keeps me from taking my English abilities for granted.
• 04/05/07 02:45 AM – In other news, my sister just called and said a friend’s brother died. He was only 37. He was making a delivery for his job and had an accident. They think he died around 10 p.m. on Monday night, but they didn’t find him until the next morning because he died in such a remote area. I cried a little thinking about how close we were in age and how I would feel if I lost my sister.
• 04/05/07 02:52 AM – I suppose I could overwrite and delete or hide things that don’t make the cut. My neighbor upstairs is listening to Damien Rice.
• 04/05/07 03:04 AM – I can’t get the Alanis Morissette cover of ‘My Humps’ out of my head. In part, because I made it my ringtone earlier. I posted a link to the video on Facebook, and Angie said she was glad to be able to tell her students she’d seen the video when they brought it up in her recitation. I’m surprised it’s all the rage among them though because I didn’t come across it through my normal channels, and the video had only been posted on Youtube for a couple of days. I think it’s quintessentially postmodern. The irony makes it ok to enjoy its somber sadness without the need to be defensive.

• 04/04/07 02:31 AM – No poetry today. After I put in grades, I went to campus early to pick up a video for gender across cultures, but when I looked it up in the catalog, it was already checked out. I panicked slightly, until I remembered that I had already checked it out the Thursday before and had been carrying it around in my backpack. After class took some kids who came late over to Hicks to take exams while I read. Around 5 I took a bus home, got my car, stopped by Qdoba, and then went to class early to borrow someone’s book and skim an article. I decided to avoid the garage since I had to pay to get out last week. Our class discussion of military-base prostitutes in Korea was quite lively — though the question of whether the power differential between men and women was “natural” was a little disheartening. Someone highlighted the intriguing paradox of situations where a man won’t enter into a relationship with a woman because she is considered to be beneath him socially, but he will have sex with her regardless. I also got to mention the harmful effects of agriculture and Bourdieu’s use of games. Back at home I disappeared into Quicksilver trying to find a way to append copied items to existing items in the clipboard. I studied a little bit of Japanese before going to bed.

I decided to sleep this morning
    instead of going to Japanese.
Then I worked on questions
    for gender across cultures,
solved the case
    of the missing toter,
and went to campus
    for a SAGSO meeting.
I got my Mac
    and came home,
and then went back to campus
    to buy software
    and get Carolyn and Hubert
    for dinner.
Carolyn had a bad experience
    with a set of spare keys
    on her trip to Philadelphia.
Carolyn also finds
    the fashion sense
    of primatologists
    to be
    questionable.
I worked on my Japanese speech
    and waited to open my Mac
    until Donovan could hear it sing.
It’s such a wonderful creation.

• 04/02/07 03:43 AM -

I got a Big Mac this morning for motivation.
Then I found out a friend got raped.
I spent some time trying to understand
    the recent comfort women developments.
Then I spent a long time finding
    the Japanese word for comfort women.
But it was on Wikipedia the whole time.
And at the beginning of my book.
I got distracted by online conversations.
More people who don’t believe in pleasure.
More people who have dismissed Foucault
    because they couldn’t understand him.
Eventually I wrote part of my Japanese speech
    after spending a lot of time
    looking for very specific words
    like Chief Cabinet Secretary
    and Second Sino-Japanese War.
Now I think I have too much caffeine
    to get my four hours
    of rest.