Mahmoodian Fragments

Saussurian semiotics as Protestant? This is a novel idea. Made me wonder if the foundation of many of the theories that I like and agree with has “motivated” roots. Goodness: maybe they all do! What then?

But I wouldn’t mind some evidence: “aspects of Protestant semiotic ideology became embedded in more secular ideas of what it means to be modern” (72; emphasis added) is the best she can do?

Worse: “One finds in Saussure, argues Keane, a preoccupation not entirely different from that which agitated Calvin and other Protestant reformers: how best to institute the distinction between the transcendent world of abstract concepts and ideas and the material reality of this world” (emphasis added). Is “not entirely different” evidence of correspondent motivations? The cat on the mat and Marx’s table both have legs but only one of them is looking for a cheezburger. The other is a perverted table.

Critique is secular. Secular isn’t secular and critique isn’t critique. Saussure told me.

I simultaneously feel two contradictory impulses.

First: Mahmood’s shrill tone shuts down discussion and I think that’s bad. How to answer someone who knows you’re wrong before you open your mouth? She says she wants to maintain “discussion” and “tension” in the academy (91-92) but I’m not sure what kind of a discussion we would have. I would listen and perhaps quip sarcastically (quietly though).

Second: “Can we all get along?” asked Rodney King. Everyone laughed. No. Is the globalization of understanding a good thing? I think Zizek said that we don’t need more understanding; we need less understanding (sounds like something he’d say). Which doesn’t mean we need more hate, or stupid cartoons (would the debate have been different if they were funny? How does this fit with “taking things too seriously”?). To provide a literary example, I think we need to judge books by their covers—the problem is when we aren’t able to revise our judgments. Don’t we read literature because it helps us learn how to think carefully and change our minds?

I liked the part about religious discrimination as racism. Racism isn’t racism anymore. Mahmood told me.

I didn’t understand the argument Mahmood makes about the different forms of religious assimilation undertaken by Muslims and Christians: Muslims assimilate Muhammad (76) and therefore respond bodily and affectively to insults to Muhammad, whereas Christians maintain some kind of signifier/signified split between themselves and the artifacts of their religion, a split that insulates them from the pain of any insult to those artifacts? If this is the case, why would all those court cases suppressing anti-Christian films in Europe even be necessary?

I was raised by “hippy” parents at the church of bike-jumps and Tom Swift. I’m not sure what (if anything, cartoon or otherwise) would make me go to the window and shout, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”