text:
Anatomic anomie
"The problem is, it's not just enough to live by the rules. Sure, you manage to live by them. Sometimes it's tight, extremely tight, but on the whole you manage. Your tax papers are up to date. Your invoices paid on time. You never go out without your identity card (and the special little wallet for your Visa!) And yet you haven't any friends."
Welcome to commodified man, Michel Houellebecq style. These lines in Houellebecq's first novel, Extension du domain de la lutte, capture well not just the concerns of the writer's first book, not just the Philippe Harel film that adapts closely its preoccupations, and that Houellebecq co-wrote, but also a certain condition in modern man, a condition that certainly incorporates aspects of dull choice, but also insistently segues into abjection. We could almost say the Houellebecqian world is when anomie meets anatomy. While a character like Bruno in the existentially-oriented Kings of the Road will take it as given that he can sleep with a woman no matter its general meaninglessness; for Our Hero (Harel) here, getting laid is an active struggle. Bruno is alienated certainly, but his alienation is that of a man at one remove from the world through an existential choice, however shaped by history both personal and impersonal that decision happens to be. Our Hero is alienated much more by advanced's capitalism's need to demarcate – it is demarcation rather than alienation. As Our Hero says in voice over, there are winners and losers in the world. People like himself and more especially his work colleague Tisserand (Jose Garcia) may earn good money in IT, and thus are winners in one sphere, but their sexual life is non-existent, and they must accept their loser status there.
Now what Extension du Domaine de la Lutte (Whatever) wants to do, in keeping with Houellebecqian obsession, is suggest the centrality of sexual desire to emotional despair, even to full-blown clinical depression. It's not a throwaway when near the end of the film the psychiatrist asks when Our Hero last had sex; it is central to the film's problematic of anomie coming out of anatomy, coming out of an obsessive world of sexuality, and where no sexual possibilities are available. It's like a variation on Michel Foucault's notion of scientia sexualis, where the obsession with sex manifested itself in a culture desperate to know about the sexual act, to 'scientize' it. It is a notion central to the Victorian era and the early twentieth century's attitude to sex and to some degree onwards: incorporating, we could say, Freud, Kinsey and Hite. Today however it's closer to a kind of economicus sexualis, where sexuality is so commodified that to be outside the loop, to be deemed too physically unattractive, too asocial or too shy to get laid, all contribute to the creation of an anatomical anomie that is spiritually de-grading but intellectually easy to trace.
This is a spiritual degradation that makes Houellebecq's universe deterministic, and undeniably overly simplistic, but it's also a symptomatically useful way of seeing the nature of being at the end of the 20th century. After all, Our Hero is a man who says, "I don't like this world. I definitely do not like it. The society in which I live – advertising, computers – disgusts me. My entire work as a computer expert consists of adding to the data, the cross-checks, the criteria of rational decision-making…This world has need of everything except more information." We may ask is this where the sex industry comes in, where our sense of futility with information meets emotional needs but as sexual desire? What we may require is an emotional sustenance and a world of tenderness, but such is the level of co-modification that we raise our emotional expectations to a level no higher than that required for masturbation, prostitution or the one night stand – through ultimately non-commital relationships. So where Bruno in Kings of the Road insists he always feels lonely inside a woman; it's as though that is a problem consistent with a nauseous state that struggles to generate meaning in a life, but in Houellebecq's book and Harel's film it is as though meaning can only justifiably be generated out of the pornographic, the empty, the sexually co-modified.
This may leave a problem on one level but it's also a resolution of a problem on another. If we accept that we live generally in a society that is homo economicus, and where time is money, then we can see why it makes sense that to deal with this economic state we have a co-modified sexual culture to accompany it. Thus we can see that pornography, or prostitution, isn't just a problem (and after all the latter's hardly a new industry), but its problem resides to some degree in its nature as a solution. As Our Hero insists, informing us that he's been without sex for two years "two years is a long time. But in reality, above all when one is working, it's no time at all. Anyone will tell you; it's no time at all." Hence with so little time available to the career person, and if, like Our Hero, they're without the physical attractiveness that can announce one's attributes immediately, what is left but the world of the commodified image? It resolves the problem of sexual frustration, but, and this is the psychiatrist's point, leaves a further problem lurking behind it. It would sort of make sense that Our Hero would ask, when she suggests that his lack of sex is central to his despair, would she sleep with him. He's so far removed from the social norms, of the (relatively) slow ritual towards enchanting another, that he feels he might as well just ask anyone. But as she replies, her job isn't of course to provide the sex, but the social skills in which to pursue women. Our Hero however may well believe that he is too far gone for that, and basically all he can hope for is a quick hand-job or parlour visit in the middle of his busy schedule. Add a hectic work load, physical unattractiveness, rapidly diminishing social skills and the onset of clinical depression, and Our Hero looks like the unluckiest symptom of a culture obsessed with sex and money.
But at least, he might say, he doesn't share the false sexual consciousness of his work colleague Tisserand who, though a twenty-eight year-old virgin, still acts as if sexual conquest is just around the corner. During one evening in a nightclub, Our Hero sits on the sidelines getting wasted while Tisserand boogies on the dance-floor, no matter the dismay, disgust or indifference of those he happens to dance with. Better, Our Hero, believes, to masturbate in the nightclub's toilets than go through the charade of believing you have any chance on the dance-floor. This is confronting reality Houellebecq style: that it's more realistic to disappear into the men's room for a hand-job than pursue a real-life human encounter. So commodified has man become that, if he wants to live in a real world, the world of homo economicus, then he must have a consciousness that matches its expectations, no matter if this realistic consciousness results in a higher degree of solipsism and a retreat from inter-communicative exchanges.
Such a belief is in many ways the point of focus in Houellebecq's follow-up novel, Atomised, where he contrasts two half-brothers, Michel and Bruno. Michel is physically attractive but has no real interest in sex and spends his life working on molecular biology and going to the supermarket. Bruno, on the other hand, so to speak, "jerked off at least three times a day." He's a libertine of sorts, but his physical unattractiveness and air of desperation leave him with few opportunities to practise that libertinism. Here Houellebecq works his deterministic narrative in such a manner that we're left in little doubt that the best way forward would be "that humanity must disappear, that humanity would give way to a new species which was asexual and immortal, a species which had outgrown individuality, individuation and progress." Michel's research leads to a new breed in the film's epilogue, "having broken the filial chain that linked us to humanity, we live on. Men consider us to be happy; it is certainly true that we have succeeded in overcoming the monstrous egotism, cruelty and anger which they could not; we live very different lives."
Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, the book offers up such a monstrous vision of humanity that its very eradication seems an act of huge optimism. There is no incremental amelioration in Houellebecq's world; just a huge leap into scientific possibilities that in many ways negate the very purpose and existence of art. There is no sense of a technology of the self in Houellebecq, no sense that, in Foucault's words, he believes in "techniques that permit individuals to effect, by their own means, a certain number of operations on their own bodies, their own souls, their own thoughts, their own conduct, and this in a manner so as to transform themselves, modify themselves, and to attain a certain state of perfection." Instead Houellebecq is more give to technologies over technology of the self, and also the opposite of personal freedom: predestination. As he says in the Paris Review, "I tend to think that good and evil exist and that the quantity in each of us in unchangeable. The moral character of people is set, fixed until death. This resembles the Calvinist notion of predestination, in which people are born saved or damned." Also, "I refuse to diverge from the scientific method or believe there is a truth beyond science."
Thus what Houellebecq proposes is that economic man, sexually commodified, is man at the end of the line, without the freedom to choose, and might as well be handed over to science. He doesn't see man as the master of his own fate, but caught in a certain time and incapable of doing much with it given man's fixed condition. Now we could say not only is Houellebecq too deterministically suggesting man's decline, but also that even if we accept that the human is generally economically driven, sexually frustrated and emotionally diminished, that the epoch still leaves other options, other ways in which we can choose to live. Sure, this attempt at personal ethics will prove immensely difficult in a society that cares little for acts of individual integrity, but that doesn't mean they're impossible, and what is interesting about Extension du Domain de la Lutte – even though it was co-written by Houellebecq and offers a voiceover that allows much of the writer's words to hit the screen intact – is that nevertheless the ending is changed.
And yet it's an ending that lends itself to what we could call a conventional conservatism as opposed to the radical conservatism offered at the end of Atomised. Here the film seems to suggest the best hope for Our Hero resides in the Kantian possibility of living for another. "To destroy oneself", wrote Kant, "expels that much morality from the world." Our hero believes that for all the apparent naivety of the argument, it remained the only one. "Only our sense of duty keeps us alive. In concrete terms, if you want to have a useful duty, make another being's happiness depend on your existence." While the novel ends on a clear note of despair with Our Hero lost in the clinic; the film ends with Our Hero taking his chances at dance classes – the film ending on Our Hero's dance with an attractive woman dwarfing him as they move, a smile of intrigue on her face.
If we call this a conventional conservatism we do so because, as Our Hero suggests, it has a naivety that is close to cliché, but it seems the only possibility Houellebecq can countenance short of the eradication of the human race altogether. And yet if there is no more than a tentative optimism in the film's ending, it may reside in the human becoming so hopelessly lost to sex and money that the possibility of making another's happiness dependent on oneself, presupposes the chance of getting another to depend upon us: even if we accept the idea, can we turn it into a reality? While there is something optimistic in the ending, there is also Our Hero's sardonic take on Tisserand's struggle. As he visits his co-workers' graveside, shortly after Tisserand's death in a car crash, Our Hero says, "Tisserand had fought to the end. The singles club, the ski trips. He never backed down, never gave up. Despite all his failures, he kept looking for love…" Our Hero offers these lines like they're those of a monumental struggle – and perhaps, from a certain point of view, they are. As Houellebecq says in an intriguing remark: "I'd say that the question whether love still exists plays the same role in my novels as the question of God's existence in Dostoyevsky." (Paris Review)
Now what is simultaneously impressive and infuriating about Houellebecq's vision of the world is the way it closes down the options. Certainly he captures the condition of man as economicus sexualis better than almost anybody, but the consequence is a narrow sociology that Houellebecq then expands outwards into a philosophy of life, and then expands outwards again to suggest that man has almost no options within this life. There is, to put it mildly, no technology of self available in his world, and it's not surprising that any proponents of a self with options are dismissed. This may take the form of an attack on New Agers when the narrator in Atomized says, "even the occasional, sporadic interest which New Age devotees took in this or that belief or 'ancient spiritual tradition' was no more than proof of a profound, almost schizophrenic despair." Or a sideswipe at Foucault and co: 'the global ridicule inspired by the works of Foucault, Lacan, Derrida and Deleuze, after decades of reverence, far from leaving the field clear for new ideas, simply heaped contempt on all those who were active in 'human sciences.'"
There is often in Houellebecq's vision usually an ethical pessimism that can only be tempered by a degree of moral absolutism, or an escape from morality altogether by virtue of a scientific new (non hu-) man. In some ways this makes Houellebecq's despair all the more problematic, because he is, if we think of Deleuze's book on Francis Bacon, interested in much more the horror than the scream, in Bacon's differentiation. What Deleuze means is that the horror is too representationally simple, while the scream is the undetectable despair, the despair that travels through us on a much more intangible level. "If we could express this as a dilemma, it would be: either I paint the horror and I do not paint the scream, because I make a figuration of the horrible, or else I paint the scream, and I do not paint the visible horror, I will paint the visible horror less and less, since the scream captures or detects an invisible force." Houellebecq and the director Philippe Harel detect the horror maybe too graphically here and then try to assuage the scream with the Kantian notion of making another happy. Alternatively, as in Atomised, the horror is again presented only to be assuaged this time with scientific advances that solve a problem. In many ways this is the opposite of what Bacon proposes when he says "…One's basic nature is totally without hope, and yet one's nervous system is made out of optimistic stuff." Where Houellebecq seems to think it's our nervous system that makes us unhappy and wants it tempered by morality and science, Bacon sees the nervous system constantly searching for new possibilities on its own terms, and that are explored more complexly in contemporary French films In My Skin and La vie nouvelle
Extension… suggests the opposite of this complexity. Our nervous systems, lost to selfish needs, require either a complete re-think or a retreat into conventionality. If we remind ourselves of the Spinozan notion of what does a body want, Houellebecq insists what it wants can't do us any good and must be ignored. The film addresses the problem, we could say, significantly yet flatly. Like a number of other French films in recent years – like Human Resources , Time Out, Fear and Trembling, Work Hard, Play Hard and, yes, In My Skin – there has been a fascination with work environments destroying something within oneself or our relationships with others: something which illustrates that work, in the world of homo economicus, destroys a vital aspect of our freedom and identity and replaces it with…what? We might be reminded again of Our Hero's comment that two years is no time at all when working. But should we not say that rather than man retreating into a Kantian care of another (that might be couched in relation to the workplace film as an orientation towards family), retreating from the planet altogether or, as in Houellebecq's third novel, Platform, accepting suicide is the best option in a world full of despair after trying the Kantian care of another through his love for the now late Valerie, he should try and give his nervous system variety? That if, as Bacon proposes, the nervous system is optimistic but our basic nature is totally without hope, can we work hard at changing what has become our basic nature, what we could call our epochal self? Thus we need to see homo economicus as no more than a stage of man's existence, and of merely one aspect of that stage instead of seeing man unavoidably trapped within an unremittingly predictable existence.
Maybe it's true that Our Hero and Tisserand are deeply unhappy because Tisserand's never been laid in his life and Our Hero's going through a patch so dry his mental health is in danger. But is it the very lack of sex that is causing the problem, or is it the monomaniacal need to see themselves as worth nothing more than their status as a consumer for the world of economicus sexualis? When Our Hero reluctantly joins dance classes at the end of the film, there is still this idea that offering happiness to another must come through sexual relief. It's pretty much the same happiness offered, briefly, in Houellebecq's other books. In Atomised, Bruno finally gets a sexually vivid life going with Christiane before illness leaves her disabled, and then taking her own life. With Valerie, in Platform, there is again much happiness before she dies in a terrorist attack. In this type of look at anomie, the anatomical is about the only hope. As Houellebecq suggests in Atomised, "One of the most surprising things about physical love is the sense of intimacy it creates the moment there is any trace of mutual affection, Suddenly – even if you met the night before – you can confide things to your lover that you would not tell another living soul."
In Houellebecq's work, human interaction functions most fruitfully through sexual intercourse, as though we huddle up with another against the harshness of the outside world, even if this warmth is temporary and finally removed. But could we say that the huge importance given to the couple in contemporary life lies in our status as increasingly atomised beings ripe for commodification, and that the couple is its ultimate manifestation rather than its opposite? Thus the couple will build a life together that becomes as readily commodifyingly sealing as emotionally enhancing, to the point that a couple may stay together because their joint income allows them to continue living in a very nice flat in a very nice part of an urban space. To split up wouldn't just be an emotional loss, but a societal slide also. Combine the expectations of coupling up with a standard of living enhanced by that coupling, and we can see why a split carries connotations and reverberations far beyond the intricacies of the emotional self. And is this self not what Our Hero seems to have had in the past? As we see him flicking through pictures of his life with his ex we may also wonder whether his present misery lies not just in her absence, but also in his own present status living in a high rise flat. When he says he once had a life, what exactly does he mean by this?
There is then a very specific set of problems the film – and Houellebecq's work generally – deals with, and they lie in the collapse of the social human emotionally, psychologically, sociologically and, yes, sexually. This is something the film addresses at the very beginning, saying "a few years ago Our Hero had, as they say, a "breakdown". A dreadful lethargy crushed him for months. He saw the universe as a furtive gathering of elementary particles, a fleeting shape on the way to chaos." This is the life of stuff, but there seems little between the elementary particles (the French title for Atomised is Les Particules elementaires), ) and the conventional social being, little sense that man can mould out of these elementary particles a being he can call his own. What we have on the one hand is a being of chance made out of molecules, and on the other a man of givens, making himself out of moral imperatives that are finally outside his control both in terms of moral expectation (Kant's idea is an ethical notion based not on variables available to the given situation, but on a general moral necessity), and on the need of another to situate one's own happiness.
If we compare Extension… to a work consistent with Foucault's technology of self, I'm Going Home, we can see that though both films are interested loosely in 'decaying values', Extension… moves towards the idea of being with another, whilst I'm Going Home seems to insist on the importance of the active decision made alone. The problem the sort of stoical position I'm Going Home works from, concerning being with another, is that of Seneca's "Praise in him what can neither be given nor snatched away…" The problem with being for another is that this very much can be snatched away; it's a precarious place in which to ground the self, and we might wonder whether much of Our Hero's problem with being lies in a sort of being with another or nothingness, to paraphrase Sartre. Hell can thus very much be other people, if our being depends upon others so obviously for our mental health.
Now I'm Going Home opens with the sort of loss that Houellebecq's narratives turn on: the loss of loved ones. In I'm Going Home it is aging actor Gilbert's wife and daughter, but this is really just a pre-cursor towards Gilbert realizing through the narrative what decisions he can call his own. The demise of his wife and daughter are beyond stoical decision-making, and the film thus follows less his feelings of grief, than his tentative decisions in relation to his career. This of course doesn't mean that loved ones are less important than his work, but what counts are the decisions one can make in one's life. Central to Our Hero's unhappiness is the sense that he cannot choose, but there is a feeling that this lack of choice isn't about individual lack of will, but a societal malaise.
However, I'm Going Home also has societal malaise; so much that even so ethically vigilante an actor as Gilbert gets caught in an act of thespian compromise concerning an adaptation of Joyce's Ullyses. But I'm Going Home still suggests that this has been a momentary error, however profoundly affecting, and that Gilbert very quickly rectifies it by dropping out of the role for which he's obviously ill-suited. In Extension…, though, there is no sense that we are the masters of our own destiny, and even the idea of acting in good faith in Houellbecq carries an air of bad faith. To act in good conscience, to eat well, say, to exercise, to seek out an individual happiness, would in Houellebecq's world not be bonne conscience but if anything false consciousness. Why pretend your reality is any better than it is, why pretend that the world isn't constantly being polluted, our interactions constantly sullied by compromises, and our countries run by charlatans, might be the mantra. It is there to some degree in the aforementioned scene when the 'realist' Our Hero goes off to the toilet and masturbates. Accept one's limitations, and that of the world's, and if you're lucky you may find someone to whom you can couple up and that will shelter you from the harshness outside, but don't bank on it. In fact don't even expect it: have your hand to hand.
Houellebecq's, then, is a narrow realism. It's one that insists we live not according to our possibilities, but from a nervous system that's the opposite of Bacon's: a nervous system of habit, motivated by basic drives and satiated by alcohol, fags and pills. When at the beginning of the film Our Hero attends a work colleague's party, he says as usual nothing happened, but what we see is our hero spending his time drinking and smoking and looking out of the window. He's the self-fulfilling prophet of despair, who seems like he's unwilling to create any positive energy because it would fly in the face of the despondent identity he's created for himself. To begin to love life, even to work less from habit than a nervous excitation beyond the sexual, would demand a possible existence and not a probable one.
Our Hero's notion of realism couldn't countenance such new options because there is something in his identity, just as he believes there is something in the culture, so despairingly there, so unmalleable, that he can't see any alternatives. Now it is this which gives the film much of its comic energy at the very same time that it robs it of its probing purpose. We accept the unlikelihood of change, or at best the minimal amount of change attending a dance class might provide, and try instead of changing ourselves and the world, master the correct tone in which to live in it. So central to the film, and generally to Houellebecq's universe, is tone: hence the importance of comic fatalism over 'intervalistic' stoicism. In the latter we may have a gap between the social expectation and the individual decision that creates an interval, a space for thinking through a decision before acting upon it, and this suggests personal freedom. But in Houellbecq we instead have not the intervalistic but the comic, so any space created won't so much allow the person to act freely, but to adopt the right comic tone for the inevitable action. Thus it's seen as pretty much inevitable that neither Our Hero nor Tisserand will get laid when they go off to a nightclub on Christmas Eve. But where Tisserand boogies on the dance floor hoping to pull; Our Hero of course sits and watches, well aware that nothing could conceivably happen anyway. Hence his comic fatalism, as he waits for Tisserand to fail once again.
We could even say that it's on the issue of Our Hero's fatalism that the film's main narrative event turns. Our Hero insists that Tisserand should forget about women. Even if he were to sleep with an attractive woman, Our Hero insists that all the sexual failures in his life leading up to that point would inevitably impact on any subsequent relationship: "you're orphaned by the teenage loves you never had," Our Hero insists. What he should do is take up a life as a murderer: "when you have those women trembling with your knife, begging you for their youth, you'll be their master." The comic is in danger of toppling of into the tragic because Tisserand lacks Our Hero's indifference. Usually he has to act in the world, no matter how incompetently. Of course Tisserand finally can't go ahead with Our Hero's proposal, but he gets close enough, going down to the beach where a couple make love, and then backing away at the last minute. He decides to drive back to Paris, probably still quite drunk, and crashes the car whilst trying to answer a call from Our Hero.
As with other deaths, illnesses and accidents in Houellebecq's work there is a cruel inevitability. Tisserand's death resembles Bruno's lover Christiane's cancer and then suicide in Atomised, or Valerie's death at the hands of terrorists in Platform. But again Houellebecq's interest lies in fatalism. As the narrator says in Atomised: 'each individual has a simple view of the future: a time will come when the sum of pleasures that life has left to offer is outweighed by the sum of pain. This weighing up of pleasure and pain, which, sooner or later, everyone is forced to make, leads, logically, to suicide." Houellebecq then insists, "On the subject it's amusing to note that two highly respected fin–de–siécle intellectuals, Gilles Deleuze and Guy Debord, both committed suicide for no reason other than that they could not bear the idea of their own physical decline." Whether or not Deleuze took his life because of the idea of his physical decline, or the reality and pain of that decline, doesn't of course finally interest Houellebecq: what matters is the notion of amusement attached to inevitability. In Houellebecq's world perspective doesn't lead to the possibility of change, but the fatalistic realisation of one's limitations, of our puny existence.
This is a particular type of abjection, a type absent from the other abject films released around the same time: Romance, Pola X, The Piano Teacher, In My Skin and La vie Nouvelle (the abject film to which it's closest is the deeper and darker Seul contre tous). Extension… offers instead a comic abjection that demands we accept our minimal options, but that we have the good sense to create a perspective that doesn't pretend we can change the world, but that we at least can be self-mockingly wise to our fate. If we're impressed yet sceptical about Houellebecq's vision (and it is a vision), it lies in his too ready acceptance of economic man and sexual man barely able to alter his fate, and working out of this deadbeat philosophical perspective a deadpan comic tone. Houellebecq may believe that the false consciousness lies in the New Agers and post-structuralist philosophers who reckon they can change their lives and subsequently the world, but is there not a greater false consciousness in accepting one's existence inevitably and believing one can't alter the world at all? Houellebecq suggests that all we can do is live in a state of comic abjection unless we're lucky enough to find conventional love to protect us from the wider cruelty, or hope for a future scientifically advanced stage that will banish much of this wilder cruelty from our lives. But will it not also remove the choice to be kind or cruel from our existence? These are the sort of ethical questions one feels Houellebecq can't quite entertain, as if ethics itself might be a more absurd form of false consciousness than any. But if anomie meets anatomy here, is it not finally because Houellebecq trusts so much in the latter that it leads inevitably to the former?
"The problem is, it's not just enough to live by the rules. Sure, you manage to live by them. Sometimes it's tight, extremely tight, but on the whole you manage. Your tax papers are up to date. Your invoices paid on time. You never go out without your identity card (and the special little wallet for your Visa!) And yet you haven't any friends."
Welcome to commodified man, Michel Houellebecq style. These lines in Houellebecq's first novel, Extension du domain de la lutte, capture well not just the concerns of the writer's first book, not just the Philippe Harel film that adapts closely its preoccupations, and that Houellebecq co-wrote, but also a certain condition in modern man, a condition that certainly incorporates aspects of dull choice, but also insistently segues into abjection. We could almost say the Houellebecqian world is when anomie meets anatomy. While a character like Bruno in the existentially-oriented Kings of the Road will take it as given that he can sleep with a woman no matter its general meaninglessness; for Our Hero (Harel) here, getting laid is an active struggle. Bruno is alienated certainly, but his alienation is that of a man at one remove from the world through an existential choice, however shaped by history both personal and impersonal that decision happens to be. Our Hero is alienated much more by advanced's capitalism's need to demarcate - it is demarcation rather than alienation. As Our Hero says in voice over, there are winners and losers in the world. People like himself and more especially his work colleague Tisserand (Jose Garcia) may earn good money in IT, and thus are winners in one sphere, but their sexual life is non-existent, and they must accept their loser status there.
Now what Extension du Domaine de la Lutte (Whatever) wants to do, in keeping with Houellebecqian obsession, is suggest the centrality of sexual desire to emotional despair, even to full-blown clinical depression. It's not a throwaway when near the end of the film the psychiatrist asks when Our Hero last had sex; it is central to the film's problematic of anomie coming out of anatomy, coming out of an obsessive world of sexuality, and where no sexual possibilities are available. It's like a variation on Michel Foucault's notion of scientia sexualis, where the obsession with sex manifested itself in a culture desperate to know about the sexual act, to 'scientize' it. It is a notion central to the Victorian era and the early twentieth century's attitude to sex and to some degree onwards: incorporating, we could say, Freud, Kinsey and Hite. Today however it's closer to a kind of economicus sexualis, where sexuality is so commodified that to be outside the loop, to be deemed too physically unattractive, too asocial or too shy to get laid, all contribute to the creation of an anatomical anomie that is spiritually de-grading but intellectually easy to trace.
This is a spiritual degradation that makes Houellebecq's universe deterministic, and undeniably overly simplistic, but it's also a symptomatically useful way of seeing the nature of being at the end of the 20th century. After all, Our Hero is a man who says, "I don't like this world. I definitely do not like it. The society in which I live - advertising, computers - disgusts me. My entire work as a computer expert consists of adding to the data, the cross-checks, the criteria of rational decision-making...This world has need of everything except more information." We may ask is this where the sex industry comes in, where our sense of futility with information meets emotional needs but as sexual desire? What we may require is an emotional sustenance and a world of tenderness, but such is the level of co-modification that we raise our emotional expectations to a level no higher than that required for masturbation, prostitution or the one night stand - through ultimately non-commital relationships. So where Bruno in Kings of the Road insists he always feels lonely inside a woman; it's as though that is a problem consistent with a nauseous state that struggles to generate meaning in a life, but in Houellebecq's book and Harel's film it is as though meaning can only justifiably be generated out of the pornographic, the empty, the sexually co-modified.
This may leave a problem on one level but it's also a resolution of a problem on another. If we accept that we live generally in a society that is homo economicus, and where time is money, then we can see why it makes sense that to deal with this economic state we have a co-modified sexual culture to accompany it. Thus we can see that pornography, or prostitution, isn't just a problem (and after all the latter's hardly a new industry), but its problem resides to some degree in its nature as a solution. As Our Hero insists, informing us that he's been without sex for two years "two years is a long time. But in reality, above all when one is working, it's no time at all. Anyone will tell you; it's no time at all." Hence with so little time available to the career person, and if, like Our Hero, they're without the physical attractiveness that can announce one's attributes immediately, what is left but the world of the commodified image? It resolves the problem of sexual frustration, but, and this is the psychiatrist's point, leaves a further problem lurking behind it. It would sort of make sense that Our Hero would ask, when she suggests that his lack of sex is central to his despair, would she sleep with him. He's so far removed from the social norms, of the (relatively) slow ritual towards enchanting another, that he feels he might as well just ask anyone. But as she replies, her job isn't of course to provide the sex, but the social skills in which to pursue women. Our Hero however may well believe that he is too far gone for that, and basically all he can hope for is a quick hand-job or parlour visit in the middle of his busy schedule. Add a hectic work load, physical unattractiveness, rapidly diminishing social skills and the onset of clinical depression, and Our Hero looks like the unluckiest symptom of a culture obsessed with sex and money.
But at least, he might say, he doesn't share the false sexual consciousness of his work colleague Tisserand who, though a twenty-eight year-old virgin, still acts as if sexual conquest is just around the corner. During one evening in a nightclub, Our Hero sits on the sidelines getting wasted while Tisserand boogies on the dance-floor, no matter the dismay, disgust or indifference of those he happens to dance with. Better, Our Hero, believes, to masturbate in the nightclub's toilets than go through the charade of believing you have any chance on the dance-floor. This is confronting reality Houellebecq style: that it's more realistic to disappear into the men's room for a hand-job than pursue a real-life human encounter. So commodified has man become that, if he wants to live in a real world, the world of homo economicus, then he must have a consciousness that matches its expectations, no matter if this realistic consciousness results in a higher degree of solipsism and a retreat from inter-communicative exchanges.
Such a belief is in many ways the point of focus in Houellebecq's follow-up novel, Atomised, where he contrasts two half-brothers, Michel and Bruno. Michel is physically attractive but has no real interest in sex and spends his life working on molecular biology and going to the supermarket. Bruno, on the other hand, so to speak, "jerked off at least three times a day." He's a libertine of sorts, but his physical unattractiveness and air of desperation leave him with few opportunities to practise that libertinism. Here Houellebecq works his deterministic narrative in such a manner that we're left in little doubt that the best way forward would be "that humanity must disappear, that humanity would give way to a new species which was asexual and immortal, a species which had outgrown individuality, individuation and progress." Michel's research leads to a new breed in the film's epilogue, "having broken the filial chain that linked us to humanity, we live on. Men consider us to be happy; it is certainly true that we have succeeded in overcoming the monstrous egotism, cruelty and anger which they could not; we live very different lives."
Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, the book offers up such a monstrous vision of humanity that its very eradication seems an act of huge optimism. There is no incremental amelioration in Houellebecq's world; just a huge leap into scientific possibilities that in many ways negate the very purpose and existence of art. There is no sense of a technology of the self in Houellebecq, no sense that, in Foucault's words, he believes in "techniques that permit individuals to effect, by their own means, a certain number of operations on their own bodies, their own souls, their own thoughts, their own conduct, and this in a manner so as to transform themselves, modify themselves, and to attain a certain state of perfection." Instead Houellebecq is more give to technologies over technology of the self, and also the opposite of personal freedom: predestination. As he says in the Paris Review, "I tend to think that good and evil exist and that the quantity in each of us in unchangeable. The moral character of people is set, fixed until death. This resembles the Calvinist notion of predestination, in which people are born saved or damned." Also, "I refuse to diverge from the scientific method or believe there is a truth beyond science."
Thus what Houellebecq proposes is that economic man, sexually commodified, is man at the end of the line, without the freedom to choose, and might as well be handed over to science. He doesn't see man as the master of his own fate, but caught in a certain time and incapable of doing much with it given man's fixed condition. Now we could say not only is Houellebecq too deterministically suggesting man's decline, but also that even if we accept that the human is generally economically driven, sexually frustrated and emotionally diminished, that the epoch still leaves other options, other ways in which we can choose to live. Sure, this attempt at personal ethics will prove immensely difficult in a society that cares little for acts of individual integrity, but that doesn't mean they're impossible, and what is interesting about Extension du Domain de la Lutte - even though it was co-written by Houellebecq and offers a voiceover that allows much of the writer's words to hit the screen intact - is that nevertheless the ending is changed.
And yet it's an ending that lends itself to what we could call a conventional conservatism as opposed to the radical conservatism offered at the end of Atomised. Here the film seems to suggest the best hope for Our Hero resides in the Kantian possibility of living for another. "To destroy oneself", wrote Kant, "expels that much morality from the world." Our hero believes that for all the apparent naivety of the argument, it remained the only one. "Only our sense of duty keeps us alive. In concrete terms, if you want to have a useful duty, make another being's happiness depend on your existence." While the novel ends on a clear note of despair with Our Hero lost in the clinic; the film ends with Our Hero taking his chances at dance classes - the film ending on Our Hero's dance with an attractive woman dwarfing him as they move, a smile of intrigue on her face.
If we call this a conventional conservatism we do so because, as Our Hero suggests, it has a naivety that is close to clich, but it seems the only possibility Houellebecq can countenance short of the eradication of the human race altogether. And yet if there is no more than a tentative optimism in the film's ending, it may reside in the human becoming so hopelessly lost to sex and money that the possibility of making another's happiness dependent on oneself, presupposes the chance of getting another to depend upon us: even if we accept the idea, can we turn it into a reality? While there is something optimistic in the ending, there is also Our Hero's sardonic take on Tisserand's struggle. As he visits his co-workers' graveside, shortly after Tisserand's death in a car crash, Our Hero says, "Tisserand had fought to the end. The singles club, the ski trips. He never backed down, never gave up. Despite all his failures, he kept looking for love..." Our Hero offers these lines like they're those of a monumental struggle - and perhaps, from a certain point of view, they are. As Houellebecq says in an intriguing remark: "I'd say that the question whether love still exists plays the same role in my novels as the question of God's existence in Dostoyevsky." (Paris Review)
Now what is simultaneously impressive and infuriating about Houellebecq's vision of the world is the way it closes down the options. Certainly he captures the condition of man as economicus sexualis better than almost anybody, but the consequence is a narrow sociology that Houellebecq then expands outwards into a philosophy of life, and then expands outwards again to suggest that man has almost no options within this life. There is, to put it mildly, no technology of self available in his world, and it's not surprising that any proponents of a self with options are dismissed. This may take the form of an attack on New Agers when the narrator in Atomized says, "even the occasional, sporadic interest which New Age devotees took in this or that belief or 'ancient spiritual tradition' was no more than proof of a profound, almost schizophrenic despair." Or a sideswipe at Foucault and co: 'the global ridicule inspired by the works of Foucault, Lacan, Derrida and Deleuze, after decades of reverence, far from leaving the field clear for new ideas, simply heaped contempt on all those who were active in 'human sciences.'"
There is often in Houellebecq's vision usually an ethical pessimism that can only be tempered by a degree of moral absolutism, or an escape from morality altogether by virtue of a scientific new (non hu-) man. In some ways this makes Houellebecq's despair all the more problematic, because he is, if we think of Deleuze's book on Francis Bacon, interested in much more the horror than the scream, in Bacon's differentiation. What Deleuze means is that the horror is too representationally simple, while the scream is the undetectable despair, the despair that travels through us on a much more intangible level. "If we could express this as a dilemma, it would be: either I paint the horror and I do not paint the scream, because I make a figuration of the horrible, or else I paint the scream, and I do not paint the visible horror, I will paint the visible horror less and less, since the scream captures or detects an invisible force." Houellebecq and the director Philippe Harel detect the horror maybe too graphically here and then try to assuage the scream with the Kantian notion of making another happy. Alternatively, as in Atomised, the horror is again presented only to be assuaged this time with scientific advances that solve a problem. In many ways this is the opposite of what Bacon proposes when he says "...One's basic nature is totally without hope, and yet one's nervous system is made out of optimistic stuff." Where Houellebecq seems to think it's our nervous system that makes us unhappy and wants it tempered by morality and science, Bacon sees the nervous system constantly searching for new possibilities on its own terms, and that are explored more complexly in contemporary French films In My Skin and La vie nouvelle
Extension... suggests the opposite of this complexity. Our nervous systems, lost to selfish needs, require either a complete re-think or a retreat into conventionality. If we remind ourselves of the Spinozan notion of what does a body want, Houellebecq insists what it wants can't do us any good and must be ignored. The film addresses the problem, we could say, significantly yet flatly. Like a number of other French films in recent years - like Human Resources , Time Out, Fear and Trembling, Work Hard, Play Hard and, yes, In My Skin - there has been a fascination with work environments destroying something within oneself or our relationships with others: something which illustrates that work, in the world of homo economicus, destroys a vital aspect of our freedom and identity and replaces it with...what? We might be reminded again of Our Hero's comment that two years is no time at all when working. But should we not say that rather than man retreating into a Kantian care of another (that might be couched in relation to the workplace film as an orientation towards family), retreating from the planet altogether or, as in Houellebecq's third novel, Platform, accepting suicide is the best option in a world full of despair after trying the Kantian care of another through his love for the now late Valerie, he should try and give his nervous system variety? That if, as Bacon proposes, the nervous system is optimistic but our basic nature is totally without hope, can we work hard at changing what has become our basic nature, what we could call our epochal self? Thus we need to see homo economicus as no more than a stage of man's existence, and of merely one aspect of that stage instead of seeing man unavoidably trapped within an unremittingly predictable existence.
Maybe it's true that Our Hero and Tisserand are deeply unhappy because Tisserand's never been laid in his life and Our Hero's going through a patch so dry his mental health is in danger. But is it the very lack of sex that is causing the problem, or is it the monomaniacal need to see themselves as worth nothing more than their status as a consumer for the world of economicus sexualis? When Our Hero reluctantly joins dance classes at the end of the film, there is still this idea that offering happiness to another must come through sexual relief. It's pretty much the same happiness offered, briefly, in Houellebecq's other books. In Atomised, Bruno finally gets a sexually vivid life going with Christiane before illness leaves her disabled, and then taking her own life. With Valerie, in Platform, there is again much happiness before she dies in a terrorist attack. In this type of look at anomie, the anatomical is about the only hope. As Houellebecq suggests in Atomised, "One of the most surprising things about physical love is the sense of intimacy it creates the moment there is any trace of mutual affection, Suddenly - even if you met the night before - you can confide things to your lover that you would not tell another living soul."
In Houellebecq's work, human interaction functions most fruitfully through sexual intercourse, as though we huddle up with another against the harshness of the outside world, even if this warmth is temporary and finally removed. But could we say that the huge importance given to the couple in contemporary life lies in our status as increasingly atomised beings ripe for commodification, and that the couple is its ultimate manifestation rather than its opposite? Thus the couple will build a life together that becomes as readily commodifyingly sealing as emotionally enhancing, to the point that a couple may stay together because their joint income allows them to continue living in a very nice flat in a very nice part of an urban space. To split up wouldn't just be an emotional loss, but a societal slide also. Combine the expectations of coupling up with a standard of living enhanced by that coupling, and we can see why a split carries connotations and reverberations far beyond the intricacies of the emotional self. And is this self not what Our Hero seems to have had in the past? As we see him flicking through pictures of his life with his ex we may also wonder whether his present misery lies not just in her absence, but also in his own present status living in a high rise flat. When he says he once had a life, what exactly does he mean by this?
There is then a very specific set of problems the film - and Houellebecq's work generally - deals with, and they lie in the collapse of the social human emotionally, psychologically, sociologically and, yes, sexually. This is something the film addresses at the very beginning, saying "a few years ago Our Hero had, as they say, a "breakdown". A dreadful lethargy crushed him for months. He saw the universe as a furtive gathering of elementary particles, a fleeting shape on the way to chaos." This is the life of stuff, but there seems little between the elementary particles (the French title for Atomised is Les Particules elementaires), ) and the conventional social being, little sense that man can mould out of these elementary particles a being he can call his own. What we have on the one hand is a being of chance made out of molecules, and on the other a man of givens, making himself out of moral imperatives that are finally outside his control both in terms of moral expectation (Kant's idea is an ethical notion based not on variables available to the given situation, but on a general moral necessity), and on the need of another to situate one's own happiness.
If we compare Extension... to a work consistent with Foucault's technology of self, I'm Going Home, we can see that though both films are interested loosely in 'decaying values', Extension... moves towards the idea of being with another, whilst I'm Going Home seems to insist on the importance of the active decision made alone. The problem the sort of stoical position I'm Going Home works from, concerning being with another, is that of Seneca's "Praise in him what can neither be given nor snatched away..." The problem with being for another is that this very much can be snatched away; it's a precarious place in which to ground the self, and we might wonder whether much of Our Hero's problem with being lies in a sort of being with another or nothingness, to paraphrase Sartre. Hell can thus very much be other people, if our being depends upon others so obviously for our mental health.
Now I'm Going Home opens with the sort of loss that Houellebecq's narratives turn on: the loss of loved ones. In I'm Going Home it is aging actor Gilbert's wife and daughter, but this is really just a pre-cursor towards Gilbert realizing through the narrative what decisions he can call his own. The demise of his wife and daughter are beyond stoical decision-making, and the film thus follows less his feelings of grief, than his tentative decisions in relation to his career. This of course doesn't mean that loved ones are less important than his work, but what counts are the decisions one can make in one's life. Central to Our Hero's unhappiness is the sense that he cannot choose, but there is a feeling that this lack of choice isn't about individual lack of will, but a societal malaise.
However, I'm Going Home also has societal malaise; so much that even so ethically vigilante an actor as Gilbert gets caught in an act of thespian compromise concerning an adaptation of Joyce's Ullyses. But I'm Going Home still suggests that this has been a momentary error, however profoundly affecting, and that Gilbert very quickly rectifies it by dropping out of the role for which he's obviously ill-suited. In Extension..., though, there is no sense that we are the masters of our own destiny, and even the idea of acting in good faith in Houellbecq carries an air of bad faith. To act in good conscience, to eat well, say, to exercise, to seek out an individual happiness, would in Houellebecq's world not be bonne conscience but if anything false consciousness. Why pretend your reality is any better than it is, why pretend that the world isn't constantly being polluted, our interactions constantly sullied by compromises, and our countries run by charlatans, might be the mantra. It is there to some degree in the aforementioned scene when the 'realist' Our Hero goes off to the toilet and masturbates. Accept one's limitations, and that of the world's, and if you're lucky you may find someone to whom you can couple up and that will shelter you from the harshness outside, but don't bank on it. In fact don't even expect it: have your hand to hand.
Houellebecq's, then, is a narrow realism. It's one that insists we live not according to our possibilities, but from a nervous system that's the opposite of Bacon's: a nervous system of habit, motivated by basic drives and satiated by alcohol, fags and pills. When at the beginning of the film Our Hero attends a work colleague's party, he says as usual nothing happened, but what we see is our hero spending his time drinking and smoking and looking out of the window. He's the self-fulfilling prophet of despair, who seems like he's unwilling to create any positive energy because it would fly in the face of the despondent identity he's created for himself. To begin to love life, even to work less from habit than a nervous excitation beyond the sexual, would demand a possible existence and not a probable one.
Our Hero's notion of realism couldn't countenance such new options because there is something in his identity, just as he believes there is something in the culture, so despairingly there, so unmalleable, that he can't see any alternatives. Now it is this which gives the film much of its comic energy at the very same time that it robs it of its probing purpose. We accept the unlikelihood of change, or at best the minimal amount of change attending a dance class might provide, and try instead of changing ourselves and the world, master the correct tone in which to live in it. So central to the film, and generally to Houellebecq's universe, is tone: hence the importance of comic fatalism over 'intervalistic' stoicism. In the latter we may have a gap between the social expectation and the individual decision that creates an interval, a space for thinking through a decision before acting upon it, and this suggests personal freedom. But in Houellbecq we instead have not the intervalistic but the comic, so any space created won't so much allow the person to act freely, but to adopt the right comic tone for the inevitable action. Thus it's seen as pretty much inevitable that neither Our Hero nor Tisserand will get laid when they go off to a nightclub on Christmas Eve. But where Tisserand boogies on the dance floor hoping to pull; Our Hero of course sits and watches, well aware that nothing could conceivably happen anyway. Hence his comic fatalism, as he waits for Tisserand to fail once again.
We could even say that it's on the issue of Our Hero's fatalism that the film's main narrative event turns. Our Hero insists that Tisserand should forget about women. Even if he were to sleep with an attractive woman, Our Hero insists that all the sexual failures in his life leading up to that point would inevitably impact on any subsequent relationship: "you're orphaned by the teenage loves you never had," Our Hero insists. What he should do is take up a life as a murderer: "when you have those women trembling with your knife, begging you for their youth, you'll be their master." The comic is in danger of toppling of into the tragic because Tisserand lacks Our Hero's indifference. Usually he has to act in the world, no matter how incompetently. Of course Tisserand finally can't go ahead with Our Hero's proposal, but he gets close enough, going down to the beach where a couple make love, and then backing away at the last minute. He decides to drive back to Paris, probably still quite drunk, and crashes the car whilst trying to answer a call from Our Hero.
As with other deaths, illnesses and accidents in Houellebecq's work there is a cruel inevitability. Tisserand's death resembles Bruno's lover Christiane's cancer and then suicide in Atomised, or Valerie's death at the hands of terrorists in Platform. But again Houellebecq's interest lies in fatalism. As the narrator says in Atomised: 'each individual has a simple view of the future: a time will come when the sum of pleasures that life has left to offer is outweighed by the sum of pain. This weighing up of pleasure and pain, which, sooner or later, everyone is forced to make, leads, logically, to suicide." Houellebecq then insists, "On the subject it's amusing to note that two highly respected fin-de-sicle intellectuals, Gilles Deleuze and Guy Debord, both committed suicide for no reason other than that they could not bear the idea of their own physical decline." Whether or not Deleuze took his life because of the idea of his physical decline, or the reality and pain of that decline, doesn't of course finally interest Houellebecq: what matters is the notion of amusement attached to inevitability. In Houellebecq's world perspective doesn't lead to the possibility of change, but the fatalistic realisation of one's limitations, of our puny existence.
This is a particular type of abjection, a type absent from the other abject films released around the same time: Romance, Pola X, The Piano Teacher, In My Skin and La vie Nouvelle (the abject film to which it's closest is the deeper and darker Seul contre tous). Extension... offers instead a comic abjection that demands we accept our minimal options, but that we have the good sense to create a perspective that doesn't pretend we can change the world, but that we at least can be self-mockingly wise to our fate. If we're impressed yet sceptical about Houellebecq's vision (and it is a vision), it lies in his too ready acceptance of economic man and sexual man barely able to alter his fate, and working out of this deadbeat philosophical perspective a deadpan comic tone. Houellebecq may believe that the false consciousness lies in the New Agers and post-structuralist philosophers who reckon they can change their lives and subsequently the world, but is there not a greater false consciousness in accepting one's existence inevitably and believing one can't alter the world at all? Houellebecq suggests that all we can do is live in a state of comic abjection unless we're lucky enough to find conventional love to protect us from the wider cruelty, or hope for a future scientifically advanced stage that will banish much of this wilder cruelty from our lives. But will it not also remove the choice to be kind or cruel from our existence? These are the sort of ethical questions one feels Houellebecq can't quite entertain, as if ethics itself might be a more absurd form of false consciousness than any. But if anomie meets anatomy here, is it not finally because Houellebecq trusts so much in the latter that it leads inevitably to the former?


text:
"Американският президент" () е американска романтична комедия от 1995 г., режисиран и продуциран от Роб Райнър, по сценарий на Арън Соркин. Във филма участват Майкъл Дъглас, Анет Бенинг, Мартин Шийн, Майкъл Джей Фокс и Ричард Драйфус.

Източници

Външни препратки

Филми от 1995 година
Филми на Роб Райнър
Филми на "Кълъмбия Пикчърс"
Филми на "Юнивърсъл Студиос"
Американски романтични филми
Американски трагикомични филми

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Another night and another rotten performance out of a Lightning goalie. Dwayne Roloson has been poor all season and last night it was Mathieu Garon getting torched by the Islanders 5-1. Garon getting as many starts as he is is thanks to Roloson looking every bit of 42 years-old.
The Lightning are currently fourth in the Southeast Division and 10 points behind the Panthers for first. They're not a playoff team and without solid goaltending and stronger defense in general, they're going to go from being a game away from the Stanley Cup finals to the draft lottery.
Paging Steve Yzerman, it's time to make a season-saving trade yet again.
Last season, Yzerman worked his magic on the day of the Winter Classic to land Dwayne Roloson as a last ditch effort to fix the team's goaltending problems last season. The move paid off as Roloson carried the Lightning to the playoffs and into the Eastern Conference finals.
The problem facing Yzerman this time around is finding a team eager to part ways with a capable goalie. Putting in a call to Vancouver for Cory Schneider (or hey, why not Roberto Luongo?) would likely come at too high of a price. The same could be said if they wanted to take a shot at Kings backup Jonathan Bernier. The Panthers have Scott Clemmensen but he might come at a stiffer price to a rival.
Yzerman's got to do something because at this rate, the Lightning aren't going anywhere with the situation as it sits.


Stalled Black Truck – Rants! And babblings!
There is no better time to write on your blog, I always say, then when you should be writing something else. I have friends who run a fishing blog. The should in this particular instance is a short paper I need to write for my Postcolonial Medieval literature class. I'm stalled on the first sentence of this paper, and not going anywhere fast. Ironically, I tried to start my old F-150 today for the first time in 5 months, in hopes to use it to help a friend move this weekend, and of course, it doesn't start at all. In fact, it makes absolutely no sound whatsoever when you turn the ignition key. Attempts at jump-starting it with my Passat proved fruitless. It will have to be towed to my mechanic (who is of course named "Joe") in the morning to try and resuscitate it back to life. Trucks are not easy to push — I learned this today. Who knew: you can really feel that extra 1,000-lbs of material.
The dead, black truck sitting in front of my house that can't be moved, is a fitting metaphor for this paper that is going no-where (if you'll allow me to return to it). I've since proceeded to Edgar Allen Poe's choice remedy to lubricate the fused, stalled, an unresponsive neurons/dendrite connections in my brain. I must admit, it is helping — I think. Or, at least it's making "other" writing easier.
Well, it was … I suddenly have nothing further to say.


The Immediate past Minister for Information, Dr. Mustapha Abdul-Hamid has expressed happiness about his new Ministry, Inner City and Zongo Development and optimistic, he'll succeed at his new Ministry.
Dr. Abdul-Hamid was swapped with his former Deputy Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah who is also the Member of Parliament for Ofoase/Ayirebi Constituency in the Eastern Region.
Expressing his excitements on the first day of assuming office as the Minister for Inner City and Zongo Development, in an interview on Joy fm, the minister maintained that he considers the move by the President an honour taking into cognizance that service to the people is one of the biggest opportunities and honour that can be bestowed on anyone.
He said structures has already been laid and there is a blueprint in place, unlike the Information Ministry which he had to start afresh because Former President John Mahama collapsed it in 2013 and put it under Communication.
"I agree I have to come with my own set of priority and vision and so on but its basically to improve on what he has done and my understanding is that the development fund, for now, is about some $20million or so with the possibility of scaling up," he said.
Asked whether he has been demoted, Dr Abdul-Hamid response was, "Hahahaha, I have not…well it is not, we are all ministers, we all sit in Cabinet and so on, that hasn't changed. If I had been taken out of the Cabinet perhaps, you could say I have been demoted but even most importantly, I have been given a higher calling in my view, because there is no better service than service to your people".
"I am a Moslem and our scriptures tell us that, we have been created solely for the purpose of worship. In other words, the worship of the Almighty Allah, and therefore there is no better service to the Almighty Allah than service to a community that is largely inhabited by Moslems. Quite frankly, I am beside myself with excitement, I must tell you that," Dr Abdul-Hamid said added.
Dr Abdul-Hamid explained that his in-depth knowledge in Islam and experience as a product of the Zongo Community makes him best suitable for the position.


text:
Ron Johnson Responds to Claim That He Privately Admitted Biden Win
By Mairead McArdle
About Mairead McArdle
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Senator Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) questions Chad Wolf, acting Secretary of Homeland Security, at a committee hearing in Washington, D.C., August 6, 2020	 (Toni Sandys/Reuters)
Senator Ron Johnson pushed back Wednesday against allegations that he has admitted privately that Joe Biden won the presidential election but refuses to do so publicly due to political concerns, saying his statements have always been consistent.
Mark Becker, former chairman for the Brown County Republican Party, wrote an op-ed published Wednesday in the The Bulwark claiming that Johnson admitted that Biden won during a private phone call last month, but said he would not say as much publicly because it would be "political suicide."
"Senator Johnson knows that Joe Biden won a free and fair election," Becker wrote. "He is refusing to admit it publicly and stoking conspiracies that undermine our democracy solely because it would be 'political suicide' to oppose Trump. I find this unconscionable."
Becker said the "war that leaders of the GOP such as Senator Johnson are waging on the very foundations of our democracy" spurred his decision to publish details about his November 14 phone call with the Wisconsin Republican senator.
Johnson dismissed the op-ed's accusations against him on Wednesday, saying the article "should be viewed as the political hit piece it is, and simply ignored."
"I have been very consistent in both public and private statements that I believe there are way too many irregularities and suspect issues that need to be fully investigated and publicly vetted before a final result is determined and a peaceful transition of power takes place," Johnson said in a statement emailed to National Review.
On Tuesday, shortly after Attorney General William Barr said the Justice Department has not found evidence of voter fraud widespread enough to change the outcome of this year's presidential election, Johnson called on Barr to "show everybody" his evidence that no mass voter fraud occurred, saying there are "enough suspicions" and "irregularities" to warrant questions about the process.
Meanwhile, a growing group of GOP senators is calling on President Trump to concede the election as his legal team fails to produce evidence of widespread fraud and runs out of legal avenues to challenge the vote tallies.
Becker, who has been vocal in his opposition to Trump over the past four years, says he endorsed and campaigned for Johnson's unsuccessful opponent, Democrat Russ Feingold, during their 2016 Senate race in Wisconsin.
Send a tip to the news team at NR.
Mairead McArdle is a news writer for National Review Online and a graduate of Thomas Aquinas College. @johnsonhildy
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The Ridiculous Attacks on the 1776 Report
Anyone or anything that refuses to depict the American founding as anything but a wholly racist enterprise will be cast as a tool of white supremacy.
The Tragedy of Trump's Presidency
So much good tenaciously done. So much good gratuitously undone.
Trump Grants Clemency to Bannon, 142 Others on Eve of Inauguration
Brittany Bernstein
The president issued 70 commutations and pardoned 73 people early Wednesday, in his final hours in office.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Different angles, real lives
Artefact TV/Video
From Ellis Island to Trump's travel ban
By Pietro Santorsola
Between the 19th and 20th century more than 12 million people were processed at the immigration station of Ellis Island, in sight of New York City, all of them hoping to enter the "New World" leaving behind Europe; a continent where wars, hatred, poverty, unemployment and discrimination were happening on a daily basis.
This is how many want to remember the United States immigration policies: a country where everyone was welcome, no matter what their past was, as long as you were a hard worker with big dreams, you were more than welcome to settle and thrive in a country built by immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Poland, England, Russia, Turkey and many more.
From Woodrow Wilson to Theodore Roosevelt, some of the most notable passengers who went through this immigrant inspection station, a place remembered by Wilson as: "The gateway to dreams".
By today's standards, Ellis Island represented unfair immigrant "selection"; as unfairness and bigotry were common. But it also represented hope. Even though it had some problems, in only 50 years, it welcomed more than 12 million people to the new continent.
Today, the United States of America is witnessing a dramatic change, a change that may modify the face of the Western world significantly due to Donald Trump's new immigration policies that his opponents say have taken the country back some 80 years in only the first eight days of his presidency.
From the construction of the wall between US and Mexico, the Muslim ban: an irrational ban of countries that apparently are the "cause of terrorism", the 'privatisation' of abortion and the revoking of the Obama Care, Trump's policies are causing tension and hatred across the country.
Anti-Trump protest January 2017
A few hours after Donald Trump signed the executive order of the Muslim Ban, the Islamic Centre of Victoria, a Mosque in Texas, was set on fire bringing back memories of the Kristallnacht or "the Crystal night", a pogrom against Jews throughout Nazi Germany before World War Two.
Within a week of Donald Trump's inauguration, opinion polls show he is already the most disliked president in history, even more hated than George W. Bush reached his low three years of his mandate.
Only a week after his entrance in the White House in Washington D.C, the new president fired the US top federal lawyer after she bravely opposed the travel ban.
"The Justice Department would not defend new travel restrictions targeting seven Muslim-majority nations as I am not convinced they are lawful," said Sally Yates.
The United States of America, from being known as the country of liberty, justice and opportunity, is now known as the nation of intolerance, hatred, discrimination and irrationality, making us all fear what this new President could have in mind next.
Never before has such a restrictive ban on specific countries (Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Syria and Somalia) been implemented.
Until 1954, the year that Ellis Island's immigration station closed, the country was one of the most welcoming places in the world where everyone had the opportunity to make their "American Dream" come true.
That dream now seems like it is fading out in the clouds of intolerance and injustice as it is ironic to ban the entrance of all these people from these countries, without even considering the background or attitude of a person.
If you are unlucky enough to hold a passport from one of the countries listed, even if you are a University professor, entrance to the United States for the next 90 days or more will denied if the current court suspension is overturned.
A few days ago, in all American International airports, while Donald Trump was signing the executive order, thousands of people were detained at border controls as they were flying just as Order was being put into effect.
Thousands of people all over the States started to protest at airports such as JFK or LAX shouting "All religions are welcome in this country."
Magdalena Suarez is a 22 year-old sociology student at Columbia University in New York, she witnessed and participated in these protests, which were reported around the world.
"It was amazing to see so many people protesting together against this absurd bill that is blocking the way to thousand of innocent people," she told Artefact.
Professors, students, family members, green card holders or even those who were holding a holiday visa were all rejected and sent back to where they came from as accused of threatening the safety of the United States of America.
Family with poster sign "Welcome to America"
"Even though Mr Trump was elected with the majority, we have the duty and the possibility to protest and shout out loud that we are disgusted by this executive order that has nothing to do with what Obama did in 2011 with Iraq. We still live in a democracy, therefore, I have all the rights to go out on the streets and take to account the government," Magdalena concluded.
On the other hand, Nonie Darwish responded to these protestors who accused Donald Trump for being racist by saying: "This is not a human rights issue; if you look at Muslims, there are 55 Muslim countries in this world and they are bigger than Europe; so who needs who? How come Europe is the only one absorbing all these refugees and not wealthy countries full of space like Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab world?"
"The West feels more responsible for the misery in the Middle East. Another thing I admire about what Trump is doing is that by doing this ban on Muslims coming from radical countries, he's sending a message to the Islamic world that we cannot accept this culture that is breeding terrorists and this ban is gonna force these governments to crack down on terrorism because they need America," Darwish said.
Whether this executive order is racist or not, the USA isn't going through its easiest moments.
Democracy is under threat and social tension is all over the streets and it is more than fair to state the fact that America has changed – from being a country full of hope and welcoming the "diverse" to a country now scared of its own shadow.
Featured image by Corey Oakley via Flickr
america ban Donal Trump Ellis Island immigration New York USA
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Tweets by @ArtefactLCC
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Fighting to live equitably but 'where is the empathy?'
By Darnell Christie
Amid the pandemic, refugees and asylum seekers continue to seek their rights, but at what cost and for how much longer?
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One of the first patients in the world to receive Moderna's vaccine tells us about her experience as a volunteer in the trials of the Covid-19 vaccine.
© Artefact magazine / LCC / UAL – 2014-22 – All rights reserved.


Online Shopping is quite the craze nowadays. We get every little thing from food to digital devices online bargain Classic Brands Mattress. When it comes to buying a product like a cushion that we are also made use of to going to the shop and purchase, we have a tendency to be hesitant bargain Classic Brands Mattress sometimes. This can be rather warranted since a cushion is a quite a substantial buy and returning such a product could be a headache if you take place making an error with your choice. Right here are a few of the important things that you should know prior to you buy mattress online.
Are you looking for mattress sales to provide your bed a new life? It is good to recognize that mattress sales are getting more and much more constant. Whereas in customer's point of view – mattress sales come with unparalleled cost savings and customers looking for budget plan items even, in some cases discover it possible to make a better and also quality acquisition.
In our sight, it is not important to wind up with a substandard acquisition for conserving some dollars. Nevertheless, numerous study' s have actually currently ended that rest is critically important to our physical and emotional wellness as well as wellbeing. Hence, you have to be extremely mindful while acquiring anything from mattress sales. Thankfully talking, there is no rocket science involved at all. Keep on your own stick with the relied on suppliers either online or on the traditional market, which's all. Relied on names generally do not put their name as well as organisation in jeopardy for producing even more by marketing poor or out-of-date products.
Well, never ever buy an inappropriate bed mattress simply because it is being used at a cost much lesser than its normal price. These type of mattresses fits those who such as to sleep on their sides. These bed mattress are known to be better for sleepers who like to sleep on their back or belly.
Once again, you have to deal really meticulously below as it is a matter of your sleep or insomnia. Attempting something brand-new for a couple of days as well as specifically when products are offered with totally free tests, is not a poor concept.
Well, by kind we can classify them into three different teams. The memory foam mattress begins the leading as they are the most popular ones. These bed mattress use a lengthy life-span, they are offered at an affordable cost, as well as their toughness scores are way far better compared to their counterparts. bargain Classic Brands Mattress The 2nd kind of cushions we wish to state below is called Latex Foam. They are also popular in offline and also on the internet markets. You could locate latex foam's natural and also artificial variations. They come comprising on a poly foam base whereas their core consists of numerous latex layers to supply sleepers with even more convenience. Here comes the third and the last key kind of cushions. You can call it either innerspring mattress or spring bed mattress straight. These were typical in the USA as well as Europe. The innerspring bed mattress come geared up with mechanical springs to give the customer with type of a lift. Today's generation has actually started doing not like innerspring cushions. We all understand, our practices are transforming with the flow of time. Being constituents of an internet-based culture, we now have new issues to address, and also our way of living is bringing changes in our rest behaviors also.
Currently that you know purchasing a mattress online will not make you be sorry for at the end, let's see the things you can do it make your choice as far better as feasible. There are bed mattress which are better for back sleepers than side sleepers. Know precisely what you are going for, as well as then start surfing for the mattress that would match all your requirements.
As discussed above as well, one of the largest advantages of on-line buying is the accessibility to thousands of individual reviews. bargain Classic Brands Mattress There are uncommon chances that a product is a whole lot much better than just what it has actually been explained by the users, but most of the time if the testimonials are qualified, it would certainly give you a fantastic understanding right into the experience of using the mattress that you can not get from anywhere else.
Online Shopping is quite latest thing nowadays. We purchase everything from food to electronic gadgets online bargain Classic Brands Mattress. Nevertheless, when it comes to purchasing a product like a cushion that we are too made use of to visit the store and buy, we tend to be hesitant in some cases. This could be rather justified since a bed mattress is a quite a substantial buy and returning such a product can be a trouble if you take place making a mistake with your choice. Right here are a few of the points that you have to recognize prior to you buy mattress online.
Are you looking for mattress sales to give your bed a brand-new life? It is good to recognize that mattress sales are obtaining much more and more regular. Whereas in customer's perspective – mattress sales come with unparalleled savings as well as customers seeking budget plan items also, in some cases locate it possible to make a much better and also top quality purchase.
In our view, it is not smart to wind up with an inferior acquisition for saving some bucks. Hundreds of research study' s have actually already concluded that sleep is really important to our physical and psychological health and also wellness. Hence, you have to be really cautious while buying anything from mattress sales. Thankfully talking, there is no brain surgery included in all. Keep on your own stick with the trusted suppliers either online or on the conventional market, which's all. Relied on names usually do not put their name and company in jeopardy for yielding more by selling inadequate or out-of-date products.
Well, never ever buy an improper bed mattress simply because it is being offered at a cost a lot lesser compared to its regular price. These kind of cushions fits those that such as to sleep on their sides. These mattresses are understood to be much better for sleepers who like to sleep on their back or belly.
Once more, you have to deal really thoroughly right here as it is an issue of your rest or sleep loss. Trying something new for a couple of days as well as particularly when items are supplied with complimentary trials, is not a negative concept.
Well, by type we can categorize them right into three various teams. The memory foam mattress begins the leading as they are the most prominent ones. These cushions use a long lifespan, they are readily available at a competitive rate, and also their durability scores are way better compared to their counterparts. bargain Classic Brands Mattress The 2nd kind of bed mattress we desire to discuss here is called Latex Foam. They are also popular in offline and online markets. You could discover latex foam's natural and also artificial variations. They come comprising on a poly foam base whereas their core consists of several latex layers to supply sleepers with more comfort. Below comes the 3rd and also the last key kind of mattresses. You could call it either innerspring bed mattress or springtime mattress directly. These were really usual in the USA as well as Europe. The innerspring bed mattress come geared up with mechanical springs to supply the consumer with kind of a lift. Nevertheless, today's generation has begun disliking innerspring cushions. Most of us understand, our habits are changing with the flow of time. Being components of an internet-based culture, we now have new concerns to deal with, and our way of living is bringing modifications in our sleep routines also.
Now that you understand acquiring a mattress online will certainly not make you regret at the end, let's see the points you could do it make your decision as much better as feasible. There are cushions which are much better for back sleepers compared to side sleepers. Know precisely just what you are going for, and after that start searching for the cushion that would certainly match all your demands.
As discussed above as well, among the most significant advantages of online buying is the access to thousands of individual evaluations. If the users are verified, the opportunities are that they would talk about more the weak points of an item that its good points– this is natural for us human beings and it wonderful for you as a brand-new customer to remove the products that do not match you. Read at the very least 20 reviews by previous individuals prior to you make the decision. The even more reviews you could review the far better. There are uncommon opportunities that a product is a whole lot much better than exactly what it has been described by the users, but the majority of the moment if the testimonials are reliable, it would certainly offer you a wonderful insight right into the experience of utilizing the mattress that you can not obtain from anywhere else.
When it comes to acquiring a product like a mattress that we are too used to going to the shop and also buy, we have a tendency to be hesitant occasionally. Here are some of the things that you need to know prior to you buy mattress online.
Are you looking for mattress sales to offer your bed a brand-new life? It is excellent to recognize that mattress sales are getting much more as well as extra regular. Whereas in customer's perspective – mattress sales come with unrivaled financial savings as well as buyers seeking spending plan items also, occasionally locate it possible to make a much better and also quality acquisition.
Hundreds of research' s have actually currently concluded that rest is vitally important to our physical and also mental wellness and health and wellbeing. Therefore, you have to be extremely cautious while acquiring anything from mattress sales. Relied on names normally do not put their name and service at danger for yielding more by offering bad or out-of-date items.
Well, never acquire an unsuitable cushion even if it is being provided at a price a lot lesser than its normal cost. Relocate ahead and also leave this set for others. As a private everyone gains from his/her experience. In instance if you are not still sure concerning exactly what is mosting likely to function better for you than you could constantly choose FREE bargain Classic Brands Mattressappointment opportunities being offered right here and there. Those who already are dealing with sleep problems or are encountering chronic aches should always consult with their orthopedic or a professional as a simple modification in your sleep gear or rest practices occasionally can bring wonderful alleviation. As an instance think about soft bed mattress. These kind of cushions fits those that prefer to rest on their sides. Likewise, hundreds of vendors are manufacturing and also marketing solid cushion on the market. These mattresses are understood to be better for sleepers that such as to sleep on their back or tummy.
Once again, you have to deal very meticulously right here as it is an issue of your sleep or sleeplessness. Attempting something new for a couple of days and specifically when items are supplied with cost-free trials, is not a poor suggestion.
Well, by kind we could classify them into three various teams. The memory foam mattress begins the leading as they are one of the most prominent ones. These mattresses offer a lengthy lifespan, they are readily available at a competitive rate, and also their resilience scores are way far better compared to their equivalents. bargain Classic Brands Mattress The second sort of mattresses we wish to mention right here is called Latex Foam. They are also popular in offline as well as online markets. You could locate latex foam's natural and also synthetic variations. They come comprising on a poly foam base whereas their core consists of numerous latex layers to provide sleepers with more convenience. Here comes the third and the last main type of mattresses. You can call it either innerspring mattress or springtime bed mattress directly. These were typical in the USA and also Europe. The innerspring mattresses come furnished with mechanical springtimes to offer the customer with kind of a lift. Today's generation has actually begun disliking innerspring bed mattress. Most of us recognize, our routines are transforming with the flow of time. Being constituents of an internet-based culture, we currently have new issues to deal with, and our way of life is bringing modifications in our rest routines.
Currently that you understand purchasing a cushion online will not make you regret at the end, allow's see the points you can do it make your decision as far better as possible. There are cushions which are much better for back sleepers than side sleepers. Know precisely what you are going for, and then start browsing for the cushion that would certainly match all your needs.
As discussed above too, among the most significant advantages of on the internet shopping is the access to thousands of customer reviews. If the customers are verified, the chances are that they would discuss more the weaknesses of a product that its good points– this is natural for us human beings and it fantastic for you as a new customer to weed out the products that do not suit you. Check out a minimum of 20 testimonials by previous individuals before you make the final decision. The even more reviews you can read the better. There are rare possibilities that an item is a whole lot better compared to what it has actually been defined by the individuals, yet a lot of the time if the testimonials are credible, it would certainly provide you an excellent insight into the experience of utilizing the bed mattress that you could not receive from anywhere else.


text:
El langur marrón (Presbytis rubicunda) es una especie de primate catarrino de la familia Cercopithecidae. Se encuentra en la isla de Borneo y en las vecinas islas Karimata (P. rubicunda carimatae).

De longitud en la cabeza y el cuerpo logra de 41 a 57 cm. La cola mide de 67 a 73 cm. El peso es de 5.7 a 6.2 kg.

Habita en las selvas lluviosas.

Se mantiene en grupos que cuentan de tres a ocho individuos. Estos grupos son integrados por un macho adulto, hembras adultas, adolescentes y las crías.

La alimentación consiste de hojas, frutas y flores. Complementa su dieta con invertebrados.

Referencias

Enlaces externos

rubicunda
Primates de las islas de la Sonda de la región indomalaya
Mamíferos de Borneo
Fauna de las islas Karimata
Fauna endémica de las islas de la Sonda de la región indomalaya
Animales descritos en 1838


text:
Q: Get time that all query finished function runAll(){
    for (var i = 0; i < Math.random(); i++) {
        pool.connect(function(err, client, done) {
            client.query("update   box set gamer_id=null where  box_id=$1; ", [i], function(err, resultUpdate) {
                if(err)
                    return "has error"
                //when all query finished then return value
                return "finished all query";

            })
        })
    }

    return "after for";
}

This function all time return "after for" but i want when all query finished then return "finished all query" because these query may have some error.
how can return value when all query finished?

I can not use pg-promise for ...

A: try this,
function runAll(cb){
    var total = Math.random()
    for (var i = 0; i < total; i++) {
        pool.connect(function(err, client, done) {
            client.query("update   box set gamer_id=null where  box_id=$1; ", [i], function(err, resultUpdate) {
                i==total-1 && cb(err, resultUpdate)
            })
        })
    }
}

console.log("before invoke of runAll")

console.time("dbprocess");
runAll(function allDone(err, res){
  console.log("after call of runAll completed");
  console.timeEnd("dbprocess");
  if(err)
      return "has error"
  //when all query finished then return value
  return "finished all query";

})

console.log("after invoke of runAll")

see also this SO for the timers in JS, https://stackoverflow.com/a/18427652/4466350
I don t feel like you need explanations about callback ect, but i may have wrong, just let us know.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Guinea pigs have been used to study transmission of the influenza virus and the effectiveness of vaccines. The guinea pig most commonly used for influenza virus research is the outbred Hartley strain. Though they (and all guinea pigs) are naturally susceptible, "The main drawback of the guinea pig model for influenza research is the lack of disease signs exhibited by infected animals."
Even with influenza strains that are highly pathogenic in humans and lethal to mice and ferrets at relatively low doses, guinea pigs might exhibit at most only mild listlessness. The virus is "not detected in the spleen, kidney, colon, or brain of intranasally inoculated animals."
Influenza virus–infected guinea pigs did not display detectable signs of disease (e.g., weight loss, fever, sneezing, coughing) during the experiments described in this article. Nasal swabs showed the presence of the disease.
The researchers discovered that influenza is more easily spread in cool/cold dry spaces. If temperatures are high and/or humidity is high (80%+), influenza does not seem to spread. This may help explain the seasonal nature of influenza.


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