Hailing

Reminds me of those heady days of the early 1990’s, when I first encountered W. Campbell’s ‘sphincter says what?’ theory of subject-formation.

Hmm, the link appears to be broken. The interview is here: http://socialistworker.org/2011/05/23/politics-and-the-fantastic

when he talks each word takes animate form as a weird creature dropping from his mouth.

Whoa cool, I have got to take a look at this book! (There is a similar bit, one which I find entrancing, in _Finn Family Moomintroll_.)

Hey you!

I rather liked the London Cult Police in Kraken, and also the idea of the cult collectors. But neither is very English is it? More likely he’s riffing off Lev Grossman or someone like that, like with the clearly American Millenialist cults. I didn’t really like the hipster main characters.

Mieville is a little like Zadie Smith in having got out of university with an evidently strong belief in his ability to write exactly the kind of novel he’d like to write, and presumably use what he learned there. That isn’t a bad thing at all, but it sets them off from even other English novelists their own age.

Mieville is a little like Zadie Smith in having got out of university

The really envy-inducing thing about China is that he hasn’t got out of university, unless he’s knocked it on the head quite recently – he publishes on international law.

…the delight of language is that it isn’t determinative in the fashion that Althusser says it is.

Althusser’s probably wrong idea that ideology ‘hails’ people seems not to be about language, at least judging from this quoted passage. “Verbal call or whistle” suggests (to me, at any rate) that ideology can ‘hail’ its targets in a non-verbal way or at a non-verbal level.

While Mieville was joking about Althusser, it’s guess that this understanding of interpellation is indebted more to Pashukanis (whom he defends in his academic work) than Althusser. Another way of putting it: interpellation is a legal not simply ideological process.

First there is the question of *as what* do subjects mutually recognize each other in civil society. It is not the act of respect that has the active power as in Kant’s formulation but the system of generalized commodity exchange. Here is the practical basis for respect, that is “awareness of a value which demolishes my self-love”: Commodity exchange requires of each recognition of the other as a proprietor like him or herself, hence having the right of ownership of his or her product and the right to dispose of it freely; such mutual recognition then implies that each exchanger is bound not to take the other’s property by force and second to exchange for this property on the basis of a free agreement on its equivalent value.

In civil society individuals are thus interpellated as legal subjects, posited as free and equal with each other; and thus forced to assume a persona which in Roman jurisprudence originally derived from the function of an actor’s stage mask; the mask enabling the actor to conceal his real identity and to conform to the role written for him.

Transposed into modern civil society, man must assume a legal mask in order to engage in the activities regulated by legal rules. Pashukanis presented the mutual recognition of zoological individuals as free and equal bearers of abstract right in the act of commodity exchange as a phantasmorgia and a mode of subjection, a reification and self-reification of persons.

Halfway through Iron Council and so far Miéville seems a gay-left Tolkien. Am I missing something? Writing is well wrought to overwrought, a bit like Cormac Mc but not so inclined to pure gibberish.

By the way, has anyone noticed how Gibson’s last couple and Banks last one sucked hideously? Is age claiming our best SciFi people?

Is there anything you like?

“when he talks each word takes animate form as a weird creature dropping from his mouth. ”

Cf. Ridcully’s curse words in Reaper Man, suggesting this literalized metaphor could be independently reinvented…

This is more like a footnote to the original Embassytown post but I came too late for that as it was already closed when I tried to add my comment. Spoilers for ET ahead.

I liked the Embassytown a lot, it’s definitely one of the best sci-fi books I’ve read in a while. But one thing keeps bugging me. Mieville has always been a politically conscious writer and has – as you all know – a socialist background. So, what struck me was that you could read/interpret the book completely contrary to his leftist ideas and I keep wondering if that’s on purpose or not.

Embassytown is basically a story about cultural encounters between two completely distinct civilizations (humans and Hosts). A scenario like that implies that it is read as a metaphor on colonialism/imperialism. I mean, we have Bremen that brings the God-drug (capitalism/”superior culture”) to a culture that has functioned perfectly well without it up to that point and makes the whole Host-society addicted to that drug. Now, the only way to escape from that addiction is to actually become like the intruder, i.e. to adopt the intruders’ language and their way of thinking. Metaphorically speaking, this could be read as an argument that the imperial power (humans) has always been superior to the “colonized people” (the Hosts), since human language is “better” than Ariekei-Language: only if you adopt the superior way of living (human language = Western culture/capitalism) you can survive and overcome your addiction (= dependency). If you adhere to your former way of living, you’re doomed.

The wonderful thing about the Embassytown is that this interpretation is only one among many. There so many ideas hidden in the book you’d easily find a lot more interpretations. But given the China’s political background and this (at least from my view) possible interpretation which totally opposes Mieville’s leftist political ideas, it is quite startling to see that he put the story in a way that allows for an interpretation that’s pretty much opposed to socialist anti-imperialist ideas. So, did he do it on purpose? I’d say he did it on purpose, trying to make the reader think about what he/she is actually reading… Well, ok, maybe I’m completely off with this interpretation. I don’t know. What do you think?

May I ask an OT question about Embassytown? As the function of the population of Embassytown was largely the production and care of ambassadors, is it possible that Avice was herself a singleton twin, i.e. failed from birth to become an ambassador? This would go some distance to explaining her curiously detached relationships to people and the odd, cold emotional tone of her narration. Perhaps such a detachment manifest itself in her ability to navigate the Immer, a wanderlust that nevertheless draws her back home. And if it was the case that she was a singleton, what might have been the name of her twin?

Yes I was relying on the General Theory http://www.marxists.org/archive/pashukanis/1924/law/ch04.htm and the secondary literature on it.
Yes, I think one way approach the recognition literature is to see its relation to the constitution of people as juridical subjects in commodity exchange. I shared that point with Honneth but he was really dismissive of any skepticism about the autonomous subject as a juridical myth; it is a deep conviction for him, as I remember him saying. That discussion was several years ago, so I don’t remember the details, and I have’t followed up on the recognition literature which I think is very fascinating and important and enjoyable to read.