The Los Angeles Review of Books: French Secularism, Reinvented

 The proposed measures appear to mark a dramatic shift in the purpose of secularism. But despite the different contexts and reversed power relations, there are revealing continuities between the Third Republic’s campaign against Catholicism in the early 20th century and the current campaign against Islamist “separatism.” In fact, 19th-century secularists talked about Catholicism and Islam in such similar ways that some French Catholics even began accepting this comparison, seeing Muslims as allies against the aggressive secularism of the French state. This makes it all the more ironic that conservatives now embrace laïcité as a bludgeon against Muslims. In France, secularism has never been about removing religion entirely from the French public sphere but rather defining it, neutralizing it, and using it for the state’s own purposes.[...]

Many of the common complaints against Jesuit priests were similar to the anti-Muslim tropes of today. They were accused of being an unpatriotic “state within a state,” a communitarian, unassimilated minority; like today’s Muslims, their real loyalty was allegedly to a power outside and beyond that of the French state: their superior in Rome. As John Padberg, Geoffrey Cubitt, and other scholars have detailed, the Jesuits were long accused of being “a political corps” hiding “under the veil of a religious institute.”[...]

And yet, church attendance continued to decline. Despite a brief resurgence in religiosity after the war, some Catholics — such as the famed scholar of Islam Louis Massignon — looked to the religious practices of Muslims in French Algeria as a source of renewed spirituality for an increasingly secular France. Much of what these Catholics admired in Muslims was the all-encompassing nature of religion in their lives, which they believed promoted a deeper and more genuine spirituality. As Talal Asad has pointed out in his critiques of secularism, Catholicism and Islam are both uncomfortable with the relegation of religion to private life; both have aspired to shape society, from public space to education. Opponents of recent European headscarf and burka bans have found allies among Catholics, who argue that states overstep their rights when they seek to regulate personal expressions of faith in the public sphere.

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The Los Angeles Review of Books: Cruising for Sex, Cruising the Political: Alex Espinoza’s “Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime”

For Espinoza, cruising has profound social and political implications. “Cruising has provided a safe outlet for sexual exploration,” he writes. “It is devoid of the power dynamics that plague heterosexual interactions and exists outside of traditional hierarchies. True cruising allows people to set the terms of their own desire and both leave satisfied. It is founded on equality.”

These are bold claims, but he makes a reasonable argument for them. In a patriarchal culture, male privilege is upheld by an institutionalized misogyny that rigidly enforces gender roles in which men must always be the sexually active partner (a point Espinoza illustrates in his discussion of ancient Greek and Roman homosexuality). The act of men having sex with each other as equal partners, especially mutual penetrative sex, represents a sexual fluidity that undermines those rigid gender roles and, by implication, male privilege itself. Moreover, because cruising sex is undertaken purely for pleasure and, as the phrase goes, with “no strings attached,” it also implicitly rejects “natural law” notions that conflate sex with procreative or family-building purpose; cruising isn’t functional — it’s Dionysian. Espinoza’s further argument that cruising is “founded on equality,” refers apparently to who can play rather than who gets chosen. Cruising is equal in the sense that the man tapping his foot invitingly in the toilet stall next to you might be a day laborer or a United States senator. Doubtless, even Espinoza would agree that the same problematic hierarchies of attractiveness that prevail on cruising apps like Grindr operate in park bushes and shopping mall bathrooms. Finally, as his own experience shows, cruising can be initiatory, particularly for gay men who have no other outlet to explore their sexuality. [...]

One of the most interesting discussions in the book asks whether the contemporary hook-up culture promoted by apps like Grindr and Scruff is an extension of cruising or an entirely different practice. Espinoza comes down of the side of the former. “Though the excitement of a potential sexual exchange is tempered somewhat through the use of apps and websites, there is nonetheless a pleasant efficiency that comes with the use of these new tools that past generations have not had,” he explains. “But that doesn’t change the fact that it remains essentially cruising.” Along with this “pleasant efficiency,” however, comes the kind of racism that masquerades as “preferences,” a controversy Espinoza notes but does not discuss at length. Indeed, there are many thorny questions raised by the culture of cruising that Cruising side-steps or simply does not ask. [...]

In the more recent years, some LGBTQ activists have downplayed this central principle of the queer movement, fearing undue emphasis might alienate potential straight allies. That’s a mistake. It feeds into the belief held by some straights that demonstrations of same-sex affection as innocent as hand holding or kissing are “icky” or unnatural and should be confined to private spaces. This, in turn, fuels verbal and even physical violence against queer people who refuse to keep their hands to themselves in public. Clearly, the LGBTQ community should defend the right of its members to publicly display the ordinary physical expressions of love that heterosexuals take for granted. But, where to draw the line? Does this right to PDA include the right to have sex in parks and public toilets? Is that a hill the queer community is or should be willing to die on?

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The Los Angeles Review of Books: Trouble in Paradise: The Rise of Artificial Intelligence

Why is the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) unnerving to so many of us? I have a theory. Our ill-ease with AI may be due to the fact that the 21st century will not be the first time that entities with agency and nous will have appeared on earth. After all, Homo sapiens is the direct heir of the last such event. Isn’t it possible – or even, tautological – that many of us feel threatened by the idea of human-like machines precisely because they will be, in certain respects, like humans? [...]

We no longer tend to suspect that there might be a link between human knowledge and human depravity. Until the mid-19th century, however, few in Europe and the Americas doubted that the origin of human evil was represented, in some way, in the first pages of the book of Genesis. And in Genesis, we find an archaic legend of the fall whose images are deep as dreams, but whose plot is clear. The first human pair, Adam and Eve, are placed by God in a paradise – the Garden of Eden. They are naked, and innocent, and in love. [...]

This brings us back to AI. For Kant’s steely verdict is that human beings are evil because they are intelligent. This is of course not to say that intelligence, per se, is evil. (Kant is a rationalist.) Rather, Kant thinks that it is the essence of “restless reason” to drive humankind “irresistibly” towards the development of all its capacities – good and evil. [...]

If Kant is correct, then we can be certain (a priori) that genuinely intelligent machines will, like us, have a propensity to evil – because they are intelligent. They, too, will want to taste the forbidden fruit. And if Kant is correct, then we can also reason (a posteriori) from the absence of evil machines – there are, as yet, no evil machines – to an absence of real machine intelligence.

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The Los Angeles Review of Books: Philosophes sans Frontièrs

AS ACADEMIC PHILOSOPHY becomes ever more specialized, a number of philosophers have sought to bring philosophizing out of the ivory tower and into the street. Specialized cafes, book clubs, and “philosophy of everyday life” courses, like those in Alain de Botton’s School of Life enterprise, all point to the same cultural and social desire for high-quality intellectual conversation. In Teaching Plato in Palestine, Canadian-Brazilian philosopher Carlos Fraenkel pushes this democratizing impulse in a radical direction, traveling to some of the more conflicted communities across the globe with the aim of showing how philosophy can contribute to what he calls a “culture of debate.” His fascinating experiences as an itinerant philosopher, discussing classical philosophical texts (Greek, but also Jewish and Islamic) with students from Palestine and Makassar (Indonesia), Hasidic Jews in New York, high schoolers in Brazil, and members of the Mohawk community in Canada, demonstrate how philosophy can educate citizens and cultivate an ethos of mutual understanding. If one ever needed a book to suggest to those skeptical about the social benefits of philosophy, Teaching Plato in Palestine would be one to recommend.

The volume emerged out of Fraenkel’s experiences as a doctoral student working on Arabic and Hebraic texts while studying in Cairo. He soon discovered there was more to philosophy than analyzing arguments and devising objections. Muslim students he met became concerned with saving his soul by converting him to Islam, while Fraenkel, in turn, wanted to “save them from wasting their real life for an illusory afterlife” by converting them to a secular worldview. The result was a lively philosophical exchange over arguments for God’s existence, which did not lead to any definite conclusions (or conversions) but did prompt Fraenkel to pose two questions: Can philosophy be useful beyond the academy? And can it contribute to the transformation of conflicts over diversity into an ethical “culture of debate,” that is, a practice of rational discussion over conflicting values in a divided world? [...]

A recurring issue throughout is the tension between a commitment to religious faith and pursuing the philosophical maxim of leading a rationally examined life. As Fraenkel remarks, while most students accept the idea of examining religious views in a Socratic manner, “their commitment to the truth of Islam leaves no room for confusion.” Some of them attempt to turn the tables on their teacher, asking Fraenkel how a secular citizen could live an examined life; according to one student, many Westerners are moral relativists who equate freedom with individual choice but also view “all choices as equal.” While acknowledging that relativism makes questioning futile, Fraenkel points out that such interrogations should also be applied to the Islamic faith, which leads to a rather one-sided discussion of the differences between Sunni and Shī‘ite Muslims. The debate ends inconclusively but prompts Fraenkel to remark that one way beyond dogmatically asserting the superiority of one’s moral beliefs is to explore the shared traditions between the West and the Muslim world in order to “conduct an open discussion on an equal footing.” Despite the ongoing conflicts in Israel, Fraenkel leaves his students to ponder how philosophy might help resolve these moral-political disputes via ethical questioning and rational discussion.

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The Los Angeles Review of Books: The World According to Stanisław Lem

THERE’S A PARADOX at the heart of science fiction. The most basic aspiration of the genre — its very essence, really — is to transcend time and place. Not just to predict the future, but to imagine things that are totally foreign to human experience. How would an alien life form have evolved, compared with those on Earth? What will human society look like 10,000 years from now? What is artificial intelligence, anyway? SF tries to imagine the unimaginable, to comprehend the incomprehensible, to describe the indescribable, and to do it all in entertaining, accessible prose.

But SF, like everything else, is also a product of its time. Jules Verne’s tales of trips around the globe and voyages to the center of the Earth reflected the scientific optimism of the late 19th century, before World War I blew open technology’s dark side. During its midcentury golden age in the United States, the pulpy genre cheered on the rising economic and military dominance of the United States, forecasting an American empire that stretched to the stars. Not long after, New Wave authors like Philip K. Dick, Samuel R. Delany, and Ursula K. Le Guin wrestled with the social and political upheavals of the 1960s and ’70s, from Cold War paranoia to the Civil Rights Movement, second-wave feminism, and the drug culture. What kind of stories the Trump era might inspire is still unknown, but they probably won’t be cheerful. [...]

Compared to most science fiction writers, Lem’s thinking was both disinterested and far-reaching. In works like the nonfictional Summa Technologiae, he explored the possibilities of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and genetic engineering, comparing technological advancement to biological evolution. Just as evolution had no moral agenda, he argued, technological developments were neither inherently good nor bad, but followed their own internal logic. Unlike most would-be prophets, who predict the future with warnings of dystopia or promises of a better tomorrow, Lem approached the subject without a moralizing tone. [...]

These ideas evoke comparisons to Orwell, and to the British novelist’s famous depiction of Stalinism in 1984 (1949). But in his letters to Kandel, Lem claimed that Orwell had gotten Stalinism wrong. Whereas Orwell described his dystopian regime as “a boot stamping on a human face — forever,” Lem argued that communist oppression was not a sadistic evil pursued for its own sake but a natural result of turning state ideology into dogma. Similarly, Lem critiqued Hannah Arendt’s analysis of totalitarianism, writing that “she made out these systems to be fruit of strictly intentional evil.” Rather, he writes, “Stalin’s times concocted a myth, never concretely or cogently expressed, of the state as a machine that was not only perfect, but also omniscient and omnipotent.” For Lem, the tragic consequences weren’t the result of premeditated cruelty, but the logical outcome of turning politics into faith.

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The Los Angeles Review of Books: Is There Life After Capitalism?

In the wake of 2008, the possibility that capitalism may be in a permanent decline has started to become acceptable in mainstream economics. But the solutions proposed to address this situation amount to a kind of miserable, eternal life support: Thomas Piketty, for instance, imagines a global tax on wealth as a stay against the stagnation caused by otherwise unsustainable wealth inequality. Larry Summers, meanwhile, advocates engineering increased consumer demand as a way to prolong capital’s old age.

The English journalist Paul Mason’s recent book, Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future, by contrast, dares to imagine where we might go from here. Postcapitalism is built around two basic propositions about how capitalism works. First, Mason suggests, the history of capitalism is best understood as a history of adaptive mutations in which capitalist classes, faced with falling rates of profit, keep finding ways to buoy them back up, if only for a while. “There is,” he claims, “no final crisis of capitalism”. [...]

For Mason, in other words, capitalism’s own dynamism — its drive to require less labor — is its Achilles heel, since machines, unlike laborers, are impossible to exploit. They can be worn down, but never underpaid. Mason is aware of the material support required by an information infrastructure — he notes the “acres of air-conditioned server farm space” needed to keep it running — but he is insistent that this is secondary to the rise of information, which he views almost as if it were an evolutionary leap: “The real wonder of information is […] that it eradicates the need for labour on an incalculable scale.” [...]

Despite the vividness of this picture, however, all Mason has to offer as a counterweight is the sheer creativity of young people who “will no longer accept” such futures. He describes the social forces that will drive this youthful, non-class-based rebellion as a “granular, spontaneous micro-process, not a plan.” Postcapitalism is an extraordinary achievement of storytelling, fine-grained and schematic with equal success, critical of early 20th-century Marxism while insisting on the contemporary urgency of Marx’s thought, persuasive in its passion and its intellectual clarity alike. But it founders around the question of the power of education and technology to lead us past the horrors of 20th-century capitalism. On the one hand, Mason knows all too well that post-capitalist stories appeal to a mass readership because they erase or downplay the terrible struggles that have given us the technologies we prize. On the other hand, the concrete suggestions he makes in the book’s final chapter — a universal basic income, nationalizing banks, regulating finance — all leave untouched the problem that what counts as “money” under capital is produced by exploitation. The histories of social struggle Mason is so good at narrating disappear in these bland policy recommendations.

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The Los Angeles Review of Books: Algorithms: The Future That Already Happened

In a sense, you’re making these recommendations yourself. Machine-learning algorithms monitor information about what you do, find patterns in that data, and make informed guesses about what you want to do next. Without you, there’s no data, and there’s nothing for machine learning to learn. But when you provide your data, and when the guesses are correct, machine learning operates invisibly, leaving you to experience life as an endless stream of tiny, satisfying surprises.

Or at least that’s how things could be, according to computer scientist Pedro Domingos. In The Master Algorithm, Domingos envisions an individually optimized future in which our digital better halves learn everything about us, then go out into the world and act for us, thereby freeing us to be our best non-digital selves. In this vision, machine-learning algorithms replace tedious human activities like online shopping, legal filing, and scientific hypothesis testing. Humans feed data to algorithms, and algorithms produce a better world for humans. [...]

So the future, which is the present, isn’t looking good for humans. What is to be done? Domingos’s answer is, approximately, learn more about machine learning. The Master Algorithm insists on a politics of data in which hypervigilant data citizens actively manipulate the algorithms that might otherwise constrain them. Since machine learning depends on data, Domingos argues, “your job in a world of intelligent machines is to keep making sure they do what you want, both at the input (setting the goals) and at the output (checking that you got what you asked for).”

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The Los Angeles Review of Books: Salvaging the Future

Sherryl Vint’s 2015 Paradoxa issue, The Futures Industry, moves this vital conversation forward in a noteworthy way. Vint proposes that the future has become a site of crisis, both in the sense that real devastation looms on the horizon (as a consequence of climate change and economic instability) and also in the sense that we seem to have collectively lost the ability to imagine futures that offer plausible alternatives to the seemingly unstoppable trajectory of the apocalyptic present. Vint’s introduction to the issue contrasts the film Tomorrowland (2015) against artist-activist Banksy’s satirical Dismaland Bemusement Park (a dystopian anti–theme park that was open for one month in Somerset, England, in 2015): if Tomorrowland offers a strained nostalgia for seemingly innocent 1950s visions of the future, Dismaland bitterly exposes the exploitative corporate fantasies and totalitarian inclinations of the industry-oriented future imaginings of Disney’s Tomorrowland and the World’s Fairs that inspired it. [...]

O’Connell’s essay exemplifies the kind of work that Slavoj Žižek calls for in First as Tragedy, Then as Farce (2009) when he suggests that, in order to challenge the seemingly unshakable future unfolding before us, we must “mobilize ourselves to perform the act which will change destiny itself and thereby insert a new possibility into the past.” If the future seems locked into a dismal trajectory, it is because our sense of the past is fixed and static: the present seems to be the inevitable product of a singular history just as the future seems to be the unwavering continuation of the apocalyptic present. In order to disrupt the paralysis of such totalizing inevitability, we need to view the past as a multitude of alternate possibilities rather than remaining locked into an unshakable historical determinism. According to O’Connell, fantastic postcolonial trains insert new potentialities into the past in a way that forces us to “reconsider the narrative of history’s triumphant resolution in the present moment as capitalist realist closure.” These narratives suggest that there are, and always have been, alternatives.

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Los Angeles Review of Books: How Aid Became Big Business

“The development and humanitarian aid business is there, it’s significant business, and we’re here to help you win some of that,” Peters grinned. A slide projected beside him bore the names of global aid agencies and development institutions like the World Bank and the UK’s Department of International Development (DfID). The men and women in the audience sat straight and still in their seats, focused on every word, moving only to take notes or get a closer look at the screen. “Welcome to the world of aid-funded business,” said Peters to applause. [...]

There has long been an “aid industry” — the swarm of for-profit companies and consultants that take cuts of government aid earmarked for the world’s poorest people. In some donor countries, aid has been officially “tied”: aid-funded contracts that are required to go to companies from the rich country that is “giving” this money. In the United States, the world’s largest official donor, “tying” aid has led to extreme cases of giant multinationals profiting off this protected business. Among the main beneficiaries of the multimillion dollar US food aid budget are the huge grain traders Cargill, ADM, and Bunge, who have won the lion’s share of the contracts to provide wheat and other commodities to be shipped from America to poor countries on US-flagged ships. (The shipping industry also benefits.)

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