A “Trickle-Down Economy” Government: Relaxed First, Authoritarian Later

The theory of trickle-down economics imagined: the rich get benefits from the government, and the prosperity which results 'trickles down' the economy to the poor, or, the rich get tax breaks, and the resultant additional income they have is invested into small businesses or used to employ more poor people. Perhaps one of the concept's inspirations was the law of gravity, just as gravity pulls liquid downward, so too does wealth trickle down to the poor. If the government believes in this image of a gravity-like, lawful and orderly process of trickling down, then the government does not have to intervene into the economy as an enforcer of law, but becomes a passive observer, a spectator, as the economy functions free from government interventions but still abides by the law of gravitational pull. Today trickle-down economics implies that the economy abides by natural and universal law. It is the government's job to first witness such a process within the economy and thereby resist the tendency to intervene. Just as one cannot do much about gravity but observe it, one cannot do much about the trickle-down effect, but must be grateful that it has been pointed out, even though it is difficult to imagine that human actors within the economy are determined/controlled by a non-human and universal law. 

Government believes that some higher authority is facilitating the functioning of a law-abiding economy, and so it recedes in importance and function in the economic sphere, in that, government seems to turn away from the economy. But this turning away is also problematic because it implies that the government is not the supreme power in matters of the economy. Some would be hesitant to give up the role of supreme power that government has played thus far, and so there may be some attempts to make the government seem all-powerful, more powerful than it actually is, and therefore comparisons between divinity and human government abound. The question becomes: can the government act against the trickle-down effect, or against gravity? Can the government meddle at all in this natural law of the economy which we call the trickle-down effect? At first, the passive/weak government just celebrates the 'innovativeness' of the trickle-down theory in its ability to show how the economy behaves in a law-abiding manner; initially, government is enamored by the theory/law, and theory exerts influence over the government.   

However, the receding of importance/turning away of the government may only be temporary, because as the trickle-down law has been observed in the economy, more authoritarian elements in the government can also come into power, elements who are themselves directly invested in the economy (and hence practical, political-economic actors who cannot afford to maintain a distance from the economy as pure theorists can) and anxious to see that the government has a more productive function in the economy by using the law of gravitational trickle-down to cement authority. The main function of these authoritarian elements is not to witness passively, but to monitor actively the flow of money and the eventual spread of prosperity within the economy. With the help of the tools that monitor the trickle-down effect, the government possesses a vantage point through which the entirety of the economy becomes an object of governmental knowledge. In a traditional theory, the rich are studied in isolation and the poor are studied in isolation, but with the trickle-down effect, the connectivity, the communication and the relation between the rich and the poor can be studied accurately, and the making of some into rich people and others into poor becomes the apparent; the very transaction in the economy is recorded by the government's tools, not the effect of the transaction on the people. The movement towards the study of the trickle-down effect is a movement away from sociology, which studies classes in isolation, towards the field of socio-economics, which studies non-isolated social classes interacting in the economic sphere. It is a movement away from economics, which in its primitive form is inspired by sociology and concentrates its study to classes in isolation, towards a study of the economic activities of the population in its entirety, including the rich and the poor under the same topic as actors in the market. 

The very material flow of money which regularly makes some rich and others poor becomes visible for once, the economy is seen as an economy at work and as 'alive.' As wealth trickles down, it highlights the channels through which it passes, making these channels visible objects of scrutiny and control via government intervention; the goal for government is to do the bidding of the law, meaning that the law of gravity has to be enforced no matter what. As the passage of money through the economy is traced, it enables the monitoring closely of points where the flow is hindered, the points that need fixing or removal from the economic system; (a flow does not 'jump' over the different individuals/groups of the economy, but it is in contact with everything that falls in its path, so that it implies a completeness of knowledge, a clarity of knowledge and a truthfulness of the knowledge generated.) After a relaxed government celebrating the natural lawfulness of the economy, there arises a more authoritarian and exploitative government using the trickle down law and the consequential visibility of the whole economic system for interventions in the name of the law.

The Left's Philosophical-Economics in the Neo-Liberal World

Neo-liberalism is thought of as the era of flows of money (money flows from multinationals to the people and vice versa, between nations, in daily transactions that make some rich and others poor etc), but money does not flow out of its own nature, rather, it has to be pushed through the global economy with the help of human intervention. Money tends to 'stand still' at some points in the global economy rather than flow through the economy freely; standing still, money allows for the accumulation and exploitation of wealth around certain privileged points in the economy. 

We hear of some multinational companies being worth hundreds of billions, and this is the measure of how much money became stationary in the contact with the multinationals (as trillions and trillions come into contact with the multinationals, it is only obvious that a fraction of these trillions stops flowing when coming into contact with multinationals); in a different kind of economy where money kept flowing around, the multinationals would not be worth so much. It is very possible that the measurement of the net worth/value of these multinationals pays more emphasis to how much money is in their 'bank vaults' at the time of measurement rather than to other features, like their buildings and machines, the quality of their workforce, their levels of innovation etc. But, money in the vault is not a very good indicator of measuring multinationals' worth because the money's flows and stoppages are erratic in nature, and that ultimately its stoppage in a multinational's 'bank vault' means nothing but a happenstance. Another different example of money standing still in the form of accumulated wealth is in families with inherited wealth: this inherited wealth of the elites even today does not flow through the neo-liberal economy because this wealth has very high sentimental/emotional/romantic value and is not conceived as wealth to be circulated within today's economy. Thus, it is in the smaller business, non-inheritance based pure capitalist economy of today that money keeps flowing around rapidly. Ironically, the left has enabled this rapid-flowing neo-liberal capitalism to arise, but such a system hasn't been implemented fully.  

The leftist feels that money does not belong to anyone anymore, it must simply be pushed along the system, ultimately with no meaning and no end to this flowing (flowflowflowflow...and so on with no 'Stop'). In hurrying money along the system, however, the leftist institution is motivated as much by political-symbolic reasons as by its philosophical-economics. The main political question for the left is how to participate in the capitalist, neo-liberal economy without critics deeming the left as being complicit in capitalist wealth accumulation. All sorts of leftist organizations exist that actively participate in the process of wealth accumulation, and there is perhaps a sense of guilt in participating in such a capitalist pursuit. Hence, the left tendencies have developed financial institutions and instruments which enable the left to keep the flows of money at maximum intensity, so that the money they generated flows away from them and gets lost in the economy; the whole of the left, in an ideal world of tomorrow, becomes money-maker but not wealth-accumulator. 

It is interesting to note that the left does not shun or avoid the multinationals in its ideal economy of rapid flows, but implicates multinationals, inherited wealth etc in its project of keeping money flowing: the money flows through to the multinationals as much as it flows through to the poor, and multinationals are not to be avoided or destroyed, but their roles re-configured within the global economy as 'money-makers' but not 'wealth-accumulators.' As a side note, employing the very contemporary and technological process of hurrying cash along, the leftist becomes archaically sacrificial and altruistic. Today, these ancient values such as altruism have gotten a chance to re-emerge with the help of the most cutting edge technologies.

The Climate Change Debate and the Religion of the Sun

As the climate change debate progresses, it will increasingly be polarized to form two opposite sides: on one side is the argument that climate change is caused by humans (the scientific view on certain occasions, and the social-scientific view), while the other side will claim that it is a result of divine will. This debate will be the first time that religion and science battle one another in such a great, global scale, and this debate will surpass debate between religions only. As a battle that exists only between the developed western countries, between the religious and scientist populations within them, we can expect a mass mobilization of resources, as in the western World Wars 1 and 2. The resources that will be mobilized by each side in the conflict, however, will not be men and women in the armies, but images, research-based knowledge, media organizations; both sides will compose campaigns to convince ordinary people about the causes of climate change. This debate will begin and survive with religious and scientific propaganda, but by the end it may make apparent a crisis in science's and religion's conceptions of humanity.

If we imagine the planet as getting even more and more warmer/colder more rapidly, we can expect religion to take a different shape compared to today. No longer will there be religion based on texts and scripts, rather, a direct, divine intervention of God becomes apparent to religious people, God is not revealed by priests and temples, but God is directly acting through climate change, apparent before the people and impacting upon people. No longer will there be need of scripts, priests and temples, in their place is the direct worship of the elements of the universe, and there will form a religion of the sun, a direct worship of the sun, unmediated by protocol and formalities, but with each person as a kind of priest or prophet, utilizing his/her own spiritual depth to form a relationship with the sun. These new priests and prophets will be in dialogue with the sun. The newest worshipers won't ask for forgiveness, for a pacification of the sun's rays, but they will let their lives hang on the whim and will of the sun; they are not asking for earth's return to normalcy, but rather will be ready to give up their lives as a celebration of the divine intervention.

In the midst of this new religion will be the west's science-religion debate. Whereas science will continuously attempt to prove itself through its experiments and ever more meticulous research, religion will respond by providing the media and ordinary people with revelations of the prophets and priests who communicated with the sun; and they may even proclaim their subjective research practices, in the form of the 'ethnographic-interview' with the sun, to be more superior than the objective research of scientists. At least in this sense, religion may prevail as the more persuasive orientation towards climate change. But religion also can compromise, if it does not attempt to take the all-powerful element of the sun as a God, and rather focuses on something smaller, the earth, as a God. Between science and religion will rise the social sciences, since the social sciences seem to begin with the premise that the earth is a God and not the sun, and, in fact, even the hard sciences that are concerned with astronomical entities may secretly harbor the feeling that the sun is God and the earth is nothing. If the social sciences do indeed rise in this way, they will enable the study of the effects of climate change on the earth, on people, rather than seeing the earth purely objectively, which science is guilty of in its research endeavors, and religion is guilty of by proclaiming the sun as subject and therefore the earth as necessary object. But even if this 'social-scientistic' knowledge about the earth may be the solution to climate change, it may not be the solution to exploitative productive practices by powers: the social-scientist only applies a "science of government," developing a statistical, mathematical, scientific knowledge of the natural earth, with the ultimate objective of controlling it, in a Foucauldian sense. For the first time we are beginning to see a monitoring of the natural earth (the data on the "hottest year on record" is an example), and the surpassing of the argument that nature is too unpredictable and cannot be monitored. The earth is thus not an almighty God for social-science, but is rather a God to be crisscrossed with social-scientific, that is, managerial/administrative, knowledge. 

Parole System in Nepal's Prisons?

Parole is the system in the United States by which a prisoner is free to go back to a non-criminal life as long as he meets the demands of the prison/parole officer. The demand is to keep communicating with one's parole officer, updating about one's life outside of prison, for the duration of the parole period. This would make it seem that parole was a good way of helping the prisoner rehabilitate to life outside the prison. However, by sustaining the prisoner in communication with the prison, parole operates as an extension of the policing control of the prison outside the brick and cement prison building, with negative consequences. For this and other reasons, parole should never be considered by Nepal's criminalizing powers in their legal system.

With the system of parole, the criminal never enjoys the same level of freedom he enjoyed before his spell in prison, even though he/she once again inhabits the same real world as before his prison term. Parole demarcates the things the criminal can and cannot do, it evaluates what the prisoner does with his/her freedom. Prison time, therefore, never quite ends with the end of the complete limitation placed by the prison's guards upon the criminal's body, but rather extends beyond the prison walls to the control of the prisoner in the real world. Both his/her body and mind are to be controlled as he first emerges from prison and tries to adapt to life outside. Parole is such an intense form of control (controlling both body and mind) because parole officers always fear the next move of the criminal in the real world, the real world being the most elevated object needing protection from a criminal. Prison does not do a good job of educating and preparing for rehabilitation, which is why the parole system exists so ubiquitously.

What are the negative consequences of parole? By making the prison system ever-present to the life of the criminal, parole causes the criminal to always believe that he/she has an alternative to real life, the alternative being to spend even more time in prison in order to escape real life. Prison becomes a patriarchal structure, not just concerned with rehabilitating the criminal to real life, but always there to protect the very same criminal from the pressures of this rehabilitation; prison becomes a welcoming and tempting escape. Prison would not have been so tempting if it didn't show itself to be so present and aware of the mental anguish of the criminal in the process of his/her rehabilitation.

Foucault's metaphor of the Panopticon, where the prisoners are monitored via a tower erected at the center of the prison, still considers that the prisoners would contest the prison's power, but, the tactic of parole goes one step further, and is even more effective, for it enables criminals to actually want to be controlled, not just by being given advice about how to adapt in real life, but, by being ordered about in the most minute of things. Prisoners grumbled against the Panopticon; the Panopticon implied resistance and a strive for freedom by prisoners limited in their bodily movements, but with parole, freedom is given, real life is made accessible, but the criminal seeks the help of his/her former prison, meaning that freedom itself has been made less desirable by the prison's parole system. Additionally, a process of self-stigmatization may occur in the criminal's mind, where the criminal begins to feel himself inferior to other non-criminals in every single act and decision he/she makes in real life. Eventually the criminal cannot bear it, and seeks to be re-inserted in the prison system, by cooperating with his/her parole officer, and, if real life becomes too hard to handle, by committing breaches of his parole document in order to become a prisoner again. Unless Nepali powers want a prison-industrial complex with a system in place for the continuous 'recall' of the same prisoners, parole would not be good for helping criminals adapt well to life outside of the prison walls. 

The Implications of Nepal's Identity Politics

In the media, we find that different ethnic minorities are demanding their own territories/benefits in Nepal. However, the ways they use to formulate and disseminate such demands should make us critical. The prevalent myth is that the lowly ethnic minor individual trusts in and relies upon mainstream politicians to take his/her protests to the forefront of Nepal's priorities. But there should be other routes towards political significance outside of direct use of established politicians. In short, the politics of difference is not a bottom-up phenomena here, and that (ethnic) difference is becoming an agenda in Nepal should signal that a new, more powerful political class is emerging, a political class which does not just observe and represent Nepal's problems and struggles, but a class which actively makes new borders between the ethnic minorities, which interprets/imagines between people a friction, an antagonism. And rather than read this political intervention as a form of maturity, one can easily say that the politicians' myth-making will eventually lead to Nepal's dependency on established political parties and politicians because of their role in defining the characteristics of Nepali identities. This dependency on the political sphere may eventually result in a paternal, all-providing, authoritarian party which tells the people who they really are. 

In Nepal, no longer is it necessary to formulate a difference from the foreign national, or rather, making an observation of one's difference from the foreign national is no longer a politically lucrative venture. Politics has diverted away from such grand claims and research of the international context to become more aware of and fixate upon the immediate surroundings: in political rhetoric, replacing the foreign national pulling the strings is the immediate, Nepali neighbor controlling some aspect of one's life, and this neighbor is not some abstract concept, but a 'politician's object,' that is, an object to be modified by politicians. (Also, party cadres multiply in number as the demand for Nepal to be known more accurately and administered more effectively increases.) The stark borders between two nations, which held so much sway in political uprisings, has given way to 'invisible borders' that often do not even separate, 'but are supposed to,' according to the politician and his/her cadres. The fight is not between two starkly different identities, but between identities which have intermingled, which continue to intermingle, between which difference is very hard to create and sustain. It seems the politicians have managed to create differences between such intermingling identities, showing a level of sophistication in their capacity to imagine/interpret Nepali society which was not present to such a degree before. What politicians are doing is truly historical in significance: they are intervening into the social sphere to create permanent borders between identities which had previously more 'naturally' converged, diverged, converged again and diverged again and so on.  

Identity politics, in the way in which it is being practiced, is making the political class more powerful, and one way we see this is the immediacy and availability of the politician to the Nepali social sphere now. Power does not entail being aloof from the base population, but the powerful are even more present to the population, even more directly involved, the more powerful they get. Lastly, this strong and ever present political class speaks of an authoritarian tendency, for the politician who is ever present, ever involved, supporting one ethnic minority over the other with a fervor, energy and passion that politicians did not have before, may lead to the birth of a leader who wishes to be an absolute authority. (It is quite important to note that the formation of an authoritative figure depends more on domestic identity-based relations and conflicts than international ones. Therefore, it may be true that those political parties and personalities that accuse the international community of injustice may not have authoritarian tendencies.) 

The Code of Nepal's Future Kingdoms

In Nepal, power relations have (temporarily) changed from what they were during the monarchy. Let us map the power relations during the time of the king with a set of lines perpendicular to one another, as shown in this figure:

The top most point in the vertical line in the figure above is occupied by the monarch. The only point where there is any sense of a power relation is in the point of intersection between the two lines, meaning that the place the subject to the king occupied was at the point of intersection of the two lines. A defined position was thus occupied by the subject, a position limited by a kind of unspoken law: the subject must be 'perpendicular' to the king. Only certain subjects occupied such a position, and the collection of all such privileged subject were considered a part of the kingdom (which implies that kingdoms have nothing to do with territorial expansion, but kingdoms are simply the territories that the king's subjects inhabit.) The mobility of the subjects in this kind of structure was from the edges of the horizontal line towards the point of intersection: everyone wanted a relationship with the king, and hence everyone attempted to move towards those sets of identity traits, behaviors, characteristics and practices which would be recognized by the king, which would be found among people who had a certain power relation with the king. The movement towards the set of things which a subject must do or occupy in order to be recognized by the king was the theme to this kind of power relation. Another theme was the violence shown to those who voluntarily or involuntarily did not move towards these recognized kinds of identities and practices. The violence shown by the powerful towards the kingdom's own non-conforming subjects are higher in this type of power structure.

Moving to the type of power relation that exists today, we may note the different way it can be imagined, as in the figure in the left. The contact between the top (the powerful) and the bottom of the pyramid is now at the edges of the horizontal line, rather than at a fixed point within it. There is no longer the need to conform to a narrow identity or practice, for power is not concentrated to a point in the base, but stretched across a line. A spread of identities and practices are in contact with power. There is a lessening of violence towards the subjects and a logic of inclusion pervades the territory.

Using Deleuze and Guattari's terms, the difference between the two power structures could be called a movement from “territorializing” power, which produces a body of rules or “codes” that allow a subject to come to a relationship with the king if the subject conforms to certain identity markers and cultural practices, to a “deterritorializing” power, where the subjects are not concerned about their obedience of the law regarding their identity, and where power itself becomes more accountable towards them and approaches them, at the borders, at the margins/edges. We are slowly moving to the point where the crafting of one's identity and the subscription to 'official'/state sanctioned cultural practice is not as important in the composition of society as it was under the figure of the king. In Deleuze and Guattari, coding and decoding come one after the other in a cycle, and so we may expect a kind of resurgence in the perpendicular relationship as evident in the strong focus on social mobility, the growing exclusivity of power, the resurgence in the official sanctioning of the right behavior, right culture and right identity, and the receding of the expansive, Foucauldian “science of government” for a careful and meticulous attention to the select few within the power relation. However, one should note that the decoded and deterritorialized power scheme of today is only a kind of image of the real thing, since it will also give way without resistance.  

The Poached Object: Differently Significant in Colonialism than in Nepal's Feudalism(s)

A rhinoceros' horn finds its way into human society, from the forest at Chitwan into a living-room, but it carries a different significance depending on whether it was the result of colonial poaching or of Nepali “feudal/monarchical” poaching. Nevertheless, poaching in general seems to have been derived from a kind of colonialist 'business model': trade-routes fraught with danger (violence is an integral part of the colonial business model) and production processes concerned with 'extraction' rather than value-addition...other examples of this 'colonialist' business model are the diamond trade, the illegal drug trade and the stealing of idols/statues of Gods, as all three of these trades seem to rely on the archaic model of capitalism espoused during colonialism. In poaching, the feudal elements in Nepal's history seem to have been inspired by this colonial business model, but the signs of feudal poaching carry a different meaning than the signs of colonial poaching, even though both colonialists and feudal elements may end up extracting the same product and finding the same place of exhibition of this product (the 'living room'). As long as poaching continues, therefore, we cannot say that we are out of colonialism if we espouse some of the same trade practices that we did back then. Poaching tells us we are in colonialism with a different name. 

It is tempting to think that the rhinoceros horn was a kind of fetish, but it was not. A fetish is an object which causes pleasure, it is a kind of addition to socializing which makes the experience of socializing pleasurable. However, borrowing from Lacan, we believe the rhinoceros horn is the object small 'a.' Deriving from the discussions of Lacanians regarding the object small 'a', we can say that the object small 'a' (henceforth, object a) is different from other types of capitalism's fetishized objects prevalent in society today, and so first of all we may begin by saying that the object a is an object produced first during colonial times and through colonial means and mechanisms, and not produced within the capitalist form of production as a readily consumable object. As opposed to the fetish, the object a or the poached object is the object which is supposed to enjoy rather than the subjects in its presence enjoying it. This character of being both enjoying and lifeless makes the poached object uncanny. In short, the poached object is not enjoyable but itself supposed to be enjoying. Perhaps we can say that the poached object was an enjoyable fetish for Nepalis, and the enjoyment/consumption of this object was a distraction with negative consequences, one of which is the fact that Nepali feudalism was not as efficient and respectful of its economy as colonialism was, eventually making Nepali society a society of consumers seeking fetishized products rather than producers concerned with efficiency. 

The colonial experience, where foreign men were geographically so far away from their homeland as to be anxious that they may no longer heed their authority figures, utilized the poached object as something which could serve as a metaphor for the authority figure. The rhinoceros horn was the master in the colonial experience, it re-presented directly the human figure of the master who was far away, and, more practically, it reminded the colonial officers of the abstract authority of the colonial mission of which they were a part. The colonialists in the foreign land, away from their master, desired another master, similar to when Lacan claimed that French students desired another master when they revolted against the existing order. This master in the colonial experience was the poached object, which is also a quite degrading fact since it implies that the colonialists never considered the actual native human beings who knew the land so well as their masters. It is precisely because of the metaphoric representation of authority that the poached object carried that it has become such a prized object today, that is, it is valuable as an authoritative object and for its legacy as an authoritative object. It similarly has value to academic institutions studying power because of the seamless way in which it has managed to integrate into human relations of authority and hierarchy. The object 'rules the world' in our contemporary capitalist moment, by re-presenting the authority figure, and being the most authoritative of things within human relations. What we mean is that it is not the object produced by capitalism for consumption (such as a car) which rules the world, but precisely the colonial-authoritative object, the object small a, which does so.

Exoticism and the Truth of Revolutionary Desire in Nepal and Tibet

How is it that Tibet is, on the one hand, mystical and exotic, while on the other hand being one of the most politically heated regions in the world? It seems that exoticism, when it comes to Tibet, is embroiled in a Foucauldian “technique of government,” where exoticism enables a certain management of the population, and more importantly, a regulation of the desire of the Western revolutionary who wishes to fight for a “Free Tibet.” Indeed, "making exotic" may be one of the first "techniques of government" employed by the West on territories like Tibet and Nepal, just in order to make political engagement in these territories a matter of mature and sophisticated political institutions rather than students in a university or college. The key point regarding Tibet, for Western power, is to maintain a kind of balance. The message from power is this: Tibet is in trouble, yes, but it can also be enjoyed. All it takes to enjoy Tibet is only a little effort, and a subscription to the myths of exotic Tibet. Also, it seems that in Tibet an enjoyable way of countering oppression is sought by Western powers, shaping the struggle there as a romantic struggle, but even more than romantic, an enjoyable struggle, a struggle enjoyable as long as it lasts, to the point where some Western revolutionary practices and organizations do not want it to end. ..and indeed the exotic and the revolutionary have fused into a common image when it comes to Tibet and Tibet-related movements. Another important development has been how the struggle has been watched, discussed and acted upon from a distance, as if Westerners have not considered that the struggle may require more direct actions, such as direct visits by students protesting about Tibet. There will be no "remote control revolution." 

To a lesser intensity, Nepal is similar to Tibet in its ability to inspire revolutionary desire, and this desire is here too stunted by exotic appeal, embodied in Nepal by the figure of the tourist. There is power being exercised upon Western foreigners as is evident from the fact that these people have to come to Nepal conforming to an image of a tourist; any other reasons for travel here are still considered dangerous, but in fact this image of a dangerous Nepal is a way to stunt the real potential of Nepal as a place inspiring a revolutionary spirit. Like Tibet, Nepal is both appealingly exotic and dangerous. The political problems of Nepal are considered confined within its national boundaries and there hasn't been the kind of exposure as is being received in Tibet, but Nepal has the same potential to inspire a particular kind of approach to politics which is represented by a subject invested with what we are calling here "revolutionary desire."  

What does this "revolutionary desire" look like? Perhaps we can come to it by witnessing its opposite, exoticism, in action. Whereas the “exotifying” person, the tourist, is not to present to and attentive of the realities of Nepal (being distanced as he is into an artistic-creative spirit focused on Nepal's natural and cultural objects and practices), the revolutionary subject is very attuned to the more humanistic, social realities, and becomes fully immersed in the everyday of Nepal. He/she becomes, in Deleuzian-Guattarian terms, “deterritorialized” as a subject, not belonging to any place or time, including his/her Western homeland and its myths. He/she has not destroyed his/her desire, but found in the place where revolution is ripe and certain, a home. The link between identity and politics is broken when it comes to revolutionary desire; it can emerge to fight on the side of justice anywhere...The sacrifice of one's feelings for one's home territory is precisely what concerns Western powers. They are content with exoticism of the other, but they do not want any kind of abandonment of the homeland by their own citizens that results when the exotic image is removed. What inspired a loyal relationship to one's homeland was a kind of distance maintained with the other, a distance created between West and East by the forces that "make exotic," and once this distance is gone, the result is a lack of belief in the idea of a homeland and a motivation/desire to work towards the struggles of people elsewhere.  

If Nepal fuels the (revolutionary) desire of foreigners, then Nepal is what in Lacan is called the “object small a,” also known as the "object-cause of desire." The object-cause is itself not the desired object, but rather, it is some kind of a elusive material which in the subject causes desire for something else. The exotic-seeker piles layers to shroud such an “object small a,” so there is spirituality, mystique, religion and culture, all of which are layers to prevent the potent political scenario of Nepal from influencing foreigners to the full. What is truthful is that the first thing one would notice about Nepal, if it were not for its identity as exotic, is its politics, meaning that any subject who traverses beyond the exotic comes to confront the political. A kind of comparative politics between Nepal and the West is made possible, eventually leading to a revolutionary desire through the realization of the injustice upon Nepal. Perhaps we can understand Lacan's crucial idea of "traversing the fantasy" as precisely traversing the exotic, going beyond the exotic, so that the contemporary world's political identities come to the fore. This consciousness of the politics all over the world will make the Western subject more fruitfully and actively engaged in the world rather than remain a passive tourist. Finally, we can begin to understand how the “objects small a,” such as Nepal and Tibet,  are also felt as “objects of anxiety” when they are approached, if we are to think that we are approaching them as a powerful subject, as a subject who does not want to see revolutionary desire develop. 

The Oncoming Psychotic Age in Globalizing Nepal

Nepal will soon enter a psychotic age as it globalizes, and as it enters a new phase of geopolitics. So far, Nepal, although exhibiting disorganization, does not exhibit signs of psychosis, such as collective delusions of grandeur, collective paranoia, a kind of disorganization/confusion in its interactions and relationships with other powers, and complete, self-destructive isolation. This has to do with a particular type of relation Nepal maintains with the outside world: this relation was confined to a relation with Western powers that were stronger, powers that in very real ways served as a paternal metaphor for weak nations. For instance, World Wars were fought between powerful nations only, as if to suggest that a paternal nation was protecting its child--its territory was considered its child. Also, colonial territories were considered the “sons and daughters” of the superpowers. 

In Lacanian terms, the subject's recognition of a paternal metaphor is what ultimately causes the subject to resist psychosis, meaning that as long as the subject recognizes a father figure, there is no psychosis. In psychosis, Lacanians consider that the “Name of the Father” is “foreclosed,” meaning that this ordering and organizing metaphoric "Name" of the father is unavailable to the psychotic subject. Without this authority, this strong name of the father, the psychotic does not enter the symbolic order at all and therefore exhibits the symptoms of psychosis.  

We are getting close, today in Nepal, to a situation where the paternal metaphor will be foreclosed for the generations to come, with the result being psychosis. The main reason for this foreclosure is that in globalization, Nepal is no longer seen as a “son or daughter” by the Western superpowers, but rather, it is seen as an equal, where it is genuinely expected that Nepal will significantly contribute to the global capitalist system. For instance, Information Technology firms may export work to Nepal, not only because hiring is cheap here, but also because they have seriously found work conditions to be similar to that of the West and a level of maturity in Nepali self-governance and self-management. Thus, Nepal will enter global capitalism as a contributor, as productive; not as a sheltered, protected territory, but as an active force in managing and creating global flows. Hence, the West will consider Nepal as a (sexual) partner, rather than as a muted child. A “sexual economy” will characterize Nepal's relationship with the West.

This sexual economy means precisely that the paternal function occupied by the Western superpower will now vanish, for in its place is the West as a “husband,” or, even more aptly for today's liberal times, a “boyfriend.” The paternal metaphor, so vital in maintaining order through authority, will give way to a figure who is far more liberal, but also volatile, prone to getting anxious and angry...in a sense the relationship between two immature equals will develop. And as soon as the paternal metaphor is absent from the picture, the end result will be a kind of (social) psychosis...paranoiac relations between social organizations and an overwhelming media commenting on every act of every individual could be some of the things that will structure Nepali society in its psychotic age.

From Nepal's side, Nepal's anti-authority radical left has been responsible in its movement towards the psychosis-inducing sexual economy model among its own subjects and for "Nepal" as a symbolic entity in geopolitics. The radical left is generally concerned with a “post-Oedipal” movement in subjects, and the desired goal for moving beyond the Oedipal conflict (“sex with parent”) is moving towards a sexual economy (“partnership with equal”). It may be that the radical left subscribe to the idea that psychosis is a kind of 'liberation' from the authority of the paternal-West, and their violence in Nepali space may be motivated by the explosive removal of objects that signify a paternal-Western order. Through the removal of the signs of a paternal-West, Nepali subjects of the future will not come to know paternal authority and thereby become psychotic. 

Even in being labeled "terrorists" by the West, the radical left has made progress: by being considered a “threat” instead of a nuisance or an irritation, the West is showing that Nepali political organizations are now to be dealt with as if they were more mature, and that they should be seen as adult rivals instead of as children. Lacan's famous formula that “there is no sexual relation” can be interpreted as meaning that there is no loving relation between the partners, but there is a kind of rivalry; the compatibility of love and sexual relation is a myth. But where the West seeks a balance between authority and liberal agendas through the "husband" function ("husband" suggesting both governmental authority and sexual liberation), the continuous destruction of paternal-Western objects in Nepali space will cause psychosis (including a very real increase in the number of psychotics) soon. This is indeed a threat to Nepal's very existence, its very name, as a symbolic, sovereign territory. Either it will break up (become disorganized) or it will be consumed, in either case, in the place of "Nepal" will be something else. 

The Transformation of Nepal Army to Neutral Peace-Keepers

Given Nepal's lack of great geopolitical clout, we can say that the Nepal army, whether consciously or unconsciously, is disloyal to Nepal, in that, it lacks the incentive to be loyal (even though it searches for things to be loyal to). This 'lack of incentive to be loyal' is not just Nepal's problem: in other nations too there is disloyalty in the army. This lack of loyalty has an implication for the nature of warfare: war has become very disorganized, with major national and international laws continuously breached, because disloyal soldiers do not partake in war through a higher cause, but they fight as if they are only responsible for their own selves; and more importantly, today soldiers fight for a variety of causes, out of anger at family, for instance, rather than just subscribing to the 'supreme' cause of the nation. This wild disorganization and uncalled for extra violence is going to characterize warfare in the future because there is no fixed and established cause to be loyal to, there is no duty to the nation to serve. 

Given the lack of military, economic and political might in Nepal, there simply isn't much to be loyal to in Nepal (there aren't territories and people to romantically craft as vulnerable; everyone is already strong in the face of great difficulties). As Nepal army personnel may be disloyal to their own country, they can be taken to other nations to fight in wars that Nepal has nothing to do with. We should ask: what is the political clout of the Nepali soldier who travels to other conflict-ridden places? What is so wrong about the situation where a developed nation inspires loyalty from the Nepal army personnel towards itself? Indeed, this new found loyalty would be the ideal scenario. But the political clout of the Nepal army in other nations is quite weak. The disloyalty to one's nation has given bigger nations the opportunity to use the soldiers just for their willingness to fight: they become better soldiers because they do not belong to the nation they are fighting for. Hence, the big nations maintain the Nepal army personnel as disloyal rather than helping them become loyal. To the big nations, this lack of loyalty to the nation also implies the lack of political will. In short, the Nepal army personnel become soldiers and nothing more. 

But we cannot solely attribute the export of Nepali soldiers to the developed nations. The scenario of this export is possible because of a deep failure in the Nepal army training system with regards to emphasizing the connection between armed service and loyalty to one's nation. But, it is time not to fix this failure, but to utilize it for maximum benefit because disloyalty to the nation is a good thing; it is loyalty to the nation which has caused warfare, conflicts and ethnic divisions...it is loyalty, as the army now understands, which can be produced, crafted, artificially made/inspired, and that this loyalty does not represent an innate and intimate relationship between army and territory. Given this realization of the army, perhaps it is time to approach the issue of universal and neutral peace from the perspective of the army, rather than being reliant on the actions of political agents. The army should be more involved in neutral peace-keeping having realized that political agents inevitably take sides in the conflict, exercising their loyalty strictly to one cause. While the army, in the battlegrounds, is confused as to his/her loyalties, is not trained, at the risk of losing life, to stand firm to one's nations. The army must simply declare: it is much too unsafe and dangerous for us to think of any sort of loyalty in the face of combat...  

If the army's role is neutral peace-keeping, then it cannot just be involved when there is physical warfare, but rather, its mission must be more prolonged because in order to keep and maintain peace, deep-lying factors in the population must be changed. An interesting thing this suggests is that the army will be involved in the struggle to fix the army's own mistakes which are centuries old. For this extensive role of the army in peace-keeping, the army needs a proper line of communication with existing political agents, and the army must itself become represented well in the political sphere, both of which do not seem to be the case yet in Nepal. The first message of a political Nepal army must be: Nepal army must be neutralized, because it is loyal to no entity, and as a way of making Nepal itself a neutral nation eventually...   

Economic Sanctions on Russia and Nietzsche's Will To Power

The economic sanctions on Russia as punishment for its project in Ukraine will never subdue Russia. No matter how much the Western diplomats frame economic sanctions as attempting to subdue Russian power in Ukraine, men and women related to and in-charge of the economy of Russia do not influence what goes on in Ukraine. Hence, the economic sanctions are misdirected, and it is possible that eventually a more political force will have to be utilized against the Russians.

The misdirected economic sanctions are a result of the belief held by westerners that the economic men and women (the 'wealthy capitalists') form the most important component in a nation's power structure. Westerners put a lot of emphasis on men and women of the economy, that is, on the wealthy capitalists, as the figures who could influence the politics of a nation. But, we may notice a weakness in the men and women of the economy, and this weakness is that their object of concern is monetary profit and not power, and precisely in times of conflict monetary profit and political power are not aligned. It is as if, in the west, true politics with a national and/or individual will-to-power has been lost, and the political sphere is only in service of the economy.

The problem is that this focus on the economy is coming at the expense of power. There is no connection between economy and power in the Nietzschean sense. Perhaps for Nietzsche, an economy is a sign of a nation's weakness. True, there is a kind of economic power, where wealthy capitalists can influence politics to a certain extent—but we believe this is simply when matters are concerned with the economy first and exclusively. Men and women of the economy, while themselves not shy of taking risk, do tend to shy away from power (or, they keep their wills-to-power private), whereas political will-to-power will utilize the economy for its aims without shame. The question is: should economic men and women lead the nation or the political ones? At times of conflict, at least, it seems that men and women with strong wills-to-power should come to the forefront: those that do not act in the name of their nation, but who carry their nation forward into new territory, who grasp the nation in their hands (to take it forward into undefined territory) rather than allow it to be a burden. In a true Nietzschean fashion, the nation becomes the backdrop when the game/conflict is between two wills-to-power.  

What is needed, following from Nietzsche's concept of the will-to-power, is a tyrannical form of power, a tyrannic response to the Russian project. This will-to-power is not economic, but political in its expression. The aims of this will-to-power are political interventions into the Russian project in Ukraine. As a side note, we can simply witness the great tyrants of history, such as Alexander-the-Great, to understand that the political aims of power are seldom met as easily as economic means. For one, economic aims are concerned with a fixed territory, whereas political will-to-power wants to act on and dominate another (Ukranian) will-to-power as much as possible...even when the territory is conquered, the political aim motivating the warfare is not final, for subduing the other's will takes a lot of time.  

Therefore, political will-to-power is about people acting on people in its most basic manifestation. And so, at this infant phase of the conflict, we have an undefined group of people, known just as Russian separatists, without a territory or state to their name, acting on the will of the Ukrainian people. At the moment, Russia seeks a hero among the Russian seperatists, one who has a strong will-to-power, a strong striving for power, for whom the conflict itself is just a backdrop to the expression of his/her will. Perhaps we may thus expect a true celebrity figure, a hero/heroine, to emerge at this stage of the conflict. The conflict has not yet moved to a stage where Russia, a named territory, will directly act on Ukraine, for what is at stake at the moment is a political will-to-power rather than economic and other gains. Ukraine will have to be won over in the political sphere before economic agendas and issues are discussed. Ukraine will have to be won over through the passion and drive of the Russian separatists rather than through the military might of their weapons. It is only when a victorious will emerges that conflicts between neighboring countries which share similar histories can be said to be solved. The Ukraine-Russia conflict starts with a rivalry between two wills and it will end when one will asserts itself over another (it is not a war for the territory or the economy, and the westerners understand this). From a military perspective, this battle of the wills looks like a prolonged battle, because the military will not be used constantly and with great might, but it will be utilized only insofar as military might itself stands as an expression of a superior will.  

Economic sanctions on Russia will only go so far as to hit the elements of Russian economy without influencing the overall project in Ukraine. From the western perspective, what may be necessary to show is political power, power which is tyrannical, power which addresses the political sphere of Russian life more fully. It is also crucial that this power attach itself to the Ukrainian resistance, in order that this be a battle of wills rather than of military might. In fact, this 'battle of the wills' may already be in the tactical plans of this warfare. At the moment, the economic sanctions are only showing the Russians the current weakened state of the western will-to-power...and therefore the Russians may act more, wary of this weakened will, than be subdued. As a side note, at this point, the westerners seem to be ashamed of exhibiting their own power, but when western will-to-power is introduced amid the Russian will-to-power, war will become like a game, since both wills are out in the open and there is nothing to hide: there is an unashamed competition among the wills...As a game, the war will become more tactical than chaotic. 

Western Desire for the Decomposition of Peripheral Politics

In a kind of simple world systems analysis, we may say that the world has one pole which is the core (the west), and the other regions (“third world”, “developing nations” etc) collectively known as the periphery. This is a very simplified analysis: for one, it seems to suggest that things from the core flow out onto the periphery, and that the core and periphery are linked by an intimacy in which everything that is present in the core eventually makes its way into the periphery. This transportation of things from the core to the periphery, however, only occurs in the sphere of goods, services and cultural practices, but does not occur in the sphere of politics; rather, the periphery has to fight for true political change, even when it is democracy that they are seeking. It is as if the west wants to dominate the rest of the world in its trade practices, in the sphere of economy, but ceases to intervene when the issue is just the political sphere, the political mechanism and the political apparatus. In any case, even when it does attempt to intervene into the political, its attempts are half-hearted, meaning that it only wants to intervene into politics when trade, commerce and the economy are involved; in all honesty, politics is of a secondary concern to the west.

But, can we go so far as to say that the west wants, in the peripheral regions, an anarchic decomposition of politics? Can we say that the west is waiting for the moment when politics in the periphery is nonexistent, so that it can infiltrate the peripheral territories at will for its more economic ends? No is the answer, for the west may want political decomposition, but it will not get it today, and so we have a Lacanian scenario with regards to the logic of desire: the western desire is political decomposition, but it will not get it, and hence political decomposition maintains as a desire, that is, desire can be sensed between the fantasy of political decomposition and the peripheral resistance to this scenario. The west will not get a decomposition of politics, a death of the political, no matter how much it desires it; or rather, it desires the decomposition of politics precisely because it will not get it. In this reformulation of desire we can note the weakness of western desire today compared to how it led to conquest and violence in colonial times. Western desire is no longer strong, no longer a driving force, rather, a kind of artificial image of western desire is maintained by inserting a fake desire in between the fantasy and the reality.  

The important question is: why does the peripheral other remain as other, to continue to exist and live as other, rather than being completely destroyed through western desire? How does the periphery resist western desire? In today's world, it is not so much the west actively imposing its ideas and practices among people, but rather, it is more about the periphery actively mimicking the western—and mimicking to such a great degree of accuracy that the peripheral region literally re-presents the west: one need only think of how accurately the national capitals of the world's poor places represent western values and aesthetics. Privileged places and populations of the periphery become too accurate a picture of the west. And this mimicry begins at the political level, that is, not at the level of objects of trade such as cars and houses, but at the level of the models of western politics: democracy, authoritarianism, isolationism and so on. This accurate re-presentation is problematic because it implies a form of independence from the west, an independence which begins with the political mechanism and which the west fears will eventually spread to independence in goods and services, in the economy, in commerce, in production....a form of isolation from the west which begins with political mechanisms becoming independent...There is quite a paradoxical situation where independence occurs because the periphery mimics, rather than in the attempt to resist such a mimicry. And hence the periphery can resist desire: by re-presenting the west with its own image, by blurring the lines between self and other, by showing oneself to not be different (and 'female') but same (and 'male'). Western desire is resisted by showing the oppression of the periphery to be a kind of suicide on the part of the west.  

The west assumes, it seems to us, that the political mechanism and political actors of the peripheral population are most easily influenced by ideas of independence and isolation. Hence, the west is divided about how to respond to the political mechanisms of the periphery: on the one hand, it sees these political mechanisms as a joke, as flimsy and weak, but on the other hand, the political is very important because it can influence other social actors and institutions to isolate themselves from the west, for instance, on the issue of free trade. And hence we arrive at an important image: the west has to take the joke (the joke of the periphery's political mechanism) the most seriously, and therefore, what is most serious in the periphery is precisely the joke. In a psychoanalytic vein, as Freud said, the (western) analyst is the one person who does not laugh at the joke.

The (Lacking) Grand "End of Feudalism" Thesis

In reality, in the real social fabric, there is no move which reflects the move in the political historian's text from feudalism to capitalism, or, the “end of feudalism”. For instance, we can notice that the same groups are in power as before, and any change has only been of a trivial manner. We are speaking specifically about feudalism because the modern, objective historian is a birth of recent history and there was no “historian at the present moment” at the feudalistic moment, therefore, in a sense, everything said about the feudalistic moment has been speculated by the historian of today about a moment in which he/she did not live. Even if it may be the case that the political historian was objective in his/her research, the real social fabric does not adapt itself to the terms feudalism and capitalism that smoothly; these terms are abstractions that generalize and make speculations, rather than speak of reality in any meticulous detail; they are grandiose concepts which are difficult to apply for the average citizen in any attempts to change his/her life. Given such a use of terms, it is therefore important to politically situate the historian even if the historian himself may not directly do so. By “political situation,” we are not only speaking about the political orientation of the historian, but rather, we are speaking of the more important matter of the utility of the historian's grand thesis for a politician's rhetoric, as we will do shortly.  

In short, the grand thesis of the "end of feudalism" does not reflect reality, which is full of small gains and losses, which does not completely align to the concepts of feudalism and capitalism. So, in a sense it seems that the job of the historian's text is not to inform, but rather, to enable the general audience to consult these texts on feudalism and capitalism so that this audience may engage with the moment in a manner which subscribes to these texts; always already the purpose is to persuade rather than inform. The historian constructs a mental picture in the audience's mind about what feudalism was like, and this picture is on the most part fictitious, motivated as it is by political aims. Here, we begin to see why the historian is important: because he/she is closest to formulating (but not reaping all the benefits from) a Foucauldian technique of government as he/she has the first role in interpreting history and proclaiming the ends and beginnings of social orders; he/she produces political concepts and symbols at what are considered to be critical and important junctures. But there is a form of corruption in the historian's formulation of such a technique because the "objective" stance does not arrive arbitrarily but arrives only at a politically important moment; we may begin to see to what extent objective historicizing is imbued with biased politics. We see the very important notion of the use of objectivity: no matter how objective a historian may become, he/she does not exist in a neutral and objective space and so his/her thoughts ultimately play into subjective and biased aims of politics. 

For the politician, who is an important enforcer of the techniques of government, the “end of feudalism” thesis is something which enables him/her to formalize the history of the time, to give the times a type of definition, to mark it with more seriousness and weight than other times. Of course such a "making serious" of feudalism is usually motivated by other, more hidden political aims. The "end of feudalism" thesis allows him/her to engage with others who are regarded as rivals, to defeat these rivals in the eyes of the people...he/she uses the thesis as a weapon, and keeps utilizing it for its rhetorical richness rather than for its plausibility, relevance or objectivity: as such, politics becomes dominated by the uses of old theses, as is the case in Nepali politics where the ideas in speeches are often repeated...Using the terms feudalism and capitalism enables a very political reading of the times, infusing the present with excess political urgency and also constructing the future as an important field for politics. However, the major “undercurrent” to utilizing this (and many other) theses is to give strength to the symbolic order, which is understood here as the ordering of social reality by the use of theses. The politician steps in to save the symbolic order, which is especially vulnerable at times of upheaval. Indeed, in the faceless, post-political moment of today, the politician's only true significance must be to perform the bland role of saving the symbolic order...both a bland role but an important (and hence, rewarding) one. Additionally, the politician's motive is to use this thesis to limit the field and context of what is considered political versus what is considered apolitical. "The political" is usually reserved for fast-moving periods of time and revolutions in the contents of the moment, on newness. Ultimately, this focus on the fast-moving, the rapid goes to maintain a certain false rigor in politics, and elicits a shallow excitement towards the political...the political keeps its place in the fashion of the times because it allows commentary on supposed change and transformation. 

What philosophy of history does this subscription to the “end of feudalism” thesis (or text) entail? What is implied by this “end of feudalism” text is that things do not move forward without a symbolic impetus, that is, without concepts such as 'feudalism' to describe the social. It is considered that subjects consistently seek symbols, that they seek explanations, especially political ones, so that they may articulate and construct their own life-trajectories...and this seems especially true of Nepal where the interest towards politics is quite high. With symbolic impetus, social institutions and people move forward within the confines of what the symbolic defines and limits. When the historian speaks of the “end of feudalism,” people begin to enact moments that would come after the end of feudalism, people would begin with a consciousness of feudalism in mind in whatever they do. However, we can also subscribe to another philosophy here: that things are constantly transforming beyond the reach of the text, that the text is in fact the material weight to a human limitation or disability: the disability to keep up with how things change without symbolic impetus. Symbolic impetus only gives an illusion of control. We may believe that people's consciousness of feudalism does not have as much significance as is assumed. We can begin to reduce the importance of the thesis/text on the movement of reality and the social fabric. Reality does not rely on the symbolic order and the historian's play of words, but rather, on the Lacanian symbolic lack, that which cannot be captured by the thesis, the lack of control and the lack of technique of government...it is upon the lack of the symbolic order where reality thrives...From Foucault, if we have derived the historian's powerful role in constructing the symbolic order, from Lacan we have given the authority over the movement of the symbolic order back to the ordinary, post-political citizen. 

The Westernized Hospital's Research Arm

The hospital is a relic, a product of a certain moment in the past, which is why it had to be replaced by the research hospital, which is relatively less weak. The hospital is no longer an institution where power circulates, but rather is a powerless institution due to its passivity in the field of knowledge. Even as a research hospital, the hospital is not necessarily anything other than an outdated institution; for this "hospital research" is not as we imagine scientific research to be. Medical-science research is governed by a certain structure which makes it treat a certain body of text (“body of text” includes the rules and regulations, medical procedures, the documentation of what takes place etc) as essential and original. We say so because, even with the forward movement of research, the hospital relies on a static body of texts as its foundation; it relies on individuals who have already finished their formal education, and this formal education itself has not been significantly updated. As soon as one enters a hospital, one is in rigid territory fully controlled by a body of texts. Even the research such a hospital carries out is nothing more than a way to legitimize the unchanging body of texts that prefigures the hospital's activities; we may speculate, for instance, that much of the research is done by an aloof group of hospital staff reliant on medical-scientific methodology hundreds of years old. The hospital as an institution exists only in order to justify bodies of texts upon which it stands. In short, the hospital is a point of failure in research and science.

We are interested in the hospital because it represents, as "medical-science," an institution between science and reality. It seems to us that the hospital performs well in its administration of established science on the populations, but it seems weak in engaging the population in the scientific endeavors that it espouses; it remains secretive about its research arm, to say the least. Without the support of the population, a certain obsolete body of texts within science dominates the hospital. Moreover, the hospital does not espouse the research endeavors within science, rather, it places itself in that safe space away from research, utilizing only those “trusted” methods circulating in society and the other hospitals at large. It cannot implement and critically evaluate radically new techniques and new modes of treatment, but must rely on what society considers to be effective and appropriate. Without the support of science, the hospital becomes a dangerous place that gives rise to what can be characterized as a legitimate culture. This legitimate culture is the hospital as subscribing to a certain image, an ideal image of the doctor or the nurse. It is this ideal image of doctors and nurses, and not the scientific endeavor, which gives the hospital its legitimacy in the eyes of laypersons today.

This criticism of the hospital has to be considered because of the changing nature of the human subject today. The human subject has, in most of his/her endeavors, given up the tag of “patient” and has become more out of control. The hospital was a firm establishment when the activities of the human subject usually relied on his/her becoming safe from harm, and when there was a willingness on the part of the patient to be under the complete control of a hospital for the duration of the treatment. Today, harm is often actively sought and the hospital visit has become a regular activity in a subject's life. The demarcations between society and hospital have been made so rigid that the hospital cannot influence behaviors in wider society at all. And in one sense, the hospital is too reliable, it is almost a paradise when compared to the rest of society. The subject is not to be taken as a patient, but has become more and more, in Lacanian terms, the “subject supposed to know,” the subject who wishes to participate within research under development rather than remain under control by a rigid body of rules and regulations that govern treatment. The subject wishes to offer to his/her treatment rather than passively spending time on a hospital bed. he/she has often actively sought western medical-science from a range of choices. Additionally, the patient "calls out" to the doctor to participate in the treatment, to encourage in the doctor a willingness to treat, especially in Nepal, where neglect during treatment has caused deaths; and isn't it a proper research component which would encourage doctors not to neglect? In order to rebel against the hospital, the subject uses the cultural sphere, in the form of medical advertisements and TV shows on alternative, non-western treatments, to demonstrate how it wants to participate in its own treatment. 

These observations do not prove that the hospital has to be given up entirely. But, in order to adapt, the hospital does need to change some things: first, it must give the tag of research hospital more weight in order to more actively participate in research (this does not mean that patients are to be converted to lab mice, but the ways in which the patient information is recorded and elicited may have to change; the machines used in a hospital may have to updated, given that these machines do represent scientific progress), second, the hospital must remove itself from the influences of the culture industry: it cannot ride on the image of the serious, concerned and thoughtful doctor as created in popular TV shows. By projecting its ideal image onto the screen, the doctor will soon look even more untrustworthy to patients. In short, the movement of the hospital should be towards 'research-oriented' rather than 'service-oriented.'

Global Capitalism's Function Today: To Monitor Displaced Populations

The prevalence of all kinds of warfare (civil war, international war, rebellions) today might imply that there are certain global capitalist institutions which benefit from the ongoing wars. From the 'rubble and ruin' of war, a new desiring subject may emerge, and this is an ideal scenario for global capitalist institutions that wish to create a consumerist society from ruins. In this post, we will look at the possibility that the traumatized refugee could potentially benefit global capitalist institutions. We will look at the possibility that the flows of knowledge and information in globalization do not stop at warfare, and indeed, as risky as it may be, these flows of information perform an important function to enable the perpetuation of conflict, even if they may prevent outright violence.

The traumatized refugee is mobile but without a destination; he/she is a transient, temporary subject, existing between two ruined destination...travelling from one ruins to the next. It is precisely because the refugee cannot do anything about where he/she will end up that he/she is a pure consumer: helplessly reliant on external forces to devise a permanent settlement; consuming whatever the outside help provides in the form of housing and food. Additionally, this traumatized refugee is the central character in the process in which new towns and new settlements are made: sooner or later, it is thought, that the Syrian tent city for instance will be replaced by an actual city. In a Lacanian sense, the traumatized subject is a pure subject of desire, he/she does not only want a safe place, but is ready to continuously travel, and travel without care (without food and shelter) till it arrives at the object of its desire...in Lacanian language, this type of subject who moves without destination or the concern for survival is someone “who does not give room to one's desire,” who is ready to pursue the impossible desire (for permanent peace and resolution) till the end of his/her life.

It is in the re-construction effort of building new towns and cities that we locate global capitalism's entry into the civil war of Syria and other wars elsewhere. Entire symbolic networks of people, systems of food provision and health care, among many other things, will have to be fabricated from the ground up, and that too by external powers. Global capitalist institutions want to enter into the war-torn territory because the traumatized refugee is a pure consumer: he/she wants a complete lifestyle change, longer-lasting peace etc and also must be provided with new things such as housing. At the stage of displacement in a warfare, capitalism works via encouragement: it encourages people to keep moving, to keep going towards what is thought to be safe—and at the end of this process is the creation of a “peaceful territory.” This peace via a new territory is just a fantasy: it is not actual resolution of the conflict but an escape from it. And what is the organ encouraging people to keep escaping war? Precisely the humanitarian aid agencies that help the refugees carry on by providing food and water. 

War is like a permanent scar for the refugees: usually it is not the case that when a war is over, the population may return back to its 'original' territories. Rather, the population is permanently displaced, unsettled, traumatized...it needs a new territory to fully recover from the trauma of war. Revisiting the sites of trauma is not to anyone's benefit, not because the ruins and rubble is disturbing, but because, quite concretely, the revisit to one's own ruins may cause another war, another disturbance, and another traumatic encounter with the victors who have already built their own territories over the previous ones. It is the possibility of another war, the permanent irresolution of the first conflict, which is most traumatic for a refugee. The war itself may not be traumatizing, but the underlying conflict causing the war suddenly becomes traumatic during the event of warfare.

In all this warfare, global capitalist institutions are monitoring and researching. They face the crises through the lens of the media and the on-the-ground presence of humanitarian aid agencies. In true globalizing fashion, the flows of people are followed by flows of knowledge and information (and out come research papers detailing the state of the humanitarian crisis etc.) Wherever refugees go, global capitalism follows, for it wants a stake in the new territories created for refugees, it wants a say in the post-traumatic new subjectivity. It wants to create people as consumers and it sees great value in people "starting all over again." Therefore, we should conceive global capitalism as the flows of money and knowledge following the flows of people.

But in the midst of all this is the refugee's persistent trauma...trauma which makes of the refugee a completely passive subject, who only wishes to consume rather than produce, who needs to find, with each act of consumption, a re-confirmation of the fact that life has positives. The trauma is what makes unexpected the outcome of the refugee's movement. With the traumatized subject, it is never certain what he/she desires. The traumatized refugee is not duped by lesser objects of desire, but knows his/her desire is the quite impossible desire for resolution, yet still he/she desires it. What all this means is that the flows of capital behind refugees may have to be given up, and outright intervention on the part of bigger powers may be necessary. The objective must be to stop the cause of trauma rather than any attempt to 'cure' the traumatized. Indeed, the role of watchdog goes to show the permanence of the underlying conflict and only goes to strengthen the refugee's trauma. Global capitalism must realize that what the refugee desires is resolution to conflict and not a new territory/consumable object.

The Full Value of a Commodity in the Post-Industrial Age

We have relied on Marx and others for their idea of 'commodity fetishism' to enable a critique of capitalism. We believe that with the idea of commodity fetishism, Marx wanted to highlight that the amount of labor expended for the production of a commodity had to be included in the price/value (we use price and value interchangeably) of the commodity. In the industrial age, this meant that the value of the workers in a factory had to be included in the commodity they produced. But how can we take this idea forward and speak of the need to address a new kind of commodity fetishism? How is the idea of commodity fetishism relevant in the post-industrial age, when the labor work force is slowly getting diminished?

What is assumed in the production process of the commodity is that the flows of information regarding the commodity goes in one direction: in theory, from the laborer to the capitalist to the investor. However, such a flow is not necessarily what defines the commodity value today. We have to look at the opposite of the flow laborer-to-investor and look at the flow investor-to-laborer. In short, we must consider how the investor shapes the value of the commodity. It is the demographics of the investor body which also determines the value of a commodity today.

We arrive at such a conclusion because we have witnessed today that the capitalist-investor interaction is itself getting much hype and attention (imagining someone like Steve Jobs as the capitalist and thinking of his presentations of Apple products to the investor body). For instance, it seems that the investor himself/herself is now a part of the media frenzy surrounding a product. The investor is today present to the process of production in a more apparent way. So, it seems to us that this means the investor is also a component in the production and subsequent valuation of the commodity. The investor does not arrive at the end of a production cycle, but intervenes in the process of production during its various points. The investor's behavior, agendas, whims...in short, a type of investor knowledge determines the value of the commodity.

The steady increase in the involvement of the investor, who usually remained behind the scenes for the most part and then performed as the audience for a capitalist's product, might mean something positive for Marxists: that the capitalist is getting marginalized, and the dominating logic is not that the product is produced, but the whys and hows of the production of the product; in short, the investor's questions regarding the product. The capitalist is involved directly with the material product, and disregards questions of its value (because for the capitalist, in a somewhat Lacanian-Zizekian sense, the value of a product is not possible to determine, for the product occupies the position of a lack, a lack which is here understood as the lack of a coexistence of interests to form the relation investor-capitalist-laborer...the capitalist believes in this non-relation of the parties of the production cycle; in a sense, the capitalist disregards the investor and the laborer in the production process). Whereas for the investor, the questions on value are very important, as are the same questions important for the laborer because the value of a product determines the laborer's wages.

Let us end with an example of the reversal of the production cycle. It occurs in Fair Trade products, which do not rely on the capital and labor intensity for the product's value, but rather rely on something more intangible, such as the ethics behind the production process. Ethics is an example of a factor by which the investor values the product. But we cannot only see the positives of such a process, for we must also ensure, in Fair Trade, that the laborer gets as much of a say in the valuation of his/her product as the investor does. In short, the marginalization of the capitalist should not only imply more power for the investor, but the laborer should also get more power in the valuation process. Fair Trade cannot be reduced to a singular, historical moment where the investor and the laborer's valuation align. The post-industrial age cannot signal the return of a new protocol of commodity fetishism, as practiced by the investor rather than the capitalist.

"Mediated International Relations"

What is the relationship between North Korea and Nepal? In the globalizing world, is this such a absurd question? The absurdity is rather the fact that there is a 'non-relation' between these two nations when both are small, both can inform one another etc. There indeed must be some kind/level of flow of information, bodies, communication between the two countries, but, at least in the popular media, the nature of the relationship remains mysterious. Rather, what we seem to have is bursts of North Korean images suddenly coming through to us, on the day of some particular occasion. These images are of such a nature that we cannot seem to understand them, they are not invested with that much meaning (for us), but rather seem to be pure semblances that show us how the North Koreans live their lives...it is not a question of us understanding and connecting, but rather serving only as an audience. Why is there such detachment? 

The main assumption here is that there is such a thing as a North Korea (NK)-Nepal relationship, but that this relationship is mediated by Western powers who dominate the scene of geopolitics in different garbs: either as nations, or as organizations etc...We are at a model of international relations which emphasizes mediated international relations, which governs the relationships between two small countries by a (third) superpower.

This third superpower which dominates the relationship has access to streams of information and flows from both nations, but does not allow such a stream to flow to the other country directly. Rather, these flows pass through significant filters before they are seen in a third country. (And why particularly NK and Nepal? Perhaps because the dominoes theory is still in effect, that the superpower believes one 'troublesome' nation could influence the other...)

The Lacanian declaration that “there is no such thing as a sexual relation” applies here. There is no relationship between NK and Nepal, precisely because any type of information or statement from one towards the other never reaches the other, but reaches the superpower in between. There are not just two parties, but always a third party which performs the function of a mediator.

This mediating third party may not even be a nation-state, but rather something bigger and more faceless, something which can only be referred to as the “master signifier,” the signifying actor in control of all signs that flow from one nation to the other, which thrives in the cracks between two actors which desire to have relations with one another. And what is the nature of the master signifier? That it is absent from the scene, it is behind the scenes, pulling the strings of the lesser powers. The study of international relations as relationships between two nations never works if both the nations are small: in this case there is the need to realize what we call mediated international relations; a “non-relation” between two small nations as soon as there enters a mediating third party. The question we should ask is not “What is the real North Korea?” but rather “What is North Korea as seen by the North Koreans themselves?” This allows us to conceive of the role of the mediating third party in the NK-Nepal non-relation.