Post-Rhizome Thinking: Farmers Beyond Deleuze-Guattari

Deleuze and Guattari's famous celebration of the rhizome, after borrowing the concept from science, has made the studies and intellectual projects conducted by Nepali farmers and agriculture-related groups more scientific/science-centric: in Nepal we have much scientific research into chemical pesticides, the mechanics of irrigation techniques etc. In post-rhizome thinking however, there is the need for farmers to understand a crucial logical inversion regarding their work-environment: the farmers need to understand that the soil on which they plant their crop is not the nourishing element to that crop, rather, the soil is nothing but the fragmentation of the roots of the crops they plant; the soil is the remnants of the death of the crops they plant and have planted.

With this post-rhizome logic, the Nepali farmer may be able to position the crop's root as origin of soil, and present the landowner with the argument that it is the farmer's crop, and the farmer's toil that crop represents, which composes and creates arable soil. This logic will make the landowner face the fact that his soil is dependent on the crops planted on it, that the value of his land depends on the fragmentation of the roots of the farmer's crop.

Thus the farmers' groups can engage in studying the history of the soil of their arable lands, in order to then evaluate whether that soil has been enriched and nourished ever since planting by farmers began on it. They need to see whether the introduction of human planting on the soil had made the soil even more receptive for plantings in the future, and whether human planting caused the increase of the monetary value of the soil over time. These are not properly technical-or-scientific studies, but rather historical studies of the soil on which farmers plant, with an inclusion of scientific-agricultural methods of soil investigation inside a farmer's social change agenda.  

Entertaining Climate-Change Summer Movies And The Post-Climate-Change Age

We see on news channels quite long broadcasts of climate change conferences. Perhaps in the summer we are most anxious about global warming and need some sort of entertainment as a small distraction, either a creative conference or a summer action-adventure movie. Also, the climate-change conferences' participants devise ways to make the conference's message of “Care For The Earth” more entertaining, in the hope that the message will be memorized in the viewer's memory. Then there is the production of big movies on the environment, and watching them we may say that climate change will be a dominant issue, precisely because saving the earth will be so last minute and desperate that we will almost see an “action-adventure” movie in real life with a cast of climate-change enthusiasts.

What must be done in order to ensure a happy ending to our climate-change action adventure is a careful evaluation of the “heroes” of the climate-change movement: to see whether they are strong enough, brave enough, when the climate-change issue really comes to focus. That the climate-change movement will be so “last minute” means that there will be heroes involved in the movement rather than calmer street protests. The climate-change heroes must be identified soon, and celebrated as heroes and not just as participants in a mass movement.

It is hard to accept that the climate-change hero will certainly be effective, because there is no human-like “enemy” or “nemesis” in the climate-change movement of the future, rather nature itself will occupy the position of nemesis, which means nature itself will have to be attacked and destroyed completely, like the adventurous emptying out of the sea if the sea-levels get too high all of a sudden and leads to desperation. This means there is no turning back to the past, to pristine nature, to the way things were, in the climate-change movement; the world will not look/revert back to what it once was in the post-climate-change age.

The Nepali Pastor: Becoming-Animal To Save Stray Dogs' Lives

Ongoing knowledge-building projects makes the flock docile and disciplined; the flock's inclusion in incomplete projects makes it happy; incomplete knowledge-building turns a group of people into a flock of animals. So it is the madman, who has an endless drive to produce more and more knowledge, whose knowledge is always incomplete, who is the pastor of the flock, because the flock disciplines itself before him/her because he/she includes that flock in ongoing knowledge-building projects.

The madman is driven precisely by the desire to be a pastor of the animals, such as, in the Nepali case, the stray dogs. He/she begins in his/her ambition to be pastor by sleeping among these animals, in their territories and wastelands and not his/her own, and by the end he/she has developed a core group of stray animals which are his flock, which look to him/her for the management and protection of their territories; he/she has finally “become-animal” to use the Deleuze-Guattari term; he/she has become a stray dog, and therefore gains their trust.

The pastor begins as the madman and ends with becoming-animal. The lack of discipline among Nepali people shows that Nepali people lack pastoral power today; pastoral power has moved in Nepal from the management of people to the management of stray animals. The movement towards becoming-animal does not discount pastoral power in today's age when knowledge-building matters, rather, the pastor's knowledge may be used for improving the lives of stray animals.

It is by Nepalis' respect for pastoral power that any governmental project of killing stray dogs will be stopped, and these stray dogs can instead be seen as included within pastoral power's projects and hence in a very pure way seeking their own earthly territories, as the pastor has taught them to do just as he/she taught people before.

Atomic War, The Nobel-Prize Winning Poet And The Power Of The Rhyme Scheme

The recent Nobel Prize awarded to a poet-musician was significant. This Nobel winner will visit world-leaders as a result of his win, where he may be asked to sing a song. What the world-leader leaves with from the musician-poet's powerful performance is the power of the rhyme, not just in songs, but rhyming also in the narrative of real life events, in that, the world leader as a result of the rhymes of the musician-poet will feel the allure of rhyming, the way rhyming makes certain events significant in songs and in history, and he will want to “create a rhyme” himself by repeating historic events, such as, in a serious example, dropping the atom bomb once again in the same place where it had been dropped the previous time.

The dropping of the atom bombs is perhaps the most significant event in history which is without a rhyme, a repetition. The burden of making history “catchy” falls on the hands of world-leaders, and hence they are well aware of this incomplete or “unattractive” narrative with such a noticeable absence of a rhyme. There is a “drive-to-rhyme” as strong in the poetic world-leader as there is in the rhyming poet-musician. Perhaps the awarding of a significant rhyming poet-musician shows that the pressure or even the compulsion to rhyme by dropping another set of atom bombs is now higher than ever before. We know that we inevitably have to rhyme when we subscribe to a certain "way/style of telling" of the narrative of the world: we have to rhyme when we reach the end of the line in this kind of narration of events. 

Hence in the coming days the Japanese people and the anti-atomic bomb movements may not be all that happy that a rhyming musician-poet has won the recent Nobel Prize. They may try to obstruct this musician-poet from visiting world-leaders for performances. But in the end, other marginalized or lesser-known artists, such as hip-hop/rap artists, who also use rhyme schemes, may in turn be discouraged to produce such art, and thereafter even discouraged from signing up to anti-atomic bomb movements. 

When there will come the moment for a rhyming atom bomb drop is in fact not that difficult to predict, even though it may be more difficult these days given the use of more unconventional rhyme schemes in songs and in societal events. Nepal however can feel safe from atom bombs as long as the use of atom bombs is governed by a rhyme scheme/structure in the narrative of world-history.  

The Role Of Nepali Hill-Stations In The Chinese Housing Boom

The air pollution in China, once it gets to the point of becoming thick smog, has a convenient function: to hide a portion of the tall apartment towers from the pedestrians who are in the mood to problematize China, or hiding the tower's tops from a western economist interested in understanding the status of housing development and purchasing patterns there. Hence the towers look much smaller, making the housing development look properly managed, and whether the tops of these towers are inhabited or not becomes harder to know.

Meanwhile the Chinese tourist travels to Nepal to enjoy the morning mist and fog in Nepali hill-stations, and see the morning mist and fog as equivalent to the smog in the cities where they have purchased their homes. With this comparison between natural mist and harmful smog, the level of discontent with the environment is reduced, and a potential protest against the environment avoided. The environmental beauty in one place helps to reduce anger with environmental degradation in another, and sadly the polluted environment remains uncleaned because the clean environments don't serve as 'role-models' to be learned from but only offset the discontent felt at pollution elsewhere.

The first signs of western and suburban housing booms are the clues of oversupply in the housing market. Whether there is oversupply or not can be established by flying over the suburbs and observing if there seems to be too many houses in a certain place. The western economist may get a hunch or feeling that there are more houses than necessary in that place. Yet the pleasure felt at the picturesque, clean and uninhabited suburbs to the eye of the western economist may soften his/her judgment on the oversupply or boom of suburban houses. The western economist's reporting on the oversupply and/or boom in beautiful suburbs may not be very harsh because the beauty has had an impact on him/her.

On the other hand, there will be much more of a problem in China where the housing boom is not as picturesque as the suburbs, and instead may look hostile. The Chinese economist will never be in the mood to give a less harsh report on the housing market if he/she encounters smog when looking at the apartment towers. One way to lessen the Chinese economist's anger at the housing market is to have him/her travel to Nepal's hill-stations and see the morning mist/fog, so that he/she may then evoke this positive image of natural fog when he/she sees a scene of the smog from atop the uninhabited apartment tower in a Chinese city.

The US Presidential Debates As Officially Creating A New Battlefront

The media has looked at the debate between the leading two US presidential candidates as strictly between those two people, whereas it is entirely crucial to know that in the debate stage like at no other point, the two debaters represent their respective Democratic and Republican parties. It is the parties that debate through these candidates; the parties' battle against one another being deeper established than the battle between the two specific candidates they have sent forward to the debate platform, and the debate platform being only one front in the multi-fronted battle between the two parties.

The presidential debates do not represent the meeting point between two parties where their issues with one another may finally be resolved, rather, the debates' moderators or creators enable the two candidates to battle it out for the very first time: they won't come to peace in the debates, but rather come to an understanding that key talking points have been given the opportunity to thrive, so that a “rich and civilized battle” can be undertaken between them, given their shared interest in these talking points but opposing stances. There is the recognition by both parties that the media has brought together the people with the most points of interest in common to debate, opening a new and very active battlefront in a longer and deeper battle. 

It seems that the media likes organizing debates more than dialogues, given that so many debates take place in the media and on camera, and given that most heads-of-state undertake dialogue behind-closed-doors and the media doesn't complain. Most debates aren't decisive, but rather point out or introduce two people to one another who are most suited to argue at length, and disagree, so that the debate is a front which always produces a stalemate but which enables the two parties' members to recognize, sometimes even for the first time, a “debating mate" within an opposing party with whom the battle can be prolonged.

Curiously, if there are certain debates or battles which have too many parties involved, and it is not possible to fit all the representatives of all the parties in a single screen-shot, then it is likely that that debate will never take place. Such a large-scale debate was tried by the media in the debate between presidential hopefuls of the Republican party, but it seems not to have been attempted elsewhere where too many parties are involved. But since debates are more likely to originate new fronts of battle rather than bring a peaceful completion to a conflict, the deprivation of the opportunity to find a “debating mate” may not be a bad thing. 

The US Presidential Debates As Officially Creating A New Battlefront

The media has looked at the debate between the leading two US presidential candidates as strictly between those two people, whereas it is entirely crucial to know that in the debate stage like at no other point, the two debaters represent their respective Democratic and Republican parties. It is the parties that debate through these candidates; the parties' battle against one another being deeper established than the battle between the two specific candidates they have sent forward to the debate platform, and the debate platform being only one front in the multi-fronted battle between the two parties.

The presidential debates do not represent the meeting point between two parties where their issues with one another may finally be resolved, rather, the debates' moderators or creators enable the two candidates to battle it out for the very first time: they won't come to peace in the debates, but rather come to an understanding that key talking points has been given the opportunity to thrive, so that a “rich and civilized battle” can be undertaken between them, given their shared interest in these talking points but opposing stances. There is the recognition by both parties that the media has brought together the people with the most points of interest in common to debate, opening a new battlefront in a longer and deeper battle. 

It seems that the media likes organizing debates more than dialogues, given that so many debates take place in the media and on camera, and given that most heads-of-state undertake dialogue behind-closed-doors and the media doesn't complain. Most debates aren't decisive, but rather point out or introduce two people to one another who are most suited to argue at length, and disagree, so that the debate is a front which always produces a stalemate but which enables the two parties' members to recognize, sometimes even for the first time, a “debating mate" within an opposing party with whom the battle can be prolonged.

Curiously, if there are certain debates or battles which have too many parties involved, and it is not possible to fit all the representatives of all the parties in a single screen-shot, then it is likely that that debate will never take place. Such a large-scale debate was tried by the media in the debate between presidential hopefuls of the Republican party, but it seems not to have been attempted elsewhere where too many parties are involved. But since debates are more likely to originate new fronts of battle rather than bring a peaceful completion to a conflict, the deprivation of the opportunity to find a “debating mate” may not be a bad thing. 

The International Space Station As More Than A UN “World Heritage Site”

The International Space Station is an instance of multiculturalism at work given that diverse scientists from around the world work together there. The Space Station could very well serve as the cultural melting pot that earthly places strive to be. Yet one could wonder whether the prolonged detachment from earthly territory and community would obscure the astronauts' views and understanding of their own earthly cultures. Without increased awareness among astronauts of their own cultural activities such as festivals, the Space Station suffers like other multicultural places where the limited knowledge of one's own culture is disguised as openness and a listening stance towards the cultures of others.

Like multiculturalism's main goal on earth, the Space Station version of multiculturalism is also turned towards the finding of and communicating with aliens, in this case, outer-space aliens. However, the worst discrimination and stereotyping of aliens takes place among astronauts in the effort to find them, as all astronauts share their racist jokes and supposed “neutral observations” about aliens, inspired directly by their more earthly racism against earthly aliens.

What must occur in the International Space Station is the inclusion in its confines of the earthly aliens, the marginalized and rare races and ethnic minorities of earth itself. The earthly aliens often have their own ways of understanding outer-space and could very well contribute to the locating of and communicating with outer-space aliens. In Nepal we sometimes have a single remaining person who knows how to speak a certain marginalized ethnic language, and such a person could be included in the International Space Station team to utilize his/her rare knowledge on the cosmos.

Earthly aliens would more deeply understand the situation of outer-space aliens just discovered given that both are “too different” for the majority of earth's people. There would not be a discriminatory attitude in either party when they discover one another, and hence no cause for war between humanity and aliens. The thrust of the encounter between earthly aliens and outer-space aliens would be on sharing cultural processes and objects of one another, to cement a friendship beyond exclusion and discrimination by the earth's majority.

With the inclusion of earthly aliens in the Space Station as the first post-multiculturalist step, the astronauts could thereafter engage in cultural activities like festivals in the International Space Station itself, in order to not just read and talk about their cultures as distant from them but actually recreate and relive the cultural activities and share them with astronauts and aliens alike. The Space Station could then be cast as a cultural hub, and even attract outer-space tourists, and could even one day be beyond a UN “World Heritage Site” to become known as a “Universal Heritage Site” for its positive work in preserving and spreading the universe's cultures.

News Correspondents As Lacanian Seers Of War

The media-person (or news correspondent) who tags along in an on-the-ground war operation is considered by the soldiers to be some kind of seer of war, able to predict the war's course with expertise, sophistication and prophecy, a prediction which he/she does in his war reporting for the camera. Once the camera turns on, the news correspondent has an intense feeling of awareness of what is going on around him/her, and treats the war with utmost seriousness and problem-solving ability. Soldiers who realize the importance of such a skill-set in their team may enlist the help of a media-person, who typically has years and decades of expertise reporting in wars all over the world, something which the soldiers themselves, ironically, may lack.

Although the media-person seeks for perfect camera-work on the ground, this aspect of his/her part in the war effort is indeed amateurish today, the camera-work often being shaky and too narrow to take in the whole context of war. But curiously enough bad camera-work does not disqualify them from war and war-reporting. The media person's problematic camera-work is compensated for with his/her knowledge, which he/she does not necessarily need to share verbally, with direct commands to the soldiers, but which can be visible in his/her psychology when someone is firing at him/her, his/her bodily behavior/movement when there is gunfire, and the way he/she chooses to interact with his/her “team/unit” when the enemy is further away and there is brief safety. How, we can ask, is the news correspondent ready to engage in war without a weapon of his/her own?

The media-persons are enlisted by the war effort as prophets, akin to ancient “wise men” who saw the war's course, or other things such as “potential war weariness” in the soldiers, before the army's soldier himself/herself saw these future events. The media-person's claims of their neutrality in no way makes them exempt from war, but enables them to be a seer of both sides to a conflict, in order that this knowledge be shared with one particular side over another. When the media-person makes a final analysis report, it contains a lot of original knowledge and conclusions that the army personnel/warlords scrutinize carefully. Hence the media-person may not necessarily be an outsider in the war-effort, but may indirectly, perhaps even without his/her conscious intention, participate in the war-effort. Even if the media organization as a whole may be outside/neutral from the war-effort, the media-person on- the-ground may have agreed to share his/her expertise, or become, in a sense a “model soldier” for the other soldiers on-the-ground, in exchange for good shots for his/her camera.

These news correspondents on-the-ground are Lacanian “subjects-supposed-to-know” for the warlords during a war effort. The news correspondents' analysis is not doubted and not further analyzed, but trusted as a kind of final knowledge on the situation. These media-persons play two roles, in the television and in the army, in order to become these Lacanian analytical subjects-supposed-to-know for warlords as well as for the television viewers around the globe. They can be crucial Lacanian subjects who blend together a television persona with a more aggressive “war driven” attitude, but they need to share their spot more with others with differing analysis regarding the war. The interaction between two news correspondents would be significant today, as would be comparing the two news correspondents' on-the-ground bodily behaviors between different news channels/programs, but not to select a winner and reward his/her abilities with prizes. To get a look at two news correspondents negotiating the gunfire differently while in the same on-the-ground event could indeed reveal how both their statuses as subjects-supposed-to-know is problematic.  

Endangered Seas And The Tactic Of Environmentalist-Pacifists

The disputes over seas and islands seem to be more than strictly political struggles and instead appear as the result of concerns to save the sea environment. These disputes are about nations wanting to claim or own the very last and rare natural sea-water bodies in the planet, given that the future in a warming globe is desertification of the seas.

Also, the environment's status will become important in planning the trajectory of war or dispute. Environmental groups will become more assertive in their publications on the impact of war on the natural environment. The smoke from explosives becomes problematic for being a pollutant. War becomes problematic for being harmful to the natural environment.

A kind of primitive territorial war will take place given the desertification of the seas: not the fighting in trenches or cities for a conflict far away and remote like in the colonies, but the hands-on fighting for the very land on which one is standing, or the sea on which one is floating, that is, a fight for the natural environment around one itself; the fight as both a local environmentalist and a local patriot.

The way to stop the environment-related wars is up to the environmentalists who are also pacifists. An endangered dolphin or bird may be introduced into the war-zone in the sea or land, and the warring parties informed about this, so that they will be compelled to stop the war, at least from that territory, for fear of harming or killing the endangered animals.

Transition In Nepal, Micro-Politics In Jamal And The Doubts Of Nepali Fringe-Cadres

A recent change in Prime Ministers in Nepal occurred smoothly, without protest in the streets, even as we have come to expect protests around political events of some magnitude. This smooth transition does not speak of order and discipline, but rather suggests that what looked like a transfer of power was in fact nothing but the change of personnel precisely in order to leave the same power in place: there is an outward change in leadership but problematically Nepal will remain the same, there is predictability with regards to the important steps and decisions the new leader will take, and hence he has been accepted without protest from the major elements. In the major level of national politics in Nepal, there is no vacuum and chaos after one leader steps down and before another one has to be sought. Rather, the transition has been planned and calculated in advance so that the needs of unchanging core power are quietly met.

It is when there is such a smooth transition at high levels of power that a micro-politics must become active. This micro-political whim could have posited a new party with a new leader, simply as a disruption and not as participatory in filling the vacuum after one leader has left. An important goal of disruptive micro-politics in Nepal is to show that any action in the vacuum between the major two or three parties is interpreted as disruptive, regardless of its content, and thereby dismissed or actively suppressed, so that no place remains for the general population to act without participation and support to the major political parties or interests.

One could raise oneself as a candidate for Prime Minister out on a busy street in Jamal, cause confusion in the fringe-cadres walking to or from a political event, and thereby mobilize the major political parties' resources to reflect on whether their own candidate is worthy, or to cause them to become more alert and prepared for the planning of a rapid election campaign, so that their own party can win against this new political element that announced its candidacy quite randomly out on the street.

But the goal of disruptive micro-politics would not be to register one's micro-political event in the ears of the major elements and interests, but to make the few fringe-cadres around one more aware of how chaotic the fringes to their respective political parties are, where their very own beliefs and understandings of major political figures, events and processes are never fully certain. This roadside micro-politics is interested in enacting small and undetected chaos in the fringe-cadres' minds rather than initiating activity in the major political elements, organs and systems of Nepal.

The purpose of micro-politics is not to distance itself from the major national-level political events, but to position itself in-between major political events, in between major leaders who are orchestrating the transfer of power, precisely in those places/moments where major political elements least expect there to be resistance or disruption. The purpose is to show that the major elements and interests cannot decide on their own when politics is going to be smooth and when it is going to be volatile, but that a whim in some individual of the general populace, or from a small group of friends, can cause the fringe-cadres walking by to re-evaluate the biggest tenets, symbols and leaders of their parties.

California's Wildfires And The Firefighters' Philosophy

We see the might of the fire department when it tries to contain enormous wildfires, and we know that this fire department could replace the police and the army in places that are susceptible to fires. The fire department's up-to-date technology, such as the latest cutting-edge chemicals to tackle the blaze, and its highly skilled manpower consisting even of airplane pilots, enable it to manage large swathes of land and large numbers of population, making it very powerful, sometimes literally overnight. But this power is dependent on the whims of the fire.

The sustenance of power in the fire department depends fully on the duration of the blaze: if the blaze lasts for days, the fire department is powerful for those days, and if it lasts for weeks then the fire department is powerful for weeks. After the wildfire is extinguished, the fire department dramatically loses power and once again goes back into oblivion. Its oblivion and inactivity is complete, for the fire department maintains no internal “office politics” because its experience of power is intense, short-lived and accompanies the fire, as opposed to being the result of careful and farsighted political planning, team-building and manipulation.

Today's intense and panicked focus in the media on the wildfires of Canada and the USA are not so just because the fires have been particularly intense and active, but because of the anxiety that the longer the fires last the longer the fire department stays in power, and gets the chance to further strengthen its role in a certain place and in wider society, toppling even the police and army from certain places, for one.

The fire department dictates the flows of people out of dangerous places and evaluates when the population's private property has to be left behind. Giving the painful instruction to leave behind one's home and other belongings which cannot be taken along is made far easier by the philosophies declaring the impermanence of things. It is this idea in philosophy of impermanence which can be carried forward, thought over and espoused by the fire department more than by other organizations. It is this philosophy with which the fire department is engaged in while doing its “office work,” when the firefighters directly face the blaze, as opposed to being politicized thoroughly like the police and the army and thinking of the tactics and strategies to gain more political power for a certain team or leader within the department, even when they are supposed to be completely engaged in on-the-ground operations. Politics is of no interest to the firefighter, politics ultimately being the search and problematization of the “other” of a certain society, which the firefighter is not concerned with, given that his/her “enemy” is the natural fire itself and not the foreign or criminal “other.”

However, there is a political-philosophical problem in the fire department when it engages in the Greek philosophers/thinkers who consider fire to be one of the important four or five elements which compose the universe, and influenced by the ancient Greeks the firefighter celebrates the importance of fire and becomes a supporter of fires, and considers fire to be his/her leader and indirectly lends support to the sustenance of the fire department's power through his/her desire to see the fires burn for as long as possible. He/she ceases to fight the blaze, and builds all kinds of protests in the department in order to ultimately support his/her budding revering of fire. We must continue to reward the firefighters as enduring heroes and heroines of society for their role in dousing fires even long after they doused the blaze, which may convince them to abandon Greek philosophy's emphasis on and exaltation of fire.

Kathmandu's Widened Roads And The Marginalization Of Nepal's Nomads

There can never be an ideal, true nomad: being born is being born stationary and being introduced to a sedentary life. There is a significant moment of nomadic rebellion within the mother's womb, when the infant kicks his/her feet against the wall of his/her mother's womb, asking to be let go from his/her stationary and sedentary life, and be submitted to a “life of the legs.” But the kick is misinterpreted, and the child once born is introduced to a sedentary world, placed on its back, given illusory empty space where his/her kick does not meet an object to push away, and displayed for the pleasure of other sedentary figures that surround him/her as a special destination.

Reading Lacan, one feels that the mother's walking away from the child is due to her own nomadic impulse to walk, or her way of kicking the child back as a response to her child's kick on her womb. Yet contrary to Lacan, the child does not ask the hurt-filled question “Where does my mother go?” because indeed the child itself has kicked the mother away from within the womb before the mother actually walked away. The mother walking away from the child is a result of his/her kick to her womb; the child demands the mother to walk; the child is the originator of a nomadic impulse in the mother.

Some of Nepal's villagers become nomads when they leave behind a previous more sedentary life in the village for Kathmandu. The Nepali villager comes to Kathmandu for the first time, and in that very first moment of stepping off the bus, he/she is completely directionless, lost from familiar sedentary life, nauseous from the bus travel, with the solid and firm tarmac below him as a kind of support, a kind of sign that the urban world he/she is in can be navigated. Then as he/she travels on foot, taking hesitant steps at first, he/she becomes nomad, a traveler of Kathmandu's roads, criss-crossing Kathmandu's roads without more than the most basic purpose, at most to sell his/her village goats in the market he/she cannot locate, but moving beyond that purpose too as he/she keeps walking freely. He/she doesn't care to read the sign-posts that tell him/her where the goat market is and he/she doesn't try to understand the prevailing dialect/accent.

Yet Kathmandu's main roads have been widened significantly as a part of a big development project. Supposedly the roads have been widened to aid the growing population of drivers, but these widened roads marginalize Nepal's nomads. The pavements, which are the paths that once allowed nomads travel on foot, are nonexistent in many places, and even where they exist they are unsafe to walk given drivers driving fast and reckless. Crossing Kathmandu's widened main roads is impossible given the fast and heavy traffic flow, and so there is no possibility of changing directions based on the whim of the nomadic legs, of criss-crossing Kathmandu freely, like there used to be.

Driving within the confines of their small cars, Kathmandu residents miss the nomadic travelers once found walking the pavements. Hence authorities must interpret Kathmandu's automobile collisions as expressions of a wish for all the cars to be “kicked” away and life to be enjoyed by foot again. But a large crowd gathers around the road accidents in Kathmandu, and it is a mysterious large crowd of sedentary individuals that seems made specially for the purposes of surrounding accident scenes. This sedentary crowd blocks the drivers involved in the accident from running away on foot and instead forces them to become sedentary. For the drivers this crowd signals the real possibility of imprisonment, that most sedentary of experiences.

Nepal's Holidays And The Disciplining Of Politics

When everybody else is on Republic Day holiday in Nepal, the politician goes to work. In the holidays, the politician produces a holiday-related document, such as a policy paper on improving work condition for laborers, released aptly on and for the occasion of Labor Day holiday. The politician also engages in other activities like visiting the site of significance given a certain holiday, or engaging in healthy debate with his peers about the holiday.

“Holiday politics” is the result of the disciplining of the political system. One is effectively told that one can only say and do certain things during a particular holiday, like discussing the plight of women strictly on the occasion of Women's Day, when it is allowed and indeed given a lot of exposure. But there is yet the space for rebellion against such a disciplining of politics: one can write something on the plight of women even when it is not Women's Day, or write about an important event long after it has elapsed so that the “holidays” around it is already over, when it is as if a normalization after the event has led to the origin of conditions for the event to re-emerge. It is problematic that we celebrate Women's Day again next year precisely because we have already forgotten or erased the significance of this year's Women's Day and its achievements; what we need to do is originate and re-originate Women's Day and not just celebrate it and forget it.

Problematically, we have written history to create more holidays. We have become historians to unearth events in any given day which could transform that ordinary day into a holiday, and we have come up with techniques of studying history in order to produce more holidays. This is how history writing is so close to the politician, because the historian provides the politician with holidays. Thus, even if a small group of women rebelled against the significance of “Women's Day” and wrote a paper on women on an ordinary day, the historians are able to magnify and glorify this event to transform that day into a new broad holiday related to all women, and make it distinct from other more ordinary days.

The ordinary people must try and enlist historians to downplay the official holidays rather than transform ordinary days into holidays. Or, ordinary people must show that they are always thinking of their causes, and indeed, that every day should be a holiday. The creation of holidays must be taken up by the stakeholders of a certain cause and not left to the historian-politician team. 

Olympic Fantasies In Nepal's Torch Rallies

Protesters in Nepali torch rallies having daydreams that they are carrying the Olympic 2016 torch instead of protesting some issue with an ordinary flaming torch...First, this quite peaceful fantasy of carrying an Olympic torch helps to deter the protesters from using the flaming torch for arson, and hence this fantasy may be thoroughly crafted by the figures like the road-side Television stores that do not wish to see physical disturbance through torching. However, this fantasy of being an Olympic sportsperson leads to a moment when the protesters become more athletic, making the protests louder, more physical and even more violent.

The Nepali torch rally becomes a site of sports-like competition: who can run the fastest without tiring? Who can shout the catchy slogans the loudest? Who can cause the most disturbance in the streets? Ultimately, whose body is more healthy and better? This competition fractures the unity of the protesting crowd, dividing the protest itself between winners and losers.

It is entirely possible that a small team of very athletic athlete-politicians win in the torch rallies of all the political parties and hence cement a leadership position in all the political parties, forming a kind of authoritarian element in the whole political system and thereafter dominating the other losing political figures. Indeed, the danger of Nepal's unhealthy and non-athletic politicians is that it will allow authoritarian power to develop among an athletic set of political figures who keep winning the torch rallies across the political spectrum.

In the torch rally, it is the body of the protester which is scrutinized, not his/her mental ability with regards to politics, or even his/her emotion or passion towards a cause. Especially in the case of Nepal, with aging politicians, politics in the public event of a protest becomes a thoroughly bodily activity: the body dictates how long the politicians walk, and the unhealthy politician's body's need for exercise may be accompanied by an upward surge in torch rallies.

But for some politicians the torch rally is not an exercise or a training for a bigger athletic-political event, rather it is itself the most important event for which they prepare with other lesser events such as charity football matches. Whereas in a more romantic time in the past, the body was given up in the fight for a cause, as for instance through lengthy imprisonment of the body, today the politician's body has to be kept fit and well-exercised in order that there be sufficient energy for winning torch rallies across a variety of causes. The cause in the torch rally has stopped dictating the protester, rather, the distance of the protesting route may be more important, or the protester's diet. In the future, as a kind of real blow to the passionate politicians' attempts to be sensitive to real problems, the torch rally may be made more routine, with the artificial manufacture of more and more dubious causes to protest, if the torch rally becomes part of the exercise routine for the leading politicians.

The American Central Bank's Militant-Economists Turning To Nepal

We note a lot of “unknowns” in the analysis of expert economists when it comes to the macro-economy, and these unknowns are often concerned with the unpredictability of military events in global warfare and in geopolitically tense regions. This lack of knowledge of the relationship between military events and macro-economy is a result of the fact that military events are not factored-in in the analysis conducted by Central Banks and the strict responsibility of the predictions and analysis of military events are reserved solely for military departments.

There is no factoring-in of military events in the American Central Bank's economic model (known as the FRB/US) because it is unclear to the frustrated economist which side the perpetrator of a military event is: when a military event occurs, is it definitely an enemy's doing or the doing of the “secret service” of oneself's own government? Clarity in whether it is the “self” or the “other” undertaking a military event is important to macroeconomic models because economists use “self-other” distinctions to label some military events as negative “external shocks” coming from the other and some military events as positive “internal operations” coming from the self. This divide between friendly self and enemy other, even in these times of advanced “neoclassical economics,” shows that there is little room for understanding that self-driven military events can also be detrimental to the macro-economy. The American Central Bank's macroeconomic model must read self-driven/self-perpetrated military events as negative “shocks” as well. 

The American Central Bank needs more “militant-economists” who are able to obtain military knowledge beyond the capabilities of other economists and factor this knowledge into economic modeling and policy making. Militant-economists in the making can turn to non-militarized Nepal to look at the impact of specific global military events on a national-level macro-economy without dividing these military events along the lines of “self-initiated” and “other-perpetrated” and looking at military events neutrally. 

“Brexit” And Britain As The Foucauldian Limit-Experience Of The EU

No longer is the term “border” sufficient to name the dividing line between Britain and the EU. A border is a line which divides two territories, but it is a passable line, a form of continuity remains between the two sides, and this continuity allows the flow of migrants, for instance. With “Brexit,” we must come to abandon the idea that only a “border” separates Britain and the EU, and instead employ the word “limit” borrowed from the Foucauldian term “limit-experience,” to mean that now when the EU seeks Britain, it encounters a kind of final limit, and going to Britain or interacting with it is a “limit-experience” for the EU populace and also for migrants. 

With “Brexit,” Britain is turning towards becoming a nation with a more authoritarian and oppressive tendency. Usually borders are porous, and there tends to be some form of continuity between two sides of a border, which suggests a peace between the two territories, but it is only in authoritarian and oppressive regimes where borders are turned into limits, where borders are closed off and there is no possibility of easy passage. With a limit imposed in place of a border, Britain is effectively and emphatically saying that it is not the EU. Going forward, we can expect Britain to stubbornly act on being not-EU, by changing its laws, cultures, political system etc; in short, by obsessing over its difference from the EU to a great degree and hence exercising a high level of control into what happens within its territory.

It could also be that being the limit to EU will send Britain into obscurity, make it a kind of “alien nation” devoid of signs and markers we expect from other nations of the EU and the wider world. A nation seeking to be a “limit nation” would not look and feel similar to other more “centralized” nations; it would have very few and basic signs of being a nation at all, it would lose its defining national signs and symbols, such as popular landmarks in its capital city, and its people could lose their spirit of nationalism, becoming "Zombies" in a sense. Disagreeing with Foucault's idea that a limit can be experienced, we believe that any experience at the limit is impossible. A limit is a “zero-point,” a point which is not included in any territory, it is like the edges of a three-dimensional solid, which is not a part of anything and where theoretically nothing can exist to experience it. EU populations will find, in seeking the limit-experience of being in Britain, that it is like being in a stifling zero-point, and hence that there is nothing desirable about going to Britain because it simply does not have signs and symbols which can be experienced. Even after Britain has left the EU, ultimately it will be the EU's disappointment with Britain being at the limit which will bring about Britain's obscurity.

A true limit is a point which is far away, something too drastic and undesirable for most, something at the edge of an extensive distance, something that is almost impossible to reach, a place which is completely obscure and alien. Hence, given this possibility of becoming completely obscure, alien and undesirable, it is more likely that we will see Britain continue to have a national identity and hence not in fact turn into a zero-point to cause a true limit-experience. Being a true limit to the EU would entail a thorough destruction of Britain, a thorough dismantling of everything which has been built up in tandem with the EU nations, or a leveling of everything like in a war. Since this will likely not happen, “Brexit” may very well imply that Britain is putting up a performance, and does not intend to be a true limit. Its isolation and its differentiation will be moderate, and similarities with the EU will persist. “Brexit” will enable EU populations to experience a “lite limit-experience,” and therefore Britain may continue to be a draw as a a kind of amusing simulation of a true limit.   

Teachers' Pension Funds And The Parent-Teacher Meeting Of The Future

We hear of state-level "XYZ teachers' pension funds" as clients to big financial organizations. While being associated with a financial organization was in the past a good thing for teachers because the financial organizations were considered role-models of society, given the current negative perceptions of financial organizations, these teachers/future pensioners may find themselves considered greedy, undisciplined or generally of a bad character due to their association with the big financial organizations.

Even when there is evaluation of how the teachers are doing their jobs by financial organizations that are working in the guise of local or national government, this evaluation will ultimately be driven by the logic that if the teachers do their jobs better, their pension funds will be better, and consequently, the financial organizations themselves will be better rewarded. Nowhere will the benefit of a proper education to a child be mentioned in all this supervision and evaluation.

In the future, there will be a secret preferential treatment of the students by the teachers based on which parents are able to give the best investment advice and tips in the parents-teachers meetings. The merits of the parents will decide the fate of the children: the children in the classroom will be considered vehicles of investment tips and advice that they have learned from their parents; contributions to class will be interpreted based on the finances of the teachers and how they could be made better. In recognizing the importance of the pension and the pension fund, we must be critical of the idea that teachers determine the quality of the future of their students, because we may find that students determine the quality of the future of their teachers to an even higher degree.

Eventually, a particular branch of economics, a kind of “macro-economics-by-elementary-school-kids” will be born and taken seriously, and TV shows such as “Are You Smarter Than A 5^th Grader?” will re-emerge with much more advanced material; some 5^th graders will become well educated enough in advanced finance and macro-economics to be hired by the big financial organizations with teachers as middle-men/agents as well as clients. Economics will be a major subject of study from the earliest years of school education, and it will be seemingly concerned about the world economy, but also blatantly anxious about the pension fund. Open class discussion will blatantly focus on the health of the pension funds and seek advice from the smarter 5^th graders. Unlike in the young-adult and adult world, the anxiety over finances and the future does not need to be hidden from the youngest section of the populace, which means there is a far more productive environment for the discussion and problem-solving of the financial issues in the elementary school classrooms. Thus, we hear today of how the university is linked to the big financial organizations, but we may find elementary schools with even more effective relationships with big financial organizations in the future.

The Old, Late Nepali Prime Minister's Car And Wristwatch: From Political Objects To Museum Pieces

We walk around inside a Nepali museum, and see, among the artifacts and animal bones in exhibition, the late Prime Minister's car and wristwatch on display, and they appear lustrous, as if full of an aura which speaks of their historical importance in the making of landmark political decisions. What is problematic about this placement of the Prime Minister's possessions in the museum is that it cuts off these possessions from any political significance they may have carried into politics today; these items are not used and suggest that the politics of the past is not important in the present. It is part of a wider problem in the relationship between an older generation and a younger generation in politics: at no point does a Prime Minister who is close to natural death write down a “political will" on the side, a will document which would give over his/her possessions to future politicians rather than abandoning them to the public sphere of the museum. In fact it is their abandonment which gives the Prime Minister's possessions a luster and aura, it is their lack of use in the world which ensures that they are dust-free.

And yet we stand before the late Prime Minister's car or watch in a museum exhibition space to look at them and expect them to suddenly burst to life, for the car's engine to start or the watch to tick again. This is a way in which we fantasize and are expressive of the need for the late Prime Minister to contribute to the current political climate and activities of Nepal. If there had been a will that the Prime Minister had written, we would have in our hands a document which was a gesture that defied death, that essentially suggested that the Prime Minister was challenging natural death, and hence we would feel his/her resolution, positive stubbornness, and power at trying to challenge natural death and maintain himself/herself as a political actor even after his/her natural death. Instead, we have a significant depoliticization of the late Prime Ministers after his/her biological death, suggesting that in politics too the link between the biological body and professional activity is very close. We have the myth of the importance of the body in shaping one's identity and legacy: when the body passes away, so do one's identity and legacy. Perhaps we see the Prime Minister's car or watch as extensions of his/her biological body, so that all these “possessions” (we mean possession here also in the sense of being possessed by the Prime Minister's “soul” or “ghost”) become identity-less once the Prime Minister passes away, as if they were parts of his/her body, and hence too we expect these possessions of the late Prime Minister to burst to life in the silent museum, before our eyes, as if they were body-parts.

Perhaps the unspoken transfer of politician's possessions from political realms to cultural spaces is due to the need for the objects to be kept secret in a way for current political acts and events to function. In a museum, the car or the watch is severed from the political agendas of which they were integral components, because in a museum we think these objects are symbols of the whole of the politician's politics and not practical elements that contributed to the evolution of the politician's political thought and action/work, and can continue his/her work for him/her even today. We have in Foucault the idea that being too visible to outside eyes causes one to be understood/disciplined by knowledge-based power, yet we have the disproof of this idea in the museum: the more visible/prominent a political object in a museum, the more secretive it is, the more it does not link with the political activities of which it was a part in the past. 

Did Narrating The Nepali Budget Give A Power Trip?

Narrating the Nepali budget entailed reading about the ways in which the Nepali government would influence many different parts of Nepal with large sums of money. The coverage of the whole of Nepal, such a huge territory to be governed, and the play of large sums of money to help this territory undoubtedly gave a power-trip to the individuals who narrated the budget.

However, the experience of having a power-trip is different from the experience of feeling actual power. And importantly, the experience of feeling power, or even more crucially, of becoming powerful, is highly suppressed in Nepali politics and state-based activities. Nobody involved in Nepali politics and state-based activities is allowed to feel actual power, but there are plenty of figures within the halls where decisions are made that experience power-trips. In the case of the narrating the budget, the power-trip will be sustained, celebrated and historically established as a major political event, yet feeling actual power would have been a far greater experience, and it would entail sidestepping etiquette and order in an otherwise formal political event, eventually sidestepping the whole of field of politics itself. Actual power is not constrained by the performance of the role of a powerful figure, but it moves beyond the field of the political, and makes visible the pleasure derived from engagement with the political. Had there been a feeling of actual power in the narrating of the Nepali budget, we would have seen more excitement and more informality in addressing the audience. 

It is clear that actual power did not feature into the performance of the narration of the Nepali budget. The most crucial role and strategy in the suppression of actual power was played by the other figures in the national-political positions, especially the politicians and statesmen in the audience as the budget was being narrated. One could see that these people were inattentive, talking among themselves, and perhaps even asleep as the Nepali budget was being narrated. It is in a scenario where the audience to a political performance is for all purposes passive that there is no actual power for the narrator, rather only a power-trip supported by fantasies of an attentive audience is generated. Yet if one wanted to really appreciate actual power in this narrating of the Nepali budget, one would have to go to the previous night, when perhaps the narrator stood before the mirror in his room, with the budget document in hand, and narrated the budget before his image in the mirror. This narration to the mirror-image is not simply the rehearsal to an actual political performance, it is in fact the political act itself. For we know, following Lacan's writings on the mirror stage, that we are jealous of our mirror-image, and we actually compete with this mirror-image, so that before a mirror-image there is an actual power game, with the possibility of gaining actual power if the image is somehow defeated in this power game. If the narrator felt he was better than his own mirror-image, then he gained actual power, and his relationship with his mirror-image will have a bigger impact on Nepal politics and state-based activities than the narration before a passive audience would. 

Is Capitalism A Surplus?

Strangely, we find that banal utilitarian and “break-even” processes and events within capitalism continue to make capitalism attractive, that surplus pleasure is never the end objective of capitalism. This is strange to us because we usually wrongly think that the possibility of extra pleasure, the translation of profit into pleasure, is what lures workers and capitalists alike to production and business, and thereby drives capitalism forward. We have looked enough at why capitalism is attractive in the wealthy West, and instead we need to turn to look at its endurance and success in places like Nepal, the poor places in the world, places that more or less fail to profit from capitalism.

Surplus of pleasure is important and prior to surplus of the symbol in the early life of a capitalist subject. The capitalist child is a symbolizing machine, but fails to symbolize surplus pleasure because he/she considers surplus pleasure to be trivial and unimportant; some pleasure is surplus to requirements at that age in life, some of the signals coming from the big Other need not be interpreted, pleasure and leisure are secondary to “labor,” even for the child. Or rather, the child is occupied in symbolizing other objects and processes before turning his/her attention to surplus pleasure to symbolize it, and there is never the resources left to symbolize surplus pleasure, so that there is a surplus pleasure that remains unsymbolized. However as the child grows, his/her capacity to name and think about the objects and processes he/she finds becomes very strong and so he/she can turn to recognize and name the surplus pleasure that had always been ignored in early life. As a grown-up, his/her symbolization-machine has surplus potential.

Even so, surplus pleasure is always barred from our experience. The child who is growing up does not seek to obtain pleasure as such, but rather is limited to the symbolization of that pleasure, submitting surplus pleasure to a symbolizing gaze, but not concerned in trying to feel that pleasure which he/she had ignored earlier in life. For the grown-up, surplus pleasure gives way to surplus symbols, there is a surplus of symbols in the place of the surplus of pleasure, and so we see that capitalism is in a very fundamental way defined by a surplus. Indeed, the Lacanian Symbolic Order is itself a surplus, a surplus to requirements of socialization, as much as the Imaginary is necessary for socialization and the Real is natural and unavoidable. In the capitalism of the grown-up, the experience of pleasure as such continues to be ignored just as it was ignored by the child.

The proper anti-capitalist gesture arrives when the grown-up capitalist tendency to obtain a symbol from pleasure is replaced by the intentional and poetic gesture of obtaining pleasure from a symbol. Only with this flip, with this anti-capitalist turn, only with the obtainment of poetic pleasure from the symbol will the process of becoming anti-capitalist succeed in a way in which the poet continues to be very conscious of capitalism and its mechanisms as they are ingrained in, or wholly internalized by, the capitalist child and grown-up. This poetic pleasure from the symbol is a new pleasure, one that does not turn back to the pleasure that had been barred in childhood, but one which acts upon capitalism and the Symbolic Order without avoiding it or escaping from it, but by being actively engaged in it.    

The Rise Of Financial-Governmental Figures And Their Confession To The Government

We know the much discussed practice of financial industry figures joining the government; indeed we can call certain functional positions within the financial industry as “financial-governmental positions,” because the sole design of these positions may be to enable the figures in those positions to “go to government.” This move from finance to government appears motivated by the wish to “serve the people” that financial figures may feel after having served private interests for so long. But in truth the financial industry does not fragment once one of its members joins the government, rather, it gets even stronger, for it now has one of its own inside government and can influence the image and punishment of the financial industry.

The weakness of government when dealing with the financial-governmental figure is what can be called government's “confessional mode.” Whenever a financial-governmental figure approaches it, the governmental establishment swells with pride in anticipation of the admission of guilt that will come about through a confessional conversation of wrongdoing (involving greed.) The governmental establishment thinks that upon the admission of guilt, the financial figure will be “purged of the sin of greed” and will wholeheartedly work towards providing governmental service to the people. At no time does the government consider that the financial-governmental figure is a representative of the financial industry, and therefore the government does not act against the financial industry as a whole via a visible punishment, but acts only to slightly amend the constitution in order that the particular governmental-financial figure may be stopped from committing another sinful act.

The lack of strict punishment as a whole may be even more aggravated when the governmental establishment has figures who derive pleasure from the confessional mode. When there is pleasure in hearing a confession, there is no meaningful punishment of anyone in order that the financial-governmental figures can continue to do wrong and therefore continue to confess to government. We may turn to Foucault who shows us how integral visibility of the punished figure is to confirm effectively the role of punishment in society, but today there is no visible, meaningful punishment besides the slight and technical amendment of the constitution, which looks more of a symbolic gesture than justified punishment to the citizens.

One may say the willingness of financial figures to “go to government” shows the openness of government these days, an openness which may inspire the financial figures to share more and eventually work to change the financial system as a whole. However the confessional mode is shrouded in secrecy: we know from confession in churches where a screen separates the figures when they discuss the sin, and similarly in government, there are ways in which the confession is made vague and opaque, when not all of the guilt is conveyed, when only that much is said with which one oneself may continue to remain secret. In all, this confessional mode within government is in crisis and this is a serious problem, because even when the financial-governmental figures feel guilty and admit this guilt they are not able to enact meaningful change through the government, partly because the government itself does not properly interpret and act on this guilt and its confession. 

Office Meetings On Brand Names Made Of Invented Words

We feel brand names are powerful. But first we must be clear that the brand name is in fact not representative of one drive and pursuit of a company, but that a variety of complex and even conflicting objectives are forcibly collected together under the brand name. Today one company is home not to a variety of slightly different “departments” but rather a variety of highly differentiated “offices” entirely, so that there is no single powerful brand named company uniting all the offices underneath it harmoniously.

In the series of meetings between the different conflicting offices in a company, it is when a new word, an invented word even, is blurted out in the angry and fiery debate/dispute, and when a number of conflicting interpretations of that word arise from the conflicting offices, that the dominant office aggressively pushes that new word as a brand name to the weaker offices. The brand name is not a point of agreement between the different offices of a company as we may think on the outside but of fierce competition and disagreement.

Meetings held to discuss possible brand names are rare opportunities that produce the fiercest competition between the offices within a company. These meetings only occur at the beginning of the company's formation, at a stage when there is no obvious dominating office in the company. These meetings test each office's ability, drive and vision to take the company forward. The obscure brand name, the brand name where the words are invented, is difficult for the other offices to attack because invented words don't connote anything and cannot easily be “free-associated” with other words or ideas. 

Smog In Cities, The Invisible Protests And Chemical Weapons

Many cities around the world are engulfed in smog today, smog which can potentially build up to hazardous levels for human health. When faced with this hindrance to a healthy life, the city dwellers could abandon their daily activities as governed by the state and other authorities, and instead take to the streets in protest against the polluting of the environment. We do not know how many protests there have been which have been obscured by the smog, but these invisible protests pose a significant problem for authorities, who cannot deal with them or make the protesters visible for discipline. These protests may thus gain in much strength and numbers before authorities are able to see them and stop them.

The link between burning items and the act of protesting is strong: in Kathmandu for instance protesters have always sought to burn things like tires and cars in the course of their protest. A deep and threatening kind of politicization is evident today if we consider that industries and factories are deliberately polluting the city's streets in order to show their own disappointment and rebellion against governmental authorities. Whereas burning of cars and tires had been a sign of local and strategic control of certain streets or locations over others, the blanket of smog that engulfs the vast, whole city is evidence of a much more powerful group of people, with their associated industries, systematically protesting against the authorities. Also, this “smog protest” could finally signal an end to a kind of capitalism without social responsibility, and the beginning of a problematizing of the industries by the industrialists themselves. Only the governmental authorities are, in the end, reluctant to give up the capitalist model, regardless of the smog levels, and when the time comes these governmental authorities will enforce the model by themselves regardless of the feelings of certain industrialists.

We know that these same cities conduct the discussions of the ethics of “chemical weapons,” and we should wonder what the difference is between this hazardous smog and a chemical weapon. We have to ask why there has not been the identification of a culprit for this smog, some particular industry could be at fault but has not been identified, in much the same way that users of chemical weapons try to hide from the general public, and this correlation between smog emitters and chemical weapons users shows that smog emission is a “amoral and bad” thing, just as chemical weapons are. Further, whereas a chemical weapon as we conventionally understand it is used in smaller amounts and durations, smog is a weapon which is not directly controlled by the industrialists, but can arise at any moment, unpredictably, at times of peace or war, and without much that can be done to prevent it. This loss of control over a weapon-like substance is more threatening to world order than the weapons which are under control of the authorities. Hence it is now very important to find out the intentions and responses of the industrialists to the smog. 

Electricity Towers In Nepal In The New Society Of Control

With Nepal's purchase of electricity, new electricity towers will be built to support the newly added energy. The new electricity towers mark a shift in the kind of society that Nepal is: Nepal has moved away from a “disciplinary society” to a “society of control”. In a disciplinary society, the tower is a “Panopticon,” which is a tower made for surveillance of human beings that reside around the perimeter of the tower. The main Panopticon in Nepal is the apartment tower, which is situated in the midst of a city and provides a view for surveillance purposes. But in the new society of control, the relation between elevation and discipline breaks down, and a new punishing actor replaces the elevated human being, as control replaces discipline to achieve a higher severity in punishing.

The electricity tower is more dangerous and can lethally punish with electric shock if one comes too close to it. The necessity of human judgment to decide on who should be punished is thereby outdated, the electricity tower is always ready to punish whoever comes too close, whoever trespasses the “Danger” sign. The punishment is lethal, no longer is there the hope of rehabilitation, it is simply a matter of removing from this society the ones that cannot read the sign. The “Danger” sign beneath the electricity tower is, in Deleuzian terms, a test/examination of someone's literacy and aptitude, and the punishment is the taking of life, which is an intensification of the classroom punishment. The stakes of being literate or illiterate are very high in societies of control. Hence the the intense prioritization towards being literate, and the seeking out for dismissal of those that cannot be literate.

This society of control is difficult to problematize because there is no human being directly controlling others, and also because the punishment is so severe that critical voices find it very difficult to associate it to a real human being. Rather, the punishment is considered an accident by a dangerous but non-living force, or the result of a “mistake” on the part of the dead human being. The incidents of punishment by electricity tower need to be carefully recorded by research and the press, and the fact that there are real human beings behind the punishment needs to be displayed/clarified. The human element to a punishing object needs to be emphasized; how the electricity tower has been designed to act just like a punishing human being needs to be shown and problematized. The idea that punishment is not the most important purpose of the electricity tower is not true: for the various rural populations close to whom these electricity towers may be found, the supply of electricity is less important than the danger of electric shock. This new tool of control in Nepal has more reach and thereby the whole of Nepal should be considered a society of control because electricity towers are not only found in cities but are built in many marginal places.