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.

“Femina Women” And The Tone Of The Phallic

There is the idea in a resistive tactic that the phallic is assertive/bold, that it is responsible for overt suppression of the marginalized and feminine. A kind of resistance goes against this phallic directly, “blow for blow,” because there is no shame in going against this phallic; this phallic is naked and overt and so are the resistive forces against it.

Yet there is another side to the phallic, or another kind of phallic entirely, which is not as overt, and against which it is much harder to resist because this phallic itself appears feminine, oppressed, marginalized; this phallic is in appearance on the side of the weak. This is not the phallic of dramatic law and suppression, rather this is the phallic of the statistical knowledges, the govermental knowledges in Foucauldian terms, characterizing the science of government, the knowledges with population management as the end-goal. This governmental knowledge is “boring” even as tries to be exciting, it has a more subdued tone, and it does not overtly challenge the marginalized. This is the side/kind of the phallic which has made certain women the head of the family, the user and developer of the statistical knowledges, the subscriber to the knowledges of control; they are the good housekeepers, the “Femina women,” named after Femina, the popular women's magazine in Nepal and in the Indian subcontinent.

In what we consider to be quite trivial, that is, in the knowledge of good-housekeeping and the art of the proper lifestyle, as written out in lifestyle magazines usually reserved for women, we find the most serious tactics for the control of the whole society via the nuanced, mellow and silent control of the household by a driven woman "doing the bills." We need to take seriously the joke that says that men are suppressed by women within the walls of their homes, yet this does not mean that complaining men are the site from which a rebellion against the “good housekeeper” is possible. How then to resist the mellow, whispering phallic which does not pick a fight? One way to begin is by recognizing that the origin of Femina women is still the male subject: we have, in the women's housekeeping magazines many “professional men," such as doctors and cooks and gardeners, giving vital knowledge and advice, producing the knowledges of control for women to subscribe to, and so we see that men have flourished as producers of lifestyle related knowledges, and it is particularly their usage of the muted tone in their writing, their understanding of the importance of this subdued tone in their talking with these women, that has made them authoritative figures for the “good housekeepers.”