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go Jeremy! go Jeremy!

210 replies

onebatmother · 02/06/2008 23:41

If you are interested in discussing the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham, please join this thread.

OP posts:
Threadwworm · 03/06/2008 12:25

I dare 'ee da mention fooco.

(I can't understand a word either of them says.)

IorekByrnison · 03/06/2008 12:43

Oh lord, if we're on fuko then I'm folding. In the manner of a poker game do you see?.

I think it's OK to say cunt. It's the ill-informed (I speak for myself only) discussion of political philosophy that's making us feel a bit undergrad.

onebatmother · 03/06/2008 12:43

If there's one thing I like more than a bad Dad-pun, it;s a bad Dad-pun about an 80s philosopher

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Threadwworm · 03/06/2008 12:50

Shall we switch to Jeremy Clarkson then?

onebatmother · 03/06/2008 13:57

You are quite right Iorek re shite grasp of all of this ... stuff - stuff that used to be in accessible parts of my brain. Now - poof!- there is nothing.

Though I do think that F was broadly right in his idea that the Panopticon was the model not only for the 'modern' prison but for modern society. The extent to which we have internalized the Gaze at the centre (the gaze of the guard who may, or may not be there, in B's panopticon) is both remarkable and remarkably effective. With, or without, the actual forms of surveillance which exist in our culture.

and I think it's also true that we are more afraid of the absence of the gaze now, than of its presence. Which is why so much of culture now could be boiled down to 'look at me!'. From reality TV, sleb cutlure etc to ..erm, the web.

MN could be said, in fact, to be a perfectly functioning unit of self-surveillance, with each of us acting as the surveillor of all the others, to create a self-disciplining and regulating and therefore docile body of 'individuals'. At the centre there is both something, and nothing.

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IorekByrnison · 03/06/2008 14:00

I now see that Fuko is actually a topless model from Japan with a 47 inch bust. I truly didn't mean to bring her into these discussions - was only attempting a further alternative spelling for our post-structuralist friend.

And no to Clarkson. I think that would be very disappointing.

IorekByrnison · 03/06/2008 14:04

Yes, onebat! I know fouc all (b-boom) about Foucault but I think he was right about the Panopticon. And I think you are right about all the rest. I must think about this some more. It has been bothering me for a while and I think it is important.

IorekByrnison · 03/06/2008 14:06

There's your bad dad pun for you

onebatmother · 03/06/2008 14:13

Damn you Iorek! I've been grasping for that one all morning!

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onebatmother · 03/06/2008 14:16

closest i'd come was a peter kay fouc off.

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PortBlacksandResident · 03/06/2008 14:21

Great Pub - The Jeremy Bentham.

I actually have my head in a box between my legs now so i'm halfway there.

Threadwworm · 03/06/2008 14:24

I am just tittering away to myself and 'and therefore docile' as a description of MN.

And I'm more worried at the gaze to the centre than from. I mean, the fact that we can no longer experience anything that hasn't first been pre-experienced for us by the market or the media: we look to these to process all our experiences. Don't know anything AT ALL about Foucault though.

Threadwworm · 03/06/2008 14:24

I've been in a pub clled the Jeremy Bentham , I think. Is it near UCL?

Threadwworm · 03/06/2008 14:31

And have you really been to a panopticon in Cuba, onebat? Wouldn't that be Guantanamo Bay?

onebatmother · 03/06/2008 14:33

Hello Jeremy Vile! I missed you there. I keep meaning to ask you if you're back?

Oh dear, everyone is going to think this is about you doing the race for life or something, aren't they?

They'll click on the thread and realize it is just a bunch of cutns .

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Boco · 03/06/2008 14:33

This is alarming. I wrote essays on all this stuff, and I'm whacking the side of my head with the keyboard trying to dislodge any of it - is just vague floatings, replaced by the theme tune to Balamory

IorekByrnison · 03/06/2008 14:40

Threadworm, you've just reminded me. I recently bought a new jar of Capitalist Vegetarian Reinvention of Beef Tea and it seemed to be OK. It was maybe just a dodgy batch after all.

onebatmother · 03/06/2008 14:42

Boco! Hello darling.

Last night I felt suddenly self-conscious about mentioning anything on MN that could be described as elitist or, in fact, intellectual, or academic. and it made me cross, so I started this thread as a place to do so, without winding anyone else up or being accused of intimidation.

Only to discover that I shot my load two decades ago and I have fouc'all to say about Bentham. Or indeed anyone else.

Perhaps we should use this thread as a place to post any nostalgic maunderings/cod philosophies/undergrad shite that occur to us.

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PortBlacksandResident · 03/06/2008 14:42

Yes Threadworm - that's the one.

Boco · 03/06/2008 14:44

Lol at shooting your load.

I think my brain has fallen off. I will probably doze on this thread until it grows back, hopefully soon.

onebatmother · 03/06/2008 14:44

shit, threadie, is Guantanamo Bay on the isla de juventud?

off to google.

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Threadwworm · 03/06/2008 14:51

Same here, Iorek! I nearly started a celebratory thread.

I'm glad you saw the latent Marmite critique in my Baudrillardian musings.

( I really am just headwanking here, as they say. I don't want to get told off again by TDWP for using long words.)

IorekByrnison · 03/06/2008 14:58

So, threadworm, with your gaze to the centre the market finds out what we "want" by ever more detailed and intrusive market research, which of course is not what we want but what it can sell us in the largest quantity for the greatest profit, and it constantly prompts us to stimulate the desire to purchase. We can have no idea what we would really want were these stimuli removed.

The gaze at the centre on the other hand is a replacement for an omniscient God who knows everything we do and so motivates us to act according to Godly principles rather than according to your own will. Just as the righteous person is said to have nothing to fear from God, so the law abiding citizen is said to have nothing to fear from all-seeing and increasingly intrusive surveillance systems and databases.

I don't know which is worse.

Boco · 03/06/2008 14:59

My dp has contacted unilever with his amazing idea for spray on marmite. He feels that twiglets are acceptable as they are so finely covered with marmite, and marmite itself is vile because it's so hard to regulate the quantity, so some kind of fine spray of marmite would be the way forward. Almost a marmite mist.

He came home from work shouting 'It's ok, I've found our ticket out of here!' He keeps referring to 'when Unilever get back to me...'

(dont' tell anyone, just incase..)

IorekByrnison · 03/06/2008 15:00

Headwanking. I suppose that covers it.

But really I think there is something important in here somewhere that we should be talking about.

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