Art as Technique (Shklovsky, 1917)

Viktor Shlovsky begins this essay by stating that as perception becomes habitual, it becomes unconsciously automatic.  This process of "algebrization" or over-automatization of an object enables the reduction of perceptive efforts.  Nevertheless, the habitualization devours the sensation of life: "if the whole complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been".

Shlovsky presents the idea that "the technique of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar', to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception."  Thus, art eliminates the automatism of perception of objects.  Shlovsky uses Tolstoy's writings as an example of defamiliarization of objects by "pricking the conscience".  In specific, the author makes reference to Tolstoy's use of a horse as the narrator of "Kholstomer" and how the horse's perspective makes the institution of private property unfamiliar.

The next questions arise from reviewing the essay:

(1) Is habitualization a trait of modernity?

(2) Why is the presentation of the 'unfamiliar' fundamental to the technique of art?

(3) Does the technique of art follows the path of using doubt in order to achieve certainty or the path of acknowledgment of certainty as doubt?

(4) Can the technique of art be used to develop a new culture of learning, in which the device of 'defamiliarization' is employed to remove the automatism in thought?

The essay can be found here:

http://www.vahidnab.com/defam.htm

Separation of Ownership and Control (Fama and Jensen, 1983)

In this article, Eugene Fama and Michael Jensen explain the survival of organizations characterized by the separation of ownership and control.  Fama and Jensen argue that the separation of risk-bearing and decision making functions survive because of two reasons: (1) the benefits of the specialization in risk bearing and management; and (2) the approach to controlling the agency problems that arise from the separation of ownership and control. The main hypothesis stated in the article is that the contract structure of an organization in this context must separate decision management from decision control.  The contract structures "distinguish organizations from one another and explain why specific organizational forms survive."

In the following, some questions related to the article are presented:

(1) When do agency problems arise in an organization? How can they be addressed?

(2) Are the initiation and implementation of decisions necessarily allocated to the same agents?

(3) What factors make the combination of decision management, decision control, and residual risk bearing efficient?

(4) What factors make the separation of these three functions efficient?

(5) What is the relationship between specific knowledge and the degree of complexity of an organization?

(6) What are the costs of restricting the residual claims to the important decision agents?

(7) In what aspects do the agency problems within a family business differ from the ones faced by other types of organizations?

(8) What are the implications of unrestricted residual claims in the cost of capital of the firm?

(9) How can the agency problems related to diffuse decision and diffuse residual claimants be addressed?

(10) Under what assumptions is the following statement made by Fama and Jensen valid? "Separation and diffusion of decision management and decision control limit the power of individual decision agents to expropriate the interests of residual claimants."

(11) What are some of the market and organizational mechanisms for controlling the agency problems of specialized risk bearing derived from the unrestricted nature of common stock residual claims?

The article can be found here:

http://are.berkeley.edu/~antinori/prclass/FamaJensen.pdf

What is Enlightenment? (Foucault, 1984)

Michel Foucault begins the essay by analysing the response of Kant  to the question “What is Enlightenment?” According to Foucault, modern philosophy has not been capable of answering  this question. Foucault emphasizes the relation between Kant’s brief essay and the three Critiques. Kant describes Enlightenment as the moment when humanity puts its own reason to use, without subjecting itself to a authority.  In this moment, the critique of “what can be known, what must be done, and what may be hoped” is necessary (the Enlightenment is the age of critique).

Foucault defines Enlightenment as “a modification of the pre-existing relation linking will, authority and the use of reason”.  Foucault introduces the hypothesis that Kant’s essay is an outline of the attitude of modernity and stresses that what connect us with the Enlightenment is a permanent critique of our historical era.

In this essay, Foucault argues for a new philosophical ethos of “limit attitude” (criticism consists of analysing and reflecting upon limits).  He proposes the transformation of the critique conducted in the form of necessary limitation into “a practical critique that takes the form of a possible transgression”.

The following questions arise from the review of the essay:

(1)   Is Kant’s idea that humanity will reach maturity when it is no longer required to obey, but when men are told: “Obey, and you will be able to reason as much as you like” justified? Is this statement in agreement with the free use of reason?

(2)   What is the attitude of modernity? Is the characterization made by Baudelaire valid?
(3)   What is the will to heroize the present?

(4)   Do we have to make a decision between accepting the Enlightenment and remaining within the tradition of its rationalism or criticizing it and try to escape from its principles of rationality?

(5)   In what is given to us as universal, necessary, obligatory, what place is left to what is singular, contingent and the result of arbitrary constraints?

(6)   What is the central idea and purpose of the genealogical criticism?

(7)   Is Foucault’s claim that the attempt to escape from the system of contemporary reality in order to produce the overall program of another society, of another way of thinking, another vision of the world has only led to the most dangerous traditions valid? How is this related to the idea of spontaneous orders developed by Hayek?

(8)   What is the relationship between the growth of capabilities and the intensification of power relations?

The essay can be found here:

http://foucault.info/documents/whatIsEnlightenment/foucault.whatIsEnlightenment.en.html

The Nature of the Firm (Coase, 1937)

Ronald Coase begins this article with the concept of the economic system as being coordinated by the price mechanism and society becomes not an organisation but an organism.  As Sir Arthur Salter mentions, the economic system "works itself".  Nevertheless, Coase agrees with Robertson in that we find "islands of conscious power in this ocean of unconscious cooperation like lumps of butter coagulating in a pail of buttermilk". Then, Coase presents the following question: "If production is regulated by price movements, production could be carried on without any organisation at all, well might we ask, why is there any organisation?" Why is the price mechanism superseded?

Coase assumes the task of attempting to discover why a firm emerges at all in a specialised exchange economy and concludes that the main reason why it is profitable to establish a firm is that there is a cost of using the price mechanism (marketing cost).  This cost includes the costs of discovering the relevant prices, the costs of negotiating and concluding a separate contract for each exchange transaction, the desire to make long-term contracts under uncertainty.

Some of the questions that arise when reviewing the article are:

(1) What is the distinguishing mark of the firm?
(2) What forces determine the size of the firm? Why is not all production carried on by one big firm?
(3) Can the decreasing returns to the entrepreneur be avoided? Is Market-based-management one approach to accomplish this purpose?
(4) Why do we observe an increasing vertical integration in the Latin American countries?
(5) Is Coase's criticism of Knight theory valid?

Coase's article can be found in the following link:

http://www.sonoma.edu/users/e/eyler/426/coase1.pdf

El jardín de los senderos que se bifurcan (Borges, 1941)

En esta obra policial, Borges insinúa un laberinto de laberintos que abarca el pasado y el porvenir, un "invisible laberinto de tiempo".  Refiere la leyenda del ilustre Ts' ui Pên, quien se había propuesto componer un libro y un laberinto que fuera estrictamente infinito.  Stephen Albert descifra el enigma al interpretar un fragmento de una carta escrita por Ts' ui Pên: "Dejo a los varios porvenires (no a todos) mi jardín de senderos que se bifurcan". Albert concluye que el jardin de los senderos que se bifurcan era la novela caótica de Ts' ui Pên:

"En todas las ficciones, cada vez que un hombre se enfrenta con diversas alternativas, opta por una y elimina las otras; en la del casi inextricable Ts' ui Pên, opta - simultáneamente - por todas. Crea, así, diversos porvenires, diversos tiempos, que también, proliferan y su bifurcan."

Después de leer este cuento, me surgen las siguientes preguntas:

(1) ¿De qué maneras un libro puede ser infinito?
(2) ¿Cuál es nuestra concepción del tiempo?

(3) ¿Está sugiriendo Borges la idea de la pluralidad del sujeto, la idea de ser uno y muchos al mismo tiempo? (el descentramiento, el desdoblamiento freudiano)

(4) Si fuera así, ¿dónde queda la concepción del hombre moderno, racional y unitario?

(5) ¿Cómo enfrenta el sujeto la conjunción de dos mundos divergentes? ¿Tiene allí su origen el mito personal?

En el siguiente enlace, se puede encontrar el libro Ficciones de Borges, que incluye el libro y cuento El jardín de los senderos que se bifurcan:

http://www.textosenlinea.com.ar/borges/Ficciones.pdf

Psicología de las masas y análisis del yo (Freud, 1921)

Dentro de las aportaciones de Sigmund Freud al análisis social, se encuentra el ensayo Psicología de las masas y análisis del yo  (1921).  En esta obra, Freud coincide con Gustavo Le Bon en que cuando los individuos integran una multitud (masa), actúan de forma muy diferente a sí se encontraran aislados, por lo que desaparece el sentimiento de responsabilidad y el individuo se diluye en esa multitud anónima.  Cuando el individuo se encuentra diluido en la masa, puede sacrificar su propio interés para la consecución del interés colectivo.  Se vuelve por decirlo así, en un ser primitivo, su actividad intelectual disminuye. 

 

 

Algunas preguntas que surgen al leer el ensayo son:

 

 

(1) ¿Por qué cuando los individuos forman parte de una masa, abrigan un sentimiento de omnipotencia (la noción de que lo imposible no existe para el individuo al formar parte de una multitud)?

(2) ¿Por qué el líder de una masa fracasaría al recurrir a discursos racionales para movilizar el deseo de los individuos que forman parte de la multitud?

(3) De acuerdo con Freud, una masa no puede vivir sin un amo a quien temer, a quien obedecer.  ¿Ese amo necesariamente tiene que ser una persona, o también podría estar constituido por una idea?

(4) ¿En qué forma el proceso de identificación afecta la psicología de las masas?

(5) ¿Estarían de acuerdo con la hipótesis de Freud de que el instinto gregario no es primario?

(6) ¿Por qué la igualdad es tan importante en la consciencia social? ¿Explica esto su significancia en los discursos de poder?

(7) ¿Es justificada la hipótesis de la horda primitiva?

 

 

El enlace para leer el ensayo es el siguiente:

 

 

http://www.elortiba.org/pdf/freud_masas.pdf