I would like to take up an idea I thought up elsewhere than this blog, the idea that both art and science are arts of persuasion, in light of the new emphasis I've placed on satire. (I'm not sure about that spectrosis idea, that has to be digested a bit more; that's crazy.) Both art and science orient us to the world, participants in our continuous process of orientation, which orients us with respect to both our sensory world, our memory, our criticism, and our creative actions. Basically I reached this idea by questioning the idea that science implies a de facto hierarchy over the arts, thinking as I did that the products of scientific research just as well as aesthetic innovation often go unnoticed. What science behaves like is our thinking mind, which offers theses that may be factually correct but which are no guarantee that our actions will follow them. This modified an earlier view of mine in which I realized the mind could not command us, and that it influenced our actions by way of inquiry, a process of question and answer. This itself got modified later by considering philosophy as equivalent to the question and art as equivalent to the answer. What occurred to me was how people are very capable of doing the opposite of what their mind tells them they should do, even when entirely accurate. Flying in the face of facts is human nature, and we see this nowhere so clearly as in the history of climate change research, which has flaunted the dangers of our behavior before us for a long, long time. Inquiry provides a conclusion based on research, and one does nothing about it. Similarly, great works of art come and go and do nothing to influence the mainstream in an artist's lifetime. What art and science both accomplish is a persuasion, which is a word for both a rhetorical attempt at influence as well as a personal orientation.
Truth and beauty are nothing more than suggestions, persuasions, which can orient people to their cults, as indoctrinated practitioners: the scientist and the artist. They both behave like religious figures, like brahmin, with a different ethos of saints and holy texts. What does it matter whether one or the other is more correct than the other, or to quibble about what the rhetoric of science and the rhetoric of art really amounts to? One person can say, science means agnosticism, another can say it means atheism. One person can say art means aestheticism, another can say it means aristocracy. Personally, I think science means agnosticism and art aestheticism, and in this are they also united, in the implicit rejection of absolute knowledge, in the incompleteness principle, but who really cares? What's more alarming than how we define the doctrines is that the doctrines accomplish nothing but persuasion, but the representation of an orientation, rather than an act of orienting. At this point we can throw up both our hands and say that art and science are both forms of rhetoric, forms of persuasive communication, and the thing to do is to learn to practice them in better and better ways. And perhaps that is what we will end up deciding on; but before we settle on that optimization of persuasion as our end goal, let us consider whether there is a form of orientation that is an act of orienting, without the mere presentation of an orientation in a persuasive manner.
Here we derive a Schopenhauerian dichotomy between action and presentation, which would seem to struggle against the very nature of any form of discursive communication. Action can only be what I, and the world, am doing, and it cannot be else but my actually taking control of other bodies in space and using them, if I am to orient other objects. Otherwise, I am confined to persuading other objects, which may or may not work. And here is where art appears like action, and science appears like presentation, because we do unite art and science in the category of their being arts of persuasion, techniques of persuasion, not researches. The very research is a way in which the world appears to persuade ourselves; it is being a passive agent before the art of persuasion of the world. Art, at least conceptually, seems more prone to be able to actually persuade, rather than science, which is the presentation of a persuasion. Art puts the observer into the position of the scientist. So art seems capable of actually making a persuasion, rather than presenting one, by way of this dialectic, of what role it projects upon the observer (as spoken of before vis a vis analysand/analyst, and artist/critic.) Yet the knowledge that one would take from art, the artist's or the world's, is yet no assurance that one will be persuaded, for knowledge, to all indications, does not persuade us.
In the case of climate change, what overrules warnings of danger is the persuasion of fear and desire that is a motivating influence on the expansion of the fossil fuels industry throughout the 20th century. This is the destructive conversion of the world into capital, which is undertaken with the mentality of a drug addict, who knows they are hurting themselves but cannot stop. The mentality of addiction, or romance, is a good landmark as to what can overwhelm any factual report, to say the obvious. The narcotic influence of the drug or the romantic optimism overrides any knowledge that disputes its benefit, and that it is capable of doing so is on account of an inner pain which the narcotic answers, compensates. The knowledge intervenes and--for Christ's sake--doesn't get its horns locked with any stupid complex--but fails to come to grips with the inner pain which grasps for the narcotic. This is quite redolent of the liberal reaction to Trump voters, who are argued with on factual terms in what has become a post-fact psychology, a brainwashing which the anti-cult influence seeks to break by way of making rational arguments. This didn't work after 9/11 and it isn't working now. The illusions that people are under are not merely rational mistakes, for they themselves are capable of realizing that they are intellectually deluded, they do not need someone else to point it out. Rather, the illusions are narcotics, which serve a purpose of applying a balm to a profound psychological suffering, and this function they have is a cruel fact of life with a cruelty that is only compounded by a rationalist intervention, a dispute on the grounds of facts and figures.
Perhaps what needs to be recognized is that a worldview is itself a narcotic, an "enchantment," but that some enchantments are better than others, for their being enchantments with reality as we find it. There is no possible way to go beyond the pleasure principle, to deny the fetishism of even Freud's writings. To deny this is obnoxious, is tantamount to taking one's religion of truth against one's religion of lies without acknowledging that yours is too a religion, which psychologically reassures you. And here again art seems more vital a form of intervention than science, for it demonstrates a musical sub-structure, it demonstrates the worldview's connection to feeling and to reassurance. Science argues in terms of facts and figures, whereas art argues in terms of the narcotic value of a fact and figure. So they are both forms of persuasion, but science establishes supremacy, whereas art establishes subjectivity. Science dominates subjectivity; art persuades from the bottom rather than the top; it provides a psychic entrance into the science which constitutes it, and which it represents.
That has been the case so long as human civilization has been around, and the problem with this is that science will always re-integrate art back into itself, much like Deleuze says about anticapitalism and capitalism. The art is only an effective persuasion inasmuch as the viewer of the art is persuaded into the artist's point of view, but they always have the option to be the scientist, the critic, the analyst, to detach themselves from the creator, like Fish might characterize Milton's Satan (or Jung's Faust). Let us say a work of art persuades us to its thinking, but not to its practice. It has truly not persuaded us to an enchantment because we do not share in that enchantment unless we recognize its humanism, its pleasure/reality conjunction. In other words, the persuasion can persuade us on a certain topic, but it won't necessarily persuade us into persuasion. If the audience of a work of art is so inclined to perceive in it nothing but the meaning it has separate from its existence, to consider the medium is not the message, they have not been adequately persuaded. For the art of persuasion is self-generative, it must act such that it creates persuasive entities like itself, an influence that the world has upon the artist, but which the world does not have upon the scientist. The scientist's lack of persuasive ability reflects their being unpersuaded by the substantiality of the world, their conversion of that substance into knowledge, whereas the artist's lack of persuasive ability reflects the incapacity of the world to persuade the scientist. The artist continues the world's failure with respect to the scientist, and the scientist's failure reflects their own judgment of the world as a failure; and yet the artist continues to construct the world, whereas the scientist only provides guidelines which do not prescribe the nature of the construction, only the means and terms, much like capital does.
Science is therefore the contradictory one, who with one hand enables companies to drill and refine oil, to build cars and burn gasoline, to insert carbon monoxide into the atmosphere, and with the other provides reports to the effect that this practice will create a greenhouse effect, which of course, the companies do not adhere to. Science compels no moral, or even egoistic, imperative, only sets the terms of reality which desire may use. Science persuades us only with methodology, not with consequences, shows us how we might satisfy ourselves, and how we might be preserve ourselves, and satisfaction wins out over preservation. It provides only "how," not "why." Thus it is not an art of persuasion, purely, though it has its own rhetorical agency, it is completely overwhelmed by a pre-existing persuasion. If there is no objectivity, only subjectivity, the scientific illusion of objectivity only provides a new, intellectualized verbal field of vision in which one might act upon their pre-established desires. And this new, intellectual visual field is not quite like the visual field which it substitutes, the natural world, in which the two scientific perceptions come psychologically unified. The world expresses: I have oil you can pollute the sky with, and create global warming with. Science individuates this basic fact into two separate doctrines: how to make gasoline, and the world will warm if we burn it. Scientific neutrality assures that this will be expressed as such, as two objective observations, disorganized and distinguished from each other by the exclusion of purposiveness. Science is the persuasion of explanation, which is transparent, and permits anyone to superimpose their own desires upon it. The explanation may be persuaded by a desire, and the scientist appears innocent in this exchange because they themselves would respond to the warning that is explained to them; it is for those whom lack the scientific mentality, or a connection to the world, who will continuously exploit the scientist, who represent blind desire; Faust conjuring Mephistopheles, a superego requiring there be an id.
For in this understanding, the "id" as a pleasure-principle is directly the creation of the reality-principle of science. For this id is predisposed in a desirous manner with respect to the creations of the mind, to psychological sublimations. It is not necessarily physical, but psychological, desire; and not a desire therefore that exists in-itself, but one which is directly sculpted by the mind, but not in the way that rational moralists would wish to expect. Every rational scheme announces a new satisfaction principle, and a new preservation principle which works against it. This creates a desire for the satisfaction principle that someone who is outside that rational scheme might pursue, whether that is actually another person, as in the case of a nation or company who exploits a scientist, or a conflicting urge within someone with said scientific knowledge. The desire is caused by the knowledge, and does not have an independent existence outside of the knowledge. Therefore science does not persuade into itself, it only advertises to what will motivate its continuance, the destructively acquisitive pursuit of the satisfaction principle which arises. And yet this is, in effect, a continuation of science's process of conversion of life into knowledge. What desire comes after the fact, much like Frankenstein's monster, is a reflection of an unexamined desire which is present from the beginning, in the dissection of nature. Nature spoke, and the scientist wrote criticism upon the speech, expanding the statement into discrete doctrines, rather than acting on what nature said. Nature's life is its own knowledge, which is then somehow "redeemed" by the scientist, spoken for; it is like the conversion of speech into writing complained about by some theorists, but rather our emphasis is on the difference between action and presentation. Science is an art of persuasion, but it is also a presentation of persuasion, for nature is its own persuasion and orientation, and art.
What nature can be faulted for, is what the artist can be faulted for. Constructing what can be deconstructed, persuading such that the act becomes a presentation. Else, the Faustian outcome is that the scientist conjures Mephisto who directs nature and the artist to build what they wish, and our civilization is the result. Poiesis, therefore, is not enough, though my previous formulation of it as autopoetics was a step in the right direction, a step towards life, towards the self-determination of the maker, what must be made is what takes the weapon of research, the presentation of persuasion, out of the hands of who would wield it. And autopoetics gestures towards this, by presenting itself in its activity. And therefore what is required is an art of persuasion which is unrepresentable, by virtue of its providing its own un-presentation, its own effacement. The persuasion occurs and sponsors an interpreter, the scientist, who permits the persuasion to be forgotten. And here again, is where the joke comes in handy, because the joke is the opposite of logic, an anti-persuasion which persuades, via negation of what it contains as psychologically inconceivable. Yet we see how the joke re-establishes the logic, the presentation of persuasion, the interpretation of a joke. What is required is what cannot be interpreted, or cannot be interpreted with any credulity, and what may do so is the offering of a suitable interpretation that does not negate or contain what the act of persuasion is doing; an inexplicable relationship between act and presentation contained therein, in which presentation both speaks for and does not speak for the act, or, rather, an act which is withdrawn so soon as it is offered, which begins within aesthetic discourse and then effaces its belonging to that discourse. An act of persuasion which begins, and then cancels itself, in a way that does not actually cancel itself. My views are evolving on this subject in the sense that I have before considered aesthetics the non-commanding form in contrast to political authority, but now I see how this very influential practice of non-command itself subjects it to false representatives, critics and analysts, who parasitically drain its persuasion.
The joke is the handmaiden of logic, in that it persuades on the behalf of logic. What we are looking for therefore is the joke which is the handmaiden of aesthetic, which persuades on the behalf of aesthetic, by virtue of withdrawing aesthetic somewhat. Jokes are aesthetic forms which speak for logic, the scientist's comedy, and which initiate aesthetic by way of creating a perfect fallacy, a conjunction of two psychologically conceivable things inside an inconceivable conjunction. We see thus how comedy attacks aestheticism, beauty, by rendering the aesthetic into the category of the logical fallacy. The reverse movement is required here, in which the joke's anti-logic is matched by something's anti-aesthetic, which yet re-establishes the aesthetic. I have said that jokes are suicide chess, for logic's chess, thereby, what is required is suicide art, for aesthetic's art. An aesthetic failure which functions similarly to a logical failure in joking, which reasserts the aesthetic in the humorous release of its exclusion from the de facto aesthetic discourse that stands revealed, much like the logical place we stand, the mind's views, are reflected in what is released after we laugh, what to laugh at the joke means in terms of what we are dismissing. And this is where I find I have no recourse except the term "satirical art." For satirical art can present a poem, a film, a novel, a song, and yet withdraw the form that is presented, and have us laugh away a form of beauty we recognize as trivial and beneath consideration. Satirical art is beauty's joke, rather than the joke played on the behalf of the mind's convictions. It engages the aesthetic discourse and draws it into revulsion, for the very purpose of satirizing what resembles it intellectually. Satirical art is self-effacing, in such a way that it points a finger towards the beauty that would reject it, it brings us back to this beauty, this persuasion, by being a particularly aesthetic un-persuasion.
It must occur, therefore, within an art-form, like those above mentioned, in the same way the joke exists in the register of intellectual judgment. A good example of this is the cartoon or the caricature, which campily resist its being a valuable work of art, effacing the artist and the art, which serves the larger mission of art and nature, by indicating itself as a faulty artistic rendering. It is the intentional acting as a "bad artist," which reinforces that there is such a thing as a "good artist," in the same way the joke reinforces that there is such a thing as a "true judgment," with the use of a "false judgment." But obviously the techniques of the joke are required within satirical art to pull this off effectively, such that the satirical art is an entertainment, otherwise what we have is merely a bad work of art; it must be witty in the way of the cartoon or the caricature. The joke unifies two psychologically conceivable things, two judgments of reality into a non-judgment of reality that reveals the impossibility of their linkage. Similarly cartoons and caricatures work by making things smaller or bigger than they are, by increasing relative extremes, the proportions made disproportionate by way of combining two separate items that are correctly proportioned to themselves: big head, small body; small head, big body. Satirical art thereby would work by such conjunction, the making of "bad art" by way of taking two instances of "good art" and conjoining them. So, for instance: place the Beatles in the famous painting of Venus di Milo. You have satirical art, which combines two aesthetic appreciations into one piece of fucking trash, which yet emphasizes The Beatles and the original painting as something worthwhile.
Such a work resists interpretation, through its badness, because we cannot get around what the humor points to, the transplantation of two forms of beauty which do not belong together, which do not flatter each other to be placed in the same context; this reinforces the aesthetic discourse, persuades by anti-persuasion. The judgment occurs not philosophically, but aesthetically, and this serves to elevate the aesthetic to the level of philosophy, rather than what the joke/comedy accomplishes, which is to condemn the aesthetic as only suited for representing philosophical fallacies, much like what Marxist critics think art should do.
An example of this could be found in the pastiches of Looney Tunes cartoons, like "What's Opera Doc," in which Wagner's Der Ring Des Nibelungen is rewritten with Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. This is satirical art, which creates an effect of the same transplantation; however we notice here something new about our Beatles di Milo painting, which is the privilege that the Beatles, or Bugs Bunny get in the transplantation. Because the transplantation is itself comic, it privileges the one of the two things in the conjunction that is more allied with the comic, which is not to say that it necessitates that the one with more alliance with the comic be entirely comedic, as is the case for Bugs Bunny. The Beatles have serious work, as well as comic work, but because there is receptivity to the comic, the satirical art favors The Beatles when placed in the context of the Venus di Milo. The joke, therefore, itself, may not solely function such to make the logical statement, but to make the logical statement that is protective towards the joke's playfulness, where it comes to the two psychologically conceivable things it conjoins.
What do Hillary Clinton and an second doctor's visit have in common? They both come after a heavy Bill.
We cannot deny that of the two things, it is Hillary Clinton that is more degraded in this conjunction, because of her distance from the sexuality that makes the punchline. The second doctor's visit does not offer as much resistance to the punchline as Hillary Clinton, so Hillary ends up more degraded, dragged down to the joke's dismantled point of view. So in other words, its not totally fair what we said about the joke, that it is but suicide chess, for there is an asymmetry in the appraisal of the things it conjoins; and this is its satirical tendency; what does not merely make a logical remark, but makes an evaluative remark that is totally about contextualization within the joke. The joke is a ground where the fish that is most out of water will not make out well from a conjunction; or shall we say, what is a landlubber will quickly drown. The joke-test is a real test of presumption; and this occurs to the side of what the joke-remark actually is. Arguably, Bill Clinton is the real butt of the joke, even beyond the expense of doctors, and that is true, inasmuch as this is the actual logical argument of the joke, an insult to Bill's sexual adequacy. But aside from that degradation is the degradation of the comparison, and the contextualization within the joke, and which one fights that contextualization more, which one wants less to be part of a syntax of a joke. And so, Beatles de Milo, the Beatles win out, aside from what we could say the conjunction of the painting and the Beatles says about their relationship, the Venusian, lovey-dovey project of their music, perhaps. Aside from that is the preference for themselves as an emblem of that Venusian quality, over the original painting, because they put up less of a fight to the comic.
I encountered this realization first when I made a video in which I read a book of John Ashbery's poems in Christian Bale's voice. I thought the joke was even-handed, disparaging Ashbery's poetry as unpoetic, and Bale's reading as pretentious. Rather, it was Bale who lost out, because comedy always punches up, not down, and a marginalized major poet of the 20th century is a more sympathetic figure than a highly paid movie star, with airhead ideas, motives, and taste in projects. This however would not pay off so much that way if the poet were pretentious, but Ashbery's poetry really shined through in this context, and taught me its deep value, which was that, like the Beatles, it established a receptivity to the comic that ultimately preserved it, made it sympathetic. It's not a case of modernity or postmodernity, just a sense of satirical artistry, and the innate class consciousness of comedy, which uniquely highlights humor as a facet of sympathy with what is "down" in social terms. The joke may be used for evil ends, yes, but it has an inertia in it, a value which privileges what is below, not above. Perhaps my views on comedy are shifting. Comedy is the village-song, and tragedy is the goat-song. The satirical artist is the village-poet, who can represent sophisticated emotions and cognitions without sacrificing comedy, without sacrificing their degradation. The joke does not just degrade; it sides with the degraded, what comes into the joke already degraded, and sides against what comes into the joke excluding itself. So, the second doctor's visit wins out in that exchange, not because it's funny or degraded, but because it is unexceptional. And this reflects a commentary disposed towards rationality, or the ego, which is not anti-rational, or anti-poetry, or anti-emotion. What it is disposed against is a special status; egoism.
The real trick here with what I'm saying, and in mental disorder about, I believe, is to think about comedians who are obvious narcissists and bullies, or "funny people" who are cruel. What is missing here is the artistry, the worker, something the joke is for. But it bears mentioning that these instances of humor are not particularly funny unless you are similarly cruel; it just goes to show how humor can be used for good or ill. One of the major tells of this tendency is the desire to punch down, a comedy which focuses on mocking everyday, ordinary people; but even if we are punching up, there is something depressing about humor that does not have something it is for, which would suggest that someone is punching up merely out of resentment, not out of judgment, i.e., they want to be in the place of authority, so they punch up. So the satirical art seems preferable to the joke in this case, because in being an art it has this affirmative content. Bugs Bunny's treatment of Wagner doesn't disparage Wagner on the basis of its being art, because there is so much artistry to What's Opera Doc. But it disparages its seriousness -- "What do you expect a happy ending from an opera?" Because too much seriousness is a sign of a problem, a sign of something with a special status. And yet -- again -- here's where you can't just give in to comic madness, else you become a joke yourself, when you disparage people in suffering or who are laid low. The difference is between seriousness and suffering, taking yourself seriously versus being in a serious situation; both have a tragic grandeur, but in one case the tragedy is the narcissist, and in the other, the tragedy is likely a victim of said narcissism. The comedian still seems at liberty to mock seriousness when it is truly serious, and when the antagonism for seriousness is meant for that exceptional egoism, and thus you have the situation of a comedian-bully, who has an ego, and mocks those who are in serious pain.
Comedy in this case is just a defense mechanism to protect this narcissism, to create the illusion that equates that narcissism with humility, a la Trump. It doesn't stand for anything, it just tears things down such to elevate who is tearing them down. Satire, however, corrects this problem, by giving the comedy a clear moral purpose. Nabokov said satire is a lesson, parody is a game. And I appreciate why he values parody over satire on these grounds, truthfully, because of the risk of didacticism. However Nabokov was never short on his own store of "lessons," within his games, which are fairly obvious criticisms laden in his books. The thing that has me defend satire today is not that there is a "lesson," but that there is something affirmed, something that is valued, which the joke does not accomplish on its own. And which satires don't feel inclined to do, taking the haughty stand of a humorist, which is why I call this satirical art, what Nabokov, like to Burroughs and Pynchon, practiced, which is so evidently on the side of poetry. What distinguishes satirical art from satire is that satirical art does not shackle the art-form to pedantry, to lessons, to criticism, but rather that the art has a critical side, which it achieves through effacement; and this is why the cartoon and caricature are such good examples, better than the joke, which effaces logical speech to reassert logical speech, and which degrades the more "serious" party of the two. In essence, the joke is inclined to play party to the ego's cold, logical agenda of conquest; Trump might have loved my Hillary joke. The satirical art however, represents artistry, artistry with an effacement. And the artist may be a philosopher, or so I have to come terms with the fact, but a philosopher who effaces themselves. A joker runs contrary to this scheme, for they are the comedian who serves the status quo, the Fool in a King's court, who is not an effacing constructor. They do not create something, which then reflexively effaces itself. This is what no enemy of Trump seemed to be able to do, but which, perhaps Bill Maher could do, because his comedy has such intellectual substance; like Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Mort Sohl, Bill Hicks, or David Cross, sometimes it's not even that funny but promulgated by a clear message, comedy is a vehicle for some sort of statement.
Not to say that I think these names, including Maher, are really the best of all possible solutions, they are satirists, and what I am favoring is satirical artists. There is still a cultural emptiness to what all of them do, and why an effacing philosopher has an edge on them in my book is because philosophy is a highly rigorous form of writing, not just a comic sharing of opinions. I'm very well aware how much skill goes into this form of stand-up comedy, but I doubt its usefulness, I doubt that it accomplishes very much except in its most avant-garde moments, when it approaches art. John Cleese had a lot to say, which is very good stuff he's saying, in Faulty Towers, and yet that show is not nearly so good as Monty Python, because Python approached art. Another example is Groucho's work as a game show host; he's always brilliantly funny, but in the context of the films, things are taken to a sublime level, which is outside the social level. These social satirists essentially reaffirm the social discourse, like social critics do, whereas art destabilizes it. And philosophy has some kind of -- begrudgingly bestowed by myself, the reluctant philosopher -- artistry because of its density, and its being written. Jim Carrey can be quite funny as a late night talk show guest, but not nearly so powerful as when on-screen as Ace Ventura or one of his other better on-screen characters. The social satire reaffirms the social discourse, in which politicians and journalists participate, whereas art, and philosophy, exists outside of it. One of the major crimes of our culture is that it establishes these academic disciplines as feminine, and aristocratic, which is idiotic, for all the rich people are talking on Twitter and making crappy movies. But these rich, uneducated people, like Trump, establish a bourgeois status quo, norms of communication. The substance of high art and philosophy is work. It loses its false sense of privilege when you consider its sophistication as a product of labor. By contrast, morons on late night talk shows are "capital," vacuous dolts with nothing to say, but who say nothing very well and charmingly. Intellectualism just as well as artistry, their being coded as for the wealthy, is a delusion, which is symptomatic of a society that has no appreciation for labor, only money.
However, in today's world the intellectual or the artist needs to understand the terms of their marginalization, and from whence they originate, which is a legitimate criticism made of "seriousness," which is the existence of intellectualism and artistry which is non-effacing, non-satirical, and which does express elitism, perhaps the elitism of the self-made millionaire. Without being able to efface the intellectualism and artistry is as much a problem as a social satire in the public sphere which does not have any culture to it. For then, the intellectualism and artistry has a fascistic intent, a Luciferic intent, working contrary to the Satanic intent of the comedian misanthrope. The person who takes themselves too seriously and the person who tears everybody down with jokes are two sides of the same coin; they accomplish the same result; I am more serious than you (because you are such a joke), with the latter thing being added for the bully-comedian. Thus serious philosophy and art will always be a joke, unless it is a joke, without compromising any of the thoughtful artistry. The artistry is what negates social discourse for a form of communication that is more sublime, more dynamic, emotional, spiritual, "exceptional" from the vulgar chatter of the corrupt social order. Yet without effacing itself, it is vulnerable to being attacked for its being exceptional, serious, ivory-tower, etc. The satirist non-artist has the reverse problem, for not representing any real work of art, everything occurs inside the vulgar chatter they are said to deride but yet participate in; they come off like cosmopolitans like Wilde, who are beyond the fray and within it. Two forms of vulnerability must cohere together to protect ourselves, the sincerity and the effacement. The vulnerability of effacement permits social satirists to feel themselves above the fray of the pretentious and deluded, and the vulnerability of sincerity permits intellectuals and artists to feel themselves above the fray of the cynical and cheap. Both forms of vulnerability grant some sense of power, but they are vulnerable to the other's attack if both vulnerabilities are not combined. And this is what I propose satirical art does; by being neither the pure effacement of a joke, or the pure sincerity of a science. And this is why I am the inventor of JOKE SCIENCE, a name for the philosophy of satirical art. It is a form of strength derived from the combination of vulnerabilities, that of the serious and the playful. It has no technique, only labor; the labor makes it serious, and the lack of technique makes it playful.
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