Abstract
The two faces of Janus emerge in this chapter to invoke the perspectives of the arts and the sciences, C. P. Snow’s two cultures, reconnected in a renewed hybrid persona. The “Goddess” is the mythological narrative of Bali that is wedded here to the “Computer” inscribed in the cybernetic analysis of the human-ecological system. In the present film, they come to a meeting of the minds, embodied in “priests and programmers,” as Stephen Lansing describes their union, working together to create sustainable agriculture. The wider perspective that their meeting implies is mirrored in Roy Rappaport’s landmark work in the functional human ecology of the Maring people of New Guinea. Here, he found and demonstrated functionally, as Bateson surmised about Balinese and Iatmul, the ritual system was coupled with ecological and social systems to produce a form of adaptation in dynamic equilibrium, a relative steady state, with its biotic and social environments. The escalating curves of symmetrical schismogenesis that have so haunted Euro-American civilization and now threaten it with collapse are curtailed by religious ritual in traditional Bali and New Guinea. That the Western escalations of conflict are augmented by modern technology, which to date is still not being effectively tempered by information techniques or the humane ministrations of the arts and humanities, makes the fruitful meeting of the goddess and computer here significant and timely. It depicts a peaceable hybrid identity not unlike the Buddhist persona of Dōgen in dialogue with the self-thinking thought of Aristotle and Hegel, or the logos of Heraclitus: a conversation of distinctive value for audiences in the Anthropocene.
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His critique is largely based on general claims (1) that might seem coherent and sensible—Lansing’s work is Orientalist (253–254), (2) that Bali is itself a colonial construction (254), his work re-inscribes patterns of dependency established by neocolonialism (256), (3) that Lansing’s work redefines what are essentially inequalities in political power in terms of communication and so depoliticises them (256–257) and, accordingly, fails to recognize the power of the Brahman caste whose members, according to Helmreich, control the water system, (4) that Lansing’s work is based on Americanist assumptions about distributing digital technologies to spread corporate interests and World Bank hegemony over “developing” nations (157–258), (5) that the computer screen brings with it a “colonialist gaze” as derived from Mulvey’s (1975) “male gaze” and “God’s eye view” of the Balinese economy derived from Haraway (1991) yet citing neither, and so on.
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Foucault creates a nuanced picture of power working in social relations which figures in Lansing’s analysis of the water temple system (see below):
Power is not a substance. Neither is it a mysterious property whose origin must be delved into. Power is only a certain type of relation between individuals. Such relations are specific, that is, they have nothing to do with exchange, production, communication, even though they combine with them. The characteristic feature of power is that some men can more or less entirely determine other men’s conduct—but never exhaustively or coercively. A man who is chained up and beaten is subject to force being exerted over him. Not power. But if he can be induced to speak, when his ultimate recourse could have been to hold his tongue, preferring death, then he has been caused to behave in a certain way. His freedom has been subjected to power. He has been submitted to government. If an individual can remain free, however little his freedom may be, power can subject him to government. There is no power without potential refusal or revolt. (1981, 253; 1986, 17)
Bateson and Foucault would agree on the key point: “Power is only a certain type of relation between individuals.” Foucault might also agree that, as Bateson argues, that Joseph Goebbels could not unilaterally control Nazi Germany: “Goebbels thought that he could control public opinion in Germany with a vast communication system, and our own public relations men are perhaps liable to similar delusions. But in fact the would-be controller must always have his spies out to tell him what the people are saying about his propaganda. He is therefore in the position of being responsive to what they are saying. Therefore he cannot have a simple lineal control. We do not live in the sort of universe in which simple lineal control is possible. Life is not like that” (2000b, 443–444).
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“itaque vidi et manifestatum est mihi quia omnia bona tu fecisti et prorsus nullae substantiae sunt quas tu non fecisti. et quoniam non aequalia omnia fecisti, ideo sunt omnia, quia singula bona sunt, et simul omnia valde bona, quoniam fecit deus noster omnia bona valde.”
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“η δέ νοέσις η καθ’ αυτέν του καθ’ αυτό αρίστου, καί η μάλιστα του μάλιστα. αυτόν δέ νοει ο νους κατά μετάληψιν του νοητου: νοητός γάρ γίγνεται θιγγάνων καί νοων, ωστε ταυτόν νους καί νοητόν. τό γάρ δεκτικόν του νοητου καί της ουσίας νους, ενεργει δέ έχων, ώστ’ εκεήνου μαλλον τουτο ό δοκει ο νους θειον έχειν, καί η θεωρία τό έδιστον καή άριστον. ει ουν ούτως ευ έχει, ως ημεις ποτέ, ο θεός αεί, θαυμαστόν: ει δέ μαλλον, έτι θαυμασιώτερον. έχει δέ ωδε. καί ζωή δέ γε υπάρχει: η γάρ νου ενέργεια ζωή, εκεινος δέ η ενέργεια: ενέργεια δέ η καθ’ αυτήν εκείνου ζωή αρι´στη καί αι´διος. φαμε`ν δή τόν θεόν ειναι ζωον αι´διον άριστον, ώστε ζωή καή αιω`ν συνεχής καί αι´διος υπάρχει τω θεω: τουτο γάρ ο θεός.”
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“Diese Wissenschaft ist insofern die Einheit der Kunst und Religion, als die der Form nach äußerliche Anschauungsweise der ersteren, deren subjektives Produzieren und Zersplittern des substantiellen Inhalts in viele selbständige Gestalten, in der Totalität der zweiten, deren in der Vorstellung sich entfaltendes Auseinandergehen und Vermitteln des Entfalteten, nicht nur zu einem Ganzen zusammengehalten, sondern auch in die einfache geistige Anschauung vereint und dann zum selbstbewußten Denken erhoben ist. Dies Wissen ist damit der denkend erkannte Begriff der Kunst und Religion, in welchem das in dem Inhalte Verschiedene als notwendig und dies Notwendige als frei erkannt ist.”
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Hegel says, in the full sentence here: “Diese Bewegung, welche die Philosophie ist, findet sich schon vollbracht, indem sie am Schluß ihren eigenen Begriff erfaßt, d. i. nur auf ihr Wissen zurücksieht,” “This movement, which philosophy is, finds itself already achieved, as in conclusion it grasps its own concept, i.e., looks back only on its knowledge.” He goes on to complete his syllogistic vision, writing, “die Idee der Philosophie, welche die sich wissende Vernunft [ist]” (“the idea of philosophy, which is self-knowing reason,” making explicit his idea of circularity or reflexivity in the train of thought. Knowledge of nature becomes self-knowledge as object and subject are rejoined. What he clearly has in mind is Aristotle’s “self-thinking thought” in the passage quoted above from Metaphysics: “auton de noei ho nous kata metalēpsis to noētou,” literally, “thought thinks itself due to its partaking of thinking.”
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Also see Kahn’s commentary (1979, 96–99).
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White, D. (2018). Documentary Intertext: André Singer’s and J. Stephen Lansing’s The Goddess and the Computer 1988. In: Film in the Anthropocene. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93015-2_9
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