Subversion as expression

ben | 30 Nov 2022, 7:25 p.m.

I promise you this is a philosophical rambling, not a scientific one. With that promise made, let's consider the RS-232 protocol. 

This is a protocol used for communication between terminal devices. You would probably recognise one as being used to connect up old monitors. 

The reason it interests me is due to the fact that the standard for communication on these connectors deviates from the normal way of expressing 1s and 0s. Usually you would express a 0 by putting no voltage through a wire, and express a 1 by putting a lot (for your definition of 'a lot') of voltage through a wire. Makes sense. 

RS-232 instead demands that a 1 is expressed by putting a lot of voltage through a wire, and a 0 is expressed by putting a lot of negative voltage through a wire. (This isn't quite what the specification says, but it doesn't matter for my purposes.)

This alternate method of defining how to express a 0 and 1 down a piece of copper isn't per se worse than what I claim is the default way. It's basically a translation of the graph that stretches the bottom line downwards. The only way in which it is special is in relation to the other definition is by comparison; in the same way that if there were only one person in existence, it would be difficult to explain how he could possibly be tall or short, and it would certainly be impossible for him to be taller or shorter than anyone else.

 

This is the idea of subverting expectations, or more specifically, subverting a set of rules. It may be that two things are by themselves not particularly notable, but by standing one up as a subversion of another, it may intensify both. For example, modern art would probably not be notable if it were not for the entire institution of art that it was trying to subvert. Without the idea of art as it was, there would be no modern art; there would just be some very confusing first attempts at art.

My favourite examples of this are those in literature. When reading Fahrenheit 451 I initially thought it a bit funny how intense the author was in expressing his love of literature. It seemed a bit over the top, definitely not subtle. This deep longing he describes in his main character, how he makes the enemies complete dullards, and how over the top the entire scenario is - burning all books, and sometimes people with them? It's verging on corny. 

Of course the context explains this. It was written at a time in the USA when book burnings in Nazi Germany weren't too long ago and cold war censorship inside the country was on the rise. The reds were under the bed, and they better not be reading anti-capitalist fiction under there.

So the book is meant to be a defiant piece of mockery, or maybe even a not very well controlled expression of fear. It was difficult to publish, as you might well expect. It first met readers in Playboy magazine (which I was surprised to learn does have a history of publishing subversive content).

I don't think it would be possible to carry the same meaning that Farenheit-451 did without the historical context that grounded the subversive aspect of it. If it weren't an expression of fear, if it weren't a form of mockery, if it weren't something that the then government of the United States did not want to see, then it wouldn't really have been the same Farenheit-451.

More specifically Farenheit-451 could not have had the same meaning if there weren't the background setting to be subvervisive in. It was something more for it.

 

People like being right. People often like telling others that they're wrong even more. It's dubious as to how relevant this is to subversion, but I'd claim that saying something and then being told you're wrong is all the more powerful for the fact that your assertion is being subverted, or maybe your expectation that you are correct, that people would believe you, is being subverted. It's much worse than merely being wrong (maybe knowing that you made a mistake, but never having uttered your belief) or even less, merely not being right. 

 

My point in all this is that subversion can be important, and it can contain something valuable. Literature uses it well; humour uses it well. Irony and sarcasm is almost a trivialisation of subversion, and I do quite like those. Ironically enough, then, the reason I bothered to write this is that I read Rousseau making a point about how terrible setting up rules and expectations can be. In his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences he writes about how technological and social advancement has made the life of man worse, and less civilised. He thinks that by obfuscating man's default drives, by making him play games to partake in society, we're ruining his morals and wasting his time ("While the commodities of life multiply, while the arts perfect themselves, and while luxury spreads, true courage grows enervated, and military virtues vanish—once again the work of the sciences and all those arts which are practised in the shadows of the study.") 

His writing is quite good, and the similarity to the Unabomber's manifesto quite funny in what I would by default describe as an antiquated piece of writing (I know they both claim to be looking further back in history than a couple hundred years, but I maintain the comparison is prima facie funny). The first thing that came to mind, and kept knocking around at the back of my head though was: even if it were true that we were forced into useless rules and games of living in a society, these arbitrary practises grant us yet more abilities to be subvervise. And that's got to be cool somehow.