Billigung

Billigung (pronounced bill-a-ghin)

(1) To approve.

(2) To acquiesce.

(3) Tacitly to accept; not to oppose.

(4) "Looking the other way" from something one would not wish to admit knowledge of; a means of creating a defense of plausible deniability; a self-denial of knowledge.

1300s: A Modern German form from the Old High German billīh (appropriate), from the Proto-Germanic biliz (merciful, kind, decent, fair), the variant being Billigung (approval; acceptance), the construct being billig(en) +‎ -ung (from the Middle High German -ung & -unge, from the Old High German -unga, from the Proto-Germanic -ungō; it was used to forms nouns from verbs, usually describing either an event in which an action is carried out, or the result of that action).  The third-person singular & simple present tense is billigt, the past tense is billigte, the past participle is gebilligt and the auxiliary haben.  In German, bein a noun there's always an initial capital but when used in English as a general descriptor (sepecially in a legal context), it usually all in lower-case.  Billigung is a noun and in German, there's no plural form although in English-language texts it might appear as "billigungs" for the sake of clarity. 

When wishing not to know, look the other way

The German Billigung is not so much hard to translate as able to be translated in a number of senses; context is everything.  The way it is used to mean “looking away; avoiding specific knowledge of something which one knows or suspects is happening” was clarified in 1977.  Albert Speer (1905-1981, Reich Minister for Armaments 1942-1945), the convicted war criminal, had always denied any knowledge of the holocaust and was displeased when sent the English translation of a profile to be published in Die Zeit magazine in which Billigung had been rendered as his “...tacit consent...” of the final solution.  This he corrected, explaining Billigung in this context meant “looking away”.  This meant he averted his gaze from the worst crime of the criminal régime he served in order to be able to deny he knew of it.  Speer, predictably, was able to summon a word to explain this too: Ahnumg (the sensing of something without quite knowing exactly what).  He did at least concede the implication of his translation “...is as grave…” as the original, one biographer noting that had Speer said as much at his trial “…he would have been hanged.”  Other historians and some lawyers disagreed with that but it was an assertion the author was unable to pursue.  When she tried to nudge Speer a little further, pointing out that for one to look away from something, one must first know it's there, he didn’t deny what he’d earlier said but added they “…must never speak of it again".  The moment passed and within weeks he would be dead, dying "on the job" in police slang.  Some have noted the feeling Speer conveyed of always somehow longing to confess his knowledge of the holocaust.  He so often came so close to admitting he knew what he'd always denied, as if the last great act of his life would have been to admit worst of the the guilt he convinced himself (and some others) he'd evaded when the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at the first Nuremberg  Trial (1945-1946) convicted him of war crimes & crimes against humanity (counts 3 & 4) and sentenced him to twenty years imprisonment.

Albert Speer in conversation with his lawyer Dr Hans Flächsner (1896-dod unrecorded) and a legal associate, Nuremburg, 1945.

Looking the other way.

In what he described as a “...leadership failure...", former Australian cricket captain Steve Smith (b 1989) has admitted he "didn't want to know about it" when he became aware “something” was being planned after seeing team mates in a dressing room discussion.  Their talks he witnessed were about ball-tampering, a form of cheating which came to be known as sandpapergate.  Billigung is one of those useful German creations (zeitgeist, schadenfreude et al) which in one word conveys what might in English take a dozen or more.  Operating somewhere on the spectrum of plausible deniability, Billigung is where someone hears of or perhaps “senses” something of which they’d prefer there be no admissible evidence of their knowledge; they “look the other way”.

Gladys Berejiklian (b 1970; Premier (Liberal) of New South Wales 2017-2021) & Daryl Maguire (b 1959, MLA (Liberal) for Wagga Wagga 1999-2018).

For some, Billigung might have come to mind when pondering the recording of a telephone call between then New South Wales (Australia) Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Daryl Maguire, another member of the same parliament with whom she was in an intimate relationship, a man forced to resign as an MP as a result of an (ongoing)  investigation by the NSW Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC) for allegedly using his political influence in business activities.  Of interest was the premier’s use of the phrase "I don't need to know about that bit" when the former member began to tell her some details of his dubious deals.  To that pertinent observation, Mr Maguire replied "No, you don't".  The suggestion is the premier failed to declare a conflict of interest when dealing with the allocation of taxpayer funds which would be to the benefit of her then lover.  The words used by the then premier: "I don't need to know about that bit" may be compared with how Speer described his response in mid-1944 to being warned by a friend "never, under any circumstances" "to accept an invitation to inspect a concentration camp in Upper Silesia".  Speer's friend explained that at that place he'd "...seen something there which he was not permitted to describe and moreover could not describe".  Having received what he claimed was his first knowledge of Auschwitz, Speer asked no questions of anyone, later admitting: "I did not want to know what was happening there".  That was what he later called Billigung.     

At the time the recording was made public, the former premier denied any wrongdoing beyond having appalling taste in men.  Apart from the men in her life (and not a few women would ruefully admit to having "had a Daryl"), she probably was unlucky.  Billigung has long been a part of that essential tactic of political survival: "plausible deniability".  Actually, as practiced these days, because standards of accountability seem to have declined a bit, denials needs no longer be plausible, just not actually disproven by a publicly available audio tape or film clip.  Others, beyond NSW, might be taking interest, especially those south of the border intimately involved in party machines who, apparently for decades, didn't notice certain things going on around them.     

On 1 October 2021, the NSW ICAC announced certain investigations into the former premier's conduct in office.  Specifically, ICAC is focusing on the period between 2012-2018 and her her involvement in the circumstances in which public money was given to a shooting club and a conservatorium of music and whether that conduct was “...liable to allow or encourage the occurrence of corrupt conduct by Mr Maguire”.  The ICAC will explore whether the conduct constituted a “breach of public trust” by placing the former premier in a position where a conflict of interest existed between her public duties and private interests “...as a person who was in a personal relationship” with Mr Maguire.  The commission will also investigate whether she failed to report what could be defined as reasonable suspicions that “...concerned or may concern corrupt conduct in relation to the conduct of Mr Maguire”.  As a point of law, the ICAC is concerned with actual substantive conduct and conflicts of interest.  It is not the test of "apprehended bias" applied to the judiciary where judgements can be set aside if a court finds there could have been a "reasonable perception" of bias or conflict of interest in some way involving a judge.  To the ICAC, any degree of perception, reasonable or not, is not relevant, their findings must be based on actual conduct.

On 1 October 2021, Berejiklian announced her resignation from both the premiership and the legislative assembly.  There are critics of the NSW ICAC who oppose the public hearings and feel its rules permit an exercise of powers rather too much like the Court of Star Chamber which they say it too closely resembles.  However, the former premier can reflect that unlike the IMT at Nuremberg, neither the Star Chamber nor the ICAC were vested with capital jurisdiction so there’s that.

Dieselgate and implausible deniability

Former Audi CEO Rupert Stadler (b 1963, right) with his lawyers Ulrike Thole-Groll (left) & Thilo Pfordte (centre) during his trial, Munich District Court, May 2023.

The billigung defense is still heard in German courts and if not always exculpatory, lawyers still appreciate its effectiveness in mitigation.  Rupert Stadler began his career with Audi AG (a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group) in 1990 and between 2010-2018 was Audi’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO).  The scandal which came to be known as “dieselgate” involved companies in the Volkswagen group (and others) installing “cheat” software in diesel-powered vehicles so excessive exhaust emissions wouldn’t be detected during official testing and, after years of obfuscation, Volkswagen in 2015 admitted that was what exactly they’d done.  Civil and criminal proceedings in a number of jurisdictions ensued and thus far the fines alone have cost the group well over €34 million.  There have also been jail sentences imposed, something which presumably would have been in Herr Stadler’s thoughts when, in March 2018, Munich prosecutors named him as a suspect in their investigations.  A week later, he was arrested and held in an Augsburg prison, apparently as a precautionary move because it was claimed he was tampering with evidence by making a telephone call in which he suggested putting a witness “on leave”.  After a month, he was released on bail, subject to certain conditions.

In September 2020, Herr Stadler’s trial on charges of fraud began and for years (proceedings now take rather longer than in 1945-1946) he denied all wrongdoing until, in May 2023, he accepted a plea deal offered by Judge Stefan Weickert which would require him to admit guilt.  To date, he’s the highest-ranking executive to confess, tempted apparently by (1) the preponderance of evidence before the court which made it clear he was guilty as sin and (2) the deal limiting his punishment to a €1.1 million fine and a suspended sentence which would not see him jailed, an attractive alternative to the long term of imprisonment he otherwise faced upon conviction.  As confessions go however, it was among the more nuanced.  His lawyer read a statement saying the defendant (1) did not know that vehicles had been manipulated and buyers had been harmed, but (2) he acknowledged it was a possibility and accepted that, adding that in his case (3) there was a need for more care.  A classic piece of billigung, was the line (4) “I didn't know, but I recognized it as possible and accepted that the properties of diesel engines might not meet legal approval requirements” while the statement (5) “I have to admit the allegations overall” had an echo of Speer’s admission of “a general responsibility” while denying personal guilt.  Still, it must have conformed with the terms of the plea bargain because it was accepted by the judge.  His lawyer read the statement, apparently because he couldn’t bring himself personally to utter it but when asked by the judge if the words were his own, Herr Stadler replied (5) “Ja”.

Lindsay Lohan with Audi A5 cabriolet, Los Angeles, May 2011.  Ms Lohan apparently avoided being affected by the dieselgate scandal, all the photographs of her driving Audis have featured gasoline (petrol) powered cars.

Outside the court, his lawyer was a little more expansive, admitting her client had allowed vehicles equipped with manipulating software to remain on sale even after learning of the scam.  “In the course of addressing the diesel issue" after the revelations became public, Stadler “neglected” to inform business partners that cars with so-called defeat devices were still going on the market, meaning he was “accepting that vehicles equipped with the illegal software would go on sale” she said.  Although it may have been stating the obvious, she added Herr Stadler regretted he’d been unable to “resolve the crisis”.  The carefully composed text may however have averted another crisis, lawyers noting the cryptic nature of some of his comments might be explained by a desire not to create grounds for additional claims by consumers for financial compensation.

How that might unfold remains to be seen but on 27 June 2023 the Munich court handed down a 21 month sentence, suspended for three years, a fine of €1.1 million (US$1.2 million) also imposed; that will go to the federal government and charities, the court ruled without providing details.  Herr Stadler was the first member of the Volkswagen board member to be sentenced for his part in the scandal, the judgment coming some four years after prosecutors first laid fraud charges.  Guilty verdicts were also delivered against two former Audi executives: head of engine development Wolfgang Hatz (b 1959) and lead diesel engineer Giovanni Pamio (b 1963) who were handed suspended jail sentences of 24 months and 21 months, respectively.  Hatz was fined €400,000 (US$437,000) and Pamio €50,000 (US$55,000).  All three were guilty as sin so the verdicts were unsurprising.

Dr Angela Merkel (b 1954; chancellor of Germany 2005-2021) & Dr Martin Winterkorn (b 1947; CEO of Volkswagen AG 2007-2015).

The long-running scandal (the fines and settlements thus far ordered having cost the group some €33 billion (US$36 billion)) still has some way to run because the case against former CEO Martin Winterkorn has yet to be heard although he’s already agreed to pay VW €11.2 million (US$12.3 million) after an internal investigation found he failed properly to respond to signs the company may have been using unlawful technology which enabled its diesel engines to evade emissions testing and it's not yet clear if Dr Winterkorn will try the billigung defense.  Herr Stadler was required to pay VW €4.1 million ($US4.5 million) under terms agreed following the same investigation.  The company clearly wished to move on and in separately issued statements, Volkswagen and Audi said they were not party to Tuesday’s proceedings, which should be “viewed independently” of proceedings against the companies which had (in Germany) been finalized in 2018.  Audi seemed anxious to confirm it was now a righteous corporation, saying “Audi has made good use of the crisis as an opportunity to start over.  We have updated our systems, processes and checks to ensure compliance company-wide.”  It concluded by noting it had since “cultivated and strengthened a culture of constructive debate.”  In exchange for agreeing to pay the fines, prosecutors dropped criminal charges against Volkswagen and Audi.  

Vis-a-vis

Vis-a-vis (pronounced vee-zuh-vee or vee-za-vee (French))

(1) A French phrase, literally, “face to face” constructed with the prepositional use of the adjective.

(2) In numismatics (of a coin) having two portraits facing each other.

(3) As a preposition (some pedants disapprove of some of the extensions of meaning), in relation to; compared with; as opposed to.

(4) A type of horse-drawn carriage commonly made by Amish coachbuilders, mostly in the mid-western US; also produced for the tourist trade in various places.  In the horse-drawn era, vis-à-vis carriages were usually described as barouches, berlines or landaus depending on their configuration.

(5) A sofa in the shape of the letter “S” with seats for two, so arranged that the occupants can be face to face while sitting on opposite sides; sometimes called the tête-à-tête (literally head to head).

(6) One’s date or escort at a social event (obsolete).

(7) In limousines, a coach-builder’s term for a rear compartment configured with two rows of seats, facing each other.

1755: From the French prepositional use of the adjective vis-à-vis (face to face) from the Old French vis (face).  Vis is from the Old French viz, from the Latin vītis (vine) from the primitive Indo-European wéhitis (that which twines or bends, branch, switch), from wehiy- (to turn, wind, bend) which influenced also the Latin vieō and the English withe.  The à is from the Old French a, from the Latin ad, from the primitive Indo-European ád (near; at).  The French vis was an obsolete word for “face”, replaced in contemporary French by visage.  The literal meaning has long run in parallel with the modern meanings (“in comparison with; in relation to; as opposed to” although pedants disapprove because of the imprecision).  In French, the original sense is preserved also as real estate jargon meaning the windows of one house are within sighting distance of those of the neighboring house (literally that the occupants can see into each-other’s homes).  In English, the un-accented spelling vis-a-vis is now more common. 

Prostoria Vis-a-vis Sofa Segment.

The companion term tête-à-tête (from the French and literally “head-to-head”) means “a private conversation between two people, usually in an intimate setting”) and thus, strictly speaking, refers to a process rather than a seating arrangement and, since advances in communication technology, one can have a tête-à-tête over a phone call whereas to be vis-a-vis with them, physical closeness is demanded.  However, the two terms are often used interchangeably and the use of vis-a-vis is also sometimes the victim of linguistic promiscuity, suggesting sometimes just about any juxtaposition.  Furniture makers also variously describe the “S” shaped sofas using either term.  Occasionally, those who use vis-a-vis in its classic sense will baffle others as Horace Greeley Hjalmar Schacht (1877–1970) managed while being cross-examined during his trial before the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg (1945-1946):

Prosecutor: The position you took, as I understand it, was that the Wehrmacht was important not so much as an aggressive weapon against strong countries, Austria & Czechoslovakia, as against, or vis-a-vis, if you will, the larger powers, the concert of nations in Europe… in other words, the army stood there… as a weapon… vis-a-vis the Austrians.

Schacht: Not vis-à-vis the Austrians but vis-a-vis the Allies.

Prosecutor: I am a little naïve about these things, I must say.  You say… not vis-a-vis Austria but against the powers?

Schacht: Not against the powers but vis-a-vis the powers.

The rarely convivial Hjalmar Schacht, with the Führer.

Although that exchange was not critical in Schacht securing one of the three acquittals the bench delivered, the judges doubtlessly enjoyed it more than the prosecution.  At various times during the Third Reich, Schacht had served as Minister of Economics, Plenipotentiary General for War Economy and President of the Reichsbank (the German central bank) and he’d been indicted on counts one (conspiracy to commit crimes against peace) & two (crimes against peace).  His acquittal on both disappointed many but there were many technical difficulties in the case and the prosecution frankly lacked the expertise in matters of public finance and international banking needed to understand the details, let alone pursue them to the standard needed to convince the judges (except for the Russians who were convinced before the hearings began) to convict.  To be fair, the matters were complex and the financial wizardry with which Schacht concocted the money to allow the Nazi’s rearmament programme to be paid for was hardly orthodox monetary policy.  In particular his invention of the Metallurgische Forschungsgesellschaft (thankfully abbreviated to Mefo) which essentially meant the Reichsbank loaned money to the government (which under any other circumstances would have been unlawful) without raising loans or increasing the money supply seemed mysterious to the lawyers.  It was quite a trick and indicative of the intricacies which littered the case.

The ex-comrade Marshal Tito 1968 Mercedes-Benz 600 Pullman Landaulet (six-door, long-roof) with jump seats. 

The optional vis-a-vis seating configuration in the rear compartment of the Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100;1963-1981) Pullman was something of a novelty, the competitor limousines from the UK or US built usually with an opulent rear bench for two or three with a pair of utilitarian fold-away (jump or occasional) seats for staff or other temporary occupants (even the infamous X-100, the Lincoln Continental in which John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) was assassinated used jump seats).  There had been the odd exception.  While the limousines or horse-drawn carriages of kings and emperors had side-by-side seats for two to accommodate a consort, the Roman Catholic popes were granted a single, raised, throne-like chair for, unlike less spiritual heads of state, the bachelor Bishop of Rome never (officially) had a consort to accommodate (there were a few concubines but (as far as is known) they predated the automobile.

1957 Imperial Limousine by Ghia (left), 1964 Crown Imperial Limousine by Ghia (centre) and 1967 Imperial Limousine by Theodorou with the unusual folding vis-a-vis seats (right).  

The 600’s much-admired vis-a-vis option arrangement did seem to affect the US coachbuilders, the configuration seating seen more frequently in the years that followed its debut.  Prior to that, the elongated editions of Cadillacs, Packards, Lincolns and Imperials usually had rear compartments (often trimmed in leather unlike the cars from the UK which traditionally used leather only in front (for the chauffeur) with “West of England cloth” for the passengers) equipped with jump seats.  Even the Imperial Limousine built for Chrysler with (untypically) exquisite care and precision in Italy by Ghia (1957-1965) used them but when production was outsourced to US operators, coach-builders such as Chicago-based Andrew Theodorou included what they called “conversation seats” which, cleverly, were arranged vis-a-vis but folded in such a way that most of the additional space afforded by the conventional jump seats was retained.  During the stretch limousine era in the US, vis-a-vis seating was often used.

Mercedes-Benz 600 Pullman Landaulet (four-door, short-roof) with vis-a-vis seats.  Almost all the 600s delivered to North America, Australia and the UK were trimmed in leather but in Europe and some export markets, mohair wasn't unusual and the factory even made available its famously durable MB-Tex (a high quality vinyl rumored to verge on the indestructible) but none were ever so equipped. 

Mercedes-Benz offered the vis-a-vis configuration, in a choice of leather or mohair, in both the 600 Pullman’s closed form and the rare landaulets with their fold-back roof.  The landaulets however were often parade vehicles, used to percolate along crowd-lined boulevards with a prince, president, pope or potentate standing and waving and for this purpose, the vis-a-vis seats intruded too much and the fold-away jump seats, which afforded more standing room, were preferred.  That’s why illustrious 600 Landaulet owners such as comrade Marshall Tito, North Korea’s Great Leader, Dear Leader & Supreme Leader, the Shah of Iran, Robert Mugabe, Saddam Hussein, Mobutu Sese Seko, Idi Amin, Nicolae Ceaușescu, P W Botha and a dozen-odd others of varying degrees of virtue, all eschewed the vis-a-vis arrangement because it made it too hard to stand and wave.  Only ever produced in small numbers (although such was the factory’s misplaced optimism they hoped they might make a thousand a year) the 600 was introduced at the Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung (IAA, the  Frankfurt Motor Show, September 1963) and in a run of eighteen-odd years (1964-1981), only 2,677 were made, 2,190 of the standard-length sedan (referred to often as the short-wheelbase (SWB), a relative term given it was over eighteen feet (5.5 m) long), 487 of the twenty and a half foot long Pullmans of which 59 were landaulets.  Of the rare landaulets, most had a convertible top which exposed only rear-most of the back seats, twelve being built with a longer fabric roof which rendered open the entire rear compartment, this dozen often called the “presidential landaulets” although this was never an official name.  Although the specification sometimes varied, the Pullmans with the jump-seats usually were configured with six doors while the vis-a-vis models used four.

Seated vis-a-vis, Lindsay Lohan and her sister Aliana, enjoying a tête-à-tête, La Conversation bakery & café, West Hollywood, California, April 2012.  Sadly, La Conversation is now closed.

Avoirdupois

Avoirdupois (pronounced av-er-duh-poiz)

(1) As the avoirdupois system, a system of weight measurements.

(2) In informal (and usually jocular) use, excess body weight (mostly US).

(3) Merchandise (usually that sold by weight but also applied generally) (obsolete).

1650s: From the thirteenth century Middle English avoir de pois, aver de peise, haburdy poyse, haburdepays & haburdepeyse, (literally “goods of weight, property of weight”) from the Old French avoir de pois (goods, property, literally “asset of weight”), the construct being avoir (from the earlier aveir, from the Latin habēre (to have) + de (of), from the Latin dē, + pois (from the earlier peis, from the Latin pēnsum (something weighed, weight), from pendere (to weigh, weigh out).  The alternative spelling was the now obsolete averdupois.  Avoirdupois emerged in the 1650s as a misspelling (the French du displacing the original de from Latin) of the Middle English avoir-de-peise, the Norman form of the Old French avoir de pois which was the equivalent of the Medieval Latin averia ponderis), the construct being aveir (property, goods (and a noun use of aveir (have)), from the Classical Latin habere, from the primitive Indo-European root ghabh- (to give or receive) + peis (weight), from the Latin pensum, neuter of pendere (to hang, cause to hang; weigh; pay), from the primitive Indo-European root spen or pen (to draw, stretch, spin).  In the system of weights & measures, the accepted abbreviations are avdp & avoir.  Avoirdupois is a noun; the noun plural is avoirdupoises.

The oldest sense in English is the late thirteenth century “goods sold by weight” and by the late 1400s it had been partially codified as a system of weights based on the pound which contained 16 ounces or 7000 grains (453.59 grams); 100 pounds (US) or 112 pounds (UK) being equal to 1 hundredweight and 20 hundredweights equals 1 ton.  Since circa 1300 it had been the customary system in London and in legislation it was formalized as the UK’s official system in 1856, something which lasted until 1963 (the US mandated it between 1866-1959 although it remains widely used (in the form modified in 1959) to this day).  In England for hundreds of years it was used for all purposes except the measuring of precious metals, gem stones, and medicine but the apothecaries, although they had their own tables of weights & measures needed also to be acquainted with avoirdupois because why they sold their preparations in the apothecaries system, they purchased their raw ingredients in avoirdupois.

Collins English Dictionary: Avoirdupois trend of use.

As a euphemism, avoirdupois is a reputedly more polite way of saying “overweight” and etymologists note the use was historically usually jocular and a popular way to describe the state of one’s self.  At one time it was common for this to be shortened to adipose but it was from a source altogether more blunt, the Latin adeps & adipis meaning “fat” or “grease”.  Adipose found a niche in the international scientific vocabulary and was from the New Latin adipōsus, from the Latin adeps and was probably is some way related to the Umbrian ařepes (offerings of fat) (the “ř” in Umbrian regularly represents an earlier “d”).  The Collins English Dictionary traces word usage and it’s clear avoirdupois has, except for a spike during World War II when much technical documentation was circulated, been in precipitous decline since the early twentieth century, reflecting both the decline in use of it as an informal term and the adoption of the metric system in most of the English-speaking world (even in the US used widely in many sectors).

Lindsay Lohan: Not at all avoirdupois.

Situationism

Situationism (pronounced sich-oo-ey-shuh-niz-uhm)

(1) A fork of Marxist political philosophy, a collection of (often abstract) theories used to build critiques of existing structures.  The overt political project emerged from a mid-twentieth century avant-garde art movement.  

(2) A theory in psychology which holds that personality and behavior is influenced more by external, situational factors than internal traits or motivations.

1955: A compound word: situation + ism.  Situation was from the early fifteenth century Middle English situacioun & situacion (place, position, or location), from Middle French situation, from the Old French situacion, from the Medieval Latin situationem (nominative situatio) (position, situation), the construct being situare (to locate, to place), from situs (a site, a position), thus situate +‎ -ion.  The Latin situs was from the primitive Indo-European root tkei (to settle, dwell, be home).  The meaning "state of affairs" was from 1710, extended specifically by 1803 to mean "a post of employment".  The suffix -ion was from the Middle English -ioun, from the the Old French -ion, from the Latin -iō (genitive -iōnis).  It was appended to a perfect passive participle to form a noun of action or process, or the result of an action or process.  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  The use in political philosophy technically dates from 1955 (as situation ethics) although its origins can be traced to (at least) the nineteenth-century beginnings of sociology.  It was first seen in applied psychology in 1968 (as situational ethics) with publication of a monograph by Walter Mischel (1930-2018) who in later writings displayed some ambivalence.

The Situationist International

SI art: Ralph Rumney (1934-2002), The Change (1957).

Formed in 1957, dissolved in 1972 and eventually more a concept than a movement, the Situationist International (SI) was a trans-European, unstructured collective of artists and political thinkers.  Influenced by the criticism that philosophy had tended increasingly to fail at the moment of its actualization, the SI, although it assumed the inevitability of social revolution, always maintained many (cross-cutting) strands of expectations of the form(s) this might take.  Indeed, just as a world-revolution did not follow the Russian revolutions of 1917, the events of May, 1968 failed to realize the predicted implications; the SI can be said then to have died.  The SI’s discursive output between 1968 and 1972 may be treated either as a lifeless aftermath to an anti-climax or a bunch of bitter intellectuals serving as mourners at their own protracted funeral.

SI art: Constant Niewwenhuys (1920-2005), No Title (1975).

It's wrong to say that when formed the SI had mostly an artistic focus although there was a faction within which certainly preferred the emphasis; indeed, it was the notion of art abstracted from some purpose which was the SI's constant fault-line.  Those most influential in the early days of the SI had been much affected by the physical damage suffered by so many European cities during World War II (1939-1945) and especially the possibilities offered by re-building, thus the interest in concepts like unitary urbanism and psychogeography, essentially a response to the sociological aspects of the re-construction of those cities in the immediate post-war period.  Their work also attracted political theorists, especially those in anti-authoritarian Marxist circles who would come to position themselves as the inheritors of western political liberalism, such as the Lettrist International formed in 1952.  The SI was conceived originally as an even more radical movement which would entirely renounce any connection with high-art and deal instead with the functional business of psychogeography, dissolving rather than exploring the boundaries between life and art.  However, whatever might have been the purity of the founders' intent, the implications of the SI were inherently visual and attracted practitioners from many aspects of art.  Factions formed and any commonality of interest between the utilitarians and the artists proved insufficiently strong to maintain the SI as a unified movement and from formation to extinction, it was always fissiparous.

SI art: Asger Jorn (1914-1973), Letter to my son (1956-1957).

What ultimately coalesced as the core of situationist theory was the concept of the spectacle, an explanation of the mechanism of advanced capitalism’s modern tendency towards expression and mediation of social relations through objects.  It was beyond merely a critique of materialism and used the increasingly layered and complex language of mid-twentieth century Marxist discourse.  The definitive works of the SI were The Society of the Spectacle (1967) by Guy Debord (1931-1994) and The Revolution of Everyday Life (1968) by Raoul Vaneigem (b 1934).  In the riots of 1968, they proved influential, less as entire texts than as sources for phrases, slogans and quotes, widely used on the posters and graffiti which appeared all over French cities during the uprising.  The SI thus proved the primacy of objects in social relations, whether hegemonic or not although the SI generally held that situationism is a meaningless term, a position necessitated by their inherent rejection of ideologies, all of which they dismissed either as useless utopian myths or constructed superstructures existing only to create the social controls required to serve the economic interests of a ruling class.  Much of the history of the SI was one faction rejecting another; indeed, the SI’s transition from artistic to political movement was less organic than disruptive. 

The SI, at least in the more reductionist works, did create some genuinely interesting critiques of the post-war west and some of the early art was, if not exactly new, certainly stark and compelling.  However, it remains hard to identify enough ideas to justify the volume of text produced and phrasing it in what is surely deliberately difficult language does suggest there was an attempt to conceal the poverty and repetition of thought.

SI Propaganda

Geodesic

Geodesic (pronounced jee-uh-des-ik or jee-uh-dee-sik)

(1) In spherical geometry, a segment of a great circle.

(2) In mathematics, a course allowing the parallel-transport of vectors along a course that causes tangent vectors to remain tangent vectors throughout that course (a straight curve, a line that is straight; the shortest line between two points on a specific surface).

1821: A back-formation from geodesy (a branch of science dealing with the measurement and representation of Earth, its gravitational field and geodynamic phenomena (polar motion, Earth tides, and crustal motion) in three-dimensional, time-varying space and with great (and "down-to-earth" as it were) practical application in surveying.  The adjectives geodesical & geodetic had first appeared in 1818 & 1819 respectively, both from geodetical which had been in use since the early seventeenth century.  All the forms are derive ultimately from the Ancient Greek γεωδαισία (geodaisía) from γῆ (geo) (earth) + δαιεῖν (daiesthai) ("to divide" or "to apportion") and the use in English was most influenced by the French géodésique, dating from 1815.  In general use, the word entered general use after 1953 when it was used of the "geodesic dome" (a structure built according to geodesic principles); despite the earlier use in wartime aircraft construction, the use there was only ever "engineer's slang".    Geodesic is a noun & adjective, geodesicity is a noun, geodesical is an adjective and geodesically is an adverb; the noun plural is geodesics.    The alternative adjectival form geodetic appeared in 1834 but fell from use by mid-century.  

Four-dimensional space-time.

Geodesic describes the curve that locally minimizes the distance between two points on any mathematically defined space, such as a curved manifold; essentially the path is the one of the most minimal curvature so, in non-curved three-dimensional space, the geodesic is a straight line.  Under Albert Einstein's (1879-1955) theory of general relativity (1915), the trajectory of a body with negligible mass on which only gravitational forces are acting (ie a free falling body), defines the geodesic in curved, four-dimensional spacetime.  Dictionaries and style guides seem to prefer “space-time” but scientists (and space nerds) like “spacetime” and because it was one of them who “invented it”, it seems polite to ignore the hyphen.  The term, a calque of the German Raumzeit (the construct in English being (obviously) space + time) first appeared in a paper by German mathematician Hermann Minkowski (1864–1909), published in the Philosophical Review.  The existence of the noun plural "spacetimes" does not imply something to do with the so-called multiverse (in cosmology, a hypothetical model in which simultaneously more than one universe exists) but rather that there are different space-times created in different places at different times.

General relativity fan girl Lindsay Lohan in optical illusion dress from the Autumn-Winter collection of interior designer Matthew Williamson (b 1971), illustrating an object causing the curvature of spacetime, Gift Global Gala, Four Seasons hotel, London, November 2014.  An “optical illusion dress” is one which uses a fabric print or other device to create the effect and differs from an “illusion dress” which is made with skin-tone fabrics placed to emulate the wearer’s own flesh.

In Einstein's theory of general relativity, gravity is treated not as a force as had been the historic understanding explained in the writings of Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) but rather as a curvature of spacetime caused by the presence of mass and (thus) energy.  The Sun, being a massive object, causes a (relatively) significant curvature in the surrounding spacetime and the Earth, as it moves through this curved spacetime, follows a path (a geodesic) which manifests as what appears to be an “orbit” around the Sun.  It is this curvature of spacetime that is perceived as the “gravitational pull” of the Sun on the Earth, keeping it in a (relatively) stable and predictable orbit.  Einsteinian physics supplanted Newtonian physics as the structural model of the universe and nothing has since been the same. 

Hull of Vickers R.100 Airship.

Sir Barnes Wallis (1887-1979) was an English engineer, best remembered as the inventor of the bouncing bomb used by the Royal Air Force in Operation Chastise (dubbed the "Dambusters" raid) to attack the Ruhr Valley dams during World War II and the big Tallboy (6 tonnes) and Grand Slam (10 tonnes) deep-penetration "earthquake" bombs.  Wallis had been working on the Admiralty’s R.100 airship when he visited the Blackburn aircraft factory and was surprised to find the primitive wood-and-canvas methods of the Great War era still in use, a notable contrast to the elegant and lightweight aluminum structure of airships.  He was soon recruited by Vickers to apply his knowledge to the new generation of fixed-wing aircraft which would use light alloy construction for the internal structure.  His early experience wasn’t encouraging, the first prototype torpedo bomber, which used light alloy wing spars inspired by the girder structure of R.100, breaking up mid-air during a test-flight.  Returning to the drawing board, Wallis designed a revolutionary structural system; instead of using beams supporting an external aerodynamic skin, he made the structural members form the aerodynamic shape itself.

The geodesic structure in an airframe.

The principle was that the members followed geodesic curves in the surface, the shortest distance between two points in the curved surface although he only ever referred to it in passing as geodetic; it wouldn’t be until later the label came generally to be applied to the concept.  As a piece of engineering, it worked superbly well, having the curves form two helices at right angles to one another, the geodetic members became mutually supporting, rendering the overall framework immensely strong as well as comparatively light.  Revolutionary too was the space efficiency; because the geodetic structure was all in the outer part of the airframe meant that the centre was a large empty space, ready to take payload or fuel and the inherent strength was soon proven.  While conducting the usual wing-loading stress tests to determine the breakage point, the test routine was abandoned because the wings couldn’t be broken by the test rig.

Vickers Wellseley.

The benefits inherent in the concept were soon demonstrated.  Vickers’ first geodesic aircraft, the Wellesley, entered service in 1937 and in 1938, three of them, making use of the massive fuel capacity the structure made possible, flew non-stop from Ismailia in Egypt to Darwin in Australia, setting a new world record distance of 7,158 miles (11,265 km), an absolute record which stood until broken in 1946 by a Boeing B-29 Superfortress; it remains to this day the record for a single-engined aircraft with a piston engine, and also for aircraft flying in formation.  While the Wellesleys were under construction, Wallis designed a larger twin-engined geodetic bomber which became the Vickers Wellington, the mainstay of the RAF’s Bomber Command until 1943 when the new generation of four-engined heavy bombers began to be supplied in in the volume needed to form a strategic force.  Despite that, the Wellington was still used in many roles and remained in production until after the end of hostilities.  Over eleven-thousand were built and it was the only British bomber to be in continuous production throughout the war.

Vickers Wellington fuselage internal detail.

The final aircraft of the type, with a more complex geodetic structure was a four-engined heavy bomber called the Windsor but testing established it didn’t offer significantly better performance than the heavies already in service, and the difficulties which would be caused by trying to replicate the servicing and repair infrastructure was thought too onerous so it never entered production.  Post-war, higher speeds and operating altitudes with the consequent need for pressurised cabins rendered the fabric-covered geodetics obsolete.

Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato (one of 19 in the "Continuation Series", production of which began in 2019) during construction, an aluminium panel being attached to the superleggera frame, Aston Martin Works, Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, England.

There are obvious visual similarities between the classic superleggera method and the geodesic structure used in airframes and some buildings, most famously the “geodesic dome”.  The imperatives of both were strength both aim to create strong and lightweight structures, but they differ in their specific design and application.  As used in airframes, the geodesic structure consisted of a network of intersecting diagonal braces, creating a lattice framework which distributed loads as evenly as possible while providing a high strength-to-weight ratio.  This was of great significance in military airplanes used in combat because it enhanced their ability better to withstand damage better, the stresses distributed across the structure rather than being restricted to a limited area which could create a point-of-failure.  The geodesic framework was based on geometric principles which had been developed over centuries and typically employed hexagons & triangles to render a structure which was both rigid & light.  Superleggera construction differed in that it involves the creation of a lightweight tubular frame, covered with aluminum body panels of a thinness which wouldn’t have been possible with conventional engineering.  The attraction of the superleggera technique was the (relatively) minimalistic framework supported the skin, optimizing weight reduction without compromising strength.  So, structurally, the difference was the geodesic design used a network of intersecting braces to form a lattice, while the superleggera construction used a tubular frame covered with panels.