27 October 2004
new species of human discovered!
I really am packing, but look! They found some previously unknown little people! 'the most extreme human ever discovered'. This is just brilliant.
"It is totally unexpected," said Chris Stringer, director of the Human Origins program at the Natural History Museum in London. "To have early humans on the remote island of Flores is surprising enough. That some are only about a meter tall with a chimp-size brain is even more remarkable. That they were still there less than 20,000 years ago, and [that] modern humans must have met them, is astonishing."
watch out homo sapiens, you aint all that special after all.
out of the box, into the quiet
Am moving, all the books are coming with me. May be absent for some time, as the new address apparently doesn't exist (such that it could be connected to any form of telecommunications service). Ah well, perhaps it's time to read some more Kant and Hegel.
I strongly recommend you look at/join dissensus, a new and very exciting forum for the discussion of thought, music, art, &c.
Be seeing you.
I strongly recommend you look at/join dissensus, a new and very exciting forum for the discussion of thought, music, art, &c.
Be seeing you.
23 October 2004
I was clearing out my inbox and found this piece from one of my correspondents, who shall of course remain anonymous.
The Forum for European Philosophy Presents:
'A Dialogue with Immanuel Kant'
Britain's premiere free-thinking spirit Professor Roger Scruton will appear, amusingly adorned in lederhosen, as the 18-19th Century kraut philosopher Immanuel Kant and will be searchingly interviewed by none other than Richard Madeley and Judy Finnegan of 'The Richard and Judy Show' fame! This light-hearted event will be followed by the second installment of our ever more popular 'Philosophy Quiz' where contestants gain a chance of winning an all-expenses-paid two-week 18-30s holiday to Koenigsberg (frankfurters, beer and teutonic lapdancers!) This event is sponsored by the Daily Star and the News of the World (please look out for coupons on next week's publications and receive a 30% discount on Roger Scruton's best-selling autobiography 'Philosophy, Cricket, Sodomy and Gardening'). Thursday 22nd May, 2003, 7pm at the Institut Français, 17 Queensbury Place, South Kensington, London, SW7.
'My Life in Philosophy'
A Dialogue with Roger Trigg (Warwick University).
As well as taking us on a scintillating journey through the life of one of today's most distinguished and radical-thinking philosophers, Professor Trigg will show how the latest developments in modern science provide irrefutable evidence for the existence of (inter alia) God, angels, souls, reincarnation and original sin. Philosophical-minded Christians of all denominations are especially welcomed. Since Professor Trigg is not only a ground-breaking philosopher but also moonlights as a highly respected priest and magistrate, he is also available for christenings and legal advice (members of the Church of England accused of paedophilia and bestiality are his speciality). Wednesday 28th May, 2003, 12:30pm, Ground Floor Theatre, 20 Kingsway, LSE.
'Parallel Sex Lives: Sartre and Russell'
Max Clifford dishes up the dirt on two of the 20th Century's most sleazy philosophers and reveals how their political interventions were really only a ploy to conceal from the public their increasingly depraved sex-lives. Since the highlight of the event will be a slide-show featuring photographs of the two philosophers sexually molesting Russell's six-year old son, Conrad, we expect that this will be our best attended event yet and so we strongly advise that you book well in advance. Monday 2nd June, 2003, Main Theatre, St Clement's Building, LSE.
The Forum for European Philosophy Presents:
'A Dialogue with Immanuel Kant'
Britain's premiere free-thinking spirit Professor Roger Scruton will appear, amusingly adorned in lederhosen, as the 18-19th Century kraut philosopher Immanuel Kant and will be searchingly interviewed by none other than Richard Madeley and Judy Finnegan of 'The Richard and Judy Show' fame! This light-hearted event will be followed by the second installment of our ever more popular 'Philosophy Quiz' where contestants gain a chance of winning an all-expenses-paid two-week 18-30s holiday to Koenigsberg (frankfurters, beer and teutonic lapdancers!) This event is sponsored by the Daily Star and the News of the World (please look out for coupons on next week's publications and receive a 30% discount on Roger Scruton's best-selling autobiography 'Philosophy, Cricket, Sodomy and Gardening'). Thursday 22nd May, 2003, 7pm at the Institut Français, 17 Queensbury Place, South Kensington, London, SW7.
'My Life in Philosophy'
A Dialogue with Roger Trigg (Warwick University).
As well as taking us on a scintillating journey through the life of one of today's most distinguished and radical-thinking philosophers, Professor Trigg will show how the latest developments in modern science provide irrefutable evidence for the existence of (inter alia) God, angels, souls, reincarnation and original sin. Philosophical-minded Christians of all denominations are especially welcomed. Since Professor Trigg is not only a ground-breaking philosopher but also moonlights as a highly respected priest and magistrate, he is also available for christenings and legal advice (members of the Church of England accused of paedophilia and bestiality are his speciality). Wednesday 28th May, 2003, 12:30pm, Ground Floor Theatre, 20 Kingsway, LSE.
'Parallel Sex Lives: Sartre and Russell'
Max Clifford dishes up the dirt on two of the 20th Century's most sleazy philosophers and reveals how their political interventions were really only a ploy to conceal from the public their increasingly depraved sex-lives. Since the highlight of the event will be a slide-show featuring photographs of the two philosophers sexually molesting Russell's six-year old son, Conrad, we expect that this will be our best attended event yet and so we strongly advise that you book well in advance. Monday 2nd June, 2003, Main Theatre, St Clement's Building, LSE.
22 October 2004
I like to read
'Give me back the Berlin wall, give me Stalin and St Paul. I've seen the future, brother: it is murder' - Leonard Cohen
Listening to 'The Future' again after many years. My Serbian Croat friend (or 'Suburbian Croat' I suppose I should now refer to him) thinks it's crap, but then he's a jazz musician, so....
(Jazz always sounds like people pretending to play jazz.)
My paper on 'Kant and Political Philosophy' at some posh old university in Surrey went splendidly the other day - despite some cranky old professor telling me in that I shouldn't read Kant cos he's a fascist. Oh, and because he apparently slept with prostitutes in Konigsberg (Kant, not the cranky professor) ...Whole new meaning to the 'you could set your watch by him' claim. I severely doubt whether this is true, but even if it were, I'm not sure it really undermines his claims regarding critique, enlightenment and mankind (the topic of my paper - I go for the unambitious presentation).
After having recently been compared to an 'attack dog' (ahem!) when asking visiting speakers questions at my very own University of Dialectical Materialism and Adorno Studies (tm), I have decided that I may need to conduct some research into the meaning of the word 'decorum' (incidentally, one of the best put-down lines I ever received in a romantic context was: 'go home and look up the word 'propriety''- smart).
So, decorum then. 'Propriety of manner or conduct; grace arising from suitableness of speech and behavior to one's own character, or to the place and occasion; decency of conduct; seemliness; that which is seemly or suitable'. Well it doesn't sound too hard, does it? (Gah!) But it's impossible to work out what is suitable, I think, if it consists of imagining what it is that other people think is appropriate (or what they think they should think, etc.). And who the hell then is the big Other?.....the big non-existent bastard.
Anyway, somewhat excitingly I'm moving house in a few days. No more beetles, cockroaches (just a couple), flies or people screaming at each other at 4am when they've just been kicked out of the Turkish pool hall below....can't wait. And I'll even be getting Broadband. Welcome to the future, pig!
18 October 2004
man vs. men
'The end of man as an entire species, i.e. that of fulfilling his ultimate appointed purpose by freely exercising his own powers, will be brought by providence to a successful issue, even although the ends of men as individuals run in a diametrically opposite direction. For the very conflict of individual inclinations, which is the source of all evil, gives reason a free hand to master them all; it thus gives predominance not to evil, which destroys itself, but to good, which continues to maintain itself once it has been established.' - Kant, 'On the Common Saying: 'This may be True in Theory, but it does not Apply in Practice' (1793)
After protracted discussion with various rationalists (both pure and cold), nihilists, small children, pretty girls (some reasonable, some not), and excessively drunk people of all conceptual and a/sexual persuasions (well, it was my party after all), it's back to Kant, sobriety and the continued attempt to chain the bad black horse to the stable wall.
I love my students though - today I was informed that 'Suburbia' was a country in Eastern Europe with a sex-trafficking problem.
The other day I was trying to make clear the Sartrean distinction between being-in-itself and being-for-itself, making reference (in the time-honoured way) to classroom furniture. 'What characterises the chair and what characterises James? What makes James different from his chair?' I demanded. One girl put up her hand: 'but Miss, it's not his chair is it? It belongs to the college.'.....Proto-Marxists, already steps ahead of Sartre who took at least 20 years to get round to thinking anything at all about property-relations (and even then...). Brilliant.
After protracted discussion with various rationalists (both pure and cold), nihilists, small children, pretty girls (some reasonable, some not), and excessively drunk people of all conceptual and a/sexual persuasions (well, it was my party after all), it's back to Kant, sobriety and the continued attempt to chain the bad black horse to the stable wall.
I love my students though - today I was informed that 'Suburbia' was a country in Eastern Europe with a sex-trafficking problem.
The other day I was trying to make clear the Sartrean distinction between being-in-itself and being-for-itself, making reference (in the time-honoured way) to classroom furniture. 'What characterises the chair and what characterises James? What makes James different from his chair?' I demanded. One girl put up her hand: 'but Miss, it's not his chair is it? It belongs to the college.'.....Proto-Marxists, already steps ahead of Sartre who took at least 20 years to get round to thinking anything at all about property-relations (and even then...). Brilliant.
16 October 2004
techniques for the avoidance of outwardly glittering misery
'But all good enterprises which are not grafted on to a morally good attitude of mind are nothing but illusion and outwardly glittering misery.' - Kant, 'Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose' (1784).
I am amused to be accused in recent posts of being mean about the world's richest religion (TM), especially as I'm the one always defending Catholicism in discussion with K-Punk, who really, really hates Catholicism with, ahem, a passion.
My work at the Catholic church and my complete adoration for many Catholic masses, coupled with my utter hatred of Catholicism's vitalist, sensualist aspects (plus my specific distaste for the alcoholic, womanising, violent Irish Catholicism that constitutes my corrupt genetic inheritance) is a problem of course - but what would anyone be without their contradictions....?
Anyway, my point is really this: surely there's a way of discussing and criticising the structural elements of various religions (or indeed philosophical positions, world-views etc.) that pays attention to their specificity, without simultaneously aiming for the immediate 'offence' of those who would call themselves 'Catholic', 'Muslim', 'Kantian' etc. It's far more offensive to defend people on their behalf ('would you really say this to a Catholic?'), and concomitantly expect a blanket 'respect' for all faiths/positions (which would of course handily cut short any further debate). Anyway, this is basic stuff, surely.
I am amused to be accused in recent posts of being mean about the world's richest religion (TM), especially as I'm the one always defending Catholicism in discussion with K-Punk, who really, really hates Catholicism with, ahem, a passion.
My work at the Catholic church and my complete adoration for many Catholic masses, coupled with my utter hatred of Catholicism's vitalist, sensualist aspects (plus my specific distaste for the alcoholic, womanising, violent Irish Catholicism that constitutes my corrupt genetic inheritance) is a problem of course - but what would anyone be without their contradictions....?
Anyway, my point is really this: surely there's a way of discussing and criticising the structural elements of various religions (or indeed philosophical positions, world-views etc.) that pays attention to their specificity, without simultaneously aiming for the immediate 'offence' of those who would call themselves 'Catholic', 'Muslim', 'Kantian' etc. It's far more offensive to defend people on their behalf ('would you really say this to a Catholic?'), and concomitantly expect a blanket 'respect' for all faiths/positions (which would of course handily cut short any further debate). Anyway, this is basic stuff, surely.
14 October 2004
infinite maturity
Am a year older today (the day before nietzsche's anniversaire, incidentally). You can guess how old I am if you want, but actually that would be cheap and silly (guess, guess!). Suffice it to say that I now feel that I have properly reached the age of reason, and that I increasingly feel that reading Kant is a good way of warding off mental illness. Reason has to stop smacking its head on the ceiling of reason sometime....
Still, apart from getting shouted at by stroppy students (and there was even a riot at the college today with police wading in, batons drawn...nothing to do with my classes, I hope...I mean Sartre could corrupt the youth, but we've only got to being in-itself), it's been pretty good. Spent the evening eating Turkish meat with a Spanish philosopher, a French philosopher, two British philosophers, one Scottish nihilist, one Croatian Serb sociologist, a literary critic and a rude Turkish waiter ('it's your birthday,' he said, 'how old are you? 15?' Pah, I say...).
Plus, someone (ok, so it was sweeteffay) sent me a Playmobil Nun in the post (she has her own personal detachable bible!). And K-Punk gave me a cake.
So, really, it was excellent all round.
(Tomorrow I really will write one or all of my ridiculously postponed rationality, Iran, sex/nature, and biopolitics posts.)
Still, apart from getting shouted at by stroppy students (and there was even a riot at the college today with police wading in, batons drawn...nothing to do with my classes, I hope...I mean Sartre could corrupt the youth, but we've only got to being in-itself), it's been pretty good. Spent the evening eating Turkish meat with a Spanish philosopher, a French philosopher, two British philosophers, one Scottish nihilist, one Croatian Serb sociologist, a literary critic and a rude Turkish waiter ('it's your birthday,' he said, 'how old are you? 15?' Pah, I say...).
Plus, someone (ok, so it was sweeteffay) sent me a Playmobil Nun in the post (she has her own personal detachable bible!). And K-Punk gave me a cake.
So, really, it was excellent all round.
(Tomorrow I really will write one or all of my ridiculously postponed rationality, Iran, sex/nature, and biopolitics posts.)
11 October 2004
New blogs
Partly due to all this hyper-linkage going on with the Derrida obiturating scene, I have come across a fair few new weblogs that in turn inform and impress:
This space, a literary weblog with shades of charlotte street and pas-au-delá. Habermasian reflections, which includes a link to his interview on Iran.
The parallel campaign looks great – a kind of collective online reading group of Badiou and Deleuze, amongst others. They may or may not want to make it public however – tell me to leave you off my links bar if that’s the deal. Limited, Inc., politics and philosophy on top form here. Amardeep Singh, ditto. Hallucinations & antics looks at philosophy and noise music (wonder if he’s coming to Middlesex’s noisetheorynoise#2....).
Tonight I'm going to dinner with a Eurovision song contest entrant...from Croatia. Well, it's not everyday THAT happens....
This space, a literary weblog with shades of charlotte street and pas-au-delá. Habermasian reflections, which includes a link to his interview on Iran.
The parallel campaign looks great – a kind of collective online reading group of Badiou and Deleuze, amongst others. They may or may not want to make it public however – tell me to leave you off my links bar if that’s the deal. Limited, Inc., politics and philosophy on top form here. Amardeep Singh, ditto. Hallucinations & antics looks at philosophy and noise music (wonder if he’s coming to Middlesex’s noisetheorynoise#2....).
Tonight I'm going to dinner with a Eurovision song contest entrant...from Croatia. Well, it's not everyday THAT happens....
10 October 2004
Derrida Encore
'Clarity is necessary...Yes. But there is light, and there are lights, daylight, and also the madness of the day [la folie du jour]. Without even referring to apocalypses of the Zoroastrian type (there were more than one of them), we know that every apocalyptic eschatology is promised in the name of light, of the visionary and vision, and of a light of light, of a light brighter than all the lights it makes possible....' - Derrida
Well, now that the blogomonde is aflame with talk of the late Monsieur J.D. (who, incidentally, I am just consulting for a forthcoming paper: one of his relatively rare discussions of Kant in a really great collection entitled Raising the Tone of Philosophy, quoted above), it pains me (in a dull, unsurprising) way just how virulent, misinformed and spiteful some of the major UK/US reports have been (the previously posted bitterly ironic letter excepted). It is of course revealing just how eager correspondents are to comment on something they have never looked at: revelatory of the dark, systematically elitist anti-intellectual attempt to refuse thought at every level, of course!
Compare the Bulgarian news agency's genuine attempt to make sense of Derrida with the BBC's pitiful sneering.
nevertheless, the democratic, dessiminatory potential of the 'net fortunately wends its tenacious way through the slurry: pas-au-delà, michael bérubé, the weblog, the weblog, again, sweeteffay and k-punk.
Stay awake....
Well, now that the blogomonde is aflame with talk of the late Monsieur J.D. (who, incidentally, I am just consulting for a forthcoming paper: one of his relatively rare discussions of Kant in a really great collection entitled Raising the Tone of Philosophy, quoted above), it pains me (in a dull, unsurprising) way just how virulent, misinformed and spiteful some of the major UK/US reports have been (the previously posted bitterly ironic letter excepted). It is of course revealing just how eager correspondents are to comment on something they have never looked at: revelatory of the dark, systematically elitist anti-intellectual attempt to refuse thought at every level, of course!
Compare the Bulgarian news agency's genuine attempt to make sense of Derrida with the BBC's pitiful sneering.
nevertheless, the democratic, dessiminatory potential of the 'net fortunately wends its tenacious way through the slurry: pas-au-delà, michael bérubé, the weblog, the weblog, again, sweeteffay and k-punk.
Stay awake....
09 October 2004
Derrida r.i.p.
AA calls me on the train back from... Oxford (that jumped-up Tamworth) and tells me Derrida is mort. I come home and Adam Kotsko has emailed me to tell me the same news. Then I receive this stunning piece of writing from an occasional correspondent, who shall remain anonymous:
"As tributes continue to pour in for that incomparably compassionate and heroic Liverpudlian street-fighter and odd-job man Kenneth Bigley, it turns out that the infamous Algerian intellectual terrorist Jacques Derrida also died the same day. According to BBC's "Paris correspondent", however, Derrida is only famous for his "absurd doctrines" and for defying proper academic standards -- presumably the same standards that lead this correspondent to ascribe to Derrida the views that texts have "hidden meanings" and (a few lines later) that the meaning of a text "depends on how each reader interprets it". (Was this "Paris correspondent" Roger Scruton perchance?!) But then everyone knows that the latter was Derrida's real view -- which is why it's not worth bothering to read him: you might as well just make some shit up -- after all, that's what he did in his readings of others, isn't it?
Derrida has been doing little else than writing about the deaths of his 'friends' (and the theme of 'death') for a good twenty years now. Who is there remaining to write about Derrida? I'm sure that Critchley and Bennington are busy writing their tributes to their 'friend' right now -- that is, if they don't have one already prepared (which wouldn't surprise me -- and I'm sure that they've at least been taking notes for some time; almost every chapter of Bennington's last book [Interrupting Derrida] was about Derrida's death in some way: 'R.I.P.', 'X', 'Forever Friends', 'Is it Time?', 'Nearly the End'). And imagine the delight of the young deconstructionist who has just finished his paper/thesis/book on 'Derrida on Death' and can now preface it with all kinds of paradoxical (sorry: aporetic) musings on how the death of Derrida was both something always already inscribed within his 'life' as its ownmost condition of possibility/impossibility and yet an also a radically unanticipatable event ... they'll be queuing up to publish stuff on this. I can see the forthcoming volumes now: (Ed.) S. Critchley, 2005, Adieu, Jacques Derrida. Routledge, London. (Ed.) John Caputo, 2005, Death (Of Jacques Derrida). Indiana University Press, Bloomington ... ad nauseam. And no doubt Derrida will have left an envelope next to his bed with a final text on the topic of death and writing (the topic of his entire 'corpus'), written in hospital, running to several hundred pages, and which will make some publisher very happy indeed ($$$$$$...£££££££): 'This volume is Derrida's final text, written on his deathbed, and containing intensely personal reflections on the theme of death and dying ...'"
I think that about sums it up.
"As tributes continue to pour in for that incomparably compassionate and heroic Liverpudlian street-fighter and odd-job man Kenneth Bigley, it turns out that the infamous Algerian intellectual terrorist Jacques Derrida also died the same day. According to BBC's "Paris correspondent", however, Derrida is only famous for his "absurd doctrines" and for defying proper academic standards -- presumably the same standards that lead this correspondent to ascribe to Derrida the views that texts have "hidden meanings" and (a few lines later) that the meaning of a text "depends on how each reader interprets it". (Was this "Paris correspondent" Roger Scruton perchance?!) But then everyone knows that the latter was Derrida's real view -- which is why it's not worth bothering to read him: you might as well just make some shit up -- after all, that's what he did in his readings of others, isn't it?
Derrida has been doing little else than writing about the deaths of his 'friends' (and the theme of 'death') for a good twenty years now. Who is there remaining to write about Derrida? I'm sure that Critchley and Bennington are busy writing their tributes to their 'friend' right now -- that is, if they don't have one already prepared (which wouldn't surprise me -- and I'm sure that they've at least been taking notes for some time; almost every chapter of Bennington's last book [Interrupting Derrida] was about Derrida's death in some way: 'R.I.P.', 'X', 'Forever Friends', 'Is it Time?', 'Nearly the End'). And imagine the delight of the young deconstructionist who has just finished his paper/thesis/book on 'Derrida on Death' and can now preface it with all kinds of paradoxical (sorry: aporetic) musings on how the death of Derrida was both something always already inscribed within his 'life' as its ownmost condition of possibility/impossibility and yet an also a radically unanticipatable event ... they'll be queuing up to publish stuff on this. I can see the forthcoming volumes now: (Ed.) S. Critchley, 2005, Adieu, Jacques Derrida. Routledge, London. (Ed.) John Caputo, 2005, Death (Of Jacques Derrida). Indiana University Press, Bloomington ... ad nauseam. And no doubt Derrida will have left an envelope next to his bed with a final text on the topic of death and writing (the topic of his entire 'corpus'), written in hospital, running to several hundred pages, and which will make some publisher very happy indeed ($$$$$$...£££££££): 'This volume is Derrida's final text, written on his deathbed, and containing intensely personal reflections on the theme of death and dying ...'"
I think that about sums it up.
08 October 2004
I'll Be Your Body When Your Body Is Broken
This is currently my favourite image - Steadman's sketch from the cover of the Pelican book edition of Alasdair MacIntyre's Marxism and Christianity (1968). (Published when he was 23.)
The title is from Swans (thanks for the CD, K-Punk).
Anwyay, if you want to read something online by me, Radical Philosophy have posted my fairly recent review of Althusser's Humanist Controversy online (as a pdf) (go here: it's the 4th one down).
Iran piece to follow.....
06 October 2004
be-er (care of aa)
The thing exists again. Somehow, fiscally etc.
Am preparing long post on my recent experiences in Iran, not least because I gave the whole thing a raw deal before - portraying my trip as purely mysterious or something like that (and I have nothing but apologies for my Iranian interlocutors who mostly disagreed with my crap representations of their country). But bear in mind that I am absolutely fearful of writing something pointless and arrogant about it.
I loved being in Iran - I was absolutely happy there, and I neither want to ruin that for myself...or others.
Anyway, in general things are very good. Will be back soon with potentially controversial positions on sex, politics, philosophy & so forth.
But really. friendship is all that matters to me - but not in a Christian way, obviously.
Am preparing long post on my recent experiences in Iran, not least because I gave the whole thing a raw deal before - portraying my trip as purely mysterious or something like that (and I have nothing but apologies for my Iranian interlocutors who mostly disagreed with my crap representations of their country). But bear in mind that I am absolutely fearful of writing something pointless and arrogant about it.
I loved being in Iran - I was absolutely happy there, and I neither want to ruin that for myself...or others.
Anyway, in general things are very good. Will be back soon with potentially controversial positions on sex, politics, philosophy & so forth.
But really. friendship is all that matters to me - but not in a Christian way, obviously.
02 October 2004
rivers of sin
'Hell is being trapped in a room with all the animals you have ever eaten'. (I think this was Canetti, but I can't find the reference. Stand to be corrected).
Anyway, replace room with 'vat', animals with 'booze' and eaten with 'drunk'. Imagine! cheap wine mixing with cheaper lager, medium-priced wine curdling with expensive cocktails, rough cider with clear spirits...plus...the odd litre of Baileys creating a creamy scum round the side (we all drink this badly, no?). Hell is trying to stop yourself drowning in a sea of your past alcohol consumption.
Wondering around central London on a Friday night, mentally multiplying everyone's personal booze vat, one imagines Lady Macbeth slightly reformulating her famous 'guilt' speech:
Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this booze
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one a slightly unpleasant shade of combined-alcohol brown.
Hic.
Talking of waterways, went to see The Ister last night, a documentary based around Heidegger's 1942 lectures on Holderlin's, erm, der Ister. It follows the course of the river from Romania to Germany, via the former Yugoslavia (oddly enough, I went to the film with a Romanian, a Serbian Croat, and a German. Sounds like the start of a bad Zizek joke...). Anyway, it features interviews with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy, Bernard Stiegler, amongst others - those strange French Heideggerians who witter on about technology and death in a (mostly) entertaining manner for most of the film. There's one really odd moment when Stiegler, a former bank robber and now director of IRCAM (fact), starts arguing that dogs are men, because we adopt them and give them names. Like...yeah!
Made by two Australian blokes, the Ister is bloody long, but does some really clever things with the footage they managed to cull (filmed with a mini-DV camera). Lots of repetition and some funny coincidences: when Lacoue-Labarthe ('LL Cool P' as some wag used to call him) starts talking about a kind of 'historial emphysema' of the present and the importance of an understanding of 'breath', the camera pans to a shot of his ashtray, overloaded with fags. Ho ho ho. At the end of the film, we see a duck unsteadily wondering about the edges of the river, which is now cluttered with junk and bottles. We are informed that there is no longer any possibility of a poetic account of the Danube, a la Friedrich, and even the duck doesn't fancy a swim.
So - horrah for tenacious Australians with a thing for patriotic German poetry and Nazi ontology.
"Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you." - Elias Canetti, The Human Province
Anyway, replace room with 'vat', animals with 'booze' and eaten with 'drunk'. Imagine! cheap wine mixing with cheaper lager, medium-priced wine curdling with expensive cocktails, rough cider with clear spirits...plus...the odd litre of Baileys creating a creamy scum round the side (we all drink this badly, no?). Hell is trying to stop yourself drowning in a sea of your past alcohol consumption.
Wondering around central London on a Friday night, mentally multiplying everyone's personal booze vat, one imagines Lady Macbeth slightly reformulating her famous 'guilt' speech:
Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this booze
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one a slightly unpleasant shade of combined-alcohol brown.
Hic.
Talking of waterways, went to see The Ister last night, a documentary based around Heidegger's 1942 lectures on Holderlin's, erm, der Ister. It follows the course of the river from Romania to Germany, via the former Yugoslavia (oddly enough, I went to the film with a Romanian, a Serbian Croat, and a German. Sounds like the start of a bad Zizek joke...). Anyway, it features interviews with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy, Bernard Stiegler, amongst others - those strange French Heideggerians who witter on about technology and death in a (mostly) entertaining manner for most of the film. There's one really odd moment when Stiegler, a former bank robber and now director of IRCAM (fact), starts arguing that dogs are men, because we adopt them and give them names. Like...yeah!
Made by two Australian blokes, the Ister is bloody long, but does some really clever things with the footage they managed to cull (filmed with a mini-DV camera). Lots of repetition and some funny coincidences: when Lacoue-Labarthe ('LL Cool P' as some wag used to call him) starts talking about a kind of 'historial emphysema' of the present and the importance of an understanding of 'breath', the camera pans to a shot of his ashtray, overloaded with fags. Ho ho ho. At the end of the film, we see a duck unsteadily wondering about the edges of the river, which is now cluttered with junk and bottles. We are informed that there is no longer any possibility of a poetic account of the Danube, a la Friedrich, and even the duck doesn't fancy a swim.
So - horrah for tenacious Australians with a thing for patriotic German poetry and Nazi ontology.
"Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you." - Elias Canetti, The Human Province
