25 December 2004
blessed be
My brother attacked me over a plastic toy and drew blood, the swine. It's like a Christmas Carol round our way, though the orphans have already died.
Loads of hunts kick off tomorrow near here (Avon Vale e.g.), should be a right kerfuffle this year. Posh and not-so-posh people getting all angry and violent, plus animals. It's like revolution, but, like, without the politics. There can be no politics in the country by definition (there's no polis!).
Anyway, must go and read some more of Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason. A pox upon both your houses.
16 December 2004
I am not here
But had to report this amusing anecdote.
I was talking to a philosophy lecturer last night, as you do, and she told me that one of her female students had recently asked her not to use any words that contained more than eight letters, because she didn't understand them, and sometimes she was 'forced' to go home and look them up in the dictionary.
When it was pointed out to this lackadaisical student that the word 'philosophy' itself contained more than 8 letters, and that perhaps she would be better off taking, I don't know, law or art, the student was dumbfounded (assuming she could experience such a state, what with it weighing in at 11 letters). 'But I chose to do this course! You're supposed to be nice to me!'
I was talking to a philosophy lecturer last night, as you do, and she told me that one of her female students had recently asked her not to use any words that contained more than eight letters, because she didn't understand them, and sometimes she was 'forced' to go home and look them up in the dictionary.
When it was pointed out to this lackadaisical student that the word 'philosophy' itself contained more than 8 letters, and that perhaps she would be better off taking, I don't know, law or art, the student was dumbfounded (assuming she could experience such a state, what with it weighing in at 11 letters). 'But I chose to do this course! You're supposed to be nice to me!'
12 December 2004
Might have to put the blog on hold for a bit (the devastation, I know, I know). Hopefully just get this Iran response to Hyperstition post up and something on St Paul for The Weblog. But otherwise, I gotta do some more work, ear sickness has drained my time and I feel like a very, very bad puritan. Which is very bad indeed.
Besides, my charming, wonderful, witty, debonair Supervisor has discovered I have a blog (up there with your hypothetical Ma discovering your 'pleasure sporks' collection). Dunno if he knows which one it is, but despite infinite internet possibilities for dissembling and anonymity, it seems blatantly obvious 'who' the author of this blog is....I shouldn't have linked to articles I've written, possibly. But so hard to resist....
Anyway, back when I've written another chapter and my ear is a little better - just don't expect me to be able to hear anything if you're walking on the right side of me. And please, don't make those 'pardon' jokes when I tell you I'm not hearing properly. It's not a PC thing, it's just an 'I'll hate you forevermore, you unoriginal twat' thing.
Besides, my charming, wonderful, witty, debonair Supervisor has discovered I have a blog (up there with your hypothetical Ma discovering your 'pleasure sporks' collection). Dunno if he knows which one it is, but despite infinite internet possibilities for dissembling and anonymity, it seems blatantly obvious 'who' the author of this blog is....I shouldn't have linked to articles I've written, possibly. But so hard to resist....
Anyway, back when I've written another chapter and my ear is a little better - just don't expect me to be able to hear anything if you're walking on the right side of me. And please, don't make those 'pardon' jokes when I tell you I'm not hearing properly. It's not a PC thing, it's just an 'I'll hate you forevermore, you unoriginal twat' thing.
09 December 2004
As I can't sleep at all, I've been reading (again). Of course St Paul was wrong about all that "philosophy and vain deceit" stuff, no doubt about it, absolutely.....
The best story of late is definitely this one from Crumbling Loaf. When I check Sean's blog there's usually just one post hovering about that subsequently disappears within a day or two. And no archive. Truly....A master of the modern-day fragment.
Oh yeah, went to see Carlo Ginzburg last night. He spoke for exactly an hour about Bataille, Callois and fascism, with welcome and thrilling detours through de Maistre, Sade and Voltaire. He made great links between 'sur-fascism' and the phallic, to the, er, Acephalic, concern for rituals and the political equivocation of the College de Sociologie, etc. He got attacked by some demented old ladies (and how many of these are there on the London lecture scene?), for not being more morally condemnatory of these pesky French intellectuals (but they never actually sacrificed anyone!). Anyway, that was just cos they hadn't paid any attention at all to the talk, which was, in actuality, somewhat harsh on old Georges and co, the big bunch of sloppy Catholics...(and, no, please don't anyone accuse me of being anti-papish. Again).
To the accusation by yet more boorish elderly thugs that his talk was not concerned with 'real people' and was overly bookish, Ginzburg gave the splendid reply: 'books exist....unless you burn them', thus turning real, concrete history against the naff empiricists. Class. Fahrenheit far too clever for you!
The best story of late is definitely this one from Crumbling Loaf. When I check Sean's blog there's usually just one post hovering about that subsequently disappears within a day or two. And no archive. Truly....A master of the modern-day fragment.
Oh yeah, went to see Carlo Ginzburg last night. He spoke for exactly an hour about Bataille, Callois and fascism, with welcome and thrilling detours through de Maistre, Sade and Voltaire. He made great links between 'sur-fascism' and the phallic, to the, er, Acephalic, concern for rituals and the political equivocation of the College de Sociologie, etc. He got attacked by some demented old ladies (and how many of these are there on the London lecture scene?), for not being more morally condemnatory of these pesky French intellectuals (but they never actually sacrificed anyone!). Anyway, that was just cos they hadn't paid any attention at all to the talk, which was, in actuality, somewhat harsh on old Georges and co, the big bunch of sloppy Catholics...(and, no, please don't anyone accuse me of being anti-papish. Again).
To the accusation by yet more boorish elderly thugs that his talk was not concerned with 'real people' and was overly bookish, Ginzburg gave the splendid reply: 'books exist....unless you burn them', thus turning real, concrete history against the naff empiricists. Class. Fahrenheit far too clever for you!
08 December 2004
My favourite quote
Helas! la chair est triste, Et j'ai lu tous les livres
"The flesh, alas, is sad, and I have read all the books" - Stéphane Mallarmé
Sums it up really, doesn't it?
Anyway, have been mostly reading Schelling and Baudrillard this week. Both odd. Yet compulsive. 
Heheh, don't they look similar in some weird way?
Ok, I have to write something about St Paul, and mark some essays now.
Heheh, don't they look similar in some weird way?
Ok, I have to write something about St Paul, and mark some essays now.
05 December 2004
why is dissensus down?! I need distraction from the pain and boredom that IS Sunday.
03 December 2004
why I am not a liberal
1. Everyone in the country should be forced to do national service at the age of 18, though possibly not in a military way (buffing guns: not very useful). No! Instead we recommend: leaving your living room, hanging out with old people (they are cool), collecting rubbish, freeing hedgehogs from lager-four-pack plastic dividers, putting local library books back in the correct places without demanding acknowledgement or recompense, smiling in a non-insane manner at strangers. That sort of thing.
All British 18-year-olds have accidentally rendered themselves annoying and fat lately, and it's time they did something other than go to university or twat about on 'gap years' (invented circa 1998, such that potential students would amass horrific debt before they even got to open a single book as an undergraduate. Not that most of them do that, even. The ungrateful anti-intellectual bastards!).
2. Bring back, er, not the death penalty, exactly, but the 'fear of death penalty'. Thus you don't actually execute serial killers, pet rapists, or the person who recently stole my laptop as I slept, but force them to read everything anyone has ever written about finitude. On their own, in a room. Forever! Smudgy photocopies of Heidegger, bits of Sartre, Kierkegaard, Levinas, Nancy...and Simon Critchley. Fear of Death Penalty. It's effective. Work out the difference between mortality and finitude for yourselves, criminally-minded and badly behaved citizens of Britain!
All British 18-year-olds have accidentally rendered themselves annoying and fat lately, and it's time they did something other than go to university or twat about on 'gap years' (invented circa 1998, such that potential students would amass horrific debt before they even got to open a single book as an undergraduate. Not that most of them do that, even. The ungrateful anti-intellectual bastards!).
2. Bring back, er, not the death penalty, exactly, but the 'fear of death penalty'. Thus you don't actually execute serial killers, pet rapists, or the person who recently stole my laptop as I slept, but force them to read everything anyone has ever written about finitude. On their own, in a room. Forever! Smudgy photocopies of Heidegger, bits of Sartre, Kierkegaard, Levinas, Nancy...and Simon Critchley. Fear of Death Penalty. It's effective. Work out the difference between mortality and finitude for yourselves, criminally-minded and badly behaved citizens of Britain!
01 December 2004
The drugs episode
As someone who finds being stoned unbelievably unpleasant, this report, one among many, intrigues. I'm not sure, however, how you measure a genetic predisposition for psychosis other than by knowing whether any of your family members have, or have had, mental health problems, but it seems to me that there is something inherently psychotic about cannabis anyway: the paranoia, the hatred and suspicion of those around you, the weird thought-loops and delusions.
I once had the misfortune to live in a house with three heavy stoners. Every time I went to the library (mostly to escape the fug and the monotonous stupidity of their conversation), I was accused of 'betraying' and 'judging' them, as if my decision to do some work was really just an attempt to piss them off. The dumb, fat, slightly pasty egoists.
Legal classifications aside, I've never understood why dope is deemed more socially acceptable than speed or even booze (the annoying pious logic of the stoner: 'just 'cos alcohol is legal everyone thinks it's ok to drink...you know it's worse for you than dope. I never drink, just smoke...'). Perhaps I've just never appreciated its finer qualities, but all it's ever made me do is simultaneously want to do something creative (like play the piano, or write) and taken away my ability to do it (like Shakespeare's quip about booze and sexual desire).
Not like wine, which is just perfect, obviously.
Additional free Zizek quote of some relevance, that at least one person in the world hasn't yet read:
Today's hedonism combines pleasure with constraint — it is no longer the old notion of the "right measure" between pleasure and constraint, but a kind of pseudo-Hegelian immediate coincidence of the opposites: action and reaction should coincide, the very thing which causes damage should already be the medicine. It is no longer "Drink coffee, but with moderation!"; it is rather "Drink all the coffee you want, because it is already decaffeinated..." The ultimate example of this stance is chocolate laxative, available in the US, with the paradoxical injunction "Do you have constipation? Eat more of this chocolate!" - i.e., of the very thing which causes constipation. And is not a negative proof of the hegemony of this stance the fact that true unconstrained consumption (in all its main forms: drugs, free sex, smoking...) is emerging as the main danger? The fight against these dangers is one of the main investments of today's "biopolitics." Solutions are here desperately sought which would reproduce the paradox of the chocolate laxative. The main contender is "safe sex" — a term which makes one appreciative of the truth of the old saying "Is having sex with a condom not like taking a shower with a raincoat on?". The ultimate goal would be here, along the lines of decaf coffee, to invent "opium without opium": no wonder marijuana is so popular among liberals who want to legalize it — it already IS a kind of "opium without opium".
I once had the misfortune to live in a house with three heavy stoners. Every time I went to the library (mostly to escape the fug and the monotonous stupidity of their conversation), I was accused of 'betraying' and 'judging' them, as if my decision to do some work was really just an attempt to piss them off. The dumb, fat, slightly pasty egoists.
Legal classifications aside, I've never understood why dope is deemed more socially acceptable than speed or even booze (the annoying pious logic of the stoner: 'just 'cos alcohol is legal everyone thinks it's ok to drink...you know it's worse for you than dope. I never drink, just smoke...'). Perhaps I've just never appreciated its finer qualities, but all it's ever made me do is simultaneously want to do something creative (like play the piano, or write) and taken away my ability to do it (like Shakespeare's quip about booze and sexual desire).
Not like wine, which is just perfect, obviously.
Additional free Zizek quote of some relevance, that at least one person in the world hasn't yet read:
Today's hedonism combines pleasure with constraint — it is no longer the old notion of the "right measure" between pleasure and constraint, but a kind of pseudo-Hegelian immediate coincidence of the opposites: action and reaction should coincide, the very thing which causes damage should already be the medicine. It is no longer "Drink coffee, but with moderation!"; it is rather "Drink all the coffee you want, because it is already decaffeinated..." The ultimate example of this stance is chocolate laxative, available in the US, with the paradoxical injunction "Do you have constipation? Eat more of this chocolate!" - i.e., of the very thing which causes constipation. And is not a negative proof of the hegemony of this stance the fact that true unconstrained consumption (in all its main forms: drugs, free sex, smoking...) is emerging as the main danger? The fight against these dangers is one of the main investments of today's "biopolitics." Solutions are here desperately sought which would reproduce the paradox of the chocolate laxative. The main contender is "safe sex" — a term which makes one appreciative of the truth of the old saying "Is having sex with a condom not like taking a shower with a raincoat on?". The ultimate goal would be here, along the lines of decaf coffee, to invent "opium without opium": no wonder marijuana is so popular among liberals who want to legalize it — it already IS a kind of "opium without opium".
