11 January 2005
Londonistan
No more headscarf, plus pubs.
Must be back in the mini-satan.
Conversation with Austin (with his new Saddam Hussein watch) in the pub: just how does one teach Spinoza? The attributes are out for starters, let alone mediate infinite modes and the third kind of knowledge. But immanence? That's ok, surely. Deus sive natura - not too hard, so long as you don't get all ecological about it, and have a good response to the student who asks you 'but, miss, does that mean that the Mississippi Fried Chicken across the road is, like, God?'
I reckoned it'd be best to teach him negatively: 'hey kids, you know how you think that God (those of you who don't want to kill him) is like some big guy in the sky? Yes? Well, I've got news for you! According to this weird excommunicated Jewish guy, he's not a big guy in the sky at all! He's one infinite substance, not outside nature, looking down upon it, but nature itself. And we can try and understand how it and we work, 'cos it's like made of laws! Brilliant.
Trying to work out why Negri's analysis of immaterial labour and Empire may not have all that much to say to a country like Iran (not that there are states exempt from Empire, but there are certainly places in which the state has a not insignificant role to play in the formation of any immediate political project). It's tricky.
Must be back in the mini-satan.
Conversation with Austin (with his new Saddam Hussein watch) in the pub: just how does one teach Spinoza? The attributes are out for starters, let alone mediate infinite modes and the third kind of knowledge. But immanence? That's ok, surely. Deus sive natura - not too hard, so long as you don't get all ecological about it, and have a good response to the student who asks you 'but, miss, does that mean that the Mississippi Fried Chicken across the road is, like, God?'
I reckoned it'd be best to teach him negatively: 'hey kids, you know how you think that God (those of you who don't want to kill him) is like some big guy in the sky? Yes? Well, I've got news for you! According to this weird excommunicated Jewish guy, he's not a big guy in the sky at all! He's one infinite substance, not outside nature, looking down upon it, but nature itself. And we can try and understand how it and we work, 'cos it's like made of laws! Brilliant.
Trying to work out why Negri's analysis of immaterial labour and Empire may not have all that much to say to a country like Iran (not that there are states exempt from Empire, but there are certainly places in which the state has a not insignificant role to play in the formation of any immediate political project). It's tricky.
