28 February 2005
Heidegger Crescent
As mentioned in the comments below, there's another great report/reflection on the Rancière talk and his work more generally over at Charlotte Street.
Discovered last night while idly flicking through the A-Z that there's a 'Heidegger Crescent' in Barnes. But no Feuerbach thoroughfare in the whole of London! Pshaw....
Discovered last night while idly flicking through the A-Z that there's a 'Heidegger Crescent' in Barnes. But no Feuerbach thoroughfare in the whole of London! Pshaw....
26 February 2005
Rancière Report: How does the Outside enter the Museum?
What does Rancière understand by aesthetics? Not a science or a philosophy of art, but a distribution of the sensible: the myriad ways of articulating action, production, perception and thought.
What does Rancière understand by art? That which frames the space/time sensorium, that indicates new ways of being together.
What does Rancière understand by politics? The opposite of the Police. A form of dissensus that polemically confirms the axiom of equality - the only universal axiom of politics: not rights or representation, but the starting point for any and all thought of emancipation. Politics is: 'the introduction of a 'proper-improper' that challenges the police order' - (The Politics of Aesthetics, Glossary)
Thus, 'if it's neither art nor politics it's ethics' (ethics = the hierarchical rule of representation, the static order of placing and apportioning).
His enemies: those who would reflect on their own artistic practice by way of the following three terms:
1. hyper-commitment to reality
2. hyper-vitalism
3. hyper-commitment to objectivity
Which is to say:
1. The idea that politics can be adequately represented in art: rolling footage from the favelas relayed in the dead air of a hip gallery.
2. The ideas behind 'relational aesthetics' and the ethos of the Palais de Tokyo. Rolling around with fluffy balls and being induced to behave like a child in public spaces is not a political gesture. There is a relation - that of the intricately shared concerns of politics and art - but the attempt to indulge the relation itself is not to be countenanced.
3. Politicised art there to register historical events in a quasi-scientific manner. A form of artistic 'documentation' that involves an aestheticisation of the object, and the concomitant apportioning of political events as atomised and closed mini-occurrences.
Coupled with an apparent post-modern scepticism (though Rancière claims that we are in fact not nearly sceptical enough), this contemporary sectioning of 'politicised art' is indicative of the 'deficit of fiction' and the stifling consensus that pervades public spaces (his alternative watchwords: the empty museum, the space-time sensorium, the potential 'sensory equality' of the aesthetic regime).
There is an oscillation and perpetual negotiation between two forms of political/critical art (as opposed to 'politicised art'):
1. The aesthetic/revolutionary experience of equality: the French Revolution inaugurates the birth of the museum. In this form of collective life, there is no distinction between art, life and politics.
2. The purity of art, against adornment, against commodification (the Frankfurt School tendency).
Rather than understand these two positions as utopias, or impossible projects (the mistake of thinking that there is a fated 'modernity'), the endless negotiations between these two forms, and the boundaries of art/non-art constitute the poles of the aesthetico-politico paradox. When Brecht has his characters discuss Nazism and cauliflowers in the same breath, we witness the emergence of 'political art', which exists only by virtue of the art/non-art crossover. Politics is the endless re-negotiation of the real, and of new forms of visibility.
Questions and Responses
1. Is there a meta-value in the scepticism you take towards contemporary art and artistic discourse? A new kind of norm?
- It is not a question of values, nor of normativity, but rather a making indistinct what is deemed to be transparent (that art should 'represent' politics, that art and activism somehow equal politics, that artists are automatically social agents).
2. But some works of art are more productive than others…
- But we can no longer match art to a set of rules. Classical art had a notion of
human nature which it attempted to 'match', but we know that we can always construct criteria. It is a matter of this construction.
3. You have faith in creation/inventive potential. What about the economy/capital?
- The 'science' of economy did not change anything. Classical Marxism argued that if you know how things work then you know how to change them. But 'this is absurd!'. Everybody knows how things work, and reality has not been changed on the basis of this knowledge. In terms of invention, it is the specific sphere of art/politics that changes.
footnote: PH did a great job of chairing the session, in his humble/razor-sharp way: asking several rather pertinent questions and keeping perfect time. He made a good match for Rancière too: the reluctant master, constantly undermining any pretence to authority. When I met him once I was charmed. His total lack of arrogance, his distaste for hierarchy permeates his whole being: he genuinely seems to be more interested in talking to students than their professors. All perfectly in keeping, of course, for one of the foremost contemporary thinkers of axiomatic equality....
...............................................................................
Blog comments are getting a little repetitive, I must say, though sometimes amusing. Perhaps the whole 'French philosophy is rubbish/not it's not' thing could be put to bed and have its head staved in with a shovel, though perhaps I am hoping for too much. Thanks Roger for the Rancière info and your ever-pleasant prose.
When effay wrote this:
You're the kinda guy who thinks he's a hit with the ladies if the shop assistant who sells him his morning paper smiles at him
I couldn't help but think that I'm the kind of girl who thinks she's a hit with the ladies if the shop assistant who sells me my morning paper smiles at me, but then I'm suffering from some deeply inappropriate desire for cosmic recognition, precisely of the kind that could only be channeled through the smile of a perfect stranger...or random anonymous commentators...so 'obliged' is kind of right when s/he says 'even the affection of a troll is a form of flattery' (I suggest you take some ondansetron for the nausea though). Despite the by now numerous emails I have received calling for me to ban a certain address, I still don't feel motivated enough to do - not because I am keen to 'flirt' with my comment-leavers (I am as surely terrible and as not into this virtually as I am in the meat world - despite having read Baudrillard's Seduction, I remain deeply abrupt, rude and drunk and not at all like someone trying to keep the secret of the universe between my thighs). I do not want to 'pull' on the internet - my lovelife is a small private sparrow clutched in clammy, eager paws. It is not a series of garbled words on a computer screen.
But - my blog is not my ego. So write what you will.
What does Rancière understand by art? That which frames the space/time sensorium, that indicates new ways of being together.
What does Rancière understand by politics? The opposite of the Police. A form of dissensus that polemically confirms the axiom of equality - the only universal axiom of politics: not rights or representation, but the starting point for any and all thought of emancipation. Politics is: 'the introduction of a 'proper-improper' that challenges the police order' - (The Politics of Aesthetics, Glossary)
Thus, 'if it's neither art nor politics it's ethics' (ethics = the hierarchical rule of representation, the static order of placing and apportioning).
His enemies: those who would reflect on their own artistic practice by way of the following three terms:
1. hyper-commitment to reality
2. hyper-vitalism
3. hyper-commitment to objectivity
Which is to say:
1. The idea that politics can be adequately represented in art: rolling footage from the favelas relayed in the dead air of a hip gallery.
2. The ideas behind 'relational aesthetics' and the ethos of the Palais de Tokyo. Rolling around with fluffy balls and being induced to behave like a child in public spaces is not a political gesture. There is a relation - that of the intricately shared concerns of politics and art - but the attempt to indulge the relation itself is not to be countenanced.
3. Politicised art there to register historical events in a quasi-scientific manner. A form of artistic 'documentation' that involves an aestheticisation of the object, and the concomitant apportioning of political events as atomised and closed mini-occurrences.
Coupled with an apparent post-modern scepticism (though Rancière claims that we are in fact not nearly sceptical enough), this contemporary sectioning of 'politicised art' is indicative of the 'deficit of fiction' and the stifling consensus that pervades public spaces (his alternative watchwords: the empty museum, the space-time sensorium, the potential 'sensory equality' of the aesthetic regime).
There is an oscillation and perpetual negotiation between two forms of political/critical art (as opposed to 'politicised art'):
1. The aesthetic/revolutionary experience of equality: the French Revolution inaugurates the birth of the museum. In this form of collective life, there is no distinction between art, life and politics.
2. The purity of art, against adornment, against commodification (the Frankfurt School tendency).
Rather than understand these two positions as utopias, or impossible projects (the mistake of thinking that there is a fated 'modernity'), the endless negotiations between these two forms, and the boundaries of art/non-art constitute the poles of the aesthetico-politico paradox. When Brecht has his characters discuss Nazism and cauliflowers in the same breath, we witness the emergence of 'political art', which exists only by virtue of the art/non-art crossover. Politics is the endless re-negotiation of the real, and of new forms of visibility.
Questions and Responses
1. Is there a meta-value in the scepticism you take towards contemporary art and artistic discourse? A new kind of norm?
- It is not a question of values, nor of normativity, but rather a making indistinct what is deemed to be transparent (that art should 'represent' politics, that art and activism somehow equal politics, that artists are automatically social agents).
2. But some works of art are more productive than others…
- But we can no longer match art to a set of rules. Classical art had a notion of
human nature which it attempted to 'match', but we know that we can always construct criteria. It is a matter of this construction.
3. You have faith in creation/inventive potential. What about the economy/capital?
- The 'science' of economy did not change anything. Classical Marxism argued that if you know how things work then you know how to change them. But 'this is absurd!'. Everybody knows how things work, and reality has not been changed on the basis of this knowledge. In terms of invention, it is the specific sphere of art/politics that changes.
footnote: PH did a great job of chairing the session, in his humble/razor-sharp way: asking several rather pertinent questions and keeping perfect time. He made a good match for Rancière too: the reluctant master, constantly undermining any pretence to authority. When I met him once I was charmed. His total lack of arrogance, his distaste for hierarchy permeates his whole being: he genuinely seems to be more interested in talking to students than their professors. All perfectly in keeping, of course, for one of the foremost contemporary thinkers of axiomatic equality....
...............................................................................
Blog comments are getting a little repetitive, I must say, though sometimes amusing. Perhaps the whole 'French philosophy is rubbish/not it's not' thing could be put to bed and have its head staved in with a shovel, though perhaps I am hoping for too much. Thanks Roger for the Rancière info and your ever-pleasant prose.
When effay wrote this:
You're the kinda guy who thinks he's a hit with the ladies if the shop assistant who sells him his morning paper smiles at him
I couldn't help but think that I'm the kind of girl who thinks she's a hit with the ladies if the shop assistant who sells me my morning paper smiles at me, but then I'm suffering from some deeply inappropriate desire for cosmic recognition, precisely of the kind that could only be channeled through the smile of a perfect stranger...or random anonymous commentators...so 'obliged' is kind of right when s/he says 'even the affection of a troll is a form of flattery' (I suggest you take some ondansetron for the nausea though). Despite the by now numerous emails I have received calling for me to ban a certain address, I still don't feel motivated enough to do - not because I am keen to 'flirt' with my comment-leavers (I am as surely terrible and as not into this virtually as I am in the meat world - despite having read Baudrillard's Seduction, I remain deeply abrupt, rude and drunk and not at all like someone trying to keep the secret of the universe between my thighs). I do not want to 'pull' on the internet - my lovelife is a small private sparrow clutched in clammy, eager paws. It is not a series of garbled words on a computer screen.
But - my blog is not my ego. So write what you will.
25 February 2005
So, another night, another series of accidentally catastrophic attempts to undermine whatever desire anyone might have to listen to me. Please, just look away... Neurological car crash in progress....
Have a hideous sense that everything is wrong, and that this is already hell. Could be the drink. Certainly hope so. The alternative is ( ) unthinkable. And insupportable.
So, anyway, on to weightier matters: my new hairstyle. Apparently it makes me popular and, incomprehensibly, more interesting. And I thought women were supposed to be shallow - turns out this is merely a projection on the part of the biologically appended in order to distract from the fact that all men are...scopophilic scum lovely.
Think it may be time to grow up and assume my vanguard role in the war of the sexes. No war butsex war...class war, just as before.
UPDATE: I now feel much better. Apparently I wasn't that badly behaved after all....and I haven't lost any friends...yet....Sex war called off for now....
Have a hideous sense that everything is wrong, and that this is already hell. Could be the drink. Certainly hope so. The alternative is ( ) unthinkable. And insupportable.
So, anyway, on to weightier matters: my new hairstyle. Apparently it makes me popular and, incomprehensibly, more interesting. And I thought women were supposed to be shallow - turns out this is merely a projection on the part of the biologically appended in order to distract from the fact that all men are...
Think it may be time to grow up and assume my vanguard role in the war of the sexes. No war but
UPDATE: I now feel much better. Apparently I wasn't that badly behaved after all....and I haven't lost any friends...yet....Sex war called off for now....
23 February 2005
20 February 2005
ashura
18 February 2005
change the record, foreign policy hawks!
This is from a bazaar in Iran last year. This is my Iran post.
17 February 2005
skin deep....mmmm
It's not often that Infinite Thought goes to beauty parlours - I kid myself that I generally resemble an alcoholic elf princess, but most of the time I probably look more akin to some sort of 19th-century 'consumptive book-girl' (superhero qualities: capacity to skim-read controversial tomes in times of emergency, just call me Willow, ha ha).
Anyway, today I got my hair dyed, a bit. The bloke who washed and dried my hair was...a little guy. I mean a proper little guy - a dwarf. It was strangely erotic, as his tiny hands rinsed the soap from my damp tresses. 'Gosh,' I thought. 'Is this okay?'. I mean, it would be more offensive if I didn't find him attractive a priori I suppose, but what was going on? I quickly turned to the magazines I'd been handed to read whilst the dye set in.
Women's magazines are so bizarre. It's not like there's an obvious causal link you can point to between thin models and anorexia in magazine audiences, but I think something else entirely is going on ....they make these women look edible! Seriously. Their skin looks like coffee ice-cream covered in velvet. 'This is not going to help plump young women to cut down on their food!' I thought, as dye dripped onto my forehead. Man, my skin is going to fall off, like that weird 'melt movie' 'Street Trash' we watched when I was accidentally really stoned, shortly before I got really sick.
I turned instead, perversely, to the real, official, food pages. Some guff. It took me a minute to realise that the heading 'Pan theism' was referring to the apparently splendid virtues of a new egg-frying pan. I couldn't believe it.
Anyway, I am not using this computer tomorrow as my attention span is rapidly becoming comparable with that of a meerkat.
Anyway, today I got my hair dyed, a bit. The bloke who washed and dried my hair was...a little guy. I mean a proper little guy - a dwarf. It was strangely erotic, as his tiny hands rinsed the soap from my damp tresses. 'Gosh,' I thought. 'Is this okay?'. I mean, it would be more offensive if I didn't find him attractive a priori I suppose, but what was going on? I quickly turned to the magazines I'd been handed to read whilst the dye set in.
Women's magazines are so bizarre. It's not like there's an obvious causal link you can point to between thin models and anorexia in magazine audiences, but I think something else entirely is going on ....they make these women look edible! Seriously. Their skin looks like coffee ice-cream covered in velvet. 'This is not going to help plump young women to cut down on their food!' I thought, as dye dripped onto my forehead. Man, my skin is going to fall off, like that weird 'melt movie' 'Street Trash' we watched when I was accidentally really stoned, shortly before I got really sick.
I turned instead, perversely, to the real, official, food pages. Some guff. It took me a minute to realise that the heading 'Pan theism' was referring to the apparently splendid virtues of a new egg-frying pan. I couldn't believe it.
Anyway, I am not using this computer tomorrow as my attention span is rapidly becoming comparable with that of a meerkat.
to the questions themselves!
whilst looking for a non-rubbish definition of utilitarianism for my class the other day, I came across this picture in an introductory book for A' level philosophy students.
What kind of impression do you get from this photo? That philosophy is a bit like a bunch of pagans throwing sticks in the air (stop that nodding, effay!)? That it's something to do outdoors, in groups, when the weather is a bit off?
Honestly, what were the editors thinking? I know philosophy is hardly the most visual of subjects, but they could have posted a picture of Kant's grave, or a talking lion, or an immoral act, or something.
Apologies to 'Jasper', but I don't think I'm in a position (conceptually or temporally!) to answer your very intricate questions. I know you've finished your big book report, but mine needs some work....perhaps I'll go and find some sticks and throw them about a bit, that should help.
16 February 2005
badiou on sci-fi
A comment below reminded me that Badiou has indeed written an essay on sci-fi, part of which I reproduce here (translated five minutes ago by the machine-like mild prince. Payment = a biscuit):
Science fiction is forced to construct a world, and by this very token, to elicit a comparison with the world that we already know. This comparative construction is always related – as was already the case in Plato with the myth of Er at the end of the Republic, or even with the cosmology of the Timaeus – to a kind of conceptual epic in images. It is demiurgic (creating the Whole) and normative (judging what is on the basis of what could be, or could have been). Science fiction resembles a metaphorical disquisition, because it elaborates a judgment regarding what is on the basis of a global fiction in which we experience, in particular, the momentous question of the relation between the structure of the world and the reality of the choices that one believes to be making within it, or the freedoms that one imagines to be exercising within it. (‘Dialectics of the Fable: Philosophical Myths and Cinema’ [an essay on Cube, The Matrix and Existenz], 2003, in Matrix, Machine Philosophique, Paris, Ellipses, 2003)
And I bet I've read more PK Dick than all of you put together!
15 February 2005
review
Tim from the wrong side of capitalism has a presumably non-drunken review of the Hallward talk at Middlesex (who were you? I'm surprised I didn't introduce myself if you don't normally go to these things).
14 February 2005
Msex talks
Just a bit of institutional publicity. If you want to come and listen to people get savaged by a bunch of men with Adorno-eyebrows, then come along to the more-or-less public Middlesex talks, Thursdays, 5.30-7.30pm, Room A116, Tottenham campus, Middlesex University, White Hart Lane, London N17 8HR.
24 February
Liberation Technology: Marcuse via Simondon
Alberto Toscano, Goldsmiths College
3 March
title to be confirmed
David McNeill, University of Essex
16 and 17 March
Philosophies of Time and the Problem of History
14 April
Heidegger's 'Thing' and Beyond
Graham Harman, The American University in Cairo
28 April
title to be confirmed
Gillian Howie, University of Liverpool
19 May
title to be confirmed
Barbara Cassin, CNRS, Paris
9 June
title to be confirmed
Alain Badiou, Ecole Normale Superieure , Paris
24 February
Liberation Technology: Marcuse via Simondon
Alberto Toscano, Goldsmiths College
3 March
title to be confirmed
David McNeill, University of Essex
16 and 17 March
Philosophies of Time and the Problem of History
14 April
Heidegger's 'Thing' and Beyond
Graham Harman, The American University in Cairo
28 April
title to be confirmed
Gillian Howie, University of Liverpool
19 May
title to be confirmed
Barbara Cassin, CNRS, Paris
9 June
title to be confirmed
Alain Badiou, Ecole Normale Superieure , Paris
don't drink, pig!
Post-althusser, a night out with gesamtausgabe-boy and romanian 'sex workers of the world unite' girl. Very civilized, unlike the weekend. We compared past awards (no George crosses): mine, top twenty sociology 'a' level dissertation ('self-confidence between the sexes in education'), a crossword competition (£10!) and my PhD scholarship (liable to be retracted at any moment). Gesamtausgabe-boy had just received £100 for being top in computer science in his year, and Romanian girl is currently living off Soros's generosity (even if he almost destroyed our economy! only joking...please don't send me comments about this).
Amongst other discussions today: what is the relationship between humanism and subjectivity as understood in the French reception of Marx? Who is this subject anyway - groups, the masses, the party, man...? What does Soviet humanism of 1936 have in common with the post-Hegelian humanism of Feuerbach and other left Hegelians? Is Garaudy still alive and is he still an Allah-botherer?
Plus, why no one wanted to live in caves any more.
The question of the week has in general been: if forced, sex with monkey or robot? (care of Zizek, care of one of his students, probably). Men invariably say robot; women monkey. But why?
Amongst other discussions today: what is the relationship between humanism and subjectivity as understood in the French reception of Marx? Who is this subject anyway - groups, the masses, the party, man...? What does Soviet humanism of 1936 have in common with the post-Hegelian humanism of Feuerbach and other left Hegelians? Is Garaudy still alive and is he still an Allah-botherer?
Plus, why no one wanted to live in caves any more.
The question of the week has in general been: if forced, sex with monkey or robot? (care of Zizek, care of one of his students, probably). Men invariably say robot; women monkey. But why?
13 February 2005
drink, pig!
After an incomprehensibly drunken week, and just before my insides fuse together, I have decided (not for the first time) to turn to writing to avoid the deadly lure of the demon drink (the British disease!) - so in the next week or so finally expect that damn defence of Lisa Simpson! That articulate summary of my interest in infinity! Something about Iran! What my thesis is really about! and so on....erm, but don't push me, or I'll get cross and jab broken glass in your face.
In other news, the person or persons at The H is O, via the weblog, has written two ambiguous and amusing hostile tributes to the so-called troll (hiding under that virtual bridge and scaring digital goats) who ended up here lately (and I must admit I hold ambivalent respect/annoyance towards) here and here.
In other, other news K-Punk's dad came over yesterday and built a bookcase in my living-room, which is unbelievably splendid and holds an unfeasibly large amount of books (what is this, adjective sunday?). So once proper curtains are put in, and the towels taken down, infinite thought towers will no longer resemble the squat of the mind it desperately wants to be (just ignore the fact that a bunch of degenerates are about to turn up for an Althusser reading group). In fact, I better clear the broken glass from the carpet before they wonder in....stay clean, blog fellow travelers!
In other news, the person or persons at The H is O, via the weblog, has written two ambiguous and amusing hostile tributes to the so-called troll (hiding under that virtual bridge and scaring digital goats) who ended up here lately (and I must admit I hold ambivalent respect/annoyance towards) here and here.
In other, other news K-Punk's dad came over yesterday and built a bookcase in my living-room, which is unbelievably splendid and holds an unfeasibly large amount of books (what is this, adjective sunday?). So once proper curtains are put in, and the towels taken down, infinite thought towers will no longer resemble the squat of the mind it desperately wants to be (just ignore the fact that a bunch of degenerates are about to turn up for an Althusser reading group). In fact, I better clear the broken glass from the carpet before they wonder in....stay clean, blog fellow travelers!
11 February 2005
massively insular post
Now, the comment below is really funny. Firmly agree with Adam that Roger is on the short list for comment of the year (but who would adjudicate such a thing? The Weblog?). Must confess, as I did last night, that I'm about five days from closing down the comments. Not only do I not really have enough time to read them properly, but I find myself feeling slightly hollow about the whole thing, though perhaps that is just the drink. I had imagined that a large bunch of comments would make me feel somehow happy and popular, like one of the pretty girls in 'Clueless' - but I was wrong. It just makes me apprehensive....
Hey, I'm beginning to suspect that IT is writing all the comments, including this one. It is sort of a variation on the barber who cuts all the hair in the regiment. The Russell references of "karpov" are the giveaway. The unlikeliness of two people threatening to beat each other up over the collected works of Quine and Badiou strains all our credibility. Surely this is meant to prod us, little by little, into thinking through Badiou's reading of Dedekind's was sind und was sollen die Zahlen and gaining an overall, sorta groovy, dramatic feeling for it. Humph! Well, I'm not standing for it -- that is, if I were an independent and real commentator, instead of a figment in Ms. IT's mind. Can a figment put a foot down? Hey, take away that hook, I'm not finished here!!! Not only will I compare my gre's with anybody, I will totally resent the insinuation that I bought them, and besides, they were expensive enough and it was my money...
Hey, I'm beginning to suspect that IT is writing all the comments, including this one. It is sort of a variation on the barber who cuts all the hair in the regiment. The Russell references of "karpov" are the giveaway. The unlikeliness of two people threatening to beat each other up over the collected works of Quine and Badiou strains all our credibility. Surely this is meant to prod us, little by little, into thinking through Badiou's reading of Dedekind's was sind und was sollen die Zahlen and gaining an overall, sorta groovy, dramatic feeling for it. Humph! Well, I'm not standing for it -- that is, if I were an independent and real commentator, instead of a figment in Ms. IT's mind. Can a figment put a foot down? Hey, take away that hook, I'm not finished here!!! Not only will I compare my gre's with anybody, I will totally resent the insinuation that I bought them, and besides, they were expensive enough and it was my money...
10 February 2005
subtraction
Ya bitches,
well, Peter H (he of Badiou monograph fame) gave a paper tonight about the, erm, trajectory (bad English reception of French terminology, mais oui), of the concept of "subtraction" in recent French philosophy - Michel Henry, Deleuze, Badiou. Pics by Kandinsky, Bacon. Ok, is there a taut, problematic, question of the relation between subtraction and abstraction? Yes. Ok, is there a desire for a form of secularisation of the infinite that escapes overcoding by the debates about secularisation that, like, happened before (Blumenberg and Lowith: the form remains but filled with different content; the content remains, but the form has changed)...Tough call....
well, Peter H (he of Badiou monograph fame) gave a paper tonight about the, erm, trajectory (bad English reception of French terminology, mais oui), of the concept of "subtraction" in recent French philosophy - Michel Henry, Deleuze, Badiou. Pics by Kandinsky, Bacon. Ok, is there a taut, problematic, question of the relation between subtraction and abstraction? Yes. Ok, is there a desire for a form of secularisation of the infinite that escapes overcoding by the debates about secularisation that, like, happened before (Blumenberg and Lowith: the form remains but filled with different content; the content remains, but the form has changed)...Tough call....
09 February 2005
Happy Day
So, anyway, hopefully should be sorting the comments out soon, as ali suggested - so that they will curl up beautifully under the posts, like most blogs, and you won't have to wade through pages of stuff you don't want to read.
AND THEN EVERYONE IS HAPPY!
AND THEN EVERYONE IS HAPPY!
07 February 2005
derailed!
Quite impressed with how spectacularly my blog has been derailed...and how I have sneakily managed to remain 'friends' with everyone (ok, I really am trying to wreck everything now. Come on my scum readership, destroy me!). Feel strangely pleased that someone called Kathy writes to tells me they like my blog - and I thought it was only pored over by aggressive philosophy men of varying theo/politico/analytico/affiliations. Whilst I can't get enough of arguing with boys, I wonder how many girls read my blog...and how many philosophy girls in particular - more or less my favourite type of person, though in ridiculously short supply. (And I thought Lisa Simpson would have more of an impact than that.)
I have, though, enjoyed the more or less mentalist extremes to which the debates have tended:
'Why do you hide your identity? Are you fat?'
'Heidegger and Husserl are in hades I suspect'
'You're going to get me flunked with flying monkey's?'
'Hail Lord Russell'
'a Mediterranean cruise with a lecherous, dogmatic Wittgen-Quinean who calls you 'dear''
'Logos reigns supreme'
And so on....anyway, whilst doing my work like a good postgrad student, I came across this fine quote which I thought summed things up quite beautifully:
'Men's political, economic and ideological conflicts are the quarrels of lovers who know not that they love. Let them realize it, let their eyes be opened, let the scales fall and their truth be unveiled, let them know the truth, and love will be realized, will become reality. To love is to be a communist.' - Louis Althusser, 'On Feuerbach' (1967) from The Humanist Controversy.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
I have, though, enjoyed the more or less mentalist extremes to which the debates have tended:
'Why do you hide your identity? Are you fat?'
'Heidegger and Husserl are in hades I suspect'
'You're going to get me flunked with flying monkey's?'
'Hail Lord Russell'
'a Mediterranean cruise with a lecherous, dogmatic Wittgen-Quinean who calls you 'dear''
'Logos reigns supreme'
And so on....anyway, whilst doing my work like a good postgrad student, I came across this fine quote which I thought summed things up quite beautifully:
'Men's political, economic and ideological conflicts are the quarrels of lovers who know not that they love. Let them realize it, let their eyes be opened, let the scales fall and their truth be unveiled, let them know the truth, and love will be realized, will become reality. To love is to be a communist.' - Louis Althusser, 'On Feuerbach' (1967) from The Humanist Controversy.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
04 February 2005
negri link & c.
Consistently excellent blog a gauche has put up a link to the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, which includes an interesting review of Hardt and Negri's Multitude, and some slightly strange articles about things like Pascal, theology and gambling.
In other news, Mark Kaplan of also ace blog charlotte street has a little discussion of music 'as ersatz spirit', which hooks up with the quote I posted yesterday. He also posts an equation which intrigues, namely: Marx’s critique of abstract equality) + (Sartre’s notion of seriality) = Badiou on democracy, which interestingly links into a discussion on dissensus on Badiou, and bat's suggestion that "the recent English language reception of Badiou overstates the Sartrean influence, placing too much emphasis (or the wrong emphasis) on the "void". This tends to reduce Badiou's ontology to a latter day negative theology, and consequently misread the event as some kind of "miracle"...". Now, I'm not sure who Bat is referring to here (surely not that one line from Charlotte Street!), but would definitely reiterate the argument that, whilst clearly not down with the Sartrean 'subject of history', Badiou is nevertheless concerned (especially in the later works) to conceive of politics in markedly similar ways to Sartre in 1960 - the 'apocalyptic' coming together of the group-in-fusion, most particularly. Clearly, comparing Sartre's early phenomeno-miserablist ontology of hostile stares and holes to Badiou's set-theoretical ontology is a bit of a mistake, but skipping the ontology and going to the politics of each is much more interesting - reckon Badiou would take Sartre's destructive mass revolts over Hardt and Negri's 'politics of joy' anyday.
In other news, Mark Kaplan of also ace blog charlotte street has a little discussion of music 'as ersatz spirit', which hooks up with the quote I posted yesterday. He also posts an equation which intrigues, namely: Marx’s critique of abstract equality) + (Sartre’s notion of seriality) = Badiou on democracy, which interestingly links into a discussion on dissensus on Badiou, and bat's suggestion that "the recent English language reception of Badiou overstates the Sartrean influence, placing too much emphasis (or the wrong emphasis) on the "void". This tends to reduce Badiou's ontology to a latter day negative theology, and consequently misread the event as some kind of "miracle"...". Now, I'm not sure who Bat is referring to here (surely not that one line from Charlotte Street!), but would definitely reiterate the argument that, whilst clearly not down with the Sartrean 'subject of history', Badiou is nevertheless concerned (especially in the later works) to conceive of politics in markedly similar ways to Sartre in 1960 - the 'apocalyptic' coming together of the group-in-fusion, most particularly. Clearly, comparing Sartre's early phenomeno-miserablist ontology of hostile stares and holes to Badiou's set-theoretical ontology is a bit of a mistake, but skipping the ontology and going to the politics of each is much more interesting - reckon Badiou would take Sartre's destructive mass revolts over Hardt and Negri's 'politics of joy' anyday.
03 February 2005
immoral
yike, won't be writing about that again then.
Came across this in Private Eye TV reviews today (about a programme comparing football and religion).How true:
'Sacred music has the knack of making things seem sacred, just as rock music makes them appear dangerous and sexy. If you slowed down footage of sex, deep-sea fishing or dealings on the futures market and lashed Fauré over them, you could give any of those activities the look of a religion: speed them up and add Metallica and they look satanic. This is the result of the intervention of a video editor not a deity.'
Came across this in Private Eye TV reviews today (about a programme comparing football and religion).How true:
'Sacred music has the knack of making things seem sacred, just as rock music makes them appear dangerous and sexy. If you slowed down footage of sex, deep-sea fishing or dealings on the futures market and lashed Fauré over them, you could give any of those activities the look of a religion: speed them up and add Metallica and they look satanic. This is the result of the intervention of a video editor not a deity.'
02 February 2005
morals
Without coming over like a bad moral philosopher (to be fair, is much too late to be worried about such things), k-p pointed out to me the other day that it's often easier to justify murder than rape, even though we tend to regard the former crime as much more serious in law and so on. Just be very teacher-y about it, all those situations in which murder might not be a terrible option (self-defence, assassinating Hitler, killing the Wide-Awake Club) amount to many more than the situations in which rape might be seen to be a valid option. We could only come up with one possible scenario (sure you've already thought of it): last two surviving humans (man and woman, obv!): 'we must reproduce for the sake of the species'. 'No, piss off, I don't want to'. Even there, you'd have to give pretty massive justification for wanting to continue this largely unattractive race.
So, what's the answer? Massively more severe penalties for rape, such that punishment is at least on a par with that for murder (which varies all over the place obviously, but tends to be much harsher than for sexual crimes)?
Just a vague, mostly spurious, thought...
So, what's the answer? Massively more severe penalties for rape, such that punishment is at least on a par with that for murder (which varies all over the place obviously, but tends to be much harsher than for sexual crimes)?
Just a vague, mostly spurious, thought...
