06 December 2009
more on the free university etc.
...an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet...
As was to be expected, I got a very large response and links to online and other free university sources which I'll sort through and put up lately, but this is just to say thanks to everyone who has written so far - your comments have not gone unnoticed or unappreciated, as always.
Same goes for everyone who has contacted me/written about One-Dimensional Woman. There have been some very interesting points and criticisms which I'd really like to address (and not in a 'I hate you, I'm going to f*&% up your career you horrible critic' sort of way, obviously! Not really my, erm, style...). I'm just pleased that people have taken an interest and felt moved to say something, including one young guy's dad who read his son's copy and wrote me a few thousand (very interesting) words. That sort of thing is great.
Before that though, I may need to unplug temporarily: a sleep and calmness deficit is on the verge of exacting a terrible revenge on what remains of my psyche! And that would just be a bad scene for everyone. Let's not do that, eh...
In the meantime, although I'm a bit loathe to put this up because I sound unduly giggly and overly Radio 4, here's a link to a talk I gave recently on Badiou and Beckett in relation to ideas of the Humanities and the Human. This was recorded by the very kind René Wolf. Lara wrote a very interesting response to it, which I can't seem to link to at the moment using my Ma's Wiltshire internet (it runs through cows and is serviced by packs of blind pheasants) which in turns links back to questions of the university and academia in general. So it's all related, I promise, even if I can't quite show you how at the moment.
