If it works, break it.
I would become farts of flowers, farts of weeds, farts of trees,
bubbling farts of stagnant ponds.
Seoul. Chicago. Denver.
reader(s)
"He who stands aloof runs the risk of believing himself better than others and misusing his critique of society as an ideology for his private interest. While he gropingly forms his own life in the frail image of a true existence, he should never forget its frailty, nor how little the image is a substitute for true life."
Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia (1951; p. 26)
(Source: ghostdad-ebooks)
"Such is the influence of custom, that, where it is strongest, it not only covers our natural ignorance, but even conceals itself, and seems not to take place, merely because it is found in the highest degree."
David Hume (via totrulyexist)
Snap!
Yes, that’s exactly what he’s talking about. Yet another moment in the history of Greek philosophy that you don’t hear much about in school.
Though these techniques are largely neglected in contemporary philosophy, the textual evidence (such as the philosophical gossip of Diogenes Laertius and his sources) indicates clearly that the traditional dialectical curriculum of Classical and Hellenic Athenian philosophy involved extensive training in the rhetorical arts of “reading a bitch”and “cutting a bitch” (kunalektia and kunalysia, in Ancient Greek).
Diogenes of Sinope, the legendary Cynic, seems to have been the queen bitch of Ancient Athens, but Diogenes Laertius offers considerable textual evidence for the suggestion that Arcesilaus, Aristippus, and Bion also gave good face, as did Aristotle, founder of the House of Aristotle. Timotheus the Athenian, in his book On Lives, notes that Aristotle “spoke with a lisp…his calves were slender…and he was conspicuous by his attire, his rings, and the cut of his hair.” Gurrrl. And while getting his hair did Aristotle wrote over 300 treatises; bitch was one busy drag queen! When Xenocrates succeeded to the leadership of the Academy, Aristotle was away giving private lessons to Alexander the Not-Yet Great of Macedonia. On returning to Athens to find Xenocrates at the head of the school, bitch raised an eyebrow, twirled, left the room without saying a word, and set up shop “in the Lyceum where he would walk up and down discussing philosophy with his pupils until it was time to rub themselves with oil.” (Hot damn, now I know what my philosophy school will look like. All of these quotes are real and in Diogenes Laertius’s Lives, BTW).
In the Classical and Hellenic periods of Greek philosophy, each school was traditionally led by a “scholarch” or “house mother.” The initial succession of scholarchs in Plato’s Academy was this: Plato, Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemo, Crates, Cranor, Arcesilaus. Arcesilaus was thus the 7th scholarch of the Academy and by far its most influential leader since Plato, since it was Arcesilaus who introduced skepticism into Academic discourse and essentially established the Skeptical orMiddle Academy which is the primary subject of Cicero’sAcademica. Of Arcesilaus, Diogenes Laertius also notes that “He was devoted to dialectic…Very fertile in invention, he could meet objection acutely or bring the course of discussion back to the point at issue, and fit it to every occasion. In persuasiveness he had no equal, and this all the more drew pupils to the school, although they were in terror of his pungent wit. But they willingly put up with that; for his goodness was extraordinary and he inspired his pupils with hopes” (my kind of teacher). “He was also fond of boys and very susceptible…And yet for all that he was modest enough to recommend his pupils to hear other philosophers. And when a certain youth from Chios was not well pleased with his lectures and preferred those of…Hieronymus, Arcesilaus himself took him and introduced him to that philosopher, with an injunction to behave well.”
Arcesilaus inherited leadership of the Academy from his
sugar-daddyteacher Crantor, the previous scholarch. Diogenes describes their meeting like this: When Arcesliaus entered the room, Crantor quoted a line from Euripides: “O maiden, if I save thee, wilt thou be grateful to me?” in reply to which Arcesilaus quoted the next line of the play: “Take me, stranger, whether for maidservant or for wife.” Crantor’s teacher, Crates, was himself the buttboy of his own teacher, Polemo, and of their quadrivial relationship Diogenes reports the following: “Their common table was in the house of Crantor; and these two and Arcesilaus lived in harmony together. Arcesilaus and Crantor shared the same house, while Polemo and Crates lived with Lysicles, one of the citizens. Crates, as already stated, was the favorite of Polema and Arcesilaus of Crantor.They don’t make grad students like they used to, apparently…
In 1859, Karl Marx wrote “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness”. Sam Harris never read those words.
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature
Formats Available
In Kafka, Deleuze and Guattari free their subject from his (mis)intrepreters. In contrast to traditional readings that see in Kafka’s work a case of Oedipalized neurosis or a flight into transcendence, guilt, and subjectivity, Deleuze and Guattari make a case for Kafka as a man of joy, a promoter of radical politics who resisted at every turn submission to frozen hierarchies.
—Translated by Dana Polan with a foreword by Reda Bensmaia
I ain’t read it but you probably should
cosigned. and then read Walser. and think similar towards a minor literature stuff about him.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, from “The Primacy of Perception and its Philosophical Consequences”
With regard to the first complaint — and unlike so many other Žižekians who commented on my first piece — Downes has done the hard work of actually finding two lengthy quotes, from “A Plea for Leninist Intolerance” [pdf] and ”Mao Zedong: the Marxist Lord of Misrule,” that refute my charge
Boy Howdy! You really do think highly of yourself. Much pride, no? What a patronizing douche you can be. Must keep your teeth white.
Of course, as with anything involving Žižek, it’s all about which quotes you choose since he has written and said so very many words. And, ultimately, my argument is that Žižek is either masterful or hapless in the way that he rejects and embraces the idea of a pure Leninism at turns.
Oh god, really? Are you simply going to cherry-pick a quote or two from other people who you agree with about how to interpret Zizek’s work?
Context matters.
Zizek’s project isn’t quotes put into context to refute or support your claims, which represent more or less your anxieties about people who are willing to examine, in this case, Lenin’s work. You know that’s not how discourse should work. Such added-context is surplus, is disingenuous, and is rather unnecessary. Zizek’s project has been evolving and continuous, rather than contiguous as you represent it, and is certainly not an effort to realize/actualize/(whatever you’d like to insist) a repetition of a Leninist revolution. This obsession about a Leninist purity in Zizek is weird. And, he’s anything but pure. Moreover, your beef is clearly with Lenin (and socialists and communists and all the other folks you’re conveniently comparing who aren’t comparable in the way you insist they are to Lenin and Leninism.) As a result, you’re completely missing Zizek’s point.
[#long reads] As if length is a sign of intellectual work.
Postmodern Batman
I’m DEEEAAAAAD!!!!!
A very engaging and useful example illustrating the difference between thinking about scientific observation and doing science is offered in Thoreau’s Walden, “Brute Neighbors”.
Thoreau narrates his scientific method and narrates his thinking about what it means to behold nature in nature. Three kinds of beholding (seeing and observation) are offered regarding battling ant colonies: beholding the ants as they are battling nature where they are battling, isolating the battling ants fighting on a twig, and finally bringing ants back to his cabin and viewing things with technology. There’s a difference between observing and recording the behavior of the ants and thinking about the the doing the observing and recording. It’s not that scientists can’t do both. It’s that science is not best suited to think about itself because thinking about science is, necessarily, one step removed from doing science.
Thinking is a receding from the subject. It’s a reflection that is one step removed.
As such, it’s difficult to imagine a philosopher being able to claim that he or she is capable of thinking about science as doing science. That’s not what philosophy is, not that a philosopher can’t do science.
And so on…
Unlike Heidegger, he does not have a dismissive attitude towards science, namely, that it “does not think” or that it is merely calculation. On the contrary, in Merleau-Ponty’s thought there is a constant dialogue with the sciences in the hope of a mutual clarification.
Boner.
I’m not a huge Heidegger fan—something about National Socialism and Nazis and sympathy, even intellectual support and sentimentality for a warped German ideal, etc.—but this is crap representation of one of the simplest aspects of phenomenological studies. That science “does not think” isn’t dismissive of science at all, and you know it. It’s both inviting and insisting. It invites science to properly participate in philosophy and insists philosophy fulfill its role in science. Does not think, in this case, means philosophically as opposed to scientifically. In fact, the sentiment is that science should be free to do science and philosophy should be encouraged to think about what doing science means. To insist this relationship between science and philosophy is an attempt by philosophers to lord over science and scientists is hyperbole, at best. (Not to say that philosophers and scientists don’t argue about this and their roles in science and philosophy, but I’m clearly not implying that is so.)
I like M-P more than I like Heidegger, for several reasons, but this pseudo-distinction is comic.
"Nothing is more real than nothing."
Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies (via outofthedarkness)
Does that mean coke is the no thing?
““If ‘new’ always means, again and again, once again, anew, the appropriative drive, the repetition of the same drive to appropriate the other for oneself, the truth, being, the event, etc., what can still take place anew? Anew? What remains to come? And what will become of our just impatience to see the new coming, the new thoughts, the new thinkers, new justice, the revolution or the messianic interruption? Yet another ruse? Once again the desire of appropriation? Yes. Yes, perhaps.””—
Jacques Derrida (via ghostorballoon)
(via davidwpritchard)
I don’t have it, but I’d be interested in seeing the French word that has been translated as anew. Especially because the prefix a- in anew comes from a shortening of the Old English preposition meaning “on”. Anew isn’t towards the new, it’s an exchange. In the space of what could be something new, instead doing the same thing once again. Nothing “remains to come”.
The quote confuses me. Why “anew”? Why not “renew”? Too political? Too psychoanalytic, relatable to “repress”?
We need a word like obnew.
Interested. Who has the French?
(via dagseoul)
I do not have the French but I can help you or somebody else out there in finding it by providing a little more bibliographical information— I apologize for not doing so right away. The quote is in the essay “‘This Mad Truth’: The Just Name of Friendship.” In my little Verso edition of Politics of Friendship it’s at the very bottom of page 65.
Anyway, I think the utility of ‘anew’ in this context is its relative ahistoricality (not a word!?). Renewal implies the miraculous return of something occluded or depleted. It’s always an event in Badiou’s sense of the term (or at least as far as I understand Badiou, which isn’t very far). Anew implies a cyclical motion and a reciprocity between forwards and backwards. That’s what I think he remains by “what remains to come.” Even with the forward motion of time, history under this “anew” can be read in reverse just as well. To me, the phrase “revolution or the messianic interruption” very precisely calls up Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History. Which also deals specifically with how to hold and how to utilize the recognition of patterns and historical memory. Both of them are very interesting a-dialectic subversions that I can’t figure out how to talk about at 2:30 AM.
Good luck finding the original French equivalent of anew. I’d be really interested in knowing more about it too.
I like it. I get your point about renew. If anew “implies a cyclical motion and a reciprocity between forwards and backwards,” I wonder about the mechanics of this in context of historiography, or even history itself. I agree with you that it appears a reference to Benjamin. Of course, we don’t get much of the debris here.
In the original text the discussion is about Nietzsche and the Christian commandment to love one’s neighbor. Nietzsche going on about the drive is to possess one’s neighbor. To take the neighbor’s place. Right? “Our love of our neighbor, is it not a lust for new possessions? And likewise our love of knowledge, of truth, and altogether any lust for what is new?”
After this, then comes the statement from our quote. So, what seems clear to me is that we’re worrying about how to name any event at all. And the appropriative drive is the drive to possess.
I have to read this, again. Much more interesting years later after first seeing it. Esp interested in the comparison of Christian Love and Greek Friendship. This appears to be something like Paul v Aristotle. I don’t know. I think I only read the introduction and opening arguments in the book. I know I don’t own it.
Very intrigued. Thanks.
I have to say that when Nietzsche talks about making attempts to do something new, he sees failure as an option. He’s much more interested in making the grand attempt than he is in the result. This is in my opinion, of course. But I’ve read most of his work and I always felt that way. Versucher, in German, is tempter. Versuch, an attempt; Versuchen, to attempt. I think we’re tempted to attempt something new. Is the trouble that we end up doing things anew through the appropriative drive expressed by love?
Now I’m babbling. Anyway. …
(Source: ghostorballoons, via ghostorballoons)
"If ‘new’ always means, again and again, once again, anew, the appropriative drive, the repetition of the same drive to appropriate the other for oneself, the truth, being, the event, etc., what can still take place anew? Anew? What remains to come? And what will become of our just impatience to see the new coming, the new thoughts, the new thinkers, new justice, the revolution or the messianic interruption? Yet another ruse? Once again the desire of appropriation?
Yes. Yes, perhaps."
Jacques Derrida (via ghostorballoon)
(via davidwpritchard)
I don’t have it, but I’d be interested in seeing the French word that has been translated as anew. Especially because the prefix a- in anew comes from a shortening of the Old English preposition meaning “on”. Anew isn’t towards the new, it’s an exchange. In the space of what could be something new, instead doing the same thing once again. Nothing “remains to come”.
The quote confuses me. Why “anew”? Why not “renew”? Too political? Too psychoanalytic, relatable to “repress”?
We need a word like obnew.
Interested. Who has the French?
(Source: ghostorballoons, via deactiavtedhookedonsemiotics)
Extract from Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera, 1929 (soundtrack by Cinematic Orchestra).
Walter Benjamin writes:
By close-ups of the things around us, by focusing on hidden details of familiar objects, by exploring common place milieus under the ingenious guidance of the camera, the film, on the one hand, extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action. Our taverns and our metropolitan streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad stations and our factories appeared to have us locked up hopelessly. Then came the film and burst this prison-world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so that now, in the midst of its far-flung ruins and debris, we calmly and adventurously go traveling. With the close-up, space expands; with slow motion, movement is extended. The enlargement of a snapshot does not simply render more precise what in any case was visible, though unclear: it reveals entirely new structural formations of the subject. So, too, slow motion not only presents familiar qualities of movement but reveals in them entirely unknown ones “which, far from looking like retarded rapid movements, give the effect of singularly gliding, floating, supernatural motions.” Evidently a different nature opens itself to the camera than opens to the naked eye – if only because an unconsciously penetrated space is substituted for a space consciously explored by man. Even if one has a general knowledge of the way people walk, one knows nothing of a person’s posture during the fractional second of a stride. The act of reaching for a lighter or a spoon is familiar routine, yet we hardly know what really goes on between hand and metal, not to mention how this fluctuates with our moods. Here the camera intervenes with the resources of its lowerings and liftings, its interruptions and isolations, it extensions and accelerations, its enlargements and reductions. The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.
