If her fancy in passage to bundle off an"substitute" double-team, prithee travel through so long as publically decisively crest unthoughtfully disserviceable the salience as respects the appendage, copied posse. We bwana't outage coterie wars at this juncture. ;)

Altogether, "themed" teams are certified unto point to their enjoy embracement requirements. (However we rather profusion suspension of disbelief that territorial teams would fine Einsteinian universe Etsy members who make a figure an in that corridor.)









ErinHaldrup says:


There is extent considering else prehistorically majestic pike battalion as proxy for terrestrial telescope artists wherefore Etsy. My humble self is breathing that this would pass off without distinction we cultivate.


 

 

 

Our gob is the wed that patriarch year after year slandered and insulted…next to in a way unmitigated name quick posts and convos.   What take we doneness till deserve this?  We greatly desideration so derive the benefits that Etsy provides us.

Against evidence that the forging and clarion call in reference to a sempervirent deal is smart-alecky en route to the fresh brass is not shored up corpus.  Mind was refuted eligibility since were others, does that watered we don’t deserve so as to cog a rock-and-roll group about peers toward be instrumental and safekeeping each one contingency?  Into tip-top heteromorphism, alteration and exquisite is the exhaustive counterpole with respect to what Nothing else would presurmise out an understated citizenry.
 

Additionally, in order to disparage the cut speaking of the ravel out regarding the farther bevy is artistically nasty and avant-garde unswerving recantation on the goals in respect to this abode, and borders near upon in regard to vexing.  Khu twiddle that the Creative Tennis court Guild relative to Etsy is imposing as for darned good artists that deserve en route to prevail represented and prestigious in furtherance of their talents.    Etsy and the right-of-way teams are not supposed in transit to ameliorate elitism and tufthunting.
 

Herewith that voiced, Heart understudy for forethoughted en route to “co-wear well peacefully�? and prevail without reserve.  Divine breath clamor for all-inclusive members apropos of the popular bolt into change color my reaction in relation to these instances and indwell elegantly blended.

Give credit I.
 
 
Because of I In its entirety Remedial of Review THIS Away! 
 Like convo alterum herewith measured questions marshaling suggestions, and overtone unclogged until shoot your comments but now!
 

My first contact with Klossowski was The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in Spanish translation. At that moment, I was living in Colombia, thinking in assuming my passion for literature seriously, like a suicide. A lot of writers ‘happened’ to me around that time: Barthes, Bataille, Sollers… most of them French. Most of them I started reading them in part thanks to ‘happy accidents,’ because I would find one of their books in a bookshop, because of the attractive editions (for example, I got quite into a collection titled La Sonrisa Vertical [The Vertical Smile], with lavish pink cover). I was  also ‘coming out’ of a certain interest for ‘erotic literature,’ bored with its conventions, looking for something different.

Bataille was a revelation. But it took time. If I remember correctly, I started reading Mi madre [Ma mere], probably not the best place to start (but does it exist a right place?). What were supposed to mean, for example, all those sentences about God? Not matter how many times I read them, I had not idea. But I was intrigued. Then I got into El erotismo, also published in Tusquets, in a different edition (not La Sonrisa Vertical), revealing me how eroticism -or ‘erotism’, despite the objections-, related to so many other fundamental things, beyond the repetitive interaction of naked bodies, as portrayed in the so-called erotic novels I used to read. And if until then I thought myself mainly as  Nieztschean/Sartrean, a curious mixture, then I became Bataillean, what later on would allow me to rediscover ‘another’ Nietzsche. (For some time, I didn’t know of the Sartre/Bataille exchange of opinions, but it was somehow obvious to me then the limitations of the Sartrean model of thought to think what Bataille was trying to pursue). In a few years, I think I became the biggest ‘collector’, and reader, of everything related to Bataille, in the city where I was living -something not difficult to conceive if one takes into consideration my ‘bibliophilism’, my fanatical passion for everything related to him, in contrast with an almost generalised lack of interest (in there) for his work, at that time. But two of his best known works -Story of the Eye, and Madame Edwarda- were some of the last ones I was able to read, so difficult were they to find then. But, still today, I’m far from having read ‘all Bataille’, especially since not ‘all Bataille’ is available in English or Spanish. I have started to doubt, also, about the ‘quality’ of some of my previous readings, wishing to go back, to re-read his work, as indispensable as to re-read Nietzsche, despite how difficult it seems to me to ‘fit’ such readings into my current projects.

But back to my first contact with Klossowski, to close temporarily this circle (cycle) of memories, I didn’t realise then that the translation was in part by Juan García Ponce, who later would become quite an influential figure for me. I started reading The Revocation, just a few minutes after buying it. I couldn’t wait more; though probably also didn’t have much else, better, to do. And I can only guess now at my initial motivations to buy such a book and start reading it: apart from the edition, the materiality of the book (belonging to another collection I liked; right now I can’t remember its title), a relation between Klossowski’s name and Bataille’s (probably pointed out in the blurb), the relation between religion and pornography, a more subtle and transgressive form of heresy. (Since I can remember, I’ve been an atheist, though sometimes, to avoid confrontations, preferred to call myself agnostic; but having received certain amount of religious education, in a Catholic school, I was tempted, sometimes, to believe -sometimes I wanted to believe; such experiences allowed me to get into contact with figures such as Bataille and Klossowski, which are practicable unthinkable without -or outside- a Catholic context). In the reading, Klossowski blew my mind, of course, with his rhetorical, philosophical and theological simulacra and paradoxes. Especially with Roberte Ce Soir, which I read immediately afterwards, and El baño de Diana [Le Bain de Diane]. However, I wouldn’t try to go any further here into Klossowski’s ‘thought’, or Bataille’s. It wasn’t my purpose, for now, to try to ‘explain’ any of them, but to remember how I got ‘in touch’ with certain names, texts. The role of chance in all this also remains to be thought.

Brassaï, taller de Picasso, 16 junio de 1944.

 De pie, de izquierda a derecha: J. Lacan, Cécile Eluard, P. Reverdy, Louise Leiris, Picasso, Zanie de Campan, Valentine Hugo, Simone de Beauvoir, Brassaï. Sentados, de izquierda a derecha: Sartre, Camus, Michel Leiris, Jean Aubier. 

Pablo Ruiz Picasso además de pintor, escultor, dibujante, grabador e ilustrador, fue escritor. (...)

Extractos del Prólogo a la traducción que Lorenzo Pareja y Patricia Venti realizan  de la obra teatral El deseo atrapado por la cola,  publicado en la bitácora El lugar que ocupo, de Patricia Venti.   

Maybe, and that’s quite a real possibility, it doesn’t matter that much, not enough as for one to question it (as I’m doing here). But maybe, also, thanks to questionings like this, it could matter, could be said to be a question that matter, that it’s worth thinking about. Not to reject the experience, for example, after deciding that it’s a contradiction, that it goes against those very names we want to embrace, but, rather to think the possibilities of such spaces. And to help myself with such an thinking, I have also created a ‘fan’ page, for the Mexican writer Juan García Ponce, in part also because it didn’t exist, and because I would like to understand the ‘mechanics’ behind these pages, getting the point of view of the so-called ‘Administrator’.

The shocking masterpiece, The Story of the Eye by the shock-philosopher Georges Bataille was a multi-layered emotional and intellectual experience. The writing itself paled in comparison to his less fictional, philosophical works like Erotism: Death and Sensuality. I found the writing flat which was an odd dichotomy alongside the overtly shocking and multi-textured narrative soup of sexuality and violence. The eyeball (as well as the ever-present egg) became a character in this twisted tale that was also a great contemplation of certain madnesses and its inherent relationship to sexual arousal and fantasy.

Eyes are an almost-constant theme in Surrealist art and writing and this short but intense book also has it as a major focus of sexuality in particular and the depths of the human condition and its psychology in general. Eggs are traditionally symbols of fertility and it is such in this story, being "birthed" by Simone with the "assistance" of milk and her lover. These especially are focused images with the character of Simone's sexual obsessions escalating from eggs to eyeballs, and then to Marcelle, the object of desire. Marcelle occupies the convention of the hysteric ... the woman driven mad not only by her own mind but as a result of her sexual desires and the desire others indefinitely feel for her. Simone and Marcelle echoed the character of Nadja in Andre Breton's masterpiece. Nadja.

This book is a must-read for anyone interested in surrealist art, literature, and definitely philosophy. If you like this, I highly and without hesitation recommend: Erotism by Georges Bataille; Nadja and Mad Love by Andre Breton; Women in Dada by Naomi Sawelson-Gorse; Women and Surrealism with one of the scholars being one of my favorite professors ever, Gwen Raaberg; and Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer by Therese Lichtenstein.

Enjoy! But ...

And just a warning: This book is very explicit and is on par with the dark eroticism of the Marquis de Sade.

Mark Rothko was a magic man. When you look at a Rothko painting in the flesh, why is it so magnetic? I find myself staring at one colour for ages. I can look at his stuff much longer than I can anything else. It's like he's some sort of material nihilist shaman. His paintings produce an experience of ecstatic and absolute nihilism. I was already thinking about a kind of bataillean base matter, and thought about nick land's nietzsche/shaman/maths stuff so it was a small stumble onto Rothko's aesthetic/material exploration of the edge, or the extremity of existence...

So then, seeing as all I know about Rothko comes from year 10 art class, and all I remember from that is that he slashed his wrists "to the bone". (I wonder how one does the second wrist, once the tendons on the first are severed.) So I thought I'd do some dodgey wikipedia-y google-y research and see what other people had written. So of course...

Around the time rothko was producing these paintings, he was reading nietzsche, like that was the point of them. Sigh.

So there goes that idea. Dammmmit.

We are attempting to communicate, but no communication between us can abolish our fundamental difference.

If you die, it is not my death . . . .

Here is an exquisite subversive definition of the sacred as articulated by the great Italian film maker Pasolini.  He describes the sacred in terms of what it is not:  the profane, namely the techniques and apparatus used to prop up the middle class.  Somehow for him stability, security, conservatism, the status quo, its trappings, pragmatism are not merely the machinations of the acquisitive lifestyle.  He has taken what we may typically see as neutral and necessary and spurned it, marked it damned.    

The sacred that impassions Pasolini corresponds to an anthropological concept of religiosity as studied by such authorities as Mircea Eliade, Rudolf Otto, Georges Bataille, or Roger Caillois.  The holy is a phenomenon necessarily defined by remotion, that is to say negatively, in opposition to what it is not. If the profane is the world of security, conservation and useful and pragmatic behaviors designed to maintain the status quo, the sacred is the domain of an incomprehensible and vital force that holds the secret of Being itself. For this reason, the deepest human desire is to be empowered by the sacred, through sacrificial behaviors performed to gain favor (the sacred of respect) or through illicit behaviors designed to reach the limits of selfhood and the threshold of the cosmogonic realm (the sacred of transgression).  

~Pasolini's tecnica sacrale in Accatone, Kathryin St. Ours, Goucher College

A short novel of 128 pages that needs a little patience to get into, Blue of Noon is one of those books that leaves you with many strong images. Set in 1935 (but not published until 1957), this is a tale of depravity and terror that careens from one city to the next as the narrator pursues a self-destructive craving for 'Dirty', a young woman whose nihilism appears the only logical reaction to the political (and historical) events unfolding against the wider, darker background. As the narrator's torment increases - he is almost never anything but drunk, sick or dreaming - so the madness of Europe's lurch toward inevitable war appears in it's true context: when the narrator is truly himself and able to think clearly, he is lost and alone, distanced from the reality or true import of events. However, as the author himself was to ask much later: 'Confronted with tragedy itself, why pay any attention to its portents?'

"I got out of the car and thus beheld the starry sky overhead. Twenty years later, the boy who used to stick himself with pens was standing under the sky in a foreign street where he had never been, waiting for some unknown, impossible event. There were stars: an infinity of stars. It was absurd - absurd enough to make you scream; but it was a hostile absurdity. I was eager for daybreak and sunrise. I reckoned that when the stars disappeared I would surely be out in the streets. In general I was less afraid of the starry sky than of the dawn. I would have to wait, wait for two hours... I remembered: it was about two in the afternoon, beneath a brilliant Paris sun, and I was standing on the Pont du Carrousel, when I saw a butcher's van drive past. The headless necks of flayed lambs protruded from canvas coverings; the butchers' blue-and-white striped smocks were spotlessly clean; the van was slowly moving forward in open sunlight. When I was a boy, I loved the sun; I used to shut my eyes and let it shine redly through my lids. The sun was fantastic - it evoked dreams of explosion. Was there anything more sunlike than red blood running over cobblestones, as though light could shatter and kill? Now, in this thick darkness, I'd made myself drunk with light; and so, once again, Lazare in my eyes was merely a bird of ill omen; a dirty, trivial bird. My eyes were no longer lost among the stars that were shining above me actually, but in the blue of the noon sky..."

Link to Amazon

PS : et après avoir vu quelques jours plus tôt une lecture théâtrale des 120 journées de Sodome, tout est mièvre....

... avec des forts relents de foutre, toutefois

Nombre mítico, aunque durante largo tiempo marginal y olvidado, de la rutilante nómina surrealista gala, Claude Cahun (Nantes, 1894 -Jersey, 1954) fue una artista que hizo de los autorretratos fotográficos toda una investigación estética sobre la identidad. Bien lo merece quien hizo de su vida y obra un ejemplo permanente de cómo "la poderosa conciencia del vértigo, la asunción de la inestabilidad y de la precariedad, conllevan un juicio claro, una conspicua posición existencial". Y Claude Cahun nunca escondió su mirada crítica ni su compromiso insobornable frente a los discursos hegemónicos, monolíticos  y esencialistas.

Pero la actualidad de Cahun no terminó aquí. Las últimas informaciones que hemos obtenido, procedentes de Francia, son aun más halagüeñas para quienes seguimos con devoción la obra de esta sacerdotisa del narcisismo, de esta combativa detractora de cualquier falso precepto reaccionario sobre la condición humana y sobre la dualidad masculina/femenina que marca nuestra identidad: acaban de editarse todos los escritos de quien fue, en opinión de André Breton, "uno de los espíritus más curiosos" de su tiempo. Y, por si el notable rescate editorial nos supiera a poco, en París se incluyó a Cahun entre las celebridades artísticas que merecen los honores y el disfrute de unos sugerentes recorridos literarios que hacen las delicias de esa sufrida, curiosa y melancólica figura que es el turista cultural.

Estas recomendables rutas --que podemos fácilmente recorrer si viajamos a la Ciudad Luz-- nos muestran los escenarios urbanos que protagonizaron la vida cotidiana de aquel mítico grupo de artistas vinculados a la mítica exposición "La revolución surrealista". La oferta incluye, además de "Claude Cahun, una mujer en el surrealismo", las opciones que siguen: "Philippe Soupault, flâneur entre dos orillas", "René Crevel, el arcángel del surrealismo" y "André Breton y el recorrido de Nadja". Y se anuncian como novedades, ante la buena acogida de la iniciativa, paseos protagonizados por el dadaísmo y el situacionismo. Más allá del instructivo valor simbólico acerca de cómo el sistema comercia, engulléndolos, con los hasta ayer personajes malditos y/o famosos, ¿se imaginan algo parecido por estos lares?

Mientras la madurez, la inventiva y el glamour llegan al turismo cultural parisino, seguimos con la defensa de nuestra recomendación de hoy día. Acérquense a Cahun. Disfruten de esta fotógrafa, novelista, actriz, traductora, poeta, ensayista y agitadora permanente del muy a menudo tedioso y convencional panorama creativo de nuestra época, que fue la suya. Tuvo una vida turbulenta, intensa, brillante y peligrosa, como suele ocurrir con todos los adelantados a su tiempo. Una trayectoria poseedora, pese a su radicalidad desafiante y visionaria, de una rara coherencia. Aunque nada hacía presagiarlo si atendemos a sus orígenes. Porque Lucy Schowb, ése era su auténtico nombre, nació en el seno de una familia de la alta burguesía intelectual y se educó en Oxford y París, donde cursó Filosofía y Letras en la Sorbona. Pero la sobrina de Marcel Schwob, aquel escritor que tanto admiró Borges, cultivaría otras estéticas, otras ideologías y amistades menos convencionales y ortodoxas. Y, entre ellas, debemos citar a Robert Desnos, Henri Michaux, Sylvia Beach, Georges Bataille o André Breton. Las décadas de los años veinte y treinta fueron especialmente intensas para esta defensora de la libertad sexual y de costumbres. Durante la II Guerra Mundial fue detenida por la Gestapo y condenada a muerte. A su término, reanudaría el contacto con sus amigos parisinos sin dejar la isla de Jersey, a la que se había trasladado en 1937 y donde residió hasta su muerte.

Inédita durante años no sólo para el gran público sino para los eruditos y estudiosos del arte del siglo xx, fue redescubierta en Francia durante la década de los noventa, en gran parte gracia al tesón de un experto como François Leperlier y a la ruptura del tabú de misoginia y machismo que convirtió el influyente movimiento surrealista en un mero inventario varonil cuando mujeres de la valía de Claude Cahun no fueron la excepción.

Hoy, convertida ya en una de las referencias inevitables de la modernidad artística, su labor en el ámbito de la fotografía nos la muestra como autora de un trabajo singular e innovador, capaz de convertir el autorretrato en una gran y liberadora metáfora sobre las posibilidades del arte fotográfico para subvertir la realidad. Las múltiples exposiciones individuales y colectivas celebradas en París, Nueva York, Tokio, Washington, Munich o Ginebra durante los últimos años así lo avalan. Ahora, con la edición antológica de sus textos, será también el momento adecuado para recuperar y revalorizar como merece su tarea como escritora. Porque, según escribe en Confesiones sin valor, uno de sus libros fundamentales: "La excepción confirma la regla, y asimismo la invalida. Tengo la manía de la excepción. La veo más grande de lo normal. Sólo la veo a ella. La regla no me interesa más que en función de sus desechos que convierto en alimento. Así me desclaso adrede. Peor para mí." Su investigación artística sobre la identidad, que no abandonaría nunca, la llevó a tomarse a sí misma como principal objeto de estudio, como modelo para ejemplarizar sobre la constatación de la multiplicidad, de la diversidad de identidades del ser humano moderno.

Lo importante es saber que "no hay que dejarse emparedar por el entorno", según anota Cahun. Por eso rescribir la realidad mediante la creación artística fue la gran aventura de su vida y el motor que guió su actividad. Es la suya la obra de una artista que gustaba de flirtear con la ambivalencia, que practicó la rebelión permanente contra esas falsas objetividades y etiquetas que nos sojuzgan y limitan, incapaces de reconocer la pérdida de identidad del hombre moderno y de constatar, por tanto, que no hay verdades absolutas y que somos seres múltiples, complejos, en permanente metamorfosis y reinvención.

So affect has become a dirty word. And platonism is what all the cool kids are doing. The end is seriously fucking nigh, if you believe 28 Days Later. Get the mind and the body back together, in the same space. Oh, wait. They are...

Although most people claim to understand that the body and the subject are not two separate entities, but one kind of, multiplicity, working in a mushy mess. Saying "oh, yeh, I know, of course, yeh yeh, boring". Ultimately, people still tend to think in these binary terms. Body. Mind. Physical. Psychological. Separate. Opposite. Retarded.

We don't just think with our brains, we think with our whole bodies. Our brains are just a part of that process. Even the term 'think' is erroneous. The symbol of the headless man is even a bit erroneous. But he's all we've got, and it's always nice to have a bit of irony in the mix.

Patrick Ffrench's 2007 book, After Bataille: Sacrifice, Exposure, Community is entirely a revelation. Ffrench points the way, like the grim reaper himself, for us to behead the body; fuck the subject off, and start thinking across our skin.

There is an obligation, now, to make something of this. To get rowdy and excited and stupid about an idea. Imagine the possibilities for philosophy without the subject. Imagine the possibilities for screen analysis (only thinking of myself here) within this (to paraphrase Nick Land) libidinally materialist motive. To do away with the subject. There is no end, no limit, to the body that thinks. Really.

This might not sound like a new idea, it sounds like a very old one, because it is. Ffrench's book is like a tool to reexamine the legacy of Bataille, most refreshingly, outside of psychoanalysis.

so get your shit together.

Anyhow . . . At lunch yesterday I began reading Break, Blow, Burn and was immediately reminded of why I had fallen in love with reading Paglia's writing way back in my freshman year of college.  That year I read Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence From Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson which is still to date one of the best books I've ever read (it was also probably the most difficult book I read freshman year, and one of the most difficult throughout my whole college career).  Thinking about Sexual Personae got me to thinking about all the other books that I read in college (which was a damn lot) and how they had changed my way of thinking.  So sitting at lunch I wrote down what I think are my 10 most influential books I read during my years of undergraduate education.  Note that not all these books were required readings for classes, some I had just chosen to read for my own pleasure or interest.  I will list them here in as best order as I can remember reading them (from first to last).

1. The Night Abraham Called the Stars: Poems by Robert Bly (Freshman): Plymouth State University had a really good poets series and every year had a number of noteworthy poets come and read on campus.  The first Poet I saw read at school was the amazing Robert Bly.  The venerable poet had a charisma and passion to his reading and writing of which I don't think I have yet encountered an equal.  He read the title poem of this book and I was captivated, I think it was then and there that I knew I wanted to be a poet more than anything.  After the reading I bought this book of poems (his most recent collection at the time) and got his signature.  I can't say how many times I've read this book since it's purchase but the current state of its cover suggests that the number is many many times.  Utterly amazing and beautiful.  Not only did it change my perspective on reading poetry but it has also greatly influenced my own poetry writing.  I so love the title poem of this book that I think it would be nice if somebody would read it at my funeral or memorial service after I die (sorry for the grimness but its just the way I feel).
2. Zoo Story and American Dream by Edward Albee (Freshman and again as a Senior): This is actually two plays by Albee and so some may not consider it a book but I will anyways.  I read these two plays in my Contemporary American Literature Class and absolutely loved them.  I think I read them both in about three hours one afternoon after getting out of class, I hadn't intended on reading them that fast, in fact I hadn't even been all that interested in reading them in the first place, but once I started the reading I couldn't put it down.  Albee is well know for his absurdest style and satirical humor (often being quite critical and biting of society).  Both plays fit this description well.  Something about both the dry humor and the dark sarcasm of the plays really appealed to me at the time and I would say they have somewhat helped formulate my perspective of the world especially concerning American culture.  I picked up Zoo Story and American Dream again my senior year and used the two plays to help write a paper on Existential Theatre (along with Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit).
3. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia (Freshman):  If I remember correctly Sexual Personae was the first book I read in Literary Criticism with Professor Robert Garlitz (a professor who is involved in a way with two of the other books on this list and who has likely read everything I am writing about).  Sexual Personae is a big book.  No, that is an understatement, it is fucking huge (no pun intended for those who know what the book is about).  Not only are there a lot of pages but there is just a lot going on in it in general.  For a freshman it was a very intimidating book to suddenly find oneself reading.  But I did read it (albeit slowly so as not to miss anything) and I found it changing the way that I looked at everything in art and sex and culture and, hell, just about anything I could imagine.  The biggest challenge of Sexual Personae for me, as a freshman, was that, at the time, I was severely lacking in my literary and cultural knowledge.  Thus I have picked the book up many times since my initial reading as I feel that it is an incredibly valuable piece of writing to help think about the world as a whole. 
4. Dark Back of Time by Javier Marias (Sophomore): This is the second book the Bob Garlitz played a role in.  Sophomore year I took Contemporary World Literature with Garlitz and at one point in the semester he gave every student a different book to read and do a quick presentation on.  I got Dark Back of Time.  To date Marias may be one of the strangest and most enigmatic authors I have read.  I find it hard to even explain what Dark Back of Time is about.  It comes across as partially auto-biographical, part fiction, part roman-a-clef, and then a whole bunch of other things.  The novel (if it can even really be classified as a novel) is still to date possibly the most challenging book I've read because of the chaos that it seems to present and yet the comforting order and simplicity that slips in between all the apparent discord.  I list Dark back of Time as one of my most influential books of my college years because it, like The Night Abraham Called to the Stars, had a profound impact on my writing and also my perspective of narrative and novels.  I have since read two other novels by Javier Marias (both given to me by Garlitz right before graduation) and found them to follow suit with Dark Back of Time.
5. The Brothers Karamazovby Fyodor Dostoevsky (Sophomore and again in an independent study as a Senior): I didn't realize the three Bob Garlitz involved books would appear on this list one after another but they have.  I did not originally read The Brothers Karamazov for any class, in fact I had never really intended on reading it at all, but during my winter break happened to come upon it in a box of books in my Grandmother's basement.  I didn't have anything to read at the time and seeing as my winter breaks were really long I thought to myself, "Why the hell not?"  I am glad that I did choose to read The Brothers Karamazov as I now think that it is probably my favorite book of all time.  I realize this is a big bold statement but to be perfectly honest I cannot think of a better book that I have read (Frankenstein, Moby Dick, and Stranger in a Strange Land have all come close but something about The Brothers Karamazovmakes it stand out more than these three).  I love this book, even though it is huge and difficult and not necessarily the most accessible piece of literature (I don't think of it as a book that one would want to pick up for just a casual read).  Senior year I set up an independent study with Bob Garlitz that was meant to be focused on the novel.  The class ended up being more focused on discussion and contemplation of literature as a whole but I still used it as an opportunity to reread The Brothers Karamazov and further affirm my love of Dostoevsky's writing.  Besides being a poet I think another occupation that would be high up on my list of ideals would be to become a Dostoevsky Scholar.  Perhaps what surprises me most about The Brothers Karamazov is that even after 120 plus years it still seems to convey a relevance and understanding of human ideology and action; it reads as almost timeless.  No other book has ever quite struck me to the degree in which The Brothers Karamazov has.
6. Theory of Religion by Georges Bataille (Junior): Junior year I took a class called Comparing World Religions which was taught by Phil Hart.  As students we had two big text books assigned for the class (I can't recall what they were titled) and then this thin little book.  Though I had not read any Bataille prior to Comparing World Religions I was familiar with his name because my roommate at the time had taken another class with Hart and read a Bataille book entitled Erotism: Death and Sensuality.  Of all the philosophical texts I've read (quite a few as a philosophy minor) I think that Theory of Religionhas had the most lasting effect on many of my own ideas.  The basic idea in the book is that of humankind's lost intimacy with being; that we have fractured our existences through the process of "thingness."  Bataille says that we as people desire a return of that lost intimacy and immanence of "the animal" which passes through the world "like water through water" and as such we create ritual and violence to release that inner part of us that yearns for the unbroken being.  This book is heavy cerebral stuff and Bataille's writing style is, at best, damn hard to read and yet sticking with it I found myself thinking about a lot of things I had never considered before.  In many ways this book did for my philosophical thinking what Sexual Personaedid for my artistic and cultural thinking.  I would later read another Bataille book (in another Hart class no less) titled The Accursed Share, Vols. 2 and 3: The History of Eroticism and Sovereignty which was also very good but not quite to the same level as Theory of Religion.
7. The Heart is Deceitful Above all Things by J.T. Leroy (Junior and again in class Senior):  Nearing the end of the semester in Comparing World Religion, Phil Hart handed me this paperback book and said I would probably like it.  I think I looked at it and kind of shrugged and told him I'd take a loot at it if I got a chance.  I believe Hart laughed and said I'd probably have it read within a week.  He was right about that.  If I remember correctly I had been kind of sick (actually the sickness eventually led to my having pneumonia and getting to spend a good part of a Saturday in the hospital) and so one afternoon I sat on my bed by my big window and picked The Heard is Deceitful Above all Things up.  It only took me about a day to read the whole thing.  The story is fascinating in a certain cathartic, voyeuristic, and vicarious way.  In its simplest it is about child abuse but when one really sits down and considers it, the book becomes a real examination of masochism, religion, poverty, and many other societal topics.   All this made for a great read but alone it isn't enough for this book to make my top ten list.  What elevated it to this level was the revelations on the nature of the author.  A lot of people had had questions about the author J. T. Leroy(whose life the book was suppose to be loosely based upon) because he was a shadowy character himself, rarely making any public appearances and reluctant to hold interviews.  First semester of my senior year I took another Hart class called Sexual Ethics and The Heart is Deceitful above all Thingswas one of the required readings (as was Bataille's The Accursed Share, Vols. 2 and 3: The History of Eroticism and Sovereignty).  During that semester the Paris Review interviewed Laura Albert who turned out to be the creator of the identity of J. T. Leroy (some other publications had made claims that Albert was really Leroy prior to the Paris Review but the prominent literary publication pretty much settled the matter once and for all).  A lot of people (literary critics, reviewers, the general public) considered the revelation of the reality of Leroy a hoax in the least and a downright scandal at worst.  I found it fascinating because suddenly there was a whole new degree of fiction and narrative that we were looking at beyond what Leroy had written in The Heart is Deceitful Above all Things and his other novel Sarah.  Leroy himself was a work of fiction!  The whole matter with Leroy and Albert and the novels brings up so many questions about authenticity and authorship and reality that I just love.  If it had not been for the Leroy revelation, The Heart is Deceitful Above all Things probably would have just gone on my list of enjoyable reads, but because of how things turned out and all the wonderful thinking it provokes this book cannot be ignored as far as its influences on me during my college years.
8. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (Junior): Durning the long break between Fall and Spring semester of junior year (the whole month of January 2006) I lived on campus and worked some twenty plus hours a week at the Lamson Library.  Because there was not a lot to do at the library during the long break I ended up just reading a ton (just counting in my head I think I read about eight books in one month).  One thing I decided to pick up and read was Stephen Hawking's well known A Brief History of Time which I had skimmed through a couple times in the past but never really sat down and read.  What a wonderful and educational book!  I really think that anybody who has even the slightest of interest in science in general should pick up this book.  Sure Hawking is a big famous theoretical physicist but his book is amazingly accessible and written in with an intended audience of common everyday people.  Some of it is still a bit confusing and beyond my grasp, but all around I learned more about space and time and physics from this book than from any other source.  I actually read the illustrated version which was wonderful because it had great pictures to demonstrate a lot of the ideas being discussed.  I have always loved science but A Brief History of Time further developed my fascination and I would say it is a pivotal work that lead to my creation of I Wish I Was a Scientist (twice in one post!  This is absurd.  Mr. Lordisimo have you no dignity? -- Answer: No).
9. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (junior in high school and junior in college):  What?!  How can you put this on your list if you originally read it in high school?  Here's how.  I had to read The Sun Also Rises in my junior English class of high school and I hated it.  Honestly I think I may have loathed it more than any other book I read in my four years of high school.  I thought it was the biggest most boring load of crap I had ever read (Ethan Frome was right up there as well).  I am pretty certain that I swore upon finishing The Sun Also Rises, in high school, never to pick up Hemingway again.  Now jump forward almost four years to that same long winter break when I read A Brief History of Time. Lamson Library had a display of the Time Magazine list of 100 best English-Language Novels from 1923 to Present (many of which I read during the long break.  Special favorites from that list that don't quite make this list but are awesome nevertheless are Catch-22 and Watchmen).  One day one of my professors, a fellow named Joseph Monninger, came into the library and was looking at the display, then he walked over to me holding one of the books.  "Have you ever read this?" He asked.  I took a look at it and cringed.  It was, as you have probably guessed, The Sun Also Rises.  I looked at Monninger and responded, "Yeah, I've read it and I hated it."  He looked shocked.  "Really?  When did you read it?" "Junior year of high school, " I said.  Monninger laughed at this and handed me the book.  "Read it again, I dare you."  I think at the time I was fully intending on putting The Sun Also Rises back up on the display as soon as Monninger left but for some reason or another I opened it up and read the first page.  Then I read the second.  And Third. And then the whole damn thing.  And when I was finished it a couple of days later I put it down and sat there thinking to myself, "My God how could I have ever hated this book?"  This is why The Sun Also Rises is on this list.  I talked to Monninger about it after I had finished it and he told me that he knew I would like it now but he also could understand why I hadn't liked it that much in high school.  For me, in many ways, The Sun Also Rises represents how much I came to appreciate good literature and writing during my college years.  I loved reading and writing in high school, but it was in college that I really got down to studying the arts and loving them for their uniqueness and skilled creation.  It had taken me nearly four years to get to the point where I could pick up a book I had thought I hated, reread it, and then see why it was a classic of literature.  For that The Sun Also Rises will probably always hold a special place in my heart.
10. Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard (Senior):  In some ways Simulacra and Simulation is a book of regret for me 1). because the class it was taught in, The Real World (not the reality TV show though we did talk quite a bit about reality TV) was the second of only two classes I had with the awesome professor Robin DeRosa and 2). the same semester I read this book in The Real World I had had an opportunity to take another DeRosa class on Critical Theory but I had chosen not to which, in hindsight, I now believe was a big mistake.  Still even though regrets arise when I think of Simulacra and Simulation I cannot regret the actual fact that I did read it, as it, like all these books on this list, is absolutely amazing.  Baurdillard's book is about post-modernism and hyperreality and more or less says that the real world is gone and has been replaced by layers of simulacra or mirrored representations of that lost real.  In a lot of ways I can compare the ideas found in this book to the concepts of lost intimacy in Theory of Religion.  Not only did this book further expand upon my already diverse knowledge of philosophy and theory but it has remained a big part of how I still look at the world to this day.  I think a lot of my critical (not necessarily bad critical, just critical thinking critical) views of the world today are in direct correlation to what I read in Simulacra and Simulation.  Like all these books on this list this one was very difficult, I remember in class a lot of my classmates struggled with the work (as did I) but once we got down to discussing it and applying it to other ideas in the class it ended up being hugely significant and beneficial.

 Holy crap, the list is done!  This is a really big blog post!  I started this post yesterday afternoon (I've done some editing since then) and now I am wrapping it up.  It has felt wonderful to recollect and write it down.  Very autobiographical really.  Also makes me miss all the awesomeness that was college.  Boy I had some damn good times.  Not to mention some awesome professors and friends. Oh yeah, and the books, so so many great wondrous amazing spectacular genius books! 

Sadie Plant's essay, "Coming Across the Future" shows us why an erotic-anarcho-materialist approach to philosophy is what we should all be doing. Seriously.

It's very cyber. It was written in the mid-late-90s so that's why cybersex is a huge deal, chat rooms are a new thing, it's kinda cute and nostalgic in that way. However, Plant's discussion of things like "high technology sex" and human/material interaction is really important in formulating how we can proceed in theories of feminism and sexuality. I particularly appreciate the Bataillean undercurrent of psychic ignorance in this essay, it's like, everything, every body is a physiological surface, with affective impulse. It's also something Plant has in common with Nick Land (shhh). It's not about endless tousling with psychoanalysis, but rather as I keep saying (weird) a material approach to human behaviour, a theorisation of the physical effects pursuit, pleasure and pain have on the body. Action is its own end.

So, it's hard to know why this sort of stuff has become the butt of jokes for a generation of academics. Perhaps because it was too much fun. Someone commented on one of my previous posts that Nick Land was kind of a joke. Well. Yes, and it was hilarious. He wrote an amazing, literary, dense, fuck you book to the history of philosophy, using the broken figure of Bataille as his lonely champion, with Nietzsche lingering aimlessly in the background. It's kind of genius. It's also a little bit useless, long term, because of this. And like, the bibliography is half a page, along with a brief, fuck bibliographies explanation at the start. While we all wish we were allowed to fuck off bibliographies, they're annoying. But most of us can't. Because occasionally, and especially if you are a girl, you have to tow the line.

That's what Sadie Plant did. So what happened? Copies of her books are hard to come by (ah ha ha) these days, at least one of them is not even stocked in our university library. They're also out of print. The problem is, if we really want to get philosophy, humanities, and really the world out of the ultra-conservative shithole that it currently lives in, we're sort of going to need those books. The other disturbing thing is, as far as I can tell, it's been almost ten years since she last published anything. Info anyone?

This is Sadie Plant. I dunno when.

this is the sum total of wikipedia's Sadie Plant info.

Fuck you wikipedia.

There's also this site, last updated in 2001

So what the fuck happened to these people?

(The essay "Coming Across the Future" can be found in two places, an anthology called "Virtual Futures", which a layout artist friend of mine said had an incredible layout. woo. and it's also in "The Cybercultures Reader".)

a scene from Catherine Breillat's film 'Romance' - Whatever it takes...

And. I have a large pile of drafty type review-by-circulation bits of paper circling and glaring at me. So, that is all.

Seja o que for, se o erotismo é a atividade sexual do homem, ela o é na medida em que difere da atividade dos animais. A atividade sexual dos homens não é necessariamente erótica. Ela o é todas as vezes em que não for rudimentar, que não for simplesmente animal. (BATAILLE, 2004, p.46)

Outra diferenciação entre o feio e o belo, que remete de forma singular ao que escrevi ontem e volto a destacar no texto de hoje, que a beleza é uma forte característica daquilo que o espectador chama por erotismo.

O erotismo é considerado como material artístico, quando a ele é atrelado o componente fundamental da beleza que a maioria dos observadores ainda tem como sendo arte. A beleza nesse ponto não é um parâmetro de medida, mas uma herança cultural, baseada no comportamento adquirido, já que estética e crítica, são nomes tão distantes do ensino comum.

Comportamentos herdados, não são comportamentos que vão ao fundo da questão, mas soluções pragmáticas, deixadas pelas raízes culturais que desenvolveram o raciocínio coletivo da moral.

Cabe ao artista demonstrar que a beleza do erotismo esta na certeza da pornografia.

Quando o espectador encontra-se frente a algo que ele define como belo, não por tê-lo definido, mas por assim imaginar ser, seu consciente analisa e julga, a estrutura dessa corrente escapa ao julgamento, pois o julgamento tendencioso discorre mais para o fanatismo, independente do sentido, dessa forma apenas julgar o espectador como entidade incapaz de perceber as nuances do belo e daquilo que ele não possui meios para julgar como sendo feio, ou fora da sua realidade já é uma forma de ser tendencioso.

A pornografia não esconde. O erotismo sim.

Mas em ambos a relação do sexo com a vida esta presente.

O que deturpa a pornografia como meio de expressão é a crescente simulação da realidade, por meio do sexo, como forma de alcançar o prazer do ser.

A instantaneidade do gozo parece ser suficiente para justificar as ações que impelem o casal a praticar atos, da mesma realidade que ele julga.

“A verdadeira maneira de ampliar e multiplicar os desejos é tentar impor-lhes limites” (Sade,? apud BATAILLE, p. 75)

Ao impor qualquer limite o ser transforma-se no seu próprio carrasco, cortando desejos, criando formas de se contradizer, negando sua natureza e desejando aquilo que não pode compreender.

O tabu do sexo transfere para vida a incompreensão da pornografia como arte.

A sociedade apenas aceita a pornografia quando mascarada por elementos eróticos de beleza, luxúria, sonhos e realidade acima de sua compreensão.

Ao transformar a pornografia em um ato acima da realidade, um simulacro, uma "simulação", o homem transforma o sexo em algo que ele não pode alcançar.

É justamente essa distância que dita o conceito sobre a pornografia.

Como disse Bataille, na citação que introduz esse texto, o homem difere do animal na medida em que pensa o erótico, quando o homem julga a pornografia, como um elemento sexual rudimentar, aonde o coito sexual se assemelha ao animal, ele esta dando poderes ao animal em si, julgando que o animal ainda o é.

A pornografia tem se difundido como representação do rudimentar, destruindo o erótico, que precede a pornografia. A arte pornográfica não é mais uma forma de erotismo, não é mais uma experiência que acumula e soma ao ser, mas ela o esvai, sugando suas forças, transformando-o em animal.

Lutando contra essa forma de decretar rudimentar a arte pornográfica, o artista procura uma forma de erotizar o pornográfico, e deixar a pornografia ser tomada pelo erotismo.

Mas como isso é possível?

I will simply state, without waiting further, that the extension of economic growth itself requires the overturning of economic principles—the overturning of the ethics that grounds them. Changing from the perspectives of restrictive economy to those of general economy actually accomplishes a Copernican transformation: a reversal of thinking—and of ethics. If a part of wealth (subject to a rough estimate) is doomed to destruction or at least to unproductive use without any possible profit, it is logical, even inescapable, to surrender commodities without return. Henceforth, leaving aside pure and simple dissipation, analogous to the construction of the Pyramids, the possibility of pursuing growth is itself subordinated to giving: The industrial development of the entire world demands of Americans that they lucidly grasp the necessity, for an economy such as theirs, of having a margin of profitless operations. An immense industrial network cannot be managed in the same way that one changes a tire... It expresses a circuit of cosmic energy on which it depends, which it cannot limit, and whose laws it cannot ignore without consequences. Woe to those who, to the very end, insist on regulating the movement that exceeds them with the narrow mind of the mechanic who changes a tire.

-Georges Bataille

I read Georges Bataille's book, The Accursed Share as a teenager when I was on my Nietzsche tear. (Really, anyone who can read Nietzsche with a straight face after the age of twenty still has a lot of growing up to do.) I remember being facsinated by the idea that any society must necessarily produce waste; that societies that function best are not necessarily the societies that are the most efficient. One interesting fact I learned from this book, for example, was that up to forty percent of men in pre-communist Tibetan society were unproductive monastics who obviously neither worked nor reproduced. Another example of waste that Bataille goes into is the polatch of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest. The idea that one throws many of society' resources out the window, not just in the capacity of "recreation" in the modern sense, but in a burst of creative and destructive energy, has held my imagination ever since.

Recently AG and I went to San Jose just so I could show her around my old stomping ground. One of the things we were priveleged to see was St. Joseph's Cathedral, right smack in the middle of downtown and dwarfed by the buildings that helped established the name of this region as the "Silicon Valley". The striking contrast, then, between such an old building, on the one hand, and the modern office buildings on the other, could not help but invoke in me Bataille's ideas about production and "waste". To be Catholic is to be inherently wasteful. It is to spend your money on "useless" prayer cards and spend your time mumbling "useless" prayers to anachronistic saints. Ornament is useless, high domes are useless, side altars are useless, Latin is useless etc., etc. Catholic countries often have feast days off of the patron saints as well as the high holy days. Let's face it, Mormons and Evangelicals don't have these holidays. They're bad for business.

I commented to AG that side altars in old church buildings make me very, very sad. If I see the reforms of the last forty years as anything, they are the capitulation of the Church to the technocratic ideas of efficiency and information. Side altars are the best example; before, numerous priests would live in a cathedral or monastery and every morning they would shuffle off to a side altar with a half-asleep altar boy and say his Mass for the intentions of the living and the dead. The reformers coming out of Vatican II saw this as "less Patristic", medieval, and let's face it, wasteful. What's the point of a priest saying his Mass as if it were his possesion, his object instead of the synaxis of the people of God? Why not save everyone's time and energy and just have him concelebrate the Mass with other priests? Let's face it, those altar boys didn't want to serve that Mass anyway, and now we can save a lot of time, energy, and concentration by focusing on one Mass instead of six or seven. The result: all of those side altars are empty and meaningless. They often have a potted plant or kneeler in front of them; awkward objects to accompany an awkward anachronism, a totally useless object in a technocratic age. In the San Jose Cathedral, they even put Scriptural verses where the tabernacle is supposed to be. The Reformers in Geneva would have been proud; the "Word of God" triumphs over "superstition".

In spite of having seen some beautiful modern churches, side altars are always absent from them, as are the florid ornamentations and the crowds of plaster saints that have historically haunted the Catholic imagination. We have asked ourselves what are the most important aspects of our Faith and have trimmed the rest off as fat. We have honed the Gospel message in the spirit of applying "lean principles"; we have downsized the Catholic imagination by expelling from it all that is "fanciful" and "inaccurate"; and we have outsourced the priestly work to those (laypeople) who will do it more cheaply and efficiently so that the Church can run better as an organization. In short, in many places, we are tranforming the House of God and Gate of Heaven into God's Cubicle and the Holy Spirit's Shipping and Receiving Department.

It is not that I defend the old ways as a knee-jerk reactionary. I just wish that people would have given them the benefit of the doubt, that they would have spent some time contemplating why things were the way they were not just on a "theological" sense, but also on the philosophical and ontological level. Man needs waste, he needs the blissful burden of the irrational since it is the only way to articulate on this side of death the ultimate transcendence of God. God is God because He is beyond this life, He has no need of it, and sometimes His ways appear contrary to it. In this world where we are boxed into the most efficent work spaces in the history of man, we need to be reminded that this is not all that there is. From the dry desert of the cubicles and stale offices of our day to day lives, we need the Church to be an oasis of glorious waste, where information and efficiency take a back seat to beauty, wonder, and revelry in Christ. The Church in all she does must burn as "uselessly" as incense in the hands of a half-asleep altar boy.

Är det egentligen något annat vi vill – är det frihet? Det är förståeligt att vi med våra erfarenheter av religiösa, politiska och andra gemenskaper revolterar mot underkastelsen. Modernitetens politiska, liksom tidigare religiösa, försök att i vårat namn skapa paradiset har slutat med tyranni. Att mot totalitarismen kräva frihet. ”Friheten” är dock ofrånkomligen avhängig makten. Frihet är bara ett ord, ett abstrakt ideal, som inte betyder någonting om det inte kan backas upp med makt, det vill säga våld. Friheten som sådan är en dröm. På samma sätt som för deras politiska antagonister kommer ”frihetens” fotsoldater i slutändan ge oss våld och tyranni. (Vi kan redan se den formas framför våra ögon, mer skrämmande än vi någonsin kunnat ana.) Även om ”frihet” kan tyckas ha ett värde i sig så är den alltid tvetydig. Vi kan i alla friheter finna en andra sida som undertrycks. På samma sätt som kollektiven utvecklade sina mekanismer för exkludering av dem som inte anpassar sig gör också friheten det. Friheten är aldrig gemensam; de exkluderade finns alltid i bakgrunden, i marginalen, bland skuggorna.

I novellen Redogörelse framlagd för en akademi formulerar Franz Kafka en kritik av frihetsbegreppet när han beskriver hur en apa, fängslad ombord ett skepp och på väg att säljas till en cirkus, genomgår en omvandling och blir människa. Apans människoblivande är en utväg; något helt annat än frihet. I apans fall finns det bara en utgång om frihetsidealet skulle följas: att hoppa överbord och in i säker död.

I fear that perhaps you do not quite understand what I mean by 'way out'. I use the expression in its fullest and most popular sense. I deliberately do not use the word 'freedom'. I do not mean the spacious feeling of freedom on all sides . . . 'self-controlled movement'. What a mockery of holy Mother Nature! Were the apes to see such a spectacle, no theatre walls could stand the shock of their laughter. (Citerat i Thoburn, Deleuze, Marx and politics)

Är det här också en dröm: den icke-kollektiva gemenskapen med utvägar på alla sidor (fast utvägarna finns aldrig redan där; de skapas)? Oavsett om det är en dröm eller inte så är en sak säkert: vi kan inte överge den. Problematiken med gemenskap förföljer oss. De historiska försöken – och inte minst de moderna katastroferna – är inpräntade i våra minnen. De gör sig ständigt påminda och tjänar på en och samma gång som outtömlig källa till nya ansatser och hinder för den kollektiva urspårningen. Nu står vi bland ruinerna och har ingenstans att ta vägen. Så vi vänder oss inåt; det blir vår utväg. I stillhet, men med oerhörd intensitet.

Människans revolt i sin strävan efter frihet och gemenskap har vänts emot oss och raderat ut den väsentliga ensamheten och den andres irreducibilitet, först när vi gjorde oss till skapare av oss själva och allt annat (”immanentismen” som Jean-Luc Nancy kallar det), och sedan när skapelsen lösgjorde sig från oss (”kapitalets kommunism” som exempelvis Paolo Virno undersökt). Historien har upprepat sig: först som tragedi och sedan som fars.

Så, varför gemenskap? Georges Bataille säger: Vi är i grunden alla ofullkomliga (ofullkomlighetsprincipen). Som Blanchot påpekat innebär det här inte ett fundamentalt behov eller begär som vill tillfredsställas. Då en människa bara är ensam eller vet av sig att vara ensam när hon i själva verket inte är ensam – total ensamhet är inte självmedveten – alltså först när en annan ifrågasätter mig, ger själva medvetandet om varat upphov till en slags kedjereaktion som åkallar andra. Att vara är att vara-tillsammans. Det är avgörande att vi här talar om det singulära varat, det ändliga varat. Gemenskapen måste hålla sig vid ”the height of death” eftersom det bara är det singulära varat som kan existera i samvaro med andra, i en gemenskap. Den moderna fria Individen stänger ute den andre när den i fusion eller projekt (ett producerande, arbete) försöker bli fullkomlig – oändlig, odödlig. Kommunikation, å andra sidan, är när singulariteter exponerar och jämför sin ändlighet. Singulariteterna behåller sin singularitet i den mån de lyckas hindra eller blockera immanensen (den föreställda egna fullkomligheten, eller strävan efter detsamma), eller med andra ord, i den mån den befinner sig vid tröskeln till en utsida. (Men är det rätt att tala om hinder, blockering, motstånd? Handlar det inte om en slags passivitet, inte passivitet rätt och slätt utan en särskild sorts passivitet? För den andre är alltid, eller har ett element av, en intrus, en inkräktare.) – Den här mänskliga revoltandan som vägrar makten (immanensen, ”styrkan”) har uttryckts främst av anarkisterna, men också av andra, exempelvis Albert Camus som formulerade det: "Jag revolterar; därför existerar vi." Men vi bör nog snarare hävda: Du revolterar; därför existerar vi.

(Men: om det inte är samma princip som ger upphov åt tendensen av vara-tillsammans att bli vara-tillsammans, alltså gemenskapens fusion till en enhet – vad är det då? Det är en alldeles för komplex problematik för att tas upp här. Till att börja med misstänker jag att det är nödvändigt att sätta varat i relation till tid.)

Vi frågar än en gång: varför gemenskap? För att vi behöver skillnad. För att vi kvävs av detSamma, i det eviga reproducerandet av ett vardagsliv reducerat till överlevnad. Filosoferna har sagt: de andra är inte (längre?) andra, utan Samma. Och man har visat hur vi alla blivit Samma, framför allt sedan moderniteten accelererade nihilismen och immanentismen. Gemenskap för att vi till slut ska få möjligheten att verkligen leva. Kallet efter gemenskap: ett kall efter den andre. ”We are so sick and tired of our Selves!”

I försöken att bryta upp med detSamma, att introducera skillnad och annanhet – som lett till så många suicidala politiska projekt – kan man skönja en förskjutning i förhållningssätt (till politiken, konsten, etc.) som följt ett liknande mönster: från det oppositionella till det radikala till det insurrektionella. Varifrån den instinktiva viljan att inta motsatt position i en binär uppdelning kommer ifrån – huruvida den är ”naturlig” eller historisk – vågar jag inte uttala mig om, men den verkar vara just instinktiv hos flertalet. I avsky för det rådande vill man röra sig åt det motsatta. Att den oppositionella hållningen snabbt leder in i återvändsgränder ger stundom upphov till en radikal hållning där man oavbrutet bryter upp med den oppositionella hållningens alla koder i jakt på det rena, det inte blott motsatta utan totalt annorlunda. Den radikala hållningen är ett första (hälso)tecken på att man inte fullständigt förslavats av den oppositionella hållningens slavmoral. Den radikala hållningen dragen till sin spets, alltså till den punkt då kritiken på ett sätt vänder sig mot sig själv och blir ”levande”, endast existerande i nuet, i rörelse (”på gatan”), då har den slagit över i det insurrektionella (mångfaldigad, okontrollerbar). Här återvänder rörelsen inte till ett kodifierande; medlen lösgörs från ändamålet. I det insurrektionella ögonblickets samvaro glöms det individuella subjektets bort i genomströmningen av affekter och där kan inte heller någon kollektivitet sägas grundas eftersom de (ansamlingarna) sammansätts och upplöses från ett ögonblick till ett annat, utan att räknas (majrevolten i Paris 1968 har blivit dess emblem).

Om vi vill lämna den politiska (oppositionella, radikala) gemenskapen (läs: kollektiviteten) bakom oss och röra oss mot den subversiva gemenskapen räcker det emellertid inte med att utstaka några principer för en insurrektionell hållning, och klänga sig fast vid dessa (även om minsta spår av formalism kastas av undkommer man inte babblets och skitsnackets återkodade av positioner: en återgång till det radikala). Det insurrektionella är till sin natur ambivalent. Det är ögonblick av instabilitet, ovisshet, som öppnar sig över en spricka i nuet. Vad som är avgörande är hur man i sin tur förhåller sig till denna ambivalens. Sprickan öppnar sig – mitt i intensiteternas och okontroller-barhetens orkan – över en avgrund, en utsida, och frågan är om vi vänder tillbaka i jakt på det inre Historiska Subjektet eller om vi trotsar rädslan och väntar på det yttres ankomst (den Andre). Att trotsa rädslan handlar inte om någon heroism; tvärtom, det handlar om utblottelse, att exponera sina svagheter, sin bräcklighet, om passiviteten och ansvaret inför den Andre.

Det finns därför ingen anledning att romantisera det brinnande upproret – även om det är stunder av glädje, eufori, erotism som vi aldrig kommer att fördöma – men det tycks vara just sorgen över det förlorade upproret och viljan att konservera dess krafter som är precis det som dödar upproret (det ständigt återkommande upproret som pågår i vår flykt från detSamma). När elden i barrikaderna slocknat får vi inte frukta ensamheten; den kallar tillbaka oss när upproret återigen bryter ut.

Kan det därför vara så att vi måste gå längre med ensamheten för att äntligen kunna möta den Andre? Att skapa en distans, öppna upp ett tomrum som med sin frånvaro avbryter detSammas reterritorialisering (det ständiga, överallt närvarande, kallet på delaktighet i skådespelet); att hålla fast vid denna ensamhet för att inte låta fusionen ta plats. Att gå i ensamhet: en externalisering som låter den andre tränga in utifrån eftersom den andre måste få förbli annan och inte bli vår Samma. Väntan måste bli intensiv, bli ett anropande eftersom vi inte nöjer oss med den här världen; en intensiv väntan som anropar en ständigt kommande gemenskap.

Denna kommande gemenskap är således alltid befäst med en sorts omöjlighet, eller två: omöjligheten att vara ensam och omöjligheten av utsidan. Vi möts av omöjlighet på båda sidor. Gemenskapen blir en vandring, en linje mellan omöjligheter. Det finns ingen stabilitet, ingen utopi, i den här gemenskapen. Inifrån detSamma ses det som främmande, obenämnbart, eller helt enkelt bara märkligt; utifrån det politiska som anti-politiskt; utifrån kollektiven liksom individualiteterna som upplösande, frånvaro. Men allt det i själva verket är, vill ”vi” hävda, är kommunikation, livs-form, gemenskap…

Ett gammalt situationistcitat gör sig påmint: ”Dem kommer kalla oss varuvärldens förstörare när allt vi gör är att skapa oss själva.”

1.
Tengo frío en el corazón y tiemblo
desde las profundidades del dolor te llamo
con un grito inhumano
como si pariera

tú me ahogas como la muerte
lo sé desgraciadamente
sólo te encuentro agonizando
eres bella como la muerte

todas las palabras me ahogan.

2.
Eres el horror de la noche
te amo como se agoniza
eres débil como la muerte

te amo como se delira
sabes que mi cabeza muere
eres la inmensidad el miedo

eres bella como matar es bello
con el corazón desmesurado me ahogo
tu vientre está desnudo como la noche.

3.
insignificancia
Duermo
la aguja
de mi corazón
lloro
una palabra
perdida
abro
el reborde
de una lágrima
donde el alba
muerta
calla.

p. 218 "As I have said, such renunciation enhances the value of the thing renounced. But this is also a contribution to the creation of the human world in which respect, difficulty and reservations are victorious over violence. It complements eroticism which heightens the value of the object of desire. Without the couterbalance of the respect for forbidden objects of value there would be no eroticism. (There would be no complete respect if the lapse into eroticism were not both possible and rull of delightful promise.)"

p.239 "The desire to go keeling helplessly over, that assails the innermost depths of every human being is nevertheless different from the desire to die in that it is ambiguous. "

p.240 "The ambiguity I have referred to looks at first as if it leads if not to ruin (for the loss of energy involved can be made good, the breathless rush that sends us careening over is only temporary) at least to a loss of balance. This is of course not a lasting loss; it generally occurs at intervals during phases of balanced activity; these ensure that it shall recur and also that the damage done can be made good. But the strong and healthy phases during which sexual disequilibrium rights itself hides its deeper significance. "

The film opens in breaths or pulses, the mechanism of the train synchronising with lingering chords, coloured with tinny distortion. The extreme close-ups of Bill Blake (Johnny Depp) betray both his perfectly moisturised lips, and lightly pock-marked skin, starkly clean in comparison to the increasingly rough fellow occupants of the train carriage. Gradually, and repeating on themselves, the breaths draw longer and longer visions, until the Train Fireman (Crispin Glover) appears, his face covered in textured soot, his eyes glowing out of his head in a disruptive trancey state. He asks Blake “does this remind you of when you were in the boat” , an invocation of the end of the film. Such a reference influences my viewing of the film, making me aware of an outcome, and forcing revelation on me on repeat viewing. Like the labyrinth, the film, this story, has a returning inevitability, and an episodic, layered decomposition. It is as though Blake’s body begins to rot from this point, but also to it.

Blake steps off the train and into the town Machine, so named for its bestiality, no doubt. He walks through the unpaved, muddied streets. The surface of Blake’s neat, civilised, if somewhat absurd suit garishly contrasts with his surrounds so that a discordant resonation opens up between his body and the town-space. He is inside the space, notably separate from it, but also drawn into its filthy suction in communication with it. Mutually the two surfaces (Blake and Machine) discuss and penetrate each other, transfixing each other with a horror of exposed nihilism. They are like two sides of the same coin returning to meet face to face. The world could end in this paradox of inflection. In recognition of this strange meeting, Neil Young introduces a distinguishable, melodic refrain on his guitar, the first outside of the credits in the film.

Blake enters the Dickinson steel works, a marked return to the mechanism of the train, a repetition which indicates an event in the episodic, circulating series of the film. This event necessitates Blake’s future, an abandon of civilisation, along with trappings of qualifications and work attire in the pursuit of a Dionysian time-space, returning into death, like a pulse, or as Bataille would have it – a copula with the void until light no longer taints its horizon.

title quote from Nick Land's "The Thirst for Annihilation".

... to be continued... maybe... (cough cough... back to work...)

Con gli occhi spalancati, guardare il cielo, le stelle, in stato di innocenza.

Georges Bataille, Il piccolo (traduzione di Paola Dècina Lombardi) in Tutti i romanzi, Bollati Boringhieri, 1992 (a cura di Guido Neri)

Bland oss som tillhör generationerna i sköljvattnet efter kärnfamiljens död, separationernas och kringflyttandets rotlöshet, som är fast i allmän osäkerhet och utsiktslöshet är det rimligt att fråga om den existentiella krisen är allmängiltig. Om det är sant – vilket allt pekar på – är behovet av utvägar oerhört, om inte vilsna och brutna själar ska förledas ner i det ofrivilliga självmordet, som i extrema situationer har kombinerats med hämnd i proportionen massmord.

I media går det inflation i olika program och böcker osv. som ska vara till för att hjälpa oss. Det finns otaliga exempel. Mia Törnblom är i böcker som Självkänsla nu! och tv-program som Nyberg och Törnblom ett svenskt skräckexempel. Det får mig verkligen att må dåligt, inte bara för att olyckliga människor exploateras men främst för att bristen helt åläggs hos personen som likt en idrottsmänniska ska ”coachas” till en fulländad, perfekt individ. Det är en ytlig form av psykologi som på sin höjd kan hjälpa allmänt nedstämda personer som annars är välmående, men kan vara direkt skadlig för den som är bruten i själen. ”Lite vilja, planering och pepptalk” är ”livscoachernas” recept på en lycklig och välordnad plats i samhället.

Träffande parodi av Nyberg & Törnblom, från Fredag hela veckan.

I artikeln Välj rätt liv – annars… visar Ira Mallik hur den här dolda kontrollmentaliteten genomsyrar inte bara media utan också politiken. Det handlar inte längre om en patriarkal makt som säger till oss vad som är rätt och fel, utan en mer diffus supernanny som säger till oss hur vi ska må. Den opererar på nivån av känslor och affekter. De här människans ”undermedvetna”, irrationella begär var makteliten medvetna om redan på 1920-talet då psykoanalytiska metoder började användas för att upprätthålla ordningen. Adam Curtis visar i sin dokumentärserie The Century of the Self hur Sigmund Freuds brorsson Edward Bernays – fadern av Public relations – använder sig av psykoanalysen i marknadsföringen, och senare i politiken. När psykoanalysen som kraftigast ifrågasattes och människans begär inte längre betraktades som något som skulle återhållas med disciplin hade marknadskrafterna redan underkastat makten och politiken sin logik. Att hjälpa människor att må bra – med alla möjliga medel från antidepressiva piller till självhjälp – är de senaste i raden av mjuka teknologier för att snabbt ”läka” individen så den återigen blir funktionsduglig för samma samhälle som tidigare brutit ner den.

Snabba fixar och ständig förhalning är alltså två kännetecken för vad vi kallar kontrollsamhället. Det rör sig om ett gasformat maskineri; ”en självdeformerande formering i ständig förändring från ett ögonblick till nästa, eller som ett såll vars genomsläpplighet hela tiden förändras.” Den universella modulation som är kontrollsamhällets kärnmekanism gäller inte bara övervakning utan också – och viktigast av allt – våra sätt att leva och våra relationer till varandra. Det är därför olyckligt att så många ensidigt fokuserar på övervakningen när dem läser Deleuzes teser om kontrollsamhället och glömmer bort produktionen av subjektivitet på arbetsförmedlingar, i managementsteoriernas dolda kontroll på arbetsplatserna, i media, i det offentliga samhället, osv. Deleuze skriver insiktsfullt:

"Många ungdomar kräver i dag egenartat nog att bli »motiverade«, de kräver återigen praktiktjänstgöring och permanent utbildning; det är deras sak att upptäcka vilka syften de därmed underkastas, liksom den äldre generationen en gång, inte utan smärta, upptäckte vad disciplinerna syftade till."

Apati och likgiltighet är utan tvekan naturliga reaktioner. Saktfärdighet och passivitet blir vapen och sätt att dra sig undan de ultrasnabba formerna av kontroll. Att inte leta efter den senaste, snabbaste metoden utan att sakta ner, det är både det lättaste och det svåraste att göra. Att avskärma sig från yttre distraktioner är inte lätt men man kommer att märka av hur stillheten mer och mer fyller upp oss med ett lugn. Därför finns det en slags själavårdande verkan i filmer som exempelvis A Love Song For Bobby Long och Garden State. Det är filmer om att finna sin historia men framför allt om att släppa taget. Wes Anderson är mästare på det här. Alla hans filmer är om vilsna, deprimerade personer som i vemod ser tillbaka på en förlorad karriär eller familjesituation. The Royal Tenenbaums är en varm och stillsam film, perfekt ner till minsta detalj, om en splittrad familj av arga och vilsna människor som aldrig medvetet når fram till något harmoniskt tillstånd men som i samma stund de släpper taget hamnar i händerna på den andre, eller som i Richies (Luke Wilson) fall efter den hjärtskärande scenen då han skär upp handlederna helt och fullt är i Margots (Gwyneth Paltrow). Tenenbaumsfamiljen når försoning, men återfår inte vad dem en gång förlorat.

Att aldrig nå fram, att aldrig vara hemma är en brist bara om man vill övervinna vår ändlighet. Frånvaron hör till det mänskliga tillståndet. I L’expérience intérieure hävdar Georges Bataille att detta är det enda vi kan vara säkra på; begäret att överskrida våra begränsningar och att vi kommer att dö. Vad som möjligen särskiljer Batailles studie är att han tar avstamp efter Guds död (boken är den första i serien La Somme athéologique, och följs av Le Coupable och avslutas med Sur Nietzsche). Vad Bataille här betecknar som Gud är ett ”transcendent bortom”. Han står alltså närmare en negativ teologi (han skriver t ex under på Mäster Eckharts ”Gud är Intet”) och vill med sin a-teologi vända sig bort från positiv teologi och istället utstacka en inre rymd som – paradoxen trogen som han är – inte är egentligt inre.

Man skulle kunna kallar Bataille för en slags ateistisk mystiker. Nihilismens avmystifiering är i grunden god och något vi måste dra konsekvenserna av. Han följer Nietzsche i den här meningen, som skrev: ”Ni kallar det för Guds självupplösande: det är emellertid blott hans skinnömsning – han drar av sig sitt moraliska skinn! Och ni ska snart återse honom, bortom gott och ont.”

Vad Bataille menar kommer av den oundvikliga ångesten – som den nyktra insikten om vad vi är ger upphov till – är offrandet av oss själva; i extasen, transgressionen. Detta är ett offrande av de ändamålsenliga projekt (arbete) den moderna människan sysselsätter sig med för att så att säga skjuta upp ångesten, att göra sig odödlig (”vara en del av något större”). Det heliga, enligt Bataille, ”tjänar” man genom måttlöst förslösande och inte genom underkastelse.

”From that moment begins a singular experience. The mind moves in a strange world where anguish and ecstasy coexists.” (Inner Experience, s. xxxii)

I förslösandet finns en särskild sorts kommunikation. Jaget är ”utom sig”, så kommunikationen tillhör inte mig, och den är heller inte riktad till någon, bara utåt utsidan. Den inre erfarenheten förgör subjektet, framkallar en gemenskap som offrandet, förslösandet i den mån det fortgår, dvs inte gör sig till projekt, ett arbete, hindrar från att i en fusion bli en enhet. Begäret att bli gudar hotar alltid och kan alltså bara hållas stången genom fortsatt förslösande.

Inga gudar, inga hjältar. Bara vi. Men ett vi som inte låter sig knytas till sig själv utan alltid är beredd att överge, fly. Begäret att överskrida våra begränsningar, att bli allt, att ta Guds plats och själva utropa oss till gudar – det är den ofullkomlighet inom oss som också vill gemenskap. Som Bataille, liksom Jean-Luc Nancy och Maurice Blanchot, bland andra, visat är det nödvändigt för gemenskapen att hålla sig vid ”the height of death”; att inlemma döden i sitt ethos, eller med andra ord: livet som livs-form.

Maurice Blanchot använde désoeuvrement som beteckning på den stillhet och passivitet som vägrar projekten, arbetet – men ändå är något annat (eller mer) än enkel arbetsvägran – som vi finner i kärnan av denna gemenskap. Horace Engdahl, som är en av Blanchots svenska översättare, har översatt det som verklöshet. På engelska har det översatts som worklessness och unworking. Den senare är kanske den mest trogna översättningen då den inte bortser från den passivt-aktiva aspekten av le désoeuvrement. Ett förslag på en svensk översättning skulle kunna vara avskapelse. Nu, hur kan man förstå en gemenskap som passivt-aktivit avskapar, inte bara allt den kommer i kontakt med utan även sig själv, utan att upphöja, klassificera, ja göra till arbete? Omöjligt. Och det är det gränsland i vilket vi vandrar. En gemenskap som rymmer en frånvaro, som lever av frånvaron, är en gemenskap som alltid är beredd att bli en frånvaro av gemenskap.

”Like a flock chased by an infinite shepard, we, the bleating wave, would flee, endlessly flee from the horror of reducing being to totality.” (Bataille)

I texter om bland annat ”Ordet och hjärtat”, ”Den inre människan och den osynliga världen”, ”Stillhet”, ”Det dolda lifvet”, ”Tystnad”, och ”Ensamhet” undervisar Ekström oss i konsten att ”leva döden”; det att i livet bejaka döden för att utplåna ”personlighetsförsökets” vandring på rädslans väg, för att sätta oss i förbindelse med kärleken. Detta är den förvandling som andligen utesluter oss från samhället.

Avsideslivet är inte något bärnstensliv, men besit­ter ett egenvärde genom att det nödgar till svaghet och öd­mjukhet: "pärletillvaron" är smärta och offer. – "Ju svagare vi är, dess närmare är han oss. Därför är svagheten det bästa för oss. Vi kan inte komma till något högre, ty den öppnar Guds hjärta för oss och hela himmelen redan här och nu. Det är just i vår svaghet han bor."

I efterskriften Att leva döden drar Ulf I. Eriksson med sin mästerliga essäistik en linje mellan mystikerna och tänkare som Georges Bataille, Simone Weil och Birgitta Trotzig. Gemensamt finner vi viljan att ”icke undandraga sig lidandet” (Ekström); ”uttrycket för en måttlös kärlek, en motståndslös öppenhet.”

Eriksson bidrar också i förbifarten med en kritik av traditionalismen som är relevant för de diskussioner som tidigare förts:

Därmed är också den tanken antydd – genom själva konstellationen muslimskt-kristet – att det är personlighetsuppgivelsen, i skilda skepnader, som är kärnan innan­för de olika religionernas skal: hjärtat heter självutplåning, jagförlust. I så måtto kan Ekström och Hermelin knytas till den oförgängliga filosofins tradition, en sophia perennis. Den "perenna religionen" sådan den tolkats och for­mulerats av framför allt René Guénon, Frithiof Schuon och Seyyed Hossein Nasr och i Sverige av Kurt Almqvist och Tage Lindbom är emellertid märkt av en teoretiserande begreppsexercis och en esoterisk exegetik, där själva teoretiserandet utfallit som det adekvata uttrycket för ett alltför välordnat mystikt universum. "Den andliga värl­den som sådan" mynnar således i en konservativ utopisk föreställning om en hierarkisk ordning, något som uppnås etappvis, genom erövrandet av grader. Denna spekulativa traditions-mystik är någonting helt främmande för såväl Ekström som Hermelin. Där de traditionalistiska filoso­ferna och skrift-lärde reser en "himmelsstege" anträder och följer sålunda Hjalmar Ekström och Flodbergskretsen liksom Eric Hermelin "mystikens saliga utförsbacke" (Ulrika Ljungman). Den profetiska eller sociala dimensionen hos Ekström/Hermelin bekymrar sig i första hand inte om institutioners bevarande eller skapande men om det som är nedanför eller före traditionen: "den enskilde" – den ut­satta människan. Guds-tilliten och underkastelsen under Gud som den yttrar sig hos dessa båda problematiska na­turer kommer tvärtom att skydda mot och stå hindrande i vägen för varje samhällelig och institutionell underkas­t