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―What is a philosopher?
—That is perhaps an anachronistic question. But I will give a modern response. In the past one might have said it is a man who stands in wonder; today I would say, borrowing words from Georges Bataille, it is someone who is afraid. |
✖ Via The Infinite Conversation by Maurice Blanchot, trans. Susan Hanson, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993, p. 49. Here’s the original French version: ―Qu’est-ce qu’un philosophe?
―Voilà une question anachronique, peut-être. Mais j’y ferai une réponse moderne. Jadis l’on disait : c’est un homme qui s’étonne; aujourd’hui, je dirai, empruntant ce mot à Georges Bataille : c’est quelqu’un qui a peur. (L’entretien infini, éd. Gallimard, Paris, p. 70) |
• Sep 05, 2010 link notes reblogged from georgesbataille [via] tagged:
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This paradox of the carnival—which in the most general sense is the paradox of emotion, but in the most specific sense is the paradox of sacrifice- ought to be considered with the most critical attention. As children, we have all suspected it:perhaps we are all, moving strangely beneath the sky, victims of a trap, a joke whose secret we will one day know. This reaction is certainly infantile and we turn away from it, living in a world imposed on us as though it were “perfectly natural,” quite different from the one that used to exasperate us. As children, we did not know if we were going to laugh or cry but, as adults, we “possess” this world, we make endless use of it, it is made of intelligible and utilizable objects. It is made of earth, stone, wood, plants, animals. We work the earth, we build houses, we eat bread and wine. We have forgotten, out of habit, our childish apprehensions. In a word, we have ceased to mistrust ourselves. Only a few of us, amid the great fabrications of society, hang on to our really childish reactions, still wonder naively what we are doing on the earth and what sort of joke is being played on us. We want to decipher skies and paintings, go behind these starry backgrounds or these painted canvases and, like kids trying to find a gap in a fence, try to look through the cracks in the world. |
✖ Via The Cruel Practice of Art (L’Art, exercice de la cruauté) by Georges Bataille, originally published in Médecine de France, June 1949, reprinted in Georges Bataille Oeuvres Complètes, vol. XI, Paris: Gallimard, 1988. English translation by Supervert.com, 2003. [PDF] About Supervert.com : If he were alive today, would the Marquis de Sade have a web site? (120 Days of Sodom, ancestor of the sex blog.) Would Charles Baudelaire employ venture capital for a sinister new internet startup, Fleurs du Mal Inc? Would Arthur Rimbaud use information technology to disorder the senses? Would any of them, were they alive today, find some way to advance literature by means of artificial intelligence?
Supervert is what an author can be when amplified by technology. Creator of books, web sites, and CD-ROMs, Supervert stands at the intersection of literature, technology, and perhaps also abnormal psychology — for in all its endeavors, Supervert utilizes the techniques of vanguard aesthetics to research the pathology of novel perversions. A sort of deviant Bauhaus, Supervert strives to create new experiences through the synthesis of art, technology, pornography, and philosophy. (more) |
• Aug 07, 2010 link notes tagged:
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The identity of an individual is a product of human reason: it is not anything other than a rational self. Therefore, losing identity equals losing reason. So ‘communicative cognition’ is cognition as an event which occurs in a (critical) moment not controlled by reason. It belongs to the realm of affect which transcends reason or occurs due to the drive of affect. According to Bataille, the sense of an individual losing identity is also what characterizes communication with the other. |
✖ Via Nami Ohi: “Cognition as Communication: The Accursed Share by Georges Bataille as a contribution to the study of Fundamental Informatics”, The New Trends of Socio-information in East Asia, Students’ workshop, at The University of Tokyo, Nov. 2007. [PDF]“Nami Ohi is a doctoral student in the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies (GSIIS), the University of Tokyo, supervised by Prof. Toru Nishigaki. She studies literature from the systems theory perspective. She is especially interested in haiku and analyzes it by using fundamental informatics as a theoretical framework.” (more) |
• Jun 15, 2010 link notes tagged:
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