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The man who works recognizes his own product in the World that has actually been transformed by his work: he recognizes himself in it, he sees in it his own human reality, in it he discovers and reveals to others the objective reality of his humanity, of the originally abstract and purely subjective idea he has of himself. By this act of finding itself by itself, then, the [working] consciousness becomes its own meaning-or-will; and this happens precisely in work, in which it seemed to be alien meaning-or-will. |
✖ Via Introduction to the Reading of Hegel by Alexandre Kojève, Cornell University Press, [1947]1980, p. 27 Here’s the original French version: L’homme qui travaille reconnaît dans le Monde effectivement transformé par son travail sa propre œuvre: il s’y reconnaît soi-même; il y voit sa propre réalité humaine; il y découvre et il révèle aux autres la réalité objective de son humanité, de l’idée d’abord abstraite et purement subjective qu’il se fait de lui-même.] Par cet acte-de-se-retrouver soi-même par soi-même, la Conscience [travaillante] devient donc sens-ou-volonté propre; et elle le devient précisément dans le travail, où elle ne semblait être que sens-ou-volonté étranger. (Introduction à la lecture de Hegel, éd. Gallimard, Paris, 1947, p. 31) A complete PDF copy of this book is available online. A French version of the ‘Introduction’ of this book is available here. |
• Oct 02, 2010 link notes 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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We have only to speak of an object to think that we are being objective. But, because we chose it in the first place, the object reveals more about us than we do about it. What we consider to be our fundamental ideas concerning the world are often indications of the immaturity of our minds. Sometimes we stand in wonder before a chosen object; we build up hypotheses and reveries; in this way we form convictions which have all the appearance of true knowledge. But the initial source is impure: the first impression is not fundamental truth. In point of fact, scientific objectivity is possible only if one has broken first with the immediate object, if one has refused to yield to seduction of the initial choice, if one has checked and contradicted the thoughts which arise from one’s first observation. |
✖ Via Psychanlyse of Fire by Gaston Bachelard, tr. A. C. Ross, Beacon Press, [1938]1987, p. 1 Here’s the original French text: Il suffit que nous parlions d’un objet pour nous croire objectifs. Mais par notre premier choix, l’objet nous désigne plus que nous le désignons et ce que nous croyons nos pensées fondamentales sur le monde sont souvent des confidences sur la jeunesse de notre esprit. Parfois nous nous émerveillons devant un objet élu; nous accumulons les hypothèses et les rêveries; nous formons ainsi des convictions qui ont l’apparence du savoir. Mais la source initiale est l’impure: l’évidence première n’est pas une vérité fondamentale. En fait, l’objectivité scientifique n’est possible que si l’on a d’abord rompu avec l’objet immédiat, si l’on a refusé la séduction du premier choix, si l’on a arrêté et contredit les pensées qui naissent de la première observation. (éd. Gallimard, coll. Idées, Paris, [1938]1949, p. 9) Gaston Bachelard was a French epistemologist. Learn more on Wikipedia. |
• Jul 26, 2010 link notes tagged:
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In truth at first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundation of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth, [120] and Eros(Love), fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them. |
✖ Via Theogony by Hesiode, 115 (english tr. by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914) |
• Jun 17, 2010 link notes tagged:
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Why? and automatically answering, out of the blue, for no reason, just opening my mouth, words coming out, summarizing for the idiots: “Well, though I know I should have done that instead of not doing it, I’m twenty‑seven for Christ sakes and this is, uh, how life presents itself in a bar or in a club in New York, maybe anywhere, at the end of the century and how people, you know, me, behave, and this is what being Patrick means to me, I guess, so, well, yup, uh…” and this is followed by a sigh, then a slight shrug and another sigh, and above one of the doors covered by red velvet drapes in Harry’s is a sign and on the sign in letters that match the drapes’ color are the words THIS IS NOT AN EXIT. |
✖ Via American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, 1991, p. 568 More news about Bret Easton Ellis: a new novels, a film in production and maybe another one in the pipeline (an no, I’m not talking about Glamorama). “Ellis speculated that Fox Searchlight might make his upcoming Hollywood novel Imperial Bedrooms (his seventh) into a film. […] Lunar Park is in pre-production, said Ellis; Jude Law may replace Benicio Del Toro, who Ellis knows and likes. He was set to play the role, but Ellis thought Del Toro was miscast. Ellis doesn’t see himself as Jude Law either.” (more) |
• May 31, 2010 link notes tagged:
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New York: Vintage Books
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For the epistemologist, the notion of ‘application’ in an expression such as ‘applied psychoanalysis’ is simply flabby. It would seem to imply that a body of theory, more or less rigorously formulated, can be applied without modification to a set of data or to a field of study (in this case, works of art) different from that for which it was constructed (the set of psycho-neurotic symptoms and abnormal psychic phenomena). If this were so, the two domains would be indistinguishable; if they are not, then the attempt at application requires modifications that, however trivial, make that body of theory different from what it was in its first ‘state’. |
✖ Via “Beyond Representation” by Jean-François Lyotard, tr. by Jonathan Culler, reproduced in The Lyotard Reader, edited by Andrew E. Benjamin, Wiley-Blackwell, 1989, p. 155 About The Lyotard Reader: “Jean-Francois Lyotard was one of the founding members of the College Internationale de philosophie. Ha has taught at Vincennes, Saint Denis and is currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of California at Irvine. Several of his books have appeared in English, notable The Postmodern Condition, Just Gaming and The Dirrerend.The Lyotard Reader is a collection of Jean-Francois Lyotard’s most important and significant papers to date. While they are all written from within philosophy, they seek to address subjects as wide-ranging as film, painting (Adami, Francken, Newman), psychoanalysis, Judaism and politics. The originality of Lyotard’s work means that it can not be readily situated within any one philosophical tradition. Instead he returns philosophy itself to debates across a range of areas and, in so doing, redefines the philosophical enterprise.A number of chapters in The Lyotard Reader appear for the first time in English. This is the most comprehensive collection available of Lyotard’s work, work has profoundly influenced debates on the Enlightenment, on modernity, on postmodernity, on the transmission f information, on literary theory and on philosophy.” (more) |
• May 27, 2010 link notes tagged:
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The boundless sea rang terribly around, and the earth crashed loudly: wide Heaven was shaken and groaned, and high Olympus reeled from its foundation under the charge of the undying gods, and a heavy quaking reached dim Tartarus and the deep sound of their feet in the fearful onset and of their hard missiles. So, then, they launched their grievous shafts upon one another, and the cry of both armies as they shouted reached to starry heaven; and they met together with a great battle-cry. […] Astounding heat seized Chaos: and to see with eyes and to hear the sound with ears it seemed even as if Earth and wide Heaven above came together; for such a mighty crash would have arisen if Earth were being hurled to ruin, and Heaven from on high were hurling her down; so great a crash was there while the gods were meeting together in strife. Also the winds brought rumbling earthquake and duststorm, thunder and lightning and the lurid thunderbolt, which are the shafts of great Zeus, and carried the clangour and the warcry into the midst of the two hosts. An horrible uproar of terrible strife arose: mighty deeds were shown and the battle inclined. But until then, they kept at one another and fought continually in cruel war. |
✖ Via Theogony by Hesiod (tr. by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, 1914) When the Gods fought the Titans, Earth was not an hopistable place for the mortals. |
• May 09, 2010 link notes tagged:
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