Ambulatory revelations of the quixotic
"ten thousand sons of god" -lotus sutra, author unknown; holy text-
"we are seeking only the precise meaning that our consciousness gives to this word 'exist,' and we find that, for a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly" -creative evolution, henri bergson; early twentieth century philosopher, outshined by the phenomenological movement, during world war I was sent by the french and british to implore woodrow wilson to enter the war on the side of the allies, a favor they would repay in turn by supporting the founding of the league of nations-
"modern democracy does not abolish sacred life but rather shatters it and disseminates it into every individual body, making it into what is at stake in political conflict. And the root of modern democracy's secret biopolitical calling lies here..." -homo sacer, giorgio agamben; contemporary theory-
"the human soul is contained in the nerves of the body; about their physical nature I, as a layman, cannot say more than that they are extraordinarily delicate structures-- comparable to the finest filaments-- and that the total mental life of a human being rests on their excitability by external impressions." -memoirs of my nervous illness, daniel paul schreber; late nineteenth century schizophrenic-
"cook me in your breakfast and put me on your plate, you know I taste great, yeah you know I taste great" -at the hop (nino rojo), devendra banhart; singer, model, hobo, and bard---
"we are seeking only the precise meaning that our consciousness gives to this word 'exist,' and we find that, for a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly" -creative evolution, henri bergson; early twentieth century philosopher, outshined by the phenomenological movement, during world war I was sent by the french and british to implore woodrow wilson to enter the war on the side of the allies, a favor they would repay in turn by supporting the founding of the league of nations-
"modern democracy does not abolish sacred life but rather shatters it and disseminates it into every individual body, making it into what is at stake in political conflict. And the root of modern democracy's secret biopolitical calling lies here..." -homo sacer, giorgio agamben; contemporary theory-
"the human soul is contained in the nerves of the body; about their physical nature I, as a layman, cannot say more than that they are extraordinarily delicate structures-- comparable to the finest filaments-- and that the total mental life of a human being rests on their excitability by external impressions." -memoirs of my nervous illness, daniel paul schreber; late nineteenth century schizophrenic-
"cook me in your breakfast and put me on your plate, you know I taste great, yeah you know I taste great" -at the hop (nino rojo), devendra banhart; singer, model, hobo, and bard---
posted by Tongue-tied Lightning at 11:08 PM
12 Comments:
that was awesome.
Agamben's high on my list to read; I got The State of Exception but have only read the first chapter. What's your overall sense of his political bent? Is he best considered as a member of the marxist tradition?
"Videogames are the last hope for conciousness"
--Chris Marker
nugvisy
That's a good question... What would you say t.t. lightening? To my understanding, Agamben is very Foucauldian, i.e. hard to place politically...(anarchist? certainly anti-fascist). Foucault talked about the epistemic political shift to "biopower," which is in Foucault at least the form of power where masses of people are considered as a whole, and so things like populations, diseases and defects can be quantified and prevented, and thus the continuation of life is the foundational power of society. It is basically a regulatory society - focused on things like public hygiene, the birth and mortality rates, insurance, pensions, etc. - as opposed to a disciplinary society (see panopticon, discipline and punish) and sovereign society (where the sovereign holds the power to kill). - and Marxism is in fact one of the best examples of biopower, by my understanding: in fact, Foucault considered fascism and marxism about on the same level - both as institutionalized forms of "racism." He got a LOT of flak for that in academia - and a lot of people think that's why he abandoned the "biopower" project, which he proposed and began in his lectures ("Society Must Be Defended"), and instead turned to the ancient history of sexuality for his last book. Anyway, I do remember some questions about whether Agamben was truly Foucauldian or just mapping his terms onto his own theory: Agamben focuses on a originalizing (word?) history of the nation-state, whereas that is not the focus at all in Foucault - he's more interested in specific institutions as functions of epistemic power, and he certainly wouldn't intend to trace the development of any modern day institution through the historical archive (that is the opposite of what Foucault wants to do). Also, this is related to the question of whether Agamben retains a view of power that is negative (i.e. repressive), whereas in Foucault power is ALWAYS positive (i.e. empowering), like his views of knowledge (which is why he disagreed with his tutor, Althusser).
Also, I'm working my way down the page to your stuff, Jed, I'll be there soon!
dear god, sometimes theory way overwhelmes me. Often. I know very little foucault.
So do I have to read homo sacer before I read the state of exception? because that one seems more relevant to my project, but it might not be. Is it?
I don't know anything about State of Exception really... Al, little help? I do know that Homo Sacer talks about Roman law and about Nazi concentration camps, trying to develop a theory of "bare life" - expressed in the "homo sacer," the sacred man, who is actually a Roman citizen who has been stripped of his civil rights, and therefore is unprotected under the law (though he is also considered sacred by society), as far as I remember. There's a lot more to it that I'm sure Al could explain, especially the fascist stuff which is what you would be interested in there (as far as I remember it deals with trying to give humanity back to the prisoners of the camps). Also, Agamben runs in the tradition of political philosophy more than critical theory, whatever that means to you (it explains his deviations from Foucault).
Also, don't forget I failed the shit out of Foucault.
game (n.)
O.E. gamen "joy, fun, amusement," common Gmc. (cf. O.Fris. game, O.N. gaman, O.H.G. gaman "joy, glee"), regarded as identical with Goth. gaman "participation, communion," from P.Gmc. *ga- collective prefix + *mann "person," giving a sense of "people together." Meaning "contest played according to rules" is first attested c.1300. Sense of "wild animals caught for sport" is c.1290; hence fair game (1825), also gamey "having the flavor of game" (1863). Adjective sense of "brave, spirited" is 1725, from the noun, especially in game-cock "bird for fighting." Game plan is 1941, from U.S. football; game show first attested 1961.
so, videogame:
from video - Latin, "(I) see"
and
game -
ga - Proto-Germanic, collective
mann - Proto-Germanic, "person"
thus, videogame:
"I see as the collective person"
holy shit that's amazing! nice work, brilliant etymologizing. how can you beat that? nohow. Fits in with something I was just reading, in a letter by Rimbaud (who began writing at 16 and stopped writing at 21)
"For I is someone else....Universal intelligence has always thrown out ideas, naturally; men picked up a part of these fruits of the mind: people acted through them and wrote books about them. Things continued thus: man not working on himself, not yet being awake, or not yet in the fullness of the great dream."
Agamben... not a marxist. Seems to be a foucauldian. I gotta admit I took that quote of his out of context, thus the ... at the end of the sentence. He talks about the state of exception for the first third of homo sacer, so reading that you'd probably get a lot of what he says in the book of the same title.
He's basically not political, this meaning that he treats politics as something to be studied and discussed theoretically. he makes some good points about dropping the rhetoric of 'human rights' and 'racism'- he wants to go deeper than that. I like all that. He's not a liberal pepper sausage (though he is italian). He's the type you'd make a judge out of, the sort who sees through things and couldn't give a damn if you liked your taxes high or low.
I'm gonna put that bit about videogames in my piece of writing, OK? It fits in far too well. what do you think?
I misquoted Chris Marker. The actual quote is:
"Video games are the first stage in a plan for machines to help the human race, the only plan that offers a future for intelligence."
sure use it. the etymology of game i got straight from http://www.etymonline.com
have you seen chris marker's "immemory" cd-rom? He was 77 when he made it.
No, but i've heard a lot about it. I want to see it. You don't have a copy, do you? I can take it out from the library sometime, but I'm going to forget.
What's with all these people doing shit at extreme ages? It really bothers me that Rimbaud was so young. His stuff has wisdom that I just can't imagine coming from a sixteenyear old. Soon I'll post some of his good shit on the blog.
Don't worry about Rimbaud. He's one of those once-a-millenium types. And he also burnt out. It's cool to have one of those 5 year careers that leaves immortal literature, but life's pretty sweet too, I'm thinking about checking it out for a few more decades myself.
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