#forget foucault
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“Nowadays, one no longer says 'You have a soul and you must save it,' but:
'You've got a sexual nature, and you must find out how to use it well.
''You've got an unconscious, and you must learn how to liberate it.
''You've got a body, and you must know how to enjoy it.
''You've got a libido, and you must know how to spend it,' etc., etc.
This compulsion toward liquidity, flow, and an accelerated circulation of what is psychic, sexual, or pertaining to the body is the exact replica of the force which rules market value: capital must circulate; gravity and any fixed point must disappear; the chain of investments and reinvestments must never stop; value must radiate endlessly and in every direction. This is the form itself which the current realization of value takes. It is the form of capital, and sexuality as a catchword and a model is the way it appears at the level of bodies. Besides, the body to which we constantly refer has no other reality than that of the sexual and productive model. It is capital which gives birth in the same movement to the energetic of labor power and to the body we dream of today as the locus of desire and the unconscious.”
- Jean Baudrillard, Forget Foucault, p. 39
#jean baudrillard#forget foucault#circulation of desire#capitalism#liquid capital#liquidity#sexuality#means of production#unconscious desire#academic quote#poststructuralism#postmodernism#value#surplus value
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Okay, so I was re-reading your Slider one-shot for like the twentieth time, and what really struck me (beyond the brilliance of your writing, and the way you’ve presented the disillusionment of growing up, expecting the world to be a certain way, only to realize that life doesn’t quite work out the way you think it will, when you’re seventeen), is the casual sexism just tossed ‘round by our main characters!! :o We have canonical evidence of both Ice and Mav being pretty sexist (what with “the plaque for the alternates is in the ladies’ room” and the downright stalker-ish behavior exhibited by Mav at the O-club…), but it still surprised me a lil’ when twenty-y/o Ice was just like: “The Soviet Union did the impossible and taught women to drive” —and I realized that ah, he truly was born in 1959, or something. There’s little scenes throughout your story where I find myself wondering, which one of them is better, in this sense: When Ice tells Mav that Sarah isn’t talking to him ‘cause of his combat kills, justifies it by saying: “You know how women are”, and Mav tells him all women aren’t the same… I thought that maybe, it was Mav; but then later, Ice shows a distinctive amount of empathy for Juno, sees and respects her for the skilled pilot that she is… and I thought that maybe, it’s Ice after all—he does seem to be more progressive and accepting than Mav, in general? It also made me wonder, that if either of them had been a woman, would they even have respected the other person enough to consider them to be a rival??—or would it have a been a mildly-amusing circus side show for them, to have a female pilot at TOPGUN?
Ty for the ask anon!! ice is more socially progressive than mav yes.
But—maybe this is my experience growing up in one of the bluest counties in Commiefornia and then going to one of the most leftist-coded colleges in one of the most leftist-coded cities in The World; uhh, even if a white man votes D all the time & has professional respect for women/minorities to their faces etc, get him in a room with a bunch of other white men, especially in a masculine and competitive environment like the gym or the navy, and uh. progressive or not, what you get is a lot of “The Soviet Union did the impossible & taught women to drive.”
And it was the 1980s. (As a reminder, in top gun’s 1986, less than 45% of Americans even approved of interracial marriage.) It sucks to say it, but if Ice was making fun of Cougar for quitting the navy cause of his psych issues such as they may be, and openly calling bullshit on Maverick’s MiG story in front of everyone, I am quite confident in saying he Would Not respect a female pilot to her face—if they were the same rank. At the same rank, it’s a competition. All weaknesses, even perceived biological ones, are to be exploited and called to attention. —But, once he’s advanced in rank, proven his own superiority, he’s more inclined to favor a meritocratic “sex doesn’t matter just fly good” attitude, ergo his relationship w/ “Juno” (she’s just a literary symbol to show that Ice may have respect for other minorities in the Navy “your career speaks for itself” but NOT FOR HIMSELF as a closeted man). This “who cares about gender/race just fly good” attitude is probably where 50s+ Maverick lands too, which is why no issues with Phoenix.
but jesus GOD maverick is a sexist in the original Top Gun. That’s why I wrote the prologue to WWGATTAI—a part of me definitely believes both he and Ice are definitively queer, but a part of me also wonders, are they just also conditioned to dismiss women as intellectual/societal equals because of their time in the 1980s male-dominated Navy? CAN they really only have a truly equal relationship with another man? I have no idea what my Ice’s sexual orientation is for exactly this reason. Yes, he’s functionally gay by the end of it, and that’s what I keep calling him—but sexuality is fluid & complicated. It’s definitely more-than possible he’s mostly straight and it’s just the circumstances of his wildly intense trauma-bond relationship with Maverick that led to their relationship as I wrote it. If you don’t LIKE/understand/respect women, and only feel at home/excited by committing acts of male-typified violence with the few men you respect, how does that bend your definition of the word straight? ...its still straight, but only straight-ish!
not to take it a step further, but WHY ELSE is canon maverick single in TGM? he canonically can’t make it work with women until he retires from the navy!!! he doesnt know how!!! His military environment is not conducive to normal long-term relationships with civilian women!!!
#and it’s well well documented that career military service does this to you!#Jesus look at cops. 40% etc.#yeah mil/LEO relationships with women are historically quite bad.#if you only respect men & then a man comes onto you—might be easier to sustain that relationship than with a woman you do not respect#I forget where i read it but this is the element of the homosocial vs the homosexual. i want to say Foucault but I think thats incorrect#EVE KOSOFSKY SEDGWICK. from her 'between men: English literature & male homosocial desire.' I think she's the preeminent homosocial scholar#if ur interested in 'further reading' not to sound like a geek#fellas is it gay to like women#after all…women kiss men…so if u kiss a woman ur kissing something that’s kissed another man…gay#ice (mid-makeout): well mavericks kissed women before so really this is the most heterosexual thing i could do#anyway#pete maverick mitchell#tom iceman kazansky#top gun#top gun maverick#icemav#asks#edts notes#mav is a social libertarian live & let live & keep the govt out of my bedroom (except for my marriage license uwu)#ice is a social moderate liberal. donates to actblue firmly believes diversity is the militarys greatest strength etc.#(i hope this isn’t too provocative to say but) look at ices outfit in tgm. libcoded. those gay little round glasses? solid lib.#the interracial marriage stat is from Gallup btw; 94% in 2021. weve come a long way. a lot has changed since 1986.#but our fav characters are FROM 1986 too so... we still cant forget that
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Tag ppl you wanna get to know better 🤗
Tagged by @katpaulww1 🎊🐌🍀
Last song listened to: maria - greg mendez
Favorite color: yellow
Currently watching: I have only been watching tennis and UFC lately, also some random stuff on YouTube or reels on Instagram, but haven't had the time to watch a series. Maybe during the summer, I hope.
Last movie you watched: a city of sadness 🇹🇼
Currently reading: the Collège de France Lecture Series of Michel Foucault ☝️🤓 and Borges also
Sweet/spicy/savory: sweet!!!! 🍭
Relationship status: kinda giving up at this point too
Current obsession: comics too!! and cartoons, i got randomly obssesed with the Pink Panter, Hannah-Barbera, Tom & Jerry and also with some cartoons of my childhood like Courage the Cowardly Dog and The Angry Beavers. Ana Frango Eletrico it's for sure my musical obsession of the year and I'm going through a good period of writing again, which makes me really, really happy.
Last thing googled: Queque microondas, el tiempo en Santiago, Charles Oliveira, Aporia y Remedios naturales para la náusea y el dolor estomacal 🤕
Currently working on: be happy and lazy and sad and proactive.
I usually don't participate in these kinds of chains, mostly because I'm lazy, but my desire to respond to my mutual has outweighed my usual laziness. I will tag some people whom I appreciate here; please don't feel pressured to respond. I am likely to forget to mention some mutuals whom I highly value. I attribute this to my fish-like memory, but rest assured, if we are mutuals, we both know. 🧙♂️
Tagging @sanasu @crewneck @featheredriver @peplos @iaooa @mudlark101 @skatalite @redbeanbug @waveringheart @geltoothpaste @atholbrose @woolwormontario @museumofcognitiveart @priest-iuput @99vc @angel-official @heartshapedmolcajete @vieilllevague @corvus-pictor @tallyuh
Also i want to say that all of those blogs are really really really great and 🫵u🫵 should follow them quick 🧺🪆🧸
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WOE.BEGONE Character Playlists, Part 2
Here are all my character playlists for WOE.BEGONE characters who are not, have never been, and will presumably never be Mike Walters. Listed in order of first appearance. Cut for length and possible vague spoilers.
Matt
"The Magician" by Dizzy
"The Winding Stair Mountain Blues" by the Turnpike Troubadours
"Cuyahoga Canal" by The Taxpayers (suggested on the Discord)
"Down Here" by the Turnpike Troubadours
"Research Me Obsessively" from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
Anne
"She Lives (In a Time of Her Own)" by The Judybats
"A Shot in the Arm" by Wilco
"Bravado" by Lorde
"We Can Build a Fire" by Autoheart (from a collaborative Ty/Mike playlist)
"Shot at the Title" by Curtis McMurtry
"The Bonnie Dell House" by Sarah and the Safe Word (from @fortunechaos's Cowgirl Anne playlist)
Ryan & Cannonball
"Turn The Lights Off" by Tally Hall (suggested on Discord)
"Blast Doors" by Everything Everything (from Percival's playlist)
Hunter
"So-Called Friend" by Uncle Tupelo
"Hanging Tree" by Tim Easton
"Heel Turn 1" by The Mountain Goats (suggested by @solipsistful)
"Chaplinesque" by Curtis McMurtry
"Harvest" by I See Hawks In L.A.
"Heel Turn 2" by The Mountain Goats (from @solipsistful's playlist)
"Burning Bed" by The Backsliders
"When Will You Die?" by They Might Be Giants
"Gaucho" by Steely Dan
"Can't Cheat Death" by The Ballroom Thieves (from @fortunechaos's Mikey playlist)
"my tears richochet" by Taylor Swift
"A Fond Farewell" by Elliott Smith
Chance & Shadow
"Emmylou" by First Aid Kit (suggested by @woebegonepod on Discord)
"Trouble's Here" by Jann Browne
"Don't Follow" by Shelby Merry (from @auxilion's playlist)
Marissa & Charlie
"Old Slew Foot" by Rose Maddox
"Miss Marissa" by Reckless Kelly
"The Girl I Can't Forget" by Fountains of Wayne
"Wilder than Her" by Dar Williams
"Don't Follow" by Shelby Merry (from @auxilion's playlist)
"it's time to get good at darts" by Brian David Gilbert
Edgar
"What A Heavenly Way To Die" by Troye Sivan
"Flaws" by Bastille (from Scholastic Arson's Edgar playlist)
"FOOLS" by Troye Sivan
"Don't Ask Me Why" by The Backsliders
"Body Paint" by Arctic Monkeys (suggested by @fortunechaos)
"Out of the Picture" by Son Volt
"When Anger Shows" by Editors (from Scholastic Arson's Edgar playlist)
"Happiness Will Ruin This Place" by San Fermin (from @ante--meridiem's Mike/Edgar playlist)
"I Saw It Coming" by Reckless Kelly
"A Lifetime to Find" by Wilco
"In Our Bedroom After the War" by Stars (from Scholastic Arson's Edgar playlist)
"Mesa, Arizona" by Jeffrey Foucault
"Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?" by Paula Cole
"Expert in a Dying Field" by The Beths
"IDK You Yet" by Alexander 23 (from @auxilion's playlist)
"Ours" by Joe Pug (suggested by @woebegonepod on Discord)
"Somewhere in Time" by Reckless Kelly
Ty
"This House Is a Circus" by Arctic Monkeys (suggested by @fortunechaos)
"Erase" by They Might Be Giants (from @solipsistful's playlist)
"I Love You for Psychological Reasons" by They Might Be Giants (from a collaborative Ty/Mike playlist)
"My Ugly" by Cloudfodder (from Scholastic Arson's Ty/Mike playlist)
"Skullcrusher Mountain" by Jonathan Coulton (from a collaborative Ty/Mike playlist)
"Cowboys are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other" by Ned Sublette
"Panoply" by WOE.BEGONE (from @fortunechaos's Tex/Outlaw playlist)
"Otters" by Ryan MacIntyre (from @fortunechaos's Tex/Outlaw playlist)
"Expert in a Dying Field" by The Beths
"Pot Kettle Black" by Wilco
"Outlaw Ty" by WOE.BEGONE
"Jenny" by the Mountain Goats
"It's All Part of the Plan" by the Punch Brothers
"Sway" by The Rolling Stones
"Blood Orange Morning Light" by Andrew Montana (from finch's Tex/Outlaw playlist)
Felix
"This House Is a Circus" by Arctic Monkeys
"Parallel Universes" by Dan Warren (from @ante--meridiem's Mike playlist)
"3 AM" by Matchbox Twenty
"Working for the Knife" by Mitski
August
"Cowboys are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other" by Ned Sublette
"Seven Shells" by Fred Eaglesmith
"Almost (Sweet Music)" by Hozier
"IDK You Yet" by Alexander 23 (from @auxilion's playlist)
"I Saw It Coming" by Reckless Kelly
"The Curse of the Blackened Eye" by Orville Peck (from Icarus is Falling's Michael/August playlist)
"Mostly Major Chords" by Shayfer James (from @fortunechaos's Mikey playlist)
Jam
"Goody Two Shoes" by Adam Ant
"Fun" by Troye Sivan
"Gaucho" by Steely Dan
"Tonight's the Day" by Wilco
"ilomilo" by Billie Eilish
"Ours" by Joe Pug
"The Ballad of Cowboy Jam" by WOE.BEGONE
Eagle
"Kill a Man" by James and the Shame (from @auxilion's playlist)
"Eye" by The Scarring Party (from @auxilion's playlist)
"War on War" by Wilco
"Epithet Erased: Countdown" by plasterbrain and Dawn M. Bennett (from Percival's playlist)
Songs that I desperately want to put on *someone's* playlist but I don't think they currently fit anyone
"Leavin' Yesterday" by John Howie Jr. and the Rosewood Bluff
"Tired of Walking" by James McMurtry
"Perhaps Vampires Is A Bit Strong But..." by Arctic Monkeys
"Man Out of Time" by Elvis Costello
"Broken Bed" by James McMurtry
"Twist the Knife" by Neko Case
#woe.begone#matt lastname#anne wbg#ryan wbg#hunter jeremiah hartley#chance and shadow#marissa ng#charlie wbg#edgar wbg#ty betteridge#felix wbg#sylvester august baxter#jamilla gardner#eagle wbg#and now for something completely different#that time travel podcast#playlist
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Excerpts from Battles Over the Queer Past: De-generation and the Queerness of Memory from If Memory Serves: Gay Men, AIDS, and the Promise of a Queer Past by Christopher Castiglia and Christopher Reed
[ID: Four screenshots of text.
The first reads: The years following the onset of the AIDS epidemic witnessed a discursive operation that instigated a cultural forgetting of the 1960s and 1970s, installing instead a cleaned-up memory that reconstitutes sanctioned identity out of historical violence. Like national identities, the sexual consciousness that emerges from such narratives of forgetting and sanctioned memory serves state interests, not least by turning gays and lesbians into a "respectable" (fit for assimilation) constituency ready to receive state recognition in the form of "rights".
The second reads: For Foucault, gay desire is itself a form of memory: "For a homosexual, the best moment of love is likely to be when the lover leaves in the taxi. It is when the act is over and the boy is gone that one begins to dream about the warmth of his body, the quality of his smile, the tone of his voice. This is why the great homosexual writers of our culture (Cocteau, Genet, Burroughs) can write so elegantly about the sexual act itself, because the homosexual imagination is for the most part concerned with reminiscing" ("Sexual Choice, Sexual Act," 224). Viewed through the lens of queer memory, intimacy becomes a shared history as much as a shared space. Internalized as behavior patters through its integration into memorial narratives of pleasure, intimacy becomes the basis for a transformative and erotic collective life.
The third reads: In contrast, the hope for the future, the novel suggests, lies with those of the younger generation who can draw survival lessons from the past. In a scene set during Gay Pride Weekend, 1991, two young lesbians watch a documentary on pre-Stonewall gay life. When on woman asks, "Do you relate to any of this?" her lover responds, "It's not us... But it's something. It's history." "Maybe it'll make sense later on," the first woman ventures, to which her lover asserts, "It makes sense to me now" (559). Only when history "makes sense" — when memory serves — can gay countermemories heal the antagonism generated not by AIDS but by de-generational discourses that make memory-based community a suspect concept.
The fourth reads: By taking too casual an approach to memory, we rick letting our historiography disastrously change our history. The politics of memory are particularly important in relation to AIDS. Even before the NAME Project made memory into a stirring art form, a common refrain in the gay community was that we must not forget those who have died. While these individual acts of memory are urgently important, we must also remember and continue to shape and deploy our memories of social networks, political strategies, and cultural theories, not to idealize or to reinvent the past but in order to think critically about what stories are credited with access to the social "real". Only in doing so will gay men's sexual representations transform the restrictive and normalizing cultural trends of the 1990s that grew from de-generational unremembering, allowing us to avoid unnecessary loss and become present to ourselves. /end ID]
#in the future i might post excerpts one at a time bc umm . this is a long ID and idk if anyone actually cares about my aids reading alskdjn#but for now you get this bc i've typed it all up <333#anyway v v good book i don't agree w/ Everything they say but it's such an interesting read#aids history#lgbt theory#excerpts#christopher castiglia#christopher reed
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Ours is a culture of premature ejaculation. More and more, all seduction, all manner of seduction (which is itself a highly ritualized process) disappears behind the naturalized sexual imperative calling for the immediate realization of a desire. Our center of gravity has in fact shifted towards an unconscious and libidinal economy which only leaves room for the total naturalization of a desire bound either to fateful drives or to pure a simple mechanical operation, but above all to the imaginary order of repression and liberation.
Jean Baudrillard
[From Can we Forget Foucault? Obscenity and the Politics of Seduction By Isabel Millar
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Popular virtue, the “good” worker, good father, good husband, respectful of the legal system — that is the image that since the 18th century the bourgeoisie proposed and imposed on the proletariat in order to turn it away from any form of violent agitation, insurrection, any attempt to usurp power and its rules.
[…] Isn’t this puritanism an obstacle for the revolutionary leader? I would say, currently, yes. There exists […] today in our societies truly revolutionary forces made up of just those strata who are poorly integrated into society, those strata who are perpetually rejected, and who, in their turn, reject the bourgeois moral system. How can you work with them in the political battle if you do not get rid of those moral prejudices that are ours? After all, if one takes into account the habitually unemployed who say, “Me, I prefer not working to working”; if one takes into account women, prostitutes, homosexuals, drug addicts, etc., there is a force for questioning society that one has no right, I think, to neglect in the political struggle.
[…]
[…] ultimately committing a misdemeanor, committing a crime, questions the way society functions in a most fundamental way[.] So fundamental that we forget that it is social, that we have the impression that it is moral, that it involves peoples’ rights….
Michel Foucault, “Michel Foucault on Attica: An Interview” (1972)
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Representation exists only in reaction to the inescapable reality of death. We speak to avoid a direct encounter with nothingness, to avert our glance from the mortification of death. In every word we utter, death is present as that which has initiated our speaking and that sustains its being. Death is ever present in discourse as the great absence we necessarily speak against. The play of images, the self-mirroring of figures, and the self-repeating gestures of speech are all established by the fundamental relationship between language and dying. Never can words forget that their origin derives from the void: silently, they speak of nothing but death (and loss) […] Speech becomes impossible without the void of death to support it [.]
— Richard Stamelman on Foucault, Lost Beyond Telling: Representations of Death and Absence in Modern French Poetry
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say what you will about foucault but twitter discourse about him is top-tier humor. i shall never forget people earnestly claiming that education in the U.S. would be thoroughly rooted in marxism if it weren't for him. and now some guy (Atlantic writer lol) is blaming him for wokeness. fuck foucault for making my children learn pronouns instead of dialectical materialism in kindergarten 😭
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An Eccentric Bibliophile's (Yet Incomplete) Guide to Dark Academia Reading, Because Who Needs Sunlight Anyway?
Lo and behold, the inevitable moment has arrived. You find yourself engrossed in Donna Tartt's 'The Secret History' for the umpteenth occasion (it never loses its luster, does it?), and you've diligently explored the whole dark academia canon. Or have you really?
I've made this post to collect the lesser-known tomes (because, you see, I'm well-acquainted with the exquisite agony of the quest). So, without further ado, let the revelry commence!
Disclaimer: the current version of the list has the links that lead to Goodreads. Also, the current version of the list seriously lacks books written by non-white authors. I hope that we'll collectively gain a cultural momentum and make this list better in this sense. I, personally, would love a recommendation!
Dark Academia Canon
Photo by Giammarco Boscaro on Unsplash
The volumes that are often bestowed with the dubious honor of canonical status, or, simply put, the ones that are most recommended dark academia reads.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
Babel by R.F. Kuang
Bunny by Mona Awad
The Atlas by Olivie Blake
Alex Stern series by Leigh Bardugo
Lesser-Known Dark Academia Titles
Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash
Intellect reigns supreme, arts and philosophy hold us captive, and we can't forget our undying affection for those delightfully lifeless languages. Oh, and let's not overlook the timeless charm of tweed. Simply put, less known but not less great titles that have all the canonical elements of dark academia. I've also added a few words about those that I love most.
The Flanders Panel by Arturo Perez-Reverte: a 15th-century painting has the key to a Renaissance murder, and the question Quis Necavit Equitem is answered by a modern-day art expert
Cornish Trilogy by Robertson Davies: a defrocked monk, some scholars of a university lovingly called "Spook" and a girl named Maria Magdalena Theotoky try to find out what to do with the vast estate of the recently deceased millionaire and art collector Francis Cornish
Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas: a selective admission process gets Ines in an experimental liberal arts school called Catherine House. The alumni of this school became, at their own time, prize-winning authors, artists, inventors, Supreme Court justices and even presidents. But how exactly did that happen?
The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason
A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee: no such thing as witchcraft exists in the world. That's probably not the case for Felicity, who is still trying to find out who killed five Dalloway students (supposedly, witches). Enter Ellis Haley, a young prodigy and a literary darling, who writes books about murders by re-enacting said murders...
Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson
Wilder Girls by Rory Power
Hex by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight
These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever
Ghosts of Harvard by Francesca Serritella
The Cloisters by Katy Hays
In These Hallowed Halls: A Dark Academia Anthology
The Maidens by Alex Michaelides
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
Dark Academia Vibes
Photo by Darran Shen on Unsplash
These books might as well be the quintessential dark academia reads, but the only element that isn't bedecked in romanticism is higher education itself. Murders continue to unfold in the most peculiar manner, occult knowledge flourishes, and suddenly, the folks with a smidge of Latin under their belts are the life of the scholarly soirée. Simply put, a book that a dark academic might read and love if they are not that fond of remembering their own school days.
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
The Magus by John Fowles
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson
All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness
All's Well by Mona Awad
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez
Hare House by Sally Hinchcliffe
Tripping Arcadia by Kit Mayquist
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters
The River Has Teeth by Erica Waters
The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Hester Fox
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Metropolitan Stories by Christine Coulson
Piranesi by Susanne Clarke
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanne Clarke
The Laundry Files series by Charles Stross
Alchemical Journeys series by Seanan McGuire
The Cadfael Chronicles by Ellis Peters
Dublin Murder Squad series by Tana French
Please, by all means, feel at liberty to append additional entries to the inventory - or, simply put, feel free to add to this list.
#dark academia#books & libraries#dark#bookblr#book recommendations#light academia#dark academism#dark academic aesthetic
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Alain Badiou on Gilles Deleuze, Pocket Pantheon, page 113 - 118
How is it that, even more so than ten years ago, he is our contemporary? And how is it that he is still out of step with the times, so out of step as to be that rarity: a future contemporary? He is certainly not 'modern' in the eyes of the academics who write the balance sheet of the twentieth century as though its spirit had always resided in the discussion, which now triumphs in our classrooms, between pious phenomenologists and democratic grammarians. Speaking of phenomenology, Eric Alliez is quite right to say that Deleuze's most constant - and most difficult - project was to prove that we can escape it. And that we must do so because it had, as he put it, 'blessed too many things'. As for analytic philosophy and the 'linguistic turn', he hated them with a vengeance, and took the view that a sort of Viennese commando had, at least in university philosophy departments, turned the rich American thought of the Emersons, the Thoreaus and the Jameses into a desert. As for democracy, it cannot be said too often, given that it is such a courageous and correct declaration, that one of the major characteristics of philosophy according to Deleuze is that it positively loathes the very notion of 'debate'.
But that does not necessarily mean that Deleuze completed the Heideggerian programme of modernity - that interminable 'end of metaphysics' that also goes by the name of the work of deconstruction. He liked to say that he had no problem with metaphysics. It is not easy to insert Deleuze into the usual genealogies. Of course he held that our times began with Nietzsche, as do so many others, and credited him - though this is not, in my view, his most powerful inspiration with having introduced into philosophy the notion of meaning, as opposed to that of truth, which had been killed by conformisms. And yet this Nietzsche, whose ancestor is a Spinoza baptized the 'Christ of philosophy' and whose French brother is Bergson, would surprise a lot of people. Truth to tell, Deleuze constructed a very unusual history of 'interesting' doctrines ('interesting' was a word he liked) that was meant only for himself: the Stoics and Lucretius, Duns Scotus, Spinoza and Leibniz, Nietzsche, Bergson, Whitehead ... It is not easy to generalize this panorama, or to make it the stigma of a shared 'modernity'.
Shall we say, then, that he is, as transatlantic classifications tend to see him, one of the postmodern (or post-postmodern?) representatives of continental, and especially French, thought of the 1960s? If we do, we forget that, at the time, he was swimming against the current. He spoke very eloquently about structuralism, about non-meaning as the cause of meaning, and about the theory of the 'empty set'. He shared certain of Blanchot's analyses of death and writing, but he also rectified them. But he did not belong to that school, and still less does he belong to it ten years later. His polemic against Lacan was violent, and he challenged him - in vain - with his schizoanalysis. His 'Marxism', fraternally woven together with Guattari, was the complete antithesis of Althusser's. Which leaves, obviously, the deep friendship that governs his tributes to Foucault. Although I do not have time to prove it here, I insist that their creative friendship must not conceal the fact that it changes completely as their central idea of what a concrete singularity itself is changes.
So how can we evoke him for our times? Why is it so obvious that he is by our side, even in the ironic distance of his perpetual retreat from the frontline where we were fighting against reactive infamy? I will disseminate this evidence in five major motifs, which are all bound up with the realization that something has been exhausted (another word he liked). He was often 'exhausted', and felt at such times that he was a brother to many of his heroes, such as Melville or Beckett.
1. Deleuze contrasted all thought of 'ends' (the end of metaphysics, the end of ideologies, the end of grand narratives, the end of revolutions . . .) with the conviction that nothing was 'interesting' unless it was affirmative. Critique, impotencies, ends, modesties . . . none of that is as valuable as a single real affirmation.
2. The motifs of unity, gatherings, 'consensus' and shared values are nothing more than thought's tiresome moment of fatigue. What does have value is certainly synthetic, as is all creativity, but in the form of separation, disjunction. Disjunctive synthesis: that is the real operation of anyone who is 'forced' to think (for we do not think 'freely', we think under pressure, we think as 'spiritual automata').
3. We have to stop speculating about time, its precariousness, and its subjective ubiquity. For what matters is eternity or, to be more specific, the temporal atemporality that has received the name 'event'. The great and unique 'throw of the dice' on which life wagers both its chance occurrence and its eternal return.
4. We have to get away from the obsession with language. Speech is of vital importance, but it is caught up in its multiform correlation with the integrality of affirmative experience, and has no constituent syntactic power. To confuse philosophy with grammar or with an inventory of rules is aberrational. Let us abandon, like an old corpse, the idea that the natural form of thought is judgement. And above all, do not judge: that is a good axiom for thought. Replace judgement with personal experience, with becoming 'caught up in our milieu'.
5. The dialectic is exhausted. We must rise up against the negative. In accordance with the 'Return' method, this brings us back to point 1: finding the integral affirmation of the improbable and doing so ascetically, which means of course without any negation of any kind, trusting - involuntarily - in becomings.
I would happily say that what sums up all these precious lessons - both for him and for me, even though I agree with neither the details nor the argument - can be summed up in one negative prescription: fight the spirit of finitude, fight the false innocence, the morality of defeat and resignation implicit in the word 'finitude' and tiresome 'modest' proclamations about the finite destiny of the human creature; and in one affirmative prescription: trust only in the infinite. For Deleuze, the concept is the trajectory of its real components 'at infinite speed'. And thought is nothing more than a burning to a chaotic infinity, to the 'Chaosmos'. Yes, that is the frontline I was talking about earlier, the frontline where he stands alongside us, and by doing so proves himself to be a very important contemporary: let thought be faithful to the infinity on which it depends. Let it concede nothing to the hateful spirit of finitude. In the one life we have been granted, and caring nothing for the limits that conformism assigns us, we will attempt at all cost to live, as the Ancients used to say, 'as immortals'. Which means: exposing within us, so far as we can, the human animal to that which exceeds it.
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“The government has a great need to restore its credibility, to make people forget its history and rewrite it. The intelligentsia have to a remarkable degree undertaken this task. It is also necessary to establish the "lessons" that have to be drawn from the war, to ensure that these are conceived on the narrowest grounds, in terms of such socially neutral categories as "stupidity" or "error" or "ignorance" or perhaps "cost."
Why? Because soon it will be necessary to justify other confrontations, perhaps other U.S. interventions in the world, other Vietnams.
But this time, these will have to be successful intervention, which don't slip out of control. Chile, for example. It is even possible for the press to criticize successful interventions - the Dominican Republic, Chile, etc. - as long as these criticisms don't exceed "civilized limits," that is to say, as long as they don't serve to arouse popular movements capable of hindering these enterprises, and are not accompanied by any rational analysis of the motives of U.S. imperialism, something which is complete anathema, intolerable to liberal ideology.
How is the liberal press proceeding with regard to Vietnam, that sector which supported the "doves"? By stressing the "stupidity" of the U.S. intervention; that's a politically neutral term. It would have been sufficient to find an "intelligent" policy. The war was thus a tragic error in which good intentions were transmuted into bad policies, because of a generation of incompetent and arrogant officials. The war's savagery is also denounced, but that too, is used as a neutral category...Presumably the goals were legitimate - it would have been all right to do the same thing, but more humanely...
The "responsible" doves were opposed to the war - on a pragmatic basis. Now it is necessary to reconstruct the system of beliefs according to which the United States is the benefactor of humanity, historically committed to freedom, self-determination, and human rights. With regard to this doctrine, the "responsible" doves share the same presuppositions as the hawks. They do not question the right of the United States to intervene in other countries. Their criticism is actually very convenient for the state, which is quite willing to be chided for its errors, as long as the fundamental right of forceful intervention is not brought into question.
...
The resources of imperialist ideology are quite vast. It tolerates - indeed, encourages - a variety of forms of opposition, such as those I have just illustrated. It is permissible to criticize the lapses of the intellectuals and of government advisers, and even to accuse them of an abstract desire for "domination," again a socially neutral category not linked in any way to concrete social and economic structures. But to relate that abstract "desire for domination" to the employment of force by the United States government in order to preserve a certain system of world order, specifically, to ensure that the countries of the world remain open insofar as possible to exploitation by U.S.-based corporations - that is extremely impolite, that is to argue in an unacceptable way.”
― Noam Chomsky, The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature
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[A. This pathology, general to both mental and organic pathology: - cont'd]
[2. We will borrow terms from old works descriptions whose archaism should not make us forget that they were the starting points - cont'd]
f. Hebephrenia, psychosis of adolescence, is classically defined by:
i. intellectual and motor excitement (
chattering
neologisms
puns
mannerisms
impulses)
ii. hallucinations and disordered delirium, whose polymorphism is gradually impoverished
– Michel Foucault, Maladie mentale et personnalité, (Chapter 1: Mental and Organic Medicine), Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1954
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i see people talking about the small, nice dialogue quoting foucault, octavia butler, and twin peaks also. This game's silly.
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300 words a day
In the very image of naive eroticism, there it was: a girlfriend-tshirt!
The realization was plumb horrifying. I couldn't sleep. Actually, I'm writing this at 1:20am. Technically Tuesday like a New Wave song title… sooooo poetic, don't you think?
My editor friend got back to the apartment right as I was putting on that piss-stained memory play which is all-too convenient. I don't want to sleep because I don't want to go to class tomorrow— captive by the old bat and her goddamn craftsmanship. A field trip pain in the ass that I gotta face clean sober. Bigmouth, Special One, lend me your power! (Now I really know how Joan of Arc felt…)
She's actually got into a house show coming up soon and the lineup looks exhilarating. Nothing like knowing your local scene— I wish I had some sort of pathetic boyfriend so I could expand to music. My last fling was a total homebody, boner-killer of the soul.
But anyhow tomorrow is Foucault and boxing gloves and one less puff of nicotine and mounting the bearskin onto the handmade plate, and a new bag of coffee added in to boot, so nothing can go too too too badly for me in all that.
10 and two am!
What a proper three hundred today— expressing all the college girl anxieties of mere existence. Cramped into a 5-buck car with the coolest acquaintances in my weaving class, but also the cruel old teacher, what a shame! Dommage! Dommage!! I'll never forget translating that word this summer, explaining to three rail thin French tourists that the art museum’s ads are for a show opening two weeks in advance. Dommage! I’d like for the French to take over the cultural world and teach everyone videography, cigarette party tricks and how to swear. It's too bad about Goddard, except he was entirely right. Bonne-nuit Mon Cher auteur!
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i hate when we study Michel Foucault. Not because i have anything particularly against his work I just sound like an idiot when I forget how to say his name every time T^T
#mez speaks#i had never heard it outloud until recently and i had NOT being saying it correctly T^T this is so embarassing
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