Nostalgia + Kantianism = Revolution?

Narrating the Left: Residual Marxism Dead Voles has a very nice paragraph on the problem of the Left and Critical Theory, in particular the seeming failure of Americans to hold the nostalgia that Europe does (more than a paragraph, but that is what I repeat here): Europe is a couple of generations closer than we are [...]

Anodyneheavy: The Codification of Revolution

Anodyne lite has a wonderfully concise critique of what I take to be the Badioun-Zizek, perhaps Negri epistemo-revolution tactics. A brief sample, with which I in spirit and point agree: Because insofar as our notions of what’s radical rely on rehashing a hypothesis that is haunted by the specter of colossal failure and violent abuse, [...]

Hearing Alain Badiou on Hardtalk: The Bashful Maoist

I’m sorry, I had never had the pleasureof hearing Badiou speak on contemporary politics, or even speak on anything. A funny thing happens when you see the person. Ideas, tones, the very specular sense of a person invades the writing, filling it out. Here in Hardtalk, originally posted by Infinite Thought, Badiou attempts to make [...]

The Power of Political Silence: Achilles, Antigone and Ignatius

The non-Being of Speech In researching and thinking on political/philosophical application of the ideal of Achilles (written about here) I’ve run into a provocative quotation from the early Christian Bishop Ignatius: It’s better to be silent and to be rather than speak and not to be. Teaching is a fine thing provided that he who speaks [...]

Subjects Created in Truth Procedures at Prague’s Franz Kafka International Airport

Pursuing the Generic Not only does this ”news report” play upon our well-worn picture of Eastern Block Communism, it does so fused with the addictive Fox News/CNN mode of Breaking News anticipation, perhaps revealing the degree to which we are already pure Ideological subjects. What is striking is that we recognize ourselves here, not in some sci-fi [...]

Professors of the Left: Unite!

The discussion that arose around my last post on the discourse of the Left brought to mind something said to me in passing a few years ago. A professor of Classics at a college which is a standard-bearer for the American Left, who had been teaching there for nearly half a century, and at least seemed [...]

Mikhail on the Communism Conference; Don’t talk about the car!

Mikhail over at Perverse Egalitarianism posts on Toscano’s presentation at the Birkbeck Communism Conference, a text provided for us by Infinite Thought. He remarks that the illustrations that I.T. provide actually illuminate something of the meaning of it, and makes the interesting mistake of including the striking image of a Rolls in Soviet colors:   In [...]

The Pre-eventual in Badiou: Conjoined Semiosis

Nick over at The Accursed Share posts his interesting essay on the problem of the waiting for the event, “What is to be done? Alain Badiou and the Pre-eventual” . His desire to de-emphasize the event is notable, and something I have affinity for, but I simply cannot follow his reasoning one what to do prior [...]

Growing Enthused – Achilles (Fetish and Blake)

The Problem with Fetish Yesterday I spent some time researching into Sloterdijk, and making connections towards productive theories on economy and value. Re-reading parts of David Graeber’s provocative and enlightening Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams, with careful attention to its last chapter helped focus me on the precise [...]

An Achillean Economy: The Economy of Thymotics and Anger, Sloterdijk

What is Greek Thymos? The above is a signature clip from Andrei Tarkovsky’s hauntful meditation on the role of the artist in society, not to mention amid Soviet Society. There may be no greater film made on the subject of the artist than Andrei Rublev. The final chapter of the bell casting is so redounding on [...]