Žižek as Ur-Bloggist: Perfecting the Associative Theoretical Multimedium

The First Bloggist, Žižek as Father Adam Kotsko has a wonderful line about Žižek, that his writing can only be understand as a theoretical-asethetic pre-posit of the Blog: I think that Zizek has something about how Flaubert can only be understood retrospectively, because he was trying to do film by means of the novel — similarly, perhaps [...]

The Magic of Court Rooms: The Science of Experiment

Amanda Knox and Magical Transformations of Law It has been noted by some that in the history of Science there are great dues to be paid to the instrumentalism of magic itself. Far from being opposed to science, magic with its ritualizations and isolations of practices, its heavy dose of the instrumentalization of forces beyond the human, [...]

The/An Importance of Metaphysics

The Science Fiction of Philosophy This conversation over at Dead Voles has been winding, snake-back, but in this bend in the road some interesting things were being discussed. Carl gives his rendition of what he believes my position on the importance of philosophical argument, something with which I agree in part. Carl’s general sense is [...]

Bryant’s Ring of Gyges: The Social Restraints of Blogging

I dislike these kinds of posts because its more interesting to be talking about this philosopher or that, this line of reasoning or that, but sometimes the content of philosophy comes together with questions of finite community and ultimately of ethics in general. In fact occasions of our own interactions become the best examples or illustrations [...]

Humanities and Ponzi: Just What Secures the Investment of Thought

In Search of Bubblemeisters A few weeks ago, in a way troubling to some, I compared Harman’s parlay of an association with a now-defunct, and as some argued, never existing philosophical Movement (Speculative Realism) into a form of Symbolic or Cultural Capital, a capital in which others now are trading, to a Ponzi Scheme. As I tried to point out, [...]

Scholars On Spinoza Now: Politics, Religion and Democracy

Pensum over at However Fallible alerted me to this nice overview article in Eurozine on some of the importances of Spinoza to contemporary questions in society. Spinoza scholars Gábor Boros, Herman De Dijn, Moira Gatens, Syliane Malinowski-Charles, Warren Montag, Teodor Münz, Steven B. Smith participate in answering a series of question sets directed mostly at religious and political issues: 1. To what extent [...]