The Tower of Beowulf and Hauntological Architecture

Ghost Buildings and Tolkein’s Tower Complete Lies. has a very interesting post  on the Ghost Building practices of acquaintance of his, Brian MacKay-Lyons, who retires to his Nova Scotia property to build ephemeral building, much of them constructed out of fragmented site materials, as Complete Lies would have it, out of the very bones of [...]

Spatial Voice: Wuthering Heights and Speakings from the Heart of a Topos

[I have been discussing and thinking-about some of Eliminative Culinarism's analysis of Deleuze in terms of hauntology, her/his notion that in the self-affirmation of a line of flight produces a fundamental negative-determination, a negative-binding against the ground of the undetermined, which results in the haunting by the Dead (if I summarize it correctly). It lead me to [...]

The Oneirics of Cash

Infinite ThØught wrote: “Discussing money is like talking about dreams; nauseating and boring in equal measures, because, on many levels, rather important. The very material consequences of the real abstractions of money (and dreams) conflict with our self-perception and those of people around us: ‘I am not the number represented by my bank balance, I [...]

Spinoza and Hooke’s Micrographia: The minascule made Large

Look at Robert Hooke’s incredible, and conception-changing Micrographia (1664). And see it as if you are looking at the very book with excellent viewing software, at Turning the Pages Online (click “Turn The Pages”). This book must have struck one as if from another planet. See the overleafs open up into the most extraordinary illustrations of the smallest [...]

Martha Nussbaum and Hecuba: The Living Latticework of Ethics

Polyxena (much welcoming) and the Chorus University of Chicago professor, Martha Nussbaum, speaks emotionally and clearly about the tender nature of ethical binding, “we are more like a plant, than a gem”, as she summons up the lessons from Euripedes’s play. She communicates in body and mind the tenuous connections which make up our sense-making [...]

The Hockney-Falco Thesis: New Space

Ever Wonder How They Made that Fabric So Real?   I must write briefly here, but highly recommended is artist David Hockney’s Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters. I’ve had it for a few months as part of my investigation into Spinoza and lenses, but only today did I enter it. [...]

Milton’s Sword of the Angel and the 1664 Comet

As it relates to Spinoza and the Caliban Question below, there is an illumination of the special place the comet of the winter of 1664 played in the political, philosophical and poetic minds of that time. It is thought that Milton had this harbinger light in mind when he wrote of the sword of the “hastning Angel” who ushered out Eve [...]

What is the Registry of Song?

Or, to put it another way: What is the ethical standing of the affective capacities which get put into effect in HAL’s regressive singing of “Daisy Bell”?

HAL 9000

The Intelligence of Innocence and What Makes Things Real The “Open the pod bay doors please HAL” sequence I watched 2001: A Space Odysseyfor the first time in sometime the other night. And a few thoughts rose to mind. There is of course the incredible personality dominance of HAL in the film, the unforgettable synthetic intelligence, and his schizophrenic lapse [...]

Panthea’s Jewel

Xenophon, Cyropaedia 6.4.2    “And Abradatas’s chariot with its four poles and eight horses was adorned most handsomely; and when he came to put on his linen corselet, such as they used in his country, Panthea brought him one of gold, also a helmet, arm-pieces, broad bracelets for his wrists–all of gold–and a purple tunic [...]