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Ode to Man
Tho’ many are the terrors,
not one more terrible than man goes.
This one beyond the grizzled sea
in winter storming to the south
He crosses, all-engulfed,
cutting through, up from under swells.
& of the gods She the Eldest, Earth
un-withering, un-toiling, is worn down,
As the Twisting Plough’s year
into Twisting Plough’s year,
Through the breeding of horse, he turns.
& the lighthearted race of birds
all-snaring he drives them
& savage beasts, their clan, & of the sea,
marine in kind
With tightly-wound meshes spun
from all-seeing is Man.
Yet too, he masters by means of pastoral
beast, mountain-trodding,
The unruly-maned horse holding fast,
‘round the neck yoked,
& the mountain’s
ceaseless bull.
& the voice & wind-fast thought
& the passion for civic ways
He has taught, so from crag’s poor court
from under the ether’s hard-tossed arrows
To flee, this all-crossing one. Blocked, he comes
upon nothing so fated.
From Hades alone escape he’ll not bring.
Tho’ from sickness impossible
Flight he has pondered.
A skilled one, devising of arts beyond hope,
Holding at times an evil,
But then to the noble he crawls,
honoring the laws of the Earth, &
Of gods the oath so just,
high-citied.
Citiless is the one who with the un-beautiful
dwells, boldly in grace.
Never for me a hearth-mate
may he have been, never equal in mind
He who offers this.
Ode to Man
A BwO is made in such a way that it can be occupied, populated only by intensities. Only intensities pass and circulate. Still, the BwO is not a scene, a place, or even a support upon which something comes to pass. It has nothing to do with phantasy, there is nothing to interpret. The BwO causes intensities to pass; it produces and distributes them in a spatium that is itself intensive, lacking extension. It is not space, nor is it in space; it is matter that occupies space to a given degree—to the degree corresponding to
the intensities produced. It is nonstratified, unformed, intense matter, the matrix of intensity, intensity = 0; but there is nothing negative about that zero, there are no negative or opposite intensities. Matter equals energy. Production of the real as an intensive magnitude starting at zero. That is why we treat the BwO as the full egg before the extension of the organism and the organization of the organs, before the formation of the strata; as the intense egg defined by axes and vectors, gradients and thresholds, by dynamic tendencies involving energy transformation and kinematic movements involving group displacement, by migrations: all independent
of accessory forms because the organs appear and function here only as pure intensities. The organ changes when it crosses a threshold, when it
changes gradient. "No organ is constant as regards either function or position, . . . sex organs sprout anywhere,... rectums open, defecate and close, . . . the entire organism changes color and consistency in split-second adjustments." The tantric egg. After all, is not Spinoza's Ethics the great book of the BwO?
Ode to Man
But human power is extremely limited, and is infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes; we have not, therefore, an absolute power of shaping to our use those things which are without us. Nevertheless, we shall bear with an equal mind all that happens to us in contravention to the claims of our own advantage, so long as we are conscious, that we have done our duty, and that the power which we possess is not sufficient to enable us to protect ourselves completely; remembering that we are a part of universal nature, and that we follow her order. If we have a clear and distinct understanding of this, that part of our nature which is defined by intelligence, in other words the better part of ourselves, will assuredly acquiesce in what befalls us, and in such acquiescence will endeavour to persist. For, in so far as we are intelligent beings, we cannot desire anything save that which is necessary, nor yield absolute acquiescence to anything, save to that which is true: wherefore, in so far as we have a right understanding of these things, the endeavour of the better part of ourselves is in harmony with the order of nature as a whole.
That last paragraph is awesome. By the way, the closest thing to “Zizek the blogger” you’ll find are his “posts” (obviously submitted by whoever is running the site) over at Lacan.com.
I’ve never followed over at Lacan.com, interesting. Perhaps the super-luminary is gradually coming down to the sublunar world he prefigured. I say this as an unconscious acolyte of course.
Despite the horrible design (I actually applied at one point for their web design position… they never followed up and it appears that they never hired anyone), you can actually find nearly entire copies of Zizek’s books posted in a quasi-“blog” format (as a series of related posts) for free—a fairly generous service in my opinion.
Ah. I met Josephine Ayerza twice, back in the day. She wanted to know if I understood what the big Lacanian matheme on my back REALLY meant.
I don’t know what you mean by the site not being designed, I am utterly bedazzled when I visit it. Within about 20 seconds I find myself having a traumatic experience of the REAL (nevermind trying to find Zizeks’ texts, and yes, that is generous).
Interesting that Zizek’s books are posted in blog form, further evidence of Adam’s thesis, perhaps.
There is also the rather strange zizekspeaks twitter account which people tend to treat as if it was him knowing that in all likelihood it is just some techo-savvy gruduate student.
Well now this is interesting:
http://twitter.com/zizekspeaks
Looks like the account has been suspended.
Someone has cut off the mouth-piece of the Father Who Enjoys?!! Or is it just a false prophet in the wilderness.
My goodness, more evidence. Just as God’s prophets are linked, disassociatively to their source, Zizek ventriloquizes through a grad-student he doesn’t even know via twitter. This Zizek/blog connection is becoming more interesting all the time.
It’s not that interesting. What’s great is all the free talks you can listen to from him. (egsvideo and stuff posted on youtube from various universities he visits etc)
Hm, what’s this stealing my thunder when I already said (but did not demonstrate, it’s blogging after all) that Gramsci was the original blogger. Except it was St. Paul….
Yes, its one thing to claim, but it was not convincing. Zizek crushes Gramsci as an Ur-blogger, father of us all, if only on the order of being He-who-enjoys. In a certain sense when you tried to apply Gramsci to blogging everything fell apart. Whereas in the philosophy world, everyone is a Zizek, just as everyone is a Christ.
One can always blame Adam as well, which I firmly do.
Paul as blogger. I like crediting Paul with all kinds of things, but I can’t stick him with this. Blogging isn’t just open letter writing. Blogging is something like defying the values of institutional knowledge through media appropriation, it must be designed for bestowed “readers” but also for searchers and glimpsers.
The first twitter-like post is clearly Plato’s Seventh Letter. Nobody is really sure if it is Plato but we damn well want to believe it is. Even better is the fact that even if it is not Plato it was likely one of his students a la the techno-savvy graduate student pretending to be zizek.
Perfect. I love this.
And the curious Hermes Trismegistus was one hell of a Twitterer/Bloggster as well.
Twittering from a false past.
A friend pointed me to this post. I guess this is what I’m doing with Žižek on my blog.