as I walk in the dark
my feet are on fire
my whole back is on fire
lighting my present
foreshadowing
my future
ανοιγοκλείνω τα μάτια μου.μαύρο.ίσως είναι νύχτα ακόμη.ίσως ονειρεύομαι.όμως ο αέρας είναι εδώ.και νοιώθω τη γη ακουμπώντας τη με τα χέρια μου.
Monday, 29 December 2008
Saturday, 20 December 2008
amor veritas
He asked her "kiss me", and she leaned tenderly over his bed.
This Kiss.
after peanuts on the bench
after vermut and r&r parties
after protests and labor
after building houses and taking down walls
after dreams and failures
after divorce and realizations
after lies and truths
after life
and death
δεν είναι εύκολο να του δείξω πώς να φυσάει.τα μάτια του, γεμάτα λατρεία.
σκέφτομαι πως δεν υπάρχει άλλος τρόπος.πλησιάζω, φυσάω μέσα στο στόμα του.
This Kiss.
after peanuts on the bench
after vermut and r&r parties
after protests and labor
after building houses and taking down walls
after dreams and failures
after divorce and realizations
after lies and truths
after life
and death
δεν είναι εύκολο να του δείξω πώς να φυσάει.τα μάτια του, γεμάτα λατρεία.
σκέφτομαι πως δεν υπάρχει άλλος τρόπος.πλησιάζω, φυσάω μέσα στο στόμα του.
Tuesday, 9 December 2008
On Violence
In Arendt's own words:
The end of human action, as distinct from the end products of fabrication, can never be reliably predicted. The means used to achieve political goals are more often than not of greater relevance to the future world than the intended goals.
[T]here are, indeed, few things more that are more frightening than the steadily increasing prestige of scientifically minded brain trusters in the councils of government during the last decades [the 1950s and '60s] ... they reckon with the consequences of certain hypothetically assumed constellations without, however, being able to test their hypotheses against actual occurrences.
Arendt writes that it is "a rather sad reflection on the present state of political science that our terminology does not distinguish among such key words as power, strength, force, authority, and, finally, violence - all of which refer to distinct, different phenomena and would hardly exist unless they did." She makes the distinctions:
Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together.
Strength unequivocally designates something in the singular ...
Force ... should be reserved, in terminological language, for the "forces of nature" or the "force of circumstances," that is, to indicate the energy released by physical or social movements.
Authority can be vested in persons - there is such a thing as personal authority, as for instance, in the relation between parent and child, between teacher and pupil - or it can be vested in offices, as, for instance, in the Roman senate or in the hierarchical offices of the Church. (A priest can grant valid absolution even though he is drunk.) Its hallmark is unquestioning recognition by those who are asked to obey; neither coercion nor persuasion is needed.
Violence , finally, as I have said, is distinguished by its instrumental character. Phenomenologically, it is close to strength, since the implements of violence, like all other tools, are designed and used for the purpose of multiplying natural strength...
"Violence," she writes, "can always destroy power. Out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience. What never can grow out of it [violence] is power." [For example, violence and threat of violence by the emperors Caligula and Nero did not enhance their power. It diminished their power.]
Arendt writes that "In a head-on clash between violence and power, the outcome is hardly in doubt" - as in a military against collective non-violent resistance (power). But, she adds, "Nowhere is the self-defeating factor in the victory of violence over power more evident than in the use of terror to maintain domination, about whose weird successes and eventual failures we know perhaps more than any generation before us."
Violence, she sums up, "can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it." Writing at the end of the 1960s, Arendt was critical of the advocacy of violence by blacks critical of Martin Luther King's non-violent movement, and she took issue with the advocacy of violence by the Left in the 1960s. On Sartre she wrote:
Sartre with his great felicity with words has given expression to the new faith. "Violence," he now believes, on the strength of Fanon's book, "like Achilles' lance, can heal the wounds it has inflicted." If this were true, revenge would be the cure-all for most of our ills.
The rarity of slave rebellions and of uprisings among the disinherited and downtrodden is notorious; on the few occasions when they occurred it was precisely "mad fury' that turned dreams into nightmares for everybody. In no case, as far as I know, was the force of these "volcanic" outbursts, in Sartre's words, "equal to that of the pressure put on them."
In the third part of her book, pages 59 through 87, she describes her discomfort with social scientists trying "to solve the riddle of 'aggressiveness' in human behavior." She asks why we should ask humans to take their "standards of behavior from another animal species."
Under some conditions, writes Arendt, rage and violence are justified. Violence inspired by a short-term goal can be rational. The absence of emotions neither causes nor promotes rationality. "Detachment and equanimity" in view of "unbearable tragedy" can indeed be "terrifying." Violence, she writes, "...is rational to the extent that it is effective in reaching the end that must justify it. But, she adds, "we never know with any certainty the eventual consequences of what we are doing."
She is not saying that people should always refrain from taking a chance. But she warns that with violence there is a danger that the means will overwhelm the end.
The end of human action, as distinct from the end products of fabrication, can never be reliably predicted. The means used to achieve political goals are more often than not of greater relevance to the future world than the intended goals.
[T]here are, indeed, few things more that are more frightening than the steadily increasing prestige of scientifically minded brain trusters in the councils of government during the last decades [the 1950s and '60s] ... they reckon with the consequences of certain hypothetically assumed constellations without, however, being able to test their hypotheses against actual occurrences.
Arendt writes that it is "a rather sad reflection on the present state of political science that our terminology does not distinguish among such key words as power, strength, force, authority, and, finally, violence - all of which refer to distinct, different phenomena and would hardly exist unless they did." She makes the distinctions:
Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together.
Strength unequivocally designates something in the singular ...
Force ... should be reserved, in terminological language, for the "forces of nature" or the "force of circumstances," that is, to indicate the energy released by physical or social movements.
Authority can be vested in persons - there is such a thing as personal authority, as for instance, in the relation between parent and child, between teacher and pupil - or it can be vested in offices, as, for instance, in the Roman senate or in the hierarchical offices of the Church. (A priest can grant valid absolution even though he is drunk.) Its hallmark is unquestioning recognition by those who are asked to obey; neither coercion nor persuasion is needed.
Violence , finally, as I have said, is distinguished by its instrumental character. Phenomenologically, it is close to strength, since the implements of violence, like all other tools, are designed and used for the purpose of multiplying natural strength...
"Violence," she writes, "can always destroy power. Out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience. What never can grow out of it [violence] is power." [For example, violence and threat of violence by the emperors Caligula and Nero did not enhance their power. It diminished their power.]
Arendt writes that "In a head-on clash between violence and power, the outcome is hardly in doubt" - as in a military against collective non-violent resistance (power). But, she adds, "Nowhere is the self-defeating factor in the victory of violence over power more evident than in the use of terror to maintain domination, about whose weird successes and eventual failures we know perhaps more than any generation before us."
Violence, she sums up, "can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it." Writing at the end of the 1960s, Arendt was critical of the advocacy of violence by blacks critical of Martin Luther King's non-violent movement, and she took issue with the advocacy of violence by the Left in the 1960s. On Sartre she wrote:
Sartre with his great felicity with words has given expression to the new faith. "Violence," he now believes, on the strength of Fanon's book, "like Achilles' lance, can heal the wounds it has inflicted." If this were true, revenge would be the cure-all for most of our ills.
The rarity of slave rebellions and of uprisings among the disinherited and downtrodden is notorious; on the few occasions when they occurred it was precisely "mad fury' that turned dreams into nightmares for everybody. In no case, as far as I know, was the force of these "volcanic" outbursts, in Sartre's words, "equal to that of the pressure put on them."
In the third part of her book, pages 59 through 87, she describes her discomfort with social scientists trying "to solve the riddle of 'aggressiveness' in human behavior." She asks why we should ask humans to take their "standards of behavior from another animal species."
Under some conditions, writes Arendt, rage and violence are justified. Violence inspired by a short-term goal can be rational. The absence of emotions neither causes nor promotes rationality. "Detachment and equanimity" in view of "unbearable tragedy" can indeed be "terrifying." Violence, she writes, "...is rational to the extent that it is effective in reaching the end that must justify it. But, she adds, "we never know with any certainty the eventual consequences of what we are doing."
She is not saying that people should always refrain from taking a chance. But she warns that with violence there is a danger that the means will overwhelm the end.
Sunday, 7 December 2008
Yesterday was a million years ago
I crack and split my xerox hands
this earth seems obliviating
high and dead our skin is glass
the dogs slaughter each other softly
τα μάτια τους γυαλίζουν στο σκοτάδι.δεν ξέρω πόσα είναι.ίσως έξι επτά.ίσως παραπάνω.δεν πλησιάζουν.ακόμα.
this earth seems obliviating
high and dead our skin is glass
the dogs slaughter each other softly
τα μάτια τους γυαλίζουν στο σκοτάδι.δεν ξέρω πόσα είναι.ίσως έξι επτά.ίσως παραπάνω.δεν πλησιάζουν.ακόμα.
Sunday, 30 November 2008
Sunday, 23 November 2008
Paris
Though convoluted and filled with objects for sale, the arcades offered the common man or woman a brief subterranean escape from a city designed to keep all bodies visible and industrious. In this way, the arcades function more like Deleuze-Guattari's model for smooth space, the space in which "the points are subordinated to the trajectory" (ATP 478). Their structural composition lends way to a space which is conducive to nomadism, in which "dwelling is subordinated to the journey" (ATP 478), and thus these passages become the space of flânerie--of distraction--one of Benjamin's primary obsessions in The Arcades Project.
arcades
arcades
escapism
The Principle of Hope contains three volumes, divided into five parts, and fifty-five chapters. The three volumes roughly correspond to Hegel's division of his system into interrogations of subjective, objective, and absolute spirit. The first volume queries "Little Daydreams" (Part One), "Anticipatory Consciousness" (Part Two") and "Wishful Images in the Mirror" (Part Three). The latter studies analyze the utopian dimensions of fashion, advertising, display, fairy tales, travel, film, theater, jokes, and other cultural phenomena. The second volume (Part IV) depicts "Outlines of a Better World," focusing on social and political utopias, including technological, architectural, and geographical utopias, as well as quests for world peace and a life of leisure. Volume three (Part Five) discusses "Wishful Images of the Fulfilled Moment," including morality, music, images of death, religion, morning-land of nature, and the highest good.
Just as Hegel's philosophy articulated the odyssey of spirit through history and culture, so too does Bloch's philosophy chart the vicissitudes of hope. For Bloch, hope permeates everyday consciousness and its articulation in cultural forms, ranging from the fairy tale to the great philosophical and political utopias. For Bloch, individuals are unfinished, they are animated by "dreams of a better life," and by utopian longings for fulfillment. The "something better" for which people yearn is precisely the subject-matter of Bloch's massive The Principle of Hope, which provides a systematic examination of the ways that daydreams, fairy tales and myths, popular culture, literature, theater, and all forms of art, political and social utopias, philosophy, and religion -- often dismissed tout court as ideology by some Marxist ideological critique -- contain emancipatory moments which project visions of a better life that put in question the organization and structure of life under capitalism (or state socialism).
Bloch urges us to grasp the three dimensions of human temporality: he offers us a dialectical analysis of the past which illuminates the present and can direct us to a better future. The past -- what has been -- contains both the sufferings, tragedies and failures of humanity -- what to avoid and to redeem -- and its unrealized hopes and potentials -- which could have been and can yet be. For Bloch, history is a repository of possibilities that are living options for future action, therefore what could have been can still be. The present moment is thus constituted in part by latency and tendency: the unrealized potentialities that are latent in the present, and the signs and foreshadowings that indicate the tendency of the direction and movement of the present into the future. This three-dimensional temporality must be grasped and activated by an anticipatory consciousness that at once perceives the unrealized emancipatory potential in the past, the latencies and tendencies of the present, and the realizable hopes of the future. Above all, Bloch develops a philosophy of hope and the future, a dreaming forward, a projection of a vision of a future kingdom of freedom. It is his conviction that only when we project our future in the light of what is, what has been, and what could be can we engage in the creative practice that will produce a world in which we are at home and realize humanities deepest dreams.
In his magnus opus, Bloch carries though both a thorough examination of the ways that hope and visions of a better world exist in everything from daydreams to the great religions, and cultural studies which trace throughout history anticipatory visions of what would later be systematized, packaged, and distributed as socialism by Karl Marx and his followers. Consequently, Bloch provides a critical hermeneutic of the ways that cultural history and socio-economic developments point to socialism as the realization of humanities deepest dreams and hopes, and that encourages us to look for the progressive and emancipatory content of cultural artifacts (rather than the merely ideological and mystificatory).
illuminations
Just as Hegel's philosophy articulated the odyssey of spirit through history and culture, so too does Bloch's philosophy chart the vicissitudes of hope. For Bloch, hope permeates everyday consciousness and its articulation in cultural forms, ranging from the fairy tale to the great philosophical and political utopias. For Bloch, individuals are unfinished, they are animated by "dreams of a better life," and by utopian longings for fulfillment. The "something better" for which people yearn is precisely the subject-matter of Bloch's massive The Principle of Hope, which provides a systematic examination of the ways that daydreams, fairy tales and myths, popular culture, literature, theater, and all forms of art, political and social utopias, philosophy, and religion -- often dismissed tout court as ideology by some Marxist ideological critique -- contain emancipatory moments which project visions of a better life that put in question the organization and structure of life under capitalism (or state socialism).
Bloch urges us to grasp the three dimensions of human temporality: he offers us a dialectical analysis of the past which illuminates the present and can direct us to a better future. The past -- what has been -- contains both the sufferings, tragedies and failures of humanity -- what to avoid and to redeem -- and its unrealized hopes and potentials -- which could have been and can yet be. For Bloch, history is a repository of possibilities that are living options for future action, therefore what could have been can still be. The present moment is thus constituted in part by latency and tendency: the unrealized potentialities that are latent in the present, and the signs and foreshadowings that indicate the tendency of the direction and movement of the present into the future. This three-dimensional temporality must be grasped and activated by an anticipatory consciousness that at once perceives the unrealized emancipatory potential in the past, the latencies and tendencies of the present, and the realizable hopes of the future. Above all, Bloch develops a philosophy of hope and the future, a dreaming forward, a projection of a vision of a future kingdom of freedom. It is his conviction that only when we project our future in the light of what is, what has been, and what could be can we engage in the creative practice that will produce a world in which we are at home and realize humanities deepest dreams.
In his magnus opus, Bloch carries though both a thorough examination of the ways that hope and visions of a better world exist in everything from daydreams to the great religions, and cultural studies which trace throughout history anticipatory visions of what would later be systematized, packaged, and distributed as socialism by Karl Marx and his followers. Consequently, Bloch provides a critical hermeneutic of the ways that cultural history and socio-economic developments point to socialism as the realization of humanities deepest dreams and hopes, and that encourages us to look for the progressive and emancipatory content of cultural artifacts (rather than the merely ideological and mystificatory).
illuminations
Friday, 21 November 2008
where is the story today?
I can't be impressed by anything wherein the story aspect has just completely disappeared and you're left to make it up yourself.I think that is cynical and it just reveals an inability to create a story.The story sensedisappears the more you're sunken in modern art.And that shouldn't be.There's no reason for that.Making a good story is not that difficult or fantastic.In the golden age of movies, every B movie had fascinating ingenious stories.
[Jack Smith, Historical treasures]
[Jack Smith, Historical treasures]
Saturday, 15 November 2008
Pavement Books Co.
Ethique, Spinoza /Editions Flammarion Paris 1920
Toute La Lyre, Victor Hugo /Editions J.Hetzel-Paris
Les Maladies de La Volonte, Th. Ribot /Librairie Felix Alcan-Paris 1920
La garconne, V.Margueritte/Editions Flammarion-Paris 1922
FEMME, Magdeleine Marx /Flammarion -Paris 1924
MISUNDERSTOOD, by Florence Montgomery/Leipzig:Bernhard Tauchnitz
I found them laying down around the corner, like tired junkies.
Friday, 14 November 2008
Thursday, 13 November 2008
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
What/we want from a trace
A vital experience
an imagination
an emotional release
all these & what we want
from life
Contact with something
we are not, know not,
think not, feel not, understand not,
therefor: An expansion.
αποσύρονται με κραυγές πίσω απ'τα δέντρα.ζεσταίνω τα χέρια μου.αναπνέω.νομίζω βλέπω ένα να ξανάρχεται.μένω ήρεμη.
an imagination
an emotional release
all these & what we want
from life
Contact with something
we are not, know not,
think not, feel not, understand not,
therefor: An expansion.
αποσύρονται με κραυγές πίσω απ'τα δέντρα.ζεσταίνω τα χέρια μου.αναπνέω.νομίζω βλέπω ένα να ξανάρχεται.μένω ήρεμη.
the love of flix
The primitive allure of movies is a thing of light and shadows.A bad film is one which doesn't flicker and move through lights and shadows, contrasts, textures by way of light.If I have these I don't mind phoniness (or the sincerity of clever actors), simple minded plots (or novelistic "good" plots), nonsense or seriousness (I don't feel non-sense in movies as a threat to my mind since I don't go to movies for the ideas that arise from sensibleness of ideas).
Images evoke feelings and ideas that are suggested by feeling.Nonsense on one given night might arouse contemptuous feeling and leave me with ideas of resolution which I might extend to personal problems and thus I might be left with great sense.It's a very personal process-thoughts via images and therefor very varied.More interesting to me than discovering what is a script writer's exact meaning.Images always give rise to a complex of feelings, thots, conjectures, speculations, etc. Why then place any value on good or bad scripts-since the best of scripts detracts most from the visual import.I suspect we are less comfortable in the visual realm than in the literary.Visual truths are blunt, whereas thots can be altered to suit & protect.
The eye falls into disuse as a receiver of impressions & films (images) mean nothing without word meanings.
[Jack Smith, Historical Treasures]
Images evoke feelings and ideas that are suggested by feeling.Nonsense on one given night might arouse contemptuous feeling and leave me with ideas of resolution which I might extend to personal problems and thus I might be left with great sense.It's a very personal process-thoughts via images and therefor very varied.More interesting to me than discovering what is a script writer's exact meaning.Images always give rise to a complex of feelings, thots, conjectures, speculations, etc. Why then place any value on good or bad scripts-since the best of scripts detracts most from the visual import.I suspect we are less comfortable in the visual realm than in the literary.Visual truths are blunt, whereas thots can be altered to suit & protect.
The eye falls into disuse as a receiver of impressions & films (images) mean nothing without word meanings.
[Jack Smith, Historical Treasures]
Friday, 7 November 2008
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