Negatron, talking about some stuff I’ve not read:
For Simondon we experience something that is eternal in that we experience both our power and limits: we are aware that there is something in us that exceeds this moment, and something of us that is so ephemeral, disappearing the moment that it is experienced. In each case we are aware that our individuality is not the end all and be all of our existence. For Simondon it is situated between the preindividual components of our existence the transindividual relations that we enter into.
Muriel Combes has drawn out the implications of this remark in her book on Simondon, referring to the “intimacy of the common.” The common, the shared language, habits, and affects that make up the backdrop of our subjectivity, a common which exists only in and through social relations, transindividuality, is not something that we only experience in moments in collectivity, in the delusions and madness of crowds, but is always present. The reference to intimacy also underscores that what is common is not something that is exterior to our individuality, it is not some role that we play, but is constitutive. Thus, to draw the two remarks together, the eternal that we experience is perhaps the common, is the irreducible relational aspect of our existence.
This remark sent me chasing around the internet for a quote I barely remembered, John McDowell quoting Stanely Cavell, I used it in a paper in college ten years ago (I no longer remember the subject of the paper nor do I have a copy). The internet, glory be, found it for me:
“We learn and teach words in certain contexts, and then we are expected, and expect others, to be able to project them into further context. Nothing insures that this projection will take place (in particular, not the grasping of universals, nor the grasping of books of rules), just as nothing insures that we will make, and understand, the same projections. That on the whole we do is a matter of our sharing routes of interest and feeling, senses of humour and of significance and of fulfillment, of what is outrageous, of what is similar to what else, what a rebuke, what forgiveness, oof when an utterance is an assertion, when an appeal, when an explanation - all the whirl of organism Wittgenstein calls ‘forms of life.’ Human speech and activity, sanity and community, rest upon nothing more, but nothing less, than this. It is a vision as simple as it is difficult, and as difficult as it is (and because it is) terrifying.” (Stanley Cavell, “The Availabilty of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy”, in _Must We Mean What We Say?_, p52)
Strikes me as quite similar.
I’m convinced that pretty much every good page-turner book will have something wrong with it. Probably something big and structural too, not just like an awkward phrase here and there. (more…)
hey y’all (both of y’all), can I pick your brains a minute? I’ve been meaning to categorize my blog posts for ages now. I started off with categories actually (I started this blog with a pretty defined set of questions and reading list) and was pretty good at keeping my posts categorized but then my interests started to shift and didn’t fit the old categories. A while back I started again re-categorizing but then things shifted further and again the categories didn’t fit (they still fit better than the first set but not fully). Anyhow, question - got any suggestions on the sort of general types of posts that tend to appear on this blog? There’s posts about me (mostly music, exercise, food, and feelings, and maybe books/reading and people I like), there’s politics in the sense of actual work I do other than theoretical work, there’s theoretical stuff tied to politics, there’s stuff on Marx, stuff on philosophy, … uh… what else? Any suggestions? Anyone done much blog post categorizing got tips to follow or mistakes to avoid?
I’ve said before how much I like Nick Hornby writing on books. It’s less literary criticism and more about the experiential content of reading, which is only partly determined by the content of the books themselves. My friend the Stoopid (sic) Noodle has been doing similar stuff. I don’t really know why I like this kind of writing so much, maybe it;s because reading is such an important part of my life (even when I temporarily hate it, an occupational hazard of what I do - BUT NOT ANYMORE!) and so I like to read about this important part of my life. Perhaps it’s time to read If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler again. Hmm.
Brainy Noodle’s post also reminds me, I want to read more Borges! And I want to read Elbaum’s book.
Sheer fucking will. Against the weight of evidence and disposition I am possessed of a positive attitude and enthusiasm. I will it so! Begone dark clouds - having torn from your grasp your silver linings I now banish you from my presence! Hello glass half-full, fragrant and delicious. Good day to you, tasks to which I commit willingly and unreservedly, you enhance my life so.
I am a model of equanimity and poise.
Back to the Future is not only the title of a great piece of cinematic art but also a way of thinking about the present politically. (more…)
You know the image (more…)
No, no, not a cry for help! Negatron’s got a post up reviewing Massimo De Angelis’s book The Beginning of History, check it out. The post begins with a funny opening:
This is going to sound terrible, but I will say it anyway: the problem with any living philosopher, or political theorist is that they go on living. When a philosopher dies a space opens up between their texts and whatever contemporary problem or situation which one might want to address. It is debatable that Spinoza would recognize himself in the idea of the multitude, or if Bergson would embrace the vitalist accounts of contemporary society, but this does not matter. As long as a philosopher is still alive, capable of commenting on current events, then it is tempting to take their word as the last word on the matter at hand.
(more…)
