- october 3
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in the red
She owes Capital Owes You Nothing nothing yet thoughts remain being in the red re:Hoens', still and all.
Weil: To ascertain exactly what the miser whose treasure was stolen lost; thus we should learn much. (in the French svp)
- october 2
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jc: emma
It is important to insist on this point in order to preempt the automatic assumption that intervals or breaks are features only of an abstract notion of time, a notion that owes its abstract nature to the fact that it breaks the vital flow of time down into discrete segments of dead time. A non- abstract, immanent notion of time would, it is assumed, restore the continuous flow by eliminating the breaks. In truth, however, the finite subject is not immediately present to a continuous unfolding of events but to breaks, delays, obstacles, still points, to which Freud constantly drew our attention through his invention of a series of concepts, including: a “latency period” that divides the two scenes of sexuality in the Emma case; a “periodic nonexcitability” that interrupts psychic functioning; and a “memory system” that he famously installed between perception and consciousness, thus disjoining them, interrupting their continuity. In his Project for a Scientific Psychology Freud describes perceptions as too ephemeral to leave any trace, which means that the perception system remains unsullied, innocent, perpetually ready to receive further impressions, while consciousness is conceived as a belated defense against unconscious memories that have already been recorded. Although this model is altered a bit in “A Note upon the’Mystic Writing-Pad,’” the disjunction between perception and consciousness retains its prominence and leads Freud to this firmly stated conclusion: “this discontinuous method of functioning of the system Pcpt-CS. lies at the bottom of the origin of the concept of time.” (Given his early and continued commitment to these models of an out-of-joint time, it is surprising that Freud was ever associated with a theory of continuous biological development.) “The Sexual Compact,” 36-7
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(no subject)
Ask “Marxist” what they want from x and they'll retort: the point is to change the world; x intervenes in the production of social reality. Interrogate “liberal” and she'll say: x is liberatory, x foretells emancipation. Read the histories and currencies of “critics” and you'll learn that “y 'belonging to' / 'underwriting' x” cannot not be brutal, that x equals the violation of x by way of totalizingly bad y. Lived, thought and felt, move into action or lock in place, we might say, form the contours of lives, though not unchangeably: contain the forces that transform the forces. There is no nonbrutal way of looking at somebody. Forces’ forces will not be alright. “Deciding” to take care of one's mental health instead of reworking said mentality in publicized-ation, is the bad kind of sad. This is mad, can proffer the good and the bad. Krass! (DE) – same. “Mad” “is”“patient”“upon” the materially articulated “potency” of (any) “tipping point”, that is, “change qua ‘matter of kind or degree’”. Global warming is ok until it is / isn’t? I never constitute an argument for pessimism or hope. Such framing trades on investments in the futurity of presumably ideal forms; rarely does it make explicit what those forms are.
Karl Marx: “The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse. It appears in the process of thinking, therefore, as a process of concentration, as a result, not as a point of departure, even though it is the point of departure in reality and hence also the point of departure for observation [Anschauung] and conception.” For Marx the concrete is a metabolized result and the abstract a social intuition capable of leading to the concrete. So, deploy both at the same placetime. Leigh Claire La Berge: “If we begin with too abstract a concept to orient our investigation, then we preclude our own access to the quotidian, material, perceptible world. And if we begin with too concrete a term, then we may be unable to understand its organization within a larger social totality.”
Andrei Chitu by way of Ray Brassier:
This means that we should formulate the two sides of the unreal. First, the irreality of the moment from the perspective of the structure, the structure being this irreality of the moment, and secondly the irreality of the structure, which is the reality of the moment. Therefore I believe that the correct way to engage theoretically with the question of surpassing our historical moment is to neither ontologise the individual nor the structure.
I believe that some traditions of the left do the former, think, in this text, of the apparition of Stirnerian spectres, while some, like the (Postonian) Wertkritik(value criticism) do the latter. Both are in my eyes guilty of falling into the trap of metaphysical subtleties,of regarding “foundations” or “standpoints” affirmatively. Less abstractly, the relative autonomy of the individual with regard to structure consists in the fact that at no given time are all the moments of the totality given, so in a certain sense the social totality is never fully present. This is its incoherence, its irreality. Therefore the autonomy of the individual is a relative temporal one, resulting from the incoherence of the totality. This incoherence of totality through time is the real possibility of political struggles, as they necessarily presuppose a relative autonomy of the individuals taking part in them.
The purpose of the revolutionary practice is not to (only) negate this capitalist totality but to sublate it, which means the fulfillment of its irreality. “Stirner, Marx and the Unreal Totality,” 410
- september 24
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(no subject)
[Context: Tertullilan finds the toga pretentious, uncomfortable; it also takes a long time to put on. By contrast, speaking of the mantle:] its whole art consists in loosely covering. That can be effected by a single circumjection, and one in no case inelegant: thus it wholly covers every part of the man at once. The shoulder it either exposes or encloses: in other respects it adheres to the shoulder; it has no surrounding support; it has no surrounding tie; it has no anxiety as to the fidelity with which its folds keep their place; easily it manages, easily readjusts itself: even in the doffing it is consigned to no cross until the morrow. If any shirt is worn beneath it, the torment of a girdle is superfluous: if anything in the way of shoeing is worn, it is a most cleanly work; or else the feet are rather bare,—[this being] more manly, at all events [than] shoes. These [pleas I advance] for the Mantle in the meantime, in so far as you have defamed it by name. Now, however, it challenges you on the score of its function withal.\
“I,” it says, “owe no duty to the forum, the election-ground, or the senate-house; I keep no obsequious vigil, preoccupy no platforms, hover about no prætorian residences; I am not odorant of the canals, am not odorant of the lattices, am no constant wearer out of benches, no wholesale router of laws, no barking pleader, no judge, no soldier, no king: I have withdrawn from the populace. My only business is with myself: except that other care I have none, save not to care. The better life you would more enjoy in seclusion than in publicity. But you will decry me as indolent. [...]"\
From Chapter V.—Virtues of the Cloak. It Pleads in Its Own Defence.\
See also Chapter VI.—Further Distinctions, and Crowning Glory, of the Cloak.\
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Re:
Here's bold
here's italics
no such thing as underline
- july 25
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a single circumjection and in no case inelegant ... I, the cloak, speak
[Context: Tertullilan finds the toga pretentious, uncomfortable; it also takes a long time to put on. By contrast, speaking of the mantle:] its whole art consists in loosely covering. That can be effected by a single circumjection, and one in no case inelegant: thus it wholly covers every part of the man at once. The shoulder it either exposes or encloses: in other respects it adheres to the shoulder; it has no surrounding support; it has no surrounding tie; it has no anxiety as to the fidelity with which its folds keep their place; easily it manages, easily readjusts itself: even in the doffing it is consigned to no cross until the morrow. If any shirt is worn beneath it, the torment of a girdle is superfluous: if anything in the way of shoeing is worn, it is a most cleanly work; or else the feet are rather bare,—[this being] more manly, at all events [than] shoes. These [pleas I advance] for the Mantle in the meantime, in so far as you have defamed it by name. Now, however, it challenges you on the score of its function withal.
“I,” it says, “owe no duty to the forum, the election-ground, or the senate-house; I keep no obsequious vigil, preoccupy no platforms, hover about no prætorian residences; I am not odorant of the canals, am not odorant of the lattices, am no constant wearer out of benches, no wholesale router of laws, no barking pleader, no judge, no soldier, no king: I have withdrawn from the populace. My only business is with myself: except that other care I have none, save not to care. The better life you would more enjoy in seclusion than in publicity. But you will decry me as indolent. [...]"
From Chapter V.—Virtues of the Cloak. It Pleads in Its Own Defence.
See also Chapter VI.—Further Distinctions, and Crowning Glory, of the Cloak.
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park where oranges have been laid to rust
a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since dev linsfirst loved livvy
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