If there was a mostawesomestsentences calendar, Giorgio Agamben would be the photo-model for June.

This is why it is necessary to remain open to the idea that the relation of abandonment is  not a relation, and that the being together of the being and Beng does not have the form of relation.

or if that’s not awesome enough for you, try this one on for size:

On the contrary: here Being is nothing other than the being’s being abandoned and remitted to itself; here Being is nothing other than the ban of the being:

most awesomestness rating: 10

The ironist is a vampire who has sucked the blood out of her lover and fanned him with coolness, lulled him to sleep and tormented him with turbulent.

if it weren’t for the werewolves, twilight would suck.

awesomestness rating: 6

while i liked this book it reminded me that the best part about art history books is that they have lots of pictures.

One would not ‘storm’ language as one had stormed the Badtille; rather, it would be a matter of developing a counterdiscourse through sealing, plagiarizing, and expropriating speech, through reversing dominant meanings and accepted usages.

i like expropriating speech.

awesomeestness rating: 4

The landlord’s liability for damage to others that occurs on his property is quite different from the scapegoat’s role in carrying people’s sins away into the desert.

um, duh.

awesomestness rating: 5

Choosing the most awesomest sentence in Althusser’s famous ISA essay is like choosing my favorite gummy bear flavor: an impossible task.

Yet I have been able to narrow it down to the three most awesomest sentences. I have also graciously added summaries of each sentence.

Something about the subject:

Which means that all ideology is centred, that the Absolute Subject occupies the unique place of the Centre, and interpellates around it the infinity of individuals into subjects in a double mirror-connexion such that it subjects the subjects to the Subject, while giving them in the Subject in which each subject can contemplate its own image (present and future) the guarantee that this really concerns them and Him, and that since everything takes place in the Family (the Holy Family: the Family is in essence Holy), ‘God will recognize his own in it’, i.e. those who have recognized God, and have recognized themselves in Him, will be saved.

Something about the Subject (capitalized):

And Moses, interpellated-called by his Name, having recognized that it ‘really’ was he who was called by God, recognizes that he is a subject, a subject of God, a subject subjected to God, a subject through the Subject and subjected to the Subject.

Something about relations:

To speak in a Marxist language, if it is true that the representation of the real conditions of existence of the individuals occupying the posts of agents of production, exploitation, repression, ideologization and scientific practice, does in the last analysis arise from the relations of production, and from relations deriving from the relations of production, we can say the following: all ideology represents in its necessarily imaginary distortion not the existing relations of production (and the other relations that derive from them), but above all the (imaginary) relationship of individuals to the relations of production and the relations that derive from them.

awesomestness rating: 11!

At present, however, we are so dominated by murderous conventions that students have not even brought themselves to confess their guilt toward prostitutes.

does he mean humanities professors?

awesomestness rating: 6.9

my all-time favorite definition of political art:

During the Dresden insurrection of 1849 Bakunin proposed, unsuccessfully, that the insurgents take the paintings out of the museums and put them on a barricade at the entrance to the city, to see if this might inhibit the attacking troops from continuing their fire.

awesomestness rating: 10

Ulrike Meinhof quoting Fritz Teufel appropriating Bertolt Brecht while on trial for inciting arson of department stores:

But it is true, as Fritz Teufel asserted at the delegates conference of the SDS, that “It is still better to set fire to a department store than to run one.” Fritz Teufel can sometimes turn a very pretty phrase.

awesomestness rating: 8

this guy is sooo not fun:

If a client insists on his attorney asking improper speeches, making irrelevant speeches, insulting the bench, or staging walk-outs or boycotts, the lawyer must reject those instructions, for he cannot excuse his own professional misconduct on the ground that his client demanded it.

awesomestness rating: 3

I like this because the book was originally written in German, which brings up an amusing (for me, anyways) translation question:

…or in plain English, to control the way the masses organize their lives.

:)

awesomestness rating: 4