and this, friends, is why i love academia. infighting academics are just too cute, especially when they’re french.
This last point is a request to the English-speaking reader. In France certain half-witted ‘commentators’ persist in labelling me a ‘structuralist’. I have been unable to get it into their tiny minds that I have used none of the methods, concepts, or key terms that characterize structural analysis.
awesomestness rating: 6.6
The greatness, but also the perplexity of laws in free societies is that they only tell what one should not, but never what one should do.
i’m kinda of the opinion that there’s a lot more perplexing about the phrase “laws in free societies.” but that’s just me, and i’m kind of picky.
awesomestness rating: 5.2
People don’ t appreciate a theoretical discussion of their emotions (Are you questioning the sincerity of my feelings?). I suppose the answer has to be, No, not the sincerity of your feelings; rather, the sincerity of all feelings.
guys, just try telling your girlfriends that.
awesomestness rating: 8.0
If, in terms of political thought and practice, of forms of collective life, humanity has yet to find and will not find anything better than currently existing parliamentary states, and the forms of consciousness associated with them, this proves that as a species, said humanity will not rank much higher than ants and elephants.
don’t forget fish. at least most of them have memory capacities of almost five seconds.
awesomestness rating: 6.8
this is from the essay “Requiem for the Twin Towers” in the collection Spirit of Terrorism, not the famous Le Monde article.
The towers, for their part, have disappeared. But they have left us the symbol of their disappearance, their disappearance as a symbol. They, which were the symbol of omnipotence, have become, by their absence, the symbol of the possible disappearance of that omnipotence— which is perhaps an even more potent symbol. Whatever becomes of that global omnipotnce, it will have been destroyed here for a moment.
and actually that’s jean baudrillard being clearer than he usually is.
awesomestness rating: 9.11 (terrible joke, i know)
Greenberg’s essay ranks up there as one of the most important essays not only in the history of art criticism, but also of the i’m-so-much-more-awesomer-than-thou school of art snobbery.
and in such an essay, it’s not surprising to find a forceful jab at the evils of that populist ploy: universal literacy.
Kitsch is a product of the industrial revolution which urbanized the masses of Western Europe and America and established what is called universal literacy.
For shame that all of you peasants want to know how to read! What will you want next, universal healthcare?
To fill the demand of the new market a new commodity was devised: ersatz culture, kitsch, destined for those who, insensible to the values of genuine culture, are hungry neverthless for the diversion that only culture of some sort can provide.
awesomestness rating: 8
I have to take issue with Bürger’s not-so-strict interpretation of the phrase “the strict meaning of the term.” In how he demonstrates it through the word ‘autonomy’, there is nothing strict to this meaning:
In the strict meaning of the term, ‘autonomy’ is thus an ideological category that joins an element of truth (the apartness of art from the praxis of life) and an element of untruth (the hypostatization of this fact, which is a result of historical development as the ‘essence’ of art).
awesomestness rating: 5.5
When I first read this, I thought Foucault had decided to substitute the word archeology for anarchy out of concern for the fact that anarchism has fallen out of fashion over the past 150 years or so. But then I re-read the sentence and realized that I had misread him and that he actually decided to rename it anarcheology, which is just, well, really damn cute.
I am not saying that all forms of power are unacceptable but that no power is necessarily acceptable or unacceptable. This is anarchism. But since anarchism is not acceptable these days, I will call it anarcheology, the method that takes no power as necessarily acceptable.
awesomestness rating: 7.7
Richard Day gets bonus points for the construction and use, in one sentence, of not one, but two clever three-word phrases in which two of the words are the same word but with slightly varied connotations separated by a preposition.
And he gets even more bonus points for criticizing marxist jargon yet shamelessly using some of their favorite stylistic/rhetorical tricks.
My basic argument in this book is that all of these groups and movements, strategies and tactics, are helpful in understanding— and furthering— the ongoing displacement of the hegemony of hegemony by an affinity for affinity
awesomestness rating: 6.5
there’s a lot to be said about this slim book— much more than the ny times fluff piece about it had to say— and more than the pseudo-controversey it’s caused suggests.
if you haven’t already read giorgio agamben’s impressive comments in support of the tarnac 9, go here.
and if you’d like to watch an articulate review of the book, check out the ramblings of glenn beck.
the only thing more entertaining than beck’s review is the “holier than thou” bickering being waged on anarchist and communist message boards across the internet over this book. try anarchists.org for a sampling.
anyways, the most awesomest sentences… well there are a couple….
We have to see that the economy is not “in” crisis, the economy is itself the crisis.
and
Particularly to be avoided are the cultural and activist circles. They are the old people’s homes where all revolutionary desires traditionally go to die.
awesomestness rating: 9.5
