February 2010
2 posts
Homo-Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life by...
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...
The Concept of Irony by Soren Kierkegaard
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
January 2010
9 posts
"The Beautiful Language of my Century: Reinventing...
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.
...
Formations of the Secular by Talal Asad
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
"Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" by...
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...
"The life of students" by Walter Benjamin
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
"The Situationists and
the New Forms of Action...
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
From Protest to Resistance by Ulrike Meinhof
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
Courtroom in Chaos: Controlling Disruptive...
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
Law, Order, and Politics in West Germany by...
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
The Force of Law: The Mystical Foundations of...
ah deconstruction at its best, or better yet, at its justest:
In the texts I just evoked, it is always a matter of differential character of force… it is always a matter of differential force, of difference as difference of force, of force as differance or force of differance (differance is a force differee-differante); it is always a matter of the relation between force and form,...
October 2009
1 post
The Order of Things by Michel Foucault
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...
September 2009
2 posts
The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
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
"The Dialectics of Disaster" by Fredric Jameson
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
August 2009
3 posts
"Down with Existing Society" by Alan Badiou
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...
The Spirit of Terrorism by Jean Baudrillard
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...
"Avant-Garde and Kitsch" by Clement Greenberg
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...
July 2009
4 posts
Theory of the Avant-Garde by Peter Bürger
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...
The Government of Man (De Gouvernement des...
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...
Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest...
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...
The Coming Insurrection by the Invisible Committee
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...
June 2009
7 posts
Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right by Karl...
Despite my hopes, Marx keeps growing on me with sentences like this— one that just about sums up the power of critique:
If I negate powdered wigs, I am still left with unpowdered wigs.
awesomestness rating: 9
Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body...
I am totally not doing justice to Feldman’s book by quoting this completely out of context, but it is rare that one comes across such a most awesomest sentence(s):
This orifical specialization was reflected in the returning of these body parts by the prisoners. The penis and its foreskin were renamed the “fagin” after the Charles Dickens character. This was later expanded to...
Difficult Death by Rene Crevel
crevel’s is an odd novel with plenty ‘interesting’ lines like the following:
A feline floating in a baggy jacket, a feline with big shoes (“The French,” he says, “love shoes, not feet, clothes but not bodies, and that’s why they live in such narrow, velvet-and-leather-lined room”).
awesomestness rating: 6.0
Social Movements, Political Violence, and the...
thank you Donatella della Porta for coining the term “terroristologist.”
from now on when i meet people at academic conferences, I will introduce myself as Shane Boyle, terroristologist.
From international terrorism, and the field of international relations, “terroristologists” spread their net wider to include domestic political violence and non-underground...
Networking Futures: The Movements Against...
Don’t get me wrong, I think Juris’ ethnography of the anti-corporate globalization movement offers probably the most comprehensive discussion of the movement (at least in Western Europe) yet available.
Yet his abiltity to define terms leaves a little something to be desired. See for yourself:
By performative violence, I mean a mode of meaningful interaction through which actors...
"On the Phenomenology of Giant Puppets" by David...
the title of this essay alone (from Graeber’s collection Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire) could compete with the awesomestness of many of the sentences i’ve posted.
but the definition of “police” Graeber develops takes the cake:
Police are a group armed, lower-echelon government administrators, trained in the scientific application of physical...
Nadja by André Breton (1928)
if you know the life of gustave courbet, you’ll like this:
The magnificent light in Courbet’s paintings is for me the same as that of the Place Vendôme, at the time the Column fell.
awesomest rating: 6
May 2009
2 posts
On Violence by Hannah Arendt (1969)
i just think tito is kind of cool:
Their calls for Mao, Castro, Che Guevara, and Ho Chi Minh are like pseudo-religious incantations for saviors from another world; they would also call for Tito if only Yugoslavia were farther away and less approachable.
or how about this pseudo-word coinage:
Marxistically speaking, the students there…
i too often enjoy waxing marxistically…
...
Back!---- "On the Genealogy of Morals" by...
It has been well over a month since my last post. Originally, I intended for this to only document the final months of my exam studying, but since I can’t seem to but keep stumbling upon awesomest sentences, I am going to keep updating.
And what better place to re-start than with friedrich nietzsche and his preface to On the Geneaology of Morals, when he kindly reminds readers:
If this...
April 2009
16 posts
Electoral Guerrilla Theatre: Radical Ridicule and...
the great thing about this sentence is that I’m actually not really taking it out of context:
Would you vote for a gnome?
yes, i think i would.
awesomest rating: 7
The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and Cinema...
i think this book might take the cake for having the most number of impenetrable (ahem), AWESOMEST sentences. how could it not? after all, it’s on structural semiotics, psychoanalysis, and cinema… AND it was written by a french person in the 1970’s.
In order to understand the fiction film, I must both ‘take myself’ for the character (=an imaginary procedure) so...
"Traditional Theory and Critical Theory by Max...
Two sentences today.
I think in this one, Horkheimer is offering a prescient critique of Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future:
That is, one would be opposing the idea of an absolute, suprahistorical subject or the possibility of exchanging subjects, as though a person could remove himself from his present historical juncture and truly insert himself into any other he wished.
I would...
Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of...
as a a general rule, drawing a definition from Wittgenstein is a bad idea. and is it ironic that lepecki’s definition of solipsism seems, well, kind of solipsistic?
Thus, what solipsism means (without saying it, but certainly manifesting it) is that the continuum I-language-world necessarily contains, and is and contained by, the I-language-world of the other.
awesomest rating: 7
Theory of the Film by Bela Balazs
i dont think i agree with this argument:
Yet an aeroplane is not a bad motor car because you can’t drive it on a road.
awesomest rating: 6.3
Critique of Violence by Walter Benjamin
Notwithstanding this antithesis, however, both schools meet in their common basic dogma: just ends can be attained by justified means, justified means for just ends. Natural law attempts, by the justness of the ends, to ‘justify’ the means, postive law to ‘guarantee’ the justness of the ends through the justification of the means. This antinomy would prove insoluble if...
Beyond the Pleasure Principle by Sigmund Freud
I read this because I hoped it would help me better understand Walter Benjamin’s “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire.” Little did I expect that Freud would actually help me to better understand the tragic feeling of inadequacy experienced by my and morgan’s neutered chihuahua mutt whenever he comes across a lady friend on the street:
The tie of affection, which binds the child...
The Death of Character by Elinor Fuchs
The ‘death of character’ idea started out as a spark of insight ignited in alternative theaters and fanned by the various poststructuralist ‘deaths’ announced in the late 1970s and 1980s (of Man, the Author, the Subject, the Work, the Book), but another important tributary came from my own readings in Buddhism. I was especially interested in the correspondence between...
Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
In defending the ‘difficultness’ of her prose, Butler offers this defense:
Both critics and friends of Gender Trouble have drawn attention to the difficulty of its style. It is no doubt strange, and maddening to some, to find a book that is not easily consumed to be ‘popular’ according to academic standards. The surprise over this is perhaps attributable to the way we...
Mythologies by Roland Barthes
i really do like this book, but come on…
Against a certain quixotism of synthesis, quite platonically incidentally, all criticism must consent to the ascesis, to the artifice of analysis; and in analysis, it must match method and language.
or
A tree is a tree. Yes, of course. But a tree as expressed by Minou Drouet is no longer wuite a tree, it is a tree whcih is decorated, adapted...
Certain Fragments by Tim Etchells
this is almost as good as gramsci’s beaver parable from last week:
Is it true that the only way to see Britain properly is to see it drunk?
awesomest rating: 8
The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as...
At least Kershaw (kind of ) admits how bad this sentence is:
Consequently, in a competition to produce an especially dense formulation, we might cryptically claim that the ideological relativity of performance is a function of the potential variability of value systems inscribed in all aspects of its context.
awesomest rating: 7
Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault
In light of all the hubbub about Michelle Obama ‘touching’ Queen Elizabeth II— aghast!— i find particular relevance in this sentence from foucault about how the consequence for touching the sovereign is not what it used to be.
And this superiority is not simply that of right, but that of the physical strength of the sovereign beating down upon the body his adversary and...
Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture by...
this is about where i stopped reading…
The last portion of the chapter offers a Baudrillardian reading of Milli Vanilli in relation to the institutional discourses of the Grammys and the law.
awesomest rating: 6.5
Selections from the Prison Notebooks by Antonio...
(The beaver, pursued by trappers who want his testacles from which medicinal drugs can be extracted, to save his life tears off his own testicles.) Why was there no defence?
I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer that tony.
awesomest rating: 9
M by Anton Kaes
The law of seriality which drove Kürten and Haarman to kill by numbers informs the very structure of Lang’s M.
When I came across this sentence, I couldn’t help but wonder whether ‘kill by numbers’ has anything to do with a more violent form of ‘paint by numbers.’
awesomest rating: 5
March 2009
19 posts
"Ideological Effects of the Cinematographic...
Apodicity?
At the same time that the world’s transfer as image seems to accomplish this phenomenological reduction, this puttong into parentheses of its real existence (a suspension necessary, we will see, to the formation of the impression of reality) provides a basis for the apodicity of the ego.
awesomest rating: 6
Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late...
for a book that seeks to “grasp the concept of postmodernism as an attempt to think the present historically in an age that has forgotten how to think historically in the first place” and then proceeds over 418 pages to describe postmodernism as a historical reality that can only be grasped through spatial logic— it seems only fitting that its most awesomest sentence is not a...
"Commodities" from Capital: Volume 1 by Karl Marx
if you know me, you’ll likely know that I have a lot of… ummm… reservations with the (forgive the pun) currency and fetishism of marxism in academia. nonetheless, while i really do appreciate what marx has to say, i find how he says these things to be very… cute.
For example:
The form of wood, for instance, is altered, by making a table out of it. Yet, for all that,...
Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord
It’s a tough task to pick just one awesomest sentence from a book so full of them.
The opening section “The Culmination of Separation” is a goldmine for nearly logically sounding sentences whose logic Debord completely inverts. But recently, Morgan told me that the sentences I tend to choose are almost-too-obvious choices, and I think it is because I have been favoring those...