Friends applaud, the comedy is finished.
—~~ Last words of Ludwig van Beethoven d. March 26, 1827
The wild worship of lawlessness and the materialist worship of law end in the same void. Nietzsche scales staggering mountains, but he turns up ultimately in Tibet. He sits down beside Tolstoy in the land of nothing and Nirvana. They are both helpless — one because he must not grasp anything, and the other because he must not let go of anything. The Tolstoyan’s will is frozen by a Buddhist instinct that all special actions are evil. But the Nietzscheite’s will is quite equally frozen by his view that all special actions are good; for if all special actions are good, none of them are special. They stand at the crossroads, and one hates all the roads and the other likes all the roads. The result is — well, some things are not hard to calculate. They stand at the cross-roads.
—G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“I would define theory as a negative movement of thought mapping the ways in which it is legitimate to be suspicious of communication. Theory is an antithetical counterforce to that which is commonly supposed to be true, posited as true, and—here of course one comes to the point—spoken as true: enounced, articulated, spoken as true.”
Paul Fry, an introduction to literary theory
Let us remember once again one of Marx’s caveats: we cannot tell from the mere taste of wheat who grew it; the product gives us no hint as to the system and the relations of production. The product appears to be all the more specific, incredibly specific and readily describable, the more closely the theoretician relates it to ideal forms of causation, comprehension, or expression, rather than to the real process of production on which it depends.
—Deleuze & Guattari, Anti-Oedipus (via oscillating-infinity)
(Source: autochthones)
My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of truth-teller or truth-telling as an activity. By this I mean that, for me, it was not a question of analyzing the internal or external criteria that would enable the Greeks and Romans, or anyone else, to recognize whether a statement or proposition is true or not. At issue for me was rather the attempt to consider truth-telling as a specific activity, or as a role.
—Discourse & Truth, Concluding remarks by Foucault
All nature, from the smallest thing to the biggest, from a grain of sand to the sun, from the protista to man, is in a constant state of coming into being and going out of being, in a constant flux, in a ceaseless state of movement and change.
—Friedrich Engels, Dialectics of Nature (via guerrillanetwork)
(via hookedonsemiotics)
The subject is an activity, not a thing… the subject produces itself by reflecting on itself, but when it is engaged on some other object it has no being apart from the activity of being so engaged.
—Lacan (via publicatiosui)
(via autochthones)
CB: Clarity is a particular technical effect of writing; a writer has no more responsibility to be clear than a painter to use blue. Yet clarity has the mystique of being the raison d’être of…
Q: It has the quality of being a liquid.
It has the quality of being a liquid but it is not a liquid. It has the quality of being transparent but it is opaque. It’s just the particular form of opacity that as an optical (I should say, textual) illusion we see as transparent. That’s a very powerful thing to use. And you ought to know that you’re being used by it and exactly how you’re being used by it. Clarity is the most extremely rhetorical property of language. ‘I don’t want you to be clear with me…I want you to do the dishes!’
Q: I don’t accept that. When you write an essay, you probably refine it many times over. Clarity I define as the opposite of clutter, which leads to impurity, externality, and error.
CB: I like all those qualities, at the technical level, at the aesthetic level.
Q: When we talk about clarity we’re talking about something being understandable.
CB: No, I don’t think they’re the same thing. One understands many things that are not clear. Clarity is an effect operating on the reader that has more to do with hypnosis than understanding. We think something is clear, but it’s more like slickness, it’s like gloss. It’s a very attractive affective quality. I don’t put it down either: to achieve clarity is a considerable technical accomplishment. It’s a particular tool. But I say expose these tools, see how they operate, who they serve. Walter Cronkite has clear prose about the news. Clear about what? Clear about what he chooses to say, very unclear about what’s actually happening in the world. I guess Walter Cronkite is not with us anymore, but whoever is telling us these facts in such clear tones is essentially an obscurantist. There’s a clarity in the struggle of the Polish or Salvadorian people without them having to say word, certainly without the need for a clear prose style with good transitions and parallel structure.
—Charles Bernstein, “Socialist Realism or Real Socialism?” (via sonofapritch)
(Source: hookedonsemiotics)
One day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s market place. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, ‘Who owns the oil?’ You begin to ask the question, ‘Who owns the iron ore?’ You begin to ask the question, ‘Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two thirds water?’ These are questions that must be asked.
—
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
And this is what really got Dr. MLK killed. (via black-culture)
THIS
(via killthemass)
(via theanimalnamesofplants)
To My Father, Creation
Creator Spirit uncreated
Sails on fleet waves far away,
Worlds heave, Lives are generated,
His Eye spans Eternity.
All inspiriting reigns his Countenance,
In its burning magic, Forms condense.
Voids pulsate and Ages roll,
Deep in prayer before his Face;
Spheres resound and Sea-Floods swell,
Golden Stars ride on apace.
Fatherhead in blessing gives the sign,
And the All is bathed in Light divine.
In bounds self-perceived, the Eternal
Silent moves, reflectively,
Until holy Thought primordial
Dons Forms, Words of Poetry.
Then, like Thunder-lyres from far away
Like prescient Creation’s Jubilee:
“Gentler shine the floating stars,
Worlds in primal Rock now rest;
O my Spirit’s images,
Be by Spirit new embraced;
When to you the heaving bosoms move,
Be revealed in piety and love.
“Be unlocked only to Love;
Eternity’s eternal seat,
As to you I gently gave,
Hurl you my Soul’s lightning out.
‘Harmony alone its like may find,
Only Soul another Soul may bind.’
Out of me your Spirits burn
Into Forms of lofty meaning;
To the Maker you return,
Images no more remaining,
By Man’s look of Love ringed burningly,
You in him dissolved, and he in me.”
- Karl Marx
