If you hate overly contextualised author-focused analysis, and analysis focused on “deep” readings, Deleuze’s readings of literature such as the work of Sacher-Masoch, Proust and Kafka will be a breath of fresh air. His essay on Sacher-Masoch ‘Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty’ changed everything for me, and I really enjoy his book ‘Essays: critical and clinical‘ as well. Sometimes the person who best knows how to read a book is a philosopher lol.
Sep 23, 2024
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I have been on a Sollers kick the last few months. His novels are varied, difficult, and a riot. But best of all is the book he and his wife Julia Kristeva co-wrote: Marriage as a Fine Art. On the one hand, it’s one huge flex on all other theory couples, just a relatively incoherent rambling braggart’s song about how great they are. Kristeva outright deems Sarte and Beauvoir “liberarian terrorists.” “To carry out their work of liberatarian terrorism, they turned themselves into a shock commando unit. . . [reliant] on their shared history as two wounded people.” But it is also very sweet. You can find them going around and around on such topics as the nature of passion (PS: “As if passion necessarily [has] to be punished, as if love could only end in disaster. I object to that notion, quite violently. That’s not my idea of love.” JK: “Passion is enthusiasm and the proximity of death. It is joy and it is death. It is annihilation and jubilation.”) As a Sollers fan and a Kristeva agnostic, it has evened out my opinion of the pair. Somehow, the book, dense as it is, tickles the same part of my brain that is satisfied by a 2000s romcom.
May 17, 2022
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been reading Walter Benjamin and Baudelaire and as a matter of modern subjectivity its fascinating as a phenomena.
David Harvey wrote this on the matter: Baudelaire would be torn the rest of his life between the stances of flâneur and dandy, a disengaged and cynical voyeur on the one hand, and man of the people who enters into the life of his subjects with passion on the other
Feb 11, 2024
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Sometimes I recommend being a hater. I’m not here to talk about the numerous quality uses of AI, how often it is actually used nor am I here to critique AI without strawmanning it. I don’t care if I strawman an account of AI because I genuinely despise the way most people use AI. I think AI generated images are ugly. I think that AI cannot hold a half decent conversation. I’m completely avoidant when it comes to showing AI my writing; I’ve never done it and I refuse to. I hate when you go to that one poetry website and there is AI “analysis” there, because its not real textual analysis and it upholds a certain contextualised intentionalist framework of reading a text reinforced in high school English. I hate that the meta AI will influence what products will be advertised to you. I don’t care if it’s the future. I genuinely love being called a dinosaur because I hate AI.
Sep 24, 2024
When we let go of the fear we hold towards the smallest creatures of our environment, and learn how to immerse ourself in an instance of nature rather than making an instance of nature our own, we learn to truly be alive. Bugs are great because you can’t own them, but you can admire their beauty. #bugnation2024
Jan 21, 2024
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It’s now beat babaganoush as my favourite dip.
Aug 31, 2024