giorgio_agamben amy in red http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/de-la-durantaye-agamben 160206 ... epitome of incomprehensibility I see ghosts of my graduate school supplementary readings on blather red. Should I be frightened? 160211 ... amy in red always? 160211 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Heh. That's a good answer! Or never. Maybe never be frightened. (I wish.) Anyway, I liked this paragraph from the review, which according to Agamben is an "allegory of literature": "Agamben tells a story about fire, one that had been told before by Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Gershom Scholem, Elie Wiesel, and others. When Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidic Judaism, was confronted with a difficult task he would go into the forest, light a fire, speak the sacred words, and receive what he needed. A generation later, when the Maggid of Mezeritz was faced with a similar difficulty, he went to the place in the forest and though he could no longer light the fire, he could still say the prayers. This sufficed, and what he desired came to pass. A generation still later, Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sassov was confronted with an equally intractable problem, and though he could no longer light the fire, and no longer knew the prayers, he went to the place in the forest, and this too was enough. When at last, another generation later, Rabbi Israel of Ruzhyn found himself in such a situation he said, “We cannot light the fire, cannot say the prayers, and no longer even know the place in the forest. But of all this we can tell the story.” And this too, it is said, sufficed." It seems this is an archetype in Jewish storytelling. More than just Jewish, probably, but I was reminded of the kids' book Something from Nothing by Phoebe Gilman, which tells a similar story. A small boy has a blanket he loves. When the blanket gets worn out, his thrifty grandfather makes it into a jacket. The same thing happens with the jacket; his grandfather makes it into a vest. The vest becomes a tie, the tie becomes a handkerchief, the handkerchief becomes a cloth button. Finally the button gets lost. Grandpa can't make "something from nothing," but the boy realizes what he has left: a story. I don't remember a lot of picture books I read 20-odd years ago, but I really like that book. There's a parallel story running in the illustrations: the scrap pieces of blanket clothe and house a family of mice living under the human family's floorboards. 160212 ... e_o_i Finished the article. I'm not sure about Agamben's idea - or the reviewer's interpretation of his idea - about purpose. The notion that humanity, or any one person, should have a single overarching goal makes me skeptical; but why abandon the idea of goals altogether? I would argue in favour of seeing human life as having multiple goals instead of one or none. Maybe I'm influenced by my personal workaday life of ticking off tasks, but it's also about leisure: when I write, it isn't just to have fun. I want to be useful, I want to do something. I don't want to change the world in a grand way, but I want to contribute... participate... all of that stuff. 160212 ... amy in red dear e_o_i i'm glad you liked my answer. i like your children's story, sounds like The Giving Tree but with more of a purpose. hmm. I think it was Heidegger who wanted the purpose thus his alignment with the solutionism of the Nazis. There are a lot of hints at interesting ideas in the review which make me want to read this series of books. but that he sets out to show that biopolitics (what is that?) has a concentration camp mindset sort of confuses me and sort of makes me believe that in the mid 90s there was a certain fixated quality to the collective that wanted to achieve something - maybe there was a label or an ideal such as the milleniarian that Agamben has now been able to say is ready to fade. but i'm intensely interested in the how he labels this period of time. to know how it is, underneath it all, characterized. and what has changed. i feel there must have been some sort of change involved for it to reach a conclusion.... all the talk of "use" reminds me of a) gender and b) christian salvation irreconcilabilty with buddhist liberation (my concern with being accused vs self-awareness. maybe they are united, like the current pope says with mercy, but i haven't read that book yet either.) and, the role of truth as a goal. don't we lose our illusions as time goes by? or do we keep re-deluding ourselves because we just can't remember what we've learned. to start out with the concentration camp is hardest nosed way to ask ourselves if we do or do not have it within us to inflict deadly suffering on other humans because of, basically, identity politics. if not there are no labels? no beingness? only doing and everybody who's distracted knows we can't have a doing without a purpose to guide it, OR, alternatively to shift the purpose to social institutions which will provide your role. a role as a different entity than a label. but say, you write a book, or a screenplay, e_o_i. at what point are you a writer (a label) when you write again? it doesn't matter in the moment of writer, but society does want it to matter because society is built on reputations, too. competence. in a way, it sounds like Agamben might have proved himself to be an incompetent philosopher, but in the long run probably not -- i want to make time for his series of progressive books, even if only to disabuse myself of ideologies that have been running their course, historically. or, you know, not. what *are biopolitics anyway? what does this have to do with Kissinger? Lord of the Flies? survival? reproduction? women? love? Kum-ba-ya? Steven Sondheim? US of A? Trump? guns in entertainment? there are a million reasons, really, why i want to read them. in summer. it feels like summer reading. 160213 ... amy in red i am 4 little books into the series. with 5 bigger books to go. also, i knew he'd come roaring back. life don't make sense until something big comes roaring back, don't you know. i wanted to share this, part of super-scary book 4: "Logic, which watches over the correct use of language as assertion, is born when the truth of the oath has already waned. And if logic and science are born from the management of the assertorial aspect of the logos, from veridiction there proceed, even if through crossings and superimpositions of every kind (which have their highest place precisely in the oath), law, religion, poetry, and literature. In the middle is philosophy, which, abiding in both truth and error, seeks to safeguard the performative experience of speech without renouncing the possibility of lying and, in every assertorial discourse, experiences the veridiction that takes place in it." by no means the most draw dropping part of the book but i thought it was well stated. so-- every time i get accused of injudiciously placing logic over art i shall have to remind you-guys "oath" is (actually) my middle name.... also a queen will die someday.... although the jury is not all the way out on "oath"... it seems i want to have my cake and eat it too by declaring its availability.... so they say. go figure. also there's some kind of gender understanding to come to within the whole arc of reasoning in all 9 books. AND WHAT ABOUT GYPSIES. that's always a thing. i'm kind of not looking forward to all the religious stuff the next five books seem to be about.... (calm down, gypsies amores) 160607 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Hello! Sorry I didn't see the first part before. What are biopolitics? I think he means the Michel Foucault sort of biopolitics: political machinery exerting control over life functions - as a violent example, executions (well, I'm not the only violent one here; Agamben uses the example of the concentration camp). But then, politics even for the middle and higher classes controls what areas people live in, how their cities and towns are shaped - all things that have a measurable impact on biological life, so what is NOT biopolitics? (The rest is somewhat beyond me. I tried to read Bruno Latour once for a course. I TRIED.) Getting back to the bit about labels: you mentioned use, and gender. I guess for a long time in Western-ish history women were thought to be mostly good for baby-having and baby-raising, while men could be relatively free to have multiple purposes (of course social class was an issue - I'm broadly generalizing). Also, I'm not sure the modern individualized idea of "having a career" was really formed until the Middle Ages. Caveat: this idea was formed by listening to a lecture in my Chaucer course. Maybe I know nothing about the topic. But given my place in history, I do think that being labeled a "writer" (being defined by a career) would be better than being defined as a "childless old maid" or as a mother if I do have children. Because it's more self-determined, less just a politicized biological function... biopolitics? But what would you call the career label - capitalist politics? We can't ONLY have that. Like other people, I do multiple things, and I don't want to be defined as money-making machine either ('cuz I'm not super good at it). A producer of creative work? A bit better, even if I don't always live up to that. Aside from the "me" thoughts, everybody getting a single label? It's not good. Actually, I realized why I think it's not good. It's those in power who get to hand out the labels. At least, they get to hand out the STICKIER labels, so they get multiple labels that stick to themselves, but then stick one or maybe two on the less powerful people. It's like: "Hello, I'm Mr/Ms Powerful, the entrepreneur, playwright, novelist, programmer, and salsa dancer. You, you're a refugee. You like dancing, too? But no, you're not a dancer, you're a refugee. You don't get to be a dancer. I'm a dancer. No, it's not my main thing, but I'm still a dancer. You need to get legal status in the new country you're in before you can do things. I mean really do things." (At least, those are my thoughts so far, about the parts I partly understand. And it's nice to have you back around, writing.) 160607 ... amys in red "slavery is to ancient humanity what technology is to modern humanity" 160830 ... amy in red i'm on the epilogue of the last book. i did, in fact, spend the summer reading them, although i also took long breaks and poured over chapter 7 of The Kingdom and the Glory. the series of books seems to me to be very relevant to the denizens, occupants, gardeners of blather. here are 3 nuggets from this last part: "language excludes and separates from itself the non-linguistic, and in the same gesture, it includes and captures it as that with which it is always already in relation. That is to say, the _ex-ceptio_, the inclusive exclusive of the real from the _logos_ and in the _logos_ is the orginary structure of the event of language." "some years earlier in "The Open" [an Agamben book not part of Homo Sacer], the anthropolgocal machine of the West was defined by the division and articulation within the human being of the human and the animal. And at the end of the book, the project of a deactivation of the machine that governs our conception of the human demanded not the study of new articulations between the animal and the human so much as rather the exposition of the central void, of the gap that separates -- in the human being -- the human and the animal. That which -- once again in the form of the exception -- was separated and then articulated together in the machine must be brought back to its division so that an inseparable life, neither animal nor human, can eventually appear." "The fundamental ontological-political problem today is not work but inoperativity, not the frantic and unceasing study of a new operativity but the exhibition of the ceaseless void that the machine of Western culture guards at its center." and now i'm going to read this bit at the end about "radical political changes" (which Agamben has argued for) and to what degree the philosophical groundwork has been laid in support or in avoidance. at least that's what i expect to read. . . 160905 ... amy in red done! this last book was hard work. i'm thinking i should read them every summer! and at any rate, i should always read philosophy above my level. it keeps me interested. 160905 ... amy in red e_o_i: from my reading, seems like with the _bios_, Plato would want you stick to your guns and your destiny, which might indeed involve a singular "label" but i get your point about leaving things like that without sovereignty, as in "i'm the mother of 3 children, ages blah blah and blah" which won't do at all, especially for people who are customarily excluded from having a full life, or however you want to put that. Aristotle's "_bios_" means using language in a way that doesn't stomp the heck out of your fellows. 160905 ... amy adaptability 'The Adventure' 2015 (in English 2018) it is so hopeful. but i don't have hope for our situation. and: how close to ayn rand and 'objectivism' (and isn't that a bummer.) 180614 ... e_o_i I am curious what he meant by "inoperativity" - the system not working, or the people not working, or (probably) something a bit more complex? 180622 ... e_o_i As an aside, I reread the blathe and realized I made a rather basic reading comprehension error: "e_o_i: I see ghosts of my graduate school supplementary readings on blather red. Should I be frightened? 160211 amy in red: always?" I thought the "always" referred to the "shouldness" of being frightened, not the frequency of seeing ghosts of graduate school readings on blather red. The answer to the first question was no, not always. :) For philosophy, I'm reading Julia Kristeva's The Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. (By "reading" I mean I last dipped into it about a month and a half ago. I was reading it on the bus on the way to the mall, which seemed incongruous, so I worried I might not be able to concentrate... but no problem there. ADHD notwithstanding, I can concentrate well enough. It's the middle-term stretches of time, like days and months, that daunt me.) 180622 ... unhinged (i just finished 'the will to power' by nietzsche. (sp) he was wrong on buddhism and i hate his concept of hierarchy but in general i found him/that book insightful. with all that critique of christians i see better why he still gets such a bad rap. christians are really good at persecution, especially of those that dare to question their motives) 180624 ... amy anthropology well, I would say, inadequately, that inoperativity means with no functional relationship. Homo sacer is a big project, though, and here I am cutting to the chase without describing anything at all.... which he has. Here’s another little blurb from The Use of Bodies “the city is founded on the division of life into bare life and politically qualified life, the human is defined by the exclusion-inclusion of the animal, the law by the exceptio of anomie, governance through the exclusion of inoperativity and its capture in the form of glory” I don’t remember what all of that means but you see it is very dualistic without demonizing. Also very descriptive so that it is all about the relatedness of everything to everything. hierarchy got to me too when I read some Nietzsche in college. Let’s say angels but we wouldn’t presume to understand their hierarchy. Also, in Beyond Good and Evil “Supposing Truth is a woman — what then?” that gets me too. For various reasons. 180624 what's it to you? who go blather from