roundup ≠ scrapbook

“班犯呢? 眼訓果d 就好安心咁訓覺, 唔眼訓果d 就好hyper 咁係度吹水. 犯法犯得咁開心仲要個個話下次一定要再黎, 呢班友真係傻的嗎. 而警察呢? 一係玩手機一係就訓覺. 有時社會就係咁荒謬.”

511 分之1

*

when the world gets absurd, humour is the best way of resistance.

Monde-Meisterschaft: Germany versus France, which will be on stage the day after, has already been *H.I.L.A.R.O.U.S.L.Y.* (ha ha!) made into a match of philosophy on, why, where else of course, ICI/HIER.

Totally Offside: Being the most-hated football star and a human being, a loving family guy and a cannibal, all at the same time. Regarding Luis Suarez. By the way, this was written and published before the most recent bite.

The Albertine Workout – going on a journey with Proust’s heart again for the next vacance en France.

How do people all over the world speak English? The Speech Accent Archive, the next big thing on my list of Ways to Procrastinate.

—

Meanwhile, 香港。
Commitment and resistance.

*

The Crocodile, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Crocodile on exhibition swallows man alive. Man resides happily inside the belly of Crocodile (!). And since “the Principles of Economics” are paramount, they come before everything. Crocodile is private property (investment!), and therefore Principles of Economics apply in this situation. We must not flay Crocodile to release Man! We need development! We must create capital!

*

Borges hated football. Here’s why.

“Borges’ problem was with soccer fan culture, which he linked to the kind of blind popular support that propped up the leaders of the twentieth century’s most horrifying political movements. In his lifetime, he saw elements of fascism, Peronism, and even anti-Semitism emerge in the Argentinean political sphere, so his intense suspicion of popular political movements and mass culture—the apogee of which, in Argentina, is soccer—makes a lot of sense.”

from the New Republic.

–

Also from Borges (with Aldolfo Bioy Casares), a short story on Football as Spectacle à la Guy Debord: Esse est percipi

—

And finally, Simon Critchley’s essay on football as Working Class Ballet.

“Football is all about the experience of failure and righteous injustice. It is about hoping to win and learning to accept defeat. But most importantly, it is about some experience of the fragility of belonging: the enigma of place, memory and history.”

…

“[The World Cup] is a shiny display of teams, tribes and nations in symbolic, indeed rather atavistic, national combat adorned with multiple layers of commodification, sponsorship and the seemingly infinite commercialization — among the official FIFA sponsors are Coca Cola, Budweiser and McDonalds. The World Cup is an image of our age at its worst and most gaudy. But it is also something more, something bound up with difficult and recalcitrant questions of conflict, memory, history, place, social class, masculinity, violence, national identity, tribe and group.”

*

World Cup mon amour.

“The discourse of “the beautiful game” romances the idea that in poverty one’s pleasures have a certain nobility. It is one of the most cynical features of the mega event: a neo-liberal fantasy about the joy of the poor functions as an alibi for an inhuman economy in which stadiums are built not as homes for a team and its fans, but as sets for a handful of televised events; in which clubs are mortgaged into abstraction; in which the obscenity of one player’s income is dwarfed by the cosmic scale of the team-owner’s wealth. The identification of the game with keywords like “universal,” “global” and “beautiful” papers over the exclusion of women from this world. It celebrates the provincialism which assumes that there is no place on earth indifferent to this sport. It turns the scholar of the sport’s globalism into expert testimony justifying development schemes. The larger and the more inclusive these events become, the more media space they take up, the more public resources they use up – and the worse things gets. Resources are not redistributed around the World Cup; they are concentrated and absorbed by a ministry of corruption.”

from the Sport Spectacle, 13.06.2014.

*

*Discovering Literature Collection Items at the British Library

*History of Philosophy without any gaps, (srsly?!)

*Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, Diderot et d’Alembert: here, here, et ici en français

—

How feminism became capitalism’s handmaiden. By Nancy Fraser, The Guardian

Love what you do? What do you mean? Privileged Fucktards. By Miya Tokumitsu, Slate

*

After being miserable, being bored, now We are all very anxious according to this article from Plan C. Surveillance, control, security and safety measures, scapegoating, privatisation and bureaucratisation, precarity and self-sensorship. Welcome to the world.

Anxiety is personalised in a number of ways – from New Right discourses blaming the poor for poverty, to contemporary therapies which treat anxiety as a neurological imbalance or a dysfunctional thinking style. A hundred varieties of “management” discourse – time management, anger management, parental management, self-branding, gamification – offer anxious subjects an illusion of control in return for ever-greater conformity to the capitalist model of subjectivity. And many more discourses of scapegoating and criminalisation treat precarity as a matter of personal deviance, irresponsibility, or pathological self-exclusion…

People both conform to the demand to communicate rather than expressing themselves, and self-censor within mediated spaces. Similarly, affective labour does not alleviate anxiety; it compounds workers’ suffering while simply distracting consumers.

*

corporation management, discipline, and control: chomsky on the american university system, education, precarity, and vulnerable workers;

about food, and hunger:
Taste the waste! how food is dumped, in immense amounts, every day in almighty Europa (and meanwhile, on earth…);
Süsses Gift – Hilfe als Geschäft, a beautifully filmed, strong critique on development aid in Africa;

…and how all things are related to each other (profit! profit! profit!).

lastly, how did saving the world become big corporate business? and does it have to? for better or worse?
“Narrow thinking, bureaucratic structures and the overriding priority of fundraising lead NGOs to treat people as donors and consumers, rather than to empower them to struggle for social justice.” Spot on.

<edit 22.07.2014> Raid then Aid: Pretending to be saviours. The “developed” world is but looting from down south.

*

A propos de somewhere nice, let’s go to the internet black market. Yami-ichi Forever! get the whatever button NOW!

what are we going to do with the world?

Fascism, Russia, and Ukraine

Calculating the risk of militant ideologies

More from Snowden: what the NSA collects

*

but after all, human beings are amazing.

Dentaku – Ototo, a more elaborated version of the Fruitilyzer by the great Tim+Mimi

RijksStudio, to spend hours on end looking at stuff

On the Writing of the Insane

vi vil ha l’oignon sur la plage!

video folgt.

*

On Google bots and robotic smog: when bots become omnipotent and omnipresent

Art is a Problem: for it is “becoming so thoroughly assimilated into, or integrated within, global social, economic, ideological, and institutional networks that it may no longer be able to pose any problems to those systems.”

Corporate Organic: promoting the lifestyle of an organic-consuming, iPhone using, yoga-practicing, “socially aware” wealthy hipster nihilist

click here for FUN FUN FUN: the postmodernism generator!

*

eau! 賣 goodness!
super bowl is super beau.
avoid fat arm, get fett arm.
no more low 麵…l’eau and behold!
กินกุ้ง be4 見工.
bow to the 包 am Bau.
星星 sing a 喪 du sang.
Ei, 唉…

Ich habe auf den Unterschied zwischen ,,ich achte” und ,,ich achtete” nicht geachtet.

– More fun with money: 

– Expand your wealth by inflicting poverty on others!

– And perhaps Russell Brand could consider the possibility of casting blank votes instead of not voting at all, when the government has made voting meaningless (cf. Seeing by José Saramago, plus/minus some drama, some reality).

– A Greek said in an interview, “when I pay the highway tolls, every cent goes to Goldman Sachs.”

—

while a trip to the main biennale di venezia exhibitions reminded us so much of trips to art brut and “outsider art” museums, on our way through the increasingly familiar labyrinths of venice, we found window displays which might qualify for the spitzen-art-world:

my golden plastic lion goes to the barber shop.

*

First,
Il fait trop beau pour travailler

Things I read:
Sex and Sensibility – Diane Mehta on Paris Review Daily
John Nash’s Ideal Money, and John Nash’s Ideal Money

And a review on what I’m reading:
thisisthetitleofmyblog, 04.2012

aaah, general strike in italy has just begun. will i arrive in la bella venezia?

*

Goldman Sachs, la banque qui dirige le monde

/

Corporate Coup d’Etat

—–

Raising Resistance

/

Notre poison quotidien

{p.s. and more on poison américain}

/

Die akte Aluminium

—–

Prison Valley

oh, darling, i never watched that much tv ever before.

but we aren’t sure

not really

we are simply

living every day as if it is the last

day of summer.

*

You had left that world behind in the hope it might be thoroughly transformed in your absence, but nothing of the sort has occurred. It got along quite nicely without you and it adjusts quite smoothly to your return. People and things conspire to make it seem as if you had not been away. For my own part, I left without regrets and I come back to it again without any great emotion. People are a thousand times more preoccupied with their own little lives than with the strangeness of another world. You are best advised, then, to land discreetly, to come back politely into this world keeping anything you may have to say – along with the few sights still gleaming in your memory – strictly to yourself.

Jean Baudrillard, America, pp. 77

*

The booming self-help industry, not to mention the cash cow of New Age spirituality, has one message: be authentic! Charming as American optimism may be, its 21st-century incarnation as the search for authenticity deserves pause. The power of this new version of the American dream can be felt through the stridency of its imperatives: Live fully! Realize yourself! Be connected! Achieve well-being!

Traditional forms of morality that required extensive social cooperation in relation to a hard reality defined by scarcity have largely collapsed and been replaced with this New Age therapeutic culture of well-being that does not require obedience or even faith — and certainly not feelings of guilt. Guilt must be shed; alienation, both of body and mind, must be eliminated, most notably through yoga practice after a long day of mind-numbing work.

Work is no longer a series of obligations to be fulfilled for the sake of sustenance: it is the expression of one’s authentic self. With the extraordinary rise of internships — not just filled by college students anymore, but more and more by working-age adults — people from sufficiently privileged backgrounds  are even prepared to work without pay  because it allows them to “grow” as persons. Every aspect of one’s existence is meant to water some fantasy of growth.

A naïve belief in authenticity eventually gives way to a deep cynicism.

Simon Critchley & Jamieson Webster
Full text:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/29/the-gospel-according-to-me/?_r=1

from
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/06/27/a-rejection-is-a-rejection-is-a-rejection/

“In the process of composing Visage I, repetition presented for me not so much a process as the observation of the social organisation of time. Thus observed, time organises itself in layers and according to different points of via – social, political and sentimental. That is the sense in which repetition fascinated me. Repetition is thus an area where there are resemblances as well as differences: if I repeat the same phrase twice, the moment has changed. One can hope even if one is very pessimistic, that thought accumulates an experience or a memory, and that if you superimpose a purely mechanical repetition, it is seen every tim as an event and not a redundancy.”

Luc Ferrari, I was running in so many different directions, 1994

“Since i want to make something, I need rules….My option is to follow the rules of the game that I invented, so I also have the option of infringing upon them. We cannot but be aware of the manipulation of opposites: law and freedom, seriousness and derision, abstraction and realism.”

from Jacqueline Caux, Presque rien avec Luc Ferrari

*

“Why do we work so long and so hard? The mystery here is not that we are required to work or that we are expected to devote so much time and energy to its pursuit, but rather that there is not more active resistance to this state of affairs…”

Opening lines from The Problem with Work, Kathi Weeks, 2011

*

“Voluntary,” i.e., unpaid or low paying jobs in the culture or academic industries, for example, are all too often accepted as an unchangeable fact, and nothing else is even demanded. The necessity of pursuing other, less creative, precarious jobs in order to finance one’s own cultural production is accepted. This forced and, simultaneously chosen, financing of one’s own creative output constantly supports and reproduces precisely those relations from which one suffers and of which one wants to be a part. Perhaps those who work creatively, these precarious cultural producers by design, are subjects that can be exploited so easily because they seem to bear their living and working conditions eternally due to the belief in their own freedom and autonomy, due to self-realization fantasies. In a neoliberal context they are exploitable to such an extreme that the State even presents them as role models.

This situation of self-precarization is connected to experiences of fear and loss of control, feelings of insecurity through the loss of certainties and safeguards, as well as fear and the experience of failure, social decline and poverty. Also for these reasons, “letting go” or forms of dropping out and dropping off of hegemonic paradigms are difficult. Everyone has to remain “on speed” otherwise you might fall out. There are no clear times for relaxation or recuperation. This kind of reproduction has no clear place, which, in turn, results in an unfulfilled yearning and a continuous suffering from this lack. The desire for relaxation to “find oneself” becomes insatiable. These kinds of reproductive practices usually have to be learned anew. They are lacking in any self-evidence and have to be fought for bitterly against oneself and others. In turn, this makes this yearning for reproduction, for regeneration, so extremely marketable.

Isabell Lorey, Governmentality & Self-Precarization: On the Normalization of Cultural Producers, 2006
http://eipcp.net/transversal/1106/lorey/en/

*

Extract from the review of Yann Moulier Boutang’s Le capitalisme cognitif from Steven Shaviro’s blog at http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=620

“The book ends…with an excellent proposal. Boutang argues for an unconditional “social wage”: to be given to everyone, without exception, and without any of the current requirements that welfare and unemployment programs impose on their recipients (requirements like behaving properly, or having to look for work, or whatever). This social wage — he gives a provisional figure of 700 euros per month, or about $1000/month at today’s exchange rates) would be paid in recompense for the fact that “general intellect,” from which corporations extract profit, is in fact the work of everyone — even and especially outside of formal work situations. Boutang spends a lot of energy showing how this proposal is fiscally feasible in Europe today, how it would rejuvenate the economy (and thus lead, in the long run, to enhanced profits for the corporations whose tax payments would finance it). What he doesn’t say, however — and perhaps does not recognize — is that, even though this proposal is perfectly feasible in terms of the overall wealth of the world economy), if it were really adopted universally — that is to say, worldwide, to all human beings on the face of the planet — it would severly disrupt the regime of appropriation that he calls “cognitive capitalism.” This is yet another example of bat020’s and k-punk’s maxim that (reversing a slogan from May 1968) we must “be unrealistic, demand the possible.” The unconditional social wage is entirely possible in terms of what the world can economically afford, but it is “unrealistic” in terms of the way that “cognitive capitalism” is structured. Demanding it pushes the system to a point of paradox, a critical point — at least notionally.”

*

“Up to a century ago the people who thought about progress were the people who had the power to bring it about. Until recently new ideas originated with the powerful; with princes, industrialists, public benefactors. Today the men with power have ceased to be benefactors of mankind; at best they do things that benefit certain individuals. Today all the new ideas come from the poor and powerless. The men with power to change anything have stopped thinking. So no change is possible.”

Peter Handke, Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a/M, 1972 (1974, English Edition)

*

Today’s reason to give in to sloth, which is to fight sloth, to justify the action of customising my cardigan with a needle and some thread:

Early Church doctrine generally viewed free time as a temptation, leisure as an invitation to sloth. This feared applied particularly to women. Eve was the temptress, distracting man from his work. The Church Fathers imagined women as specifically prone to sexual licence if they had nothing to occupy their hands. This prejudice bred a practice: female temptation could be countered by a particular craft, that of the needle, whether in weaving or embroidery, the woman’s hands kept ever busy.

The needle as a remedy for female idleness traces back to the early Church Father Jerome. As is the way of prejudices that mature in time, this sexual negative became by the middle ages also a source of honour. As the historian Edward Lucie-Smith points out, “queens were not ashamed both to weave and sew”.

Richard Sennett, The Craftsman, pp-57-8

*

Die Wahrheit ist, dass ich nur im Auto sitzend zwischen dem einen Ort, den ich gerade verlassen habe und dem andern, auf den ich zufahre,  glücklich bin, nur im Auto und auf der Fahrt bin ich glücklich, ich bin der unglücklichste Ankommende, den man sich vorstellen kann, gleich, wo ich ankommen, komme ich an, bin ich unglücklich. Ich gehöre zu den Menschen, die im Grunde keinen Ort auf der Welt aushalten und die nur glücklich sind zwischen den Orten, von denen sie weg und auf die sie zufahren.

Thomas Bernhard, Wittgensteins Neffe, 1982

*

Die Leute begehen in den Museen ja immer den Fehler, dass sie sich zuviel vornehmen, dass sie alles sehen wollen, so gehen sie und gehen sie und schauen und schauen und brechen dann plötzlich, weil sie sich ganz einfach an Kunst überfressen haben, zusammen…

Ich gehe durch die Stadt und denke, dass ich diese Stadt nicht mehr aushalte und dass ich nicht nur die Stadt nicht mehr aushalte, dass ich die ganze Welt und in der Folge eben die ganze Menschheit nicht mehr aushalte, denn die Welt und die ganze Menschheit sind ja mittlerweile so entsetzlich geworden, dass sie bald nicht mehr auszuhalten sind, wenigstens nicht für einen Menschen wie ich. Für einen Verstandesmenschen wie für einen Gefühlsmenschen wie mich ist die Welt und ist die Menschheit bald nicht mehr auszuhalten…

Thomas Berhnard, “Alte Meister”, 1985

*

Satie:

“Was ist der Mensch? Ein armes Wesen,
auf diese Welt gekommen, um die
andern Menschen zu ärgern.”

Cage:

“The feeling we are

getting nowhere

that is pleasure

which will continue.”
*

“Universities used to be communities; they used to be places where intellectual life really happened. They were also places where avant-garde stuff was happening. And that’s – in England anyway – completely ground to a halt. Universities are largely sold as factories for production of increasingly uninteresting, depressed people wandering around complaining.”

…

“For me, the big problem in politics has always been the problem of motivation – how can you motivate a self to act on some conception of what it believes to be good. We live in a context of overwhelming, de-motivated cynicism, let’s say, which we could talk about separately. But what’s been amazing over the last year is watching how a certain movement caught fire, which to me is a kind of ethico-politico response to a wrong. To put it in a slogan: ‘60s struggles were about a kind of self-liberation, whereas more recent struggles have been about liberation of the Other, or issues of equality or fairness that might not be ones that I directly experience because I live in a state of relative privilege, but ones that I’m prepared to engage with because I think there’s a wrong here which needs to be addressed.”

Simon Critchley, interview on Figure/Ground with Andrew Hines, July 29th, 2012, http://figureground.ca/interviews/simon-critchley/

*

The agent of the spectacle placed on stage as a star is the opposite of the individual, the enemy of the individual in himself as well as in others. Passing into the spectacle as a model for identification, the agent renounces all autonomous qualities in order to identify himself with the general law of obedience to the course of things. The consumption celebrity superficially represents different types of personality and shows each of these types having equal access to the totality of consumption and finding similar happiness there.

The Society of the Spectacle, 61, Guy Debord, 1967.

*