"The Mohists were dour people whose ears were open to the demands of justice rather than to the appeal of love."

"The change is possible. So, what do we consider today possible? Just follow the media. On the one hand in technology and sexuality everything seems to be possible. You can travel to the moon. You can become immortal by biogenetics. You can have sex with animals or whatever. But look at the fields of society and economy. There almost everything is ( Read more... )

hope is a tricky question. if you mean changing the status quo in favor of the oppressed, then i do not see a lot of this possibility in the states and i see little of it elsewhere in the face of *both* american hegemony and extreme right ideologies. and yet people do revolt in some countries and it's just a fact. but it is the responsibility of ( Read more... )

wow, i never thought the line 'history is written by the victors' was that cryptic....

***

so here's what i was trying to say about the tragic ground of existence: i actually do think that to minimize suffering, one simply cannot construe it as a-historical, universal, etc. to me, this is really crucial and the talk about the 'otherwise' made me ( Read more... )

"These days, intellectuals don't have a very good "press," I believe I can employ that word in a rather precise sense. This is not the moment to say that one is not an intellectual; besides, I would just provoke a smile. I am an intellectual. If I were asked for my conception of what I do, the strategist being the man who says, "What difference ( Read more... )

No one has the right to say, "Revolt for me; the final liberation of all men depends on it." But I am not in agreement with anyone who would say, "It is useless for you to revolt; it is always going to be the same thing." One does not dIctate to those who risk their lives facing a power. Is one right to revolt, or not? Let us leave the question ( Read more... )

so.... with regard to my deceptively humble relationship with philosophy--how i often don't see myself doing it--perhaps i spent way too much time thinking precisely about the singularity of some stances and how traumatic histories (trauma more in the sense of fanon, which was brilliant) overdetermine what one says. my views on this are bleak, so ( Read more... )

Take your battered soul, wear it as a crown
All that numbs you
Stare into the sun, the blind relief
All that numbs you now
As the years roll into one, only numbers change
The world revolving around your spinning head

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5v2ljEnkyg

“While I was in the next room, I heard a child who was afraid of the dark call out: ‘Do speak to me, Auntie! I’m frightened!’ ‘Why, what good would that do? You can’t see me.’ To this the child replied: ‘If someone speaks, things lighten up’”.

so i finally watched 'incendies,' which r raved about... i understand completely why he said it was like a greek tragedy. i don't even know what to say, i really don't. but certainly levinas' stance towards the palestinians is hardly forgivable and makes you wonder, once again, how such 'little mistakes' creep into one's otherwise grandiose thought ( Read more... )