The 'blog Larval Subjects contains a post in which critical theory devoteés are likened to victims of the Stockholm syndrome (said devoteés being, of course, the imprinting captives to the theorists' captors). My friend Rob over at popmatters.com's Marginal Utility offers these remarks.

My two cents: Of late I’ve become convinced that so much of the ( Read more... )

Both Sebald’s Austerlitz and the National Socialist propaganda machine represent a sort of foil of poesis, or a sort of anti-poesis, in the sense that the success of the project in either instance depends on a necessary repression of history’s fundamental becoming. The latter, a particularly disrespectful, authoritarian cousin of poesis, attempts ( Read more... )

Stanley Fish's article, which I discuss in an earlier entry, hits upon something really peculiar about French theory: most every concerned party considers it dead, and yet it continues to inform most every concerned party's critical practice. I have yet to read a recently published article or monograph that limits itself to simply luxuriating in ( Read more... )

I'm not sure what to make of this, but I'm sure it means something, and it augurs ill. Yesterday, I ran to the Borders in the always unwholesome Providence Place Mall to fetch a copy of The Golden Bowl for my girlfriend, and what did I see? - not one, but three hardbound copies of Heidegger's Being and Time on the $5.99 bargain shelf!

I remember ( Read more... )

I cannot help but continue thinking Giorgio Agamben's concept of the state of exception quite apposite when it comes to everything that's going on in the current housing market debacle.

The sovereign's organs, in this case, the Fed and the Treasury, determine the states of exception that lead to thrifty and prudent people getting screwed by the ( Read more... )

Concerning the Stanley Fish review mentioned in my previous post, which, incidentally, appears to have drawn the attention of folks over at Print Culture, my friend, in an e-mail message to me, make the following observations:
The problem with French theory, I think, is its language, which is an even more recondite Newspeak than that spoken by ( Read more... )

Yesterday's online edition of the New York Times contains a review by Stanley Fish of François Cusset's history of French theory in these United States, to be published in English early next month. Fish takes the opportunity to survey the fate of transplanted Gallic innovation from his privileged vantage point from the ivory tower's pinnacle, and ( Read more... )

But, strangely, when you look at the corpse of this tortured man, a particular and curious question arises: if all his disciples, his chief future apostles, if the women who followed him and stood by the cross, if all those who believed in him and worshipped him had seen a corpse like that (and it was bound to be exactly like that) how could they ( Read more... )

In a recent entry in his 'blog, Marginal Utility, over at popmatters.com, my friend Rob expresses some reservations concerning the ideological underpinnings of President Bush's meme, "the ownership society," which propelled many would-be gentry into the housing market, and, eventually, into financial waters well over their heads. Rob points out ( Read more... )

Adorno may have claimed that to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric, but he need not worry. For writing poetry - good poetry - seems nearly impossible these days, if Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century is any indication, especially when it comes to practitioners who belong to my own generation.

I used Legitimate Dangers ( Read more... )