New Year, New Post

[lynn_koh]

I spent much of last year watching the movies of Wong Kar Wai and Fruit Chan.  Does anybody know what happened to "My Blueberry Nights?", Wong's first U.S. film?
I finally finished Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, hitting my goal of finishing it in 2007.  Except for the Preface, but he wrote that last anyway, so it's not even a real preface.

There

Comments

[wittlebrudder]

Haha you're funny. I was looking forward to Norah Jones in My Blueberry Nights too. Don't know what's going on with it. Also, why is your font so huge?

[owencenli]

blueberry nights has not been released in the U.S. yet, but is available overseas i think. thanks for this essay on hegel. is dialectics related at all to contradiction, like in Mao's essay about primary and secondary contradiction?

[lynn_koh]

Mao's conception of primary and secondary contradiction is his, although the idea that contradiction is the moving force of history or the central way to understand a situation would be a Marxist approach that has its roots in Hegel. You could say that one road into dialectical thought is by throwing out the supposed "law of non-contradiction", that if A is true, then Not A is false, or that A is not Not A.

For instance, Cabral's statement that struggle is the art of turning weakness into strength; this as it turns out is something like a "dialectical reversal", in which one thing turns into its opposite -- as I mentioned in my post, oppressions are completely different, and then completely the same. Or, the U.S. getting the upper hand on the Soviet Union by training the mujaheddin to fight against the foreign infidels in Afghanistan.

contradiction and dialectics

[lynn_koh]

Jameson's take on this:

"But the dialectic is in reality the study of all these types of negation togther (along with their contradictions with each other); thus, it includes both contrariety and contradiction..., but also the logical difference between them (a difference which is at once both contrariety and contradiction, a sublation of both which is at one and the same time their synthesis and their differentiation)"

As concrete example he describes"characterizations of Utopia in opposition to each other (the city Utopia versus the country Utopia for example);...that seemingly absolute negation of Utopia which is the anti-Utopia;...Utopia as radical or absolute difference from the present as such"

Re: contradiction and dialectics

[owencenli]

arg! i wrote a long response and lost it. anyways, my basic point is that these all these examples seem like 'parlor tricks' as you say because the negation and the negation of negation seem like restatements of subjective presuppositions-

the way i think about primary and secondary contradiction is similar - the chamber of commerce as representative of capital is in contradiction with labor, but as small-time capitalists, can unify with labor against big-box stores, for instance- particularly since labor often does not seek to unionize small businesses, a chamber of commerce dominated by small local businesses can temporarily form a united front with labor around the primary contradiction with, say, Wal-Mart-

the other way i think about primary and secondary contradiction is as applied within a finite, specific group- a christian denomination can lean left or right depending on whether they focus on abortion or poverty as a primary issue, for instance- primary contradiction is similar to the concept of a wedge issue-

[owencenli]

hey where do you get fruit chan movies

Fruit Chan movies

[lynn_koh]

1. You can borrow from my partner. She has Little Cheung, Hong Kong Hollywood, Made in Hong Kong, Dumplings, and Durian Durian with no subtitles.

2. yesasia.com, half.com

That's all.

--LK

Re: Fruit Chan movies

[owencenli]

hm i don't necessarily want to buy them, was hoping i could rent them. borrowing them would be great as well. which is the best one to borrow first? made in hong kong?