Holocasting/Fly
Flames flap in the wind as standards
marking spaces in which they with
little thought of tomorrows passing draw
slight succour from yesterday’s loss.
The sun sign silhouetted amidst black
shadows falling across the nightline
dances in the skylight crimson
dresses of evening dinner and wine.
Thundrous roars peak and molotov
cocktails speak freely of time
and light utterances so easily spoken now
in words that will never be found.
Deep red mist opens the ayes of augmentation. Each
yes sign given tales of telling impedimentation. The
sentiment sweeps low and fierce, nipping at the shin
up the pole they go, deep violence coloured rags to
the bull, whips round their ears, leather smell.
Withdrawn, withered looks, stealing hearts
souls flight broken in the backbone of tipped
wings with feather light frequency folds curls
through the air in which, like liquid, the fly
flaps again against the flowers blow.
A/V paper now LIVE!
In another email that came through this week the journal A/V let me know that the paper I gave at the Manchester conference on ‘the event’ is now live on their journal. I have been developing the paper a little more since then as it’s part of an ongoing project that I am working on and the more developed paper was given at the Greenwich University postgraduate conference yesterday, as a keynote address.
That was a strange event, with lots of interesting papers and some, as usual, that I simply didn’t understand, quite often the case in inter-disciplinary conferences. I always find my notes form these conferences to be quite strange, littered as they are with various doodles and occasional sketches and the whole experience of conference going has a peculiar set of affects, from boredom and confusion to inspiration and sideways thoughts. It’s very easy to forget whole swathes of fascinating material as you focus increasingly on single topics, with previous researches put on the shelf and gathering dust until something triggers a connection and suddenly boxes are pulled down and papers strewn everywhere in that search for a particular piece of paper, a particular underlining or note. During the course of that search other things then turn up and the strange world of research becomes close, that strange world in which there is more than you realise in the background to what you do.
The paper, the first section at least, called ‘To survive da’ath’, is available on A/V here.
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR MONU9 MAGAZINE ON EXOTIC URBANISM
I’ve not come across this journal before but a polite email asking me to post this call for submissions on my website seems worth responding to positively - and it looks interesting…
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR MONU9 MAGAZINE ON EXOTIC URBANISM
Events without distinction
Notes on Heidegger - ITM (polemos, deinon and the gathering of distinction)
“war is the father of all and the king of all, and it has shown some as gods and others as human beings, made some slaves and others free” (Heraclitus, Fragment 53) - it is also worth noting something similar is said in Fragment 80, though this is not mentioned by Heidegger.
Heideggers’ translation takes this seemingly socio-political statement and reads it in terms of his central problematic of emergence and appearance. “Confrontation is indeed for all (that comes to presence) the sire (who lets emerge), but (also) for all the preserver that holds sway. For it lets some appear as gods, others as human beings, some it produces (sets forth) as slaves, but others as free” (ITM 471)
The war, the polemos, Heidegger contends, cannot be a mere socio-political fact since this is merely a human fact and it is necessary for the polemos under question to be prior to the human. To ’show some as gods and others as human beings’ the polemos to which Heraclitus directs us “must hold sway before everything divine and human” (ibid). Polemos is not mere human war, it is the distinguishing event that brings forth the human as distinct from the divine. Polemos is thus also not mere divine conflict but prior to the divine as much as it is prior to the human. Polemos is the ground of immortal mortality.
- References are to the Tale Nota Bene edition and marginal page numbers ↩
on smoke break from chasing rainbows
Temporary Autonomous Arts in Brighton (Portslade)
Online Videos by Veoh.com
Collapse Bulletin 7: Publication of Volume IV ‘Concept Horror’
The following announcement arrived today and I encourage anyone interested in philosophy, thinking and life to Collapse.
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We are delighted to announce that Collapse Volume IV will be published May 2008 and is now available for advance purchase online.
Contributors to this volume include: Kristen Alvanson, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman, Michel Houellebecq, Oleg Kulik, Thomas Ligotti, Quentin Meillassoux, China Miéville, Reza Negarestani, Benjamin Noys, Rafani, Steven Shearer, George Sieg, Eugene Thacker, Keith Tilford, Todosch, James Trafford.
Collapse IV features a series of investigations by philosophers, writers and artists into Concept Horror. Contributors address the existential, aesthetic, theological and political dimensions of horror, interrogate its peculiar affinity with philosophical thought, and uncover the horrors that may lie in wait for those who pursue rational thought beyond the bounds of the reasonable. This unique volume continues Collapse’s pursuit of indisciplinary miscegenation, the wide-ranging contributions interacting to produce common themes and suggestive connections. In the process a rich and compelling case emerges for the intimate bond between horror and philosophical thought.
Naive notes on crowned anarchy
To call life itself just or unjust, to conceive life as samsara or suffering, is to judge life and to do so from outside life, from some position which is the ground of a judgement. To encounter life, respond to it, is inevitable and not all responses are equal, this much is inevitable. Too often, however, this encounter and response is thought of as a judgement. To not judge does not mean to not respond or that any response is as good as any other. There are different responses in life, different lives if you like - or different types of life. Life produces its own end, life drives itself to death but in the encounter with death there is another space of response, this time one that shows us the two fundamental ways of response, affirmation and negation, more life or never ending death.
How am I to think of life? The philosopher must ask this question. They must, moreover, continue to ask this question and to encounter the force of this question with responses – the philosopher must not simply ask an idle question but encounter the problem of the question, the problem the question arises from, responding with thought, with emotion, with passion, with action. Encounter and response constitute the activity of thought and living, though too often this dynamic to-and-fro is congealed, by the social, into regulated habits, pre-formed responses such as the response of the subject, ‘I think…’. Living is a poor name for the habits and habitats of the human. We are all, inevitably, products of the social, products of the inhuman and yet we are not inevitably condemned to remain nothing but product, commodity, object. It is not a matter of striving to become a subject since the subject is that which is subservient, the subject of the monarch. Rather it is a matter of striving for monarchy itself, becoming a crown within life but not a ruler, judge or controller. Crowned anarchy, this is the watchword, a monarch of creation, a singular moment that adds to the abundance of singular moments. In more traditional terms, this is the assumption of an imperative to autonomy, the self (auto) lawmaking (nomos) reality.
Revision for Nietzsche and Modern European Philosophy
For my 3rd year students in NMEP. (This is just a brief and partial account of the discussion today and students are welcome to continue the discussion here on on the WebCT bulletin board if they want a little more privacy, this is a public site after all.)
Today we discussed the way in which we think the subject by exploring the problems involved in the idea of ‘loving a robot/loving a simulation/loving a simulacrum’ and how these might be teased apart. A large part of our understanding of both Klossowski and Deleuze’s works on Nietzsche involve us in thinking about the way in which there is a problem for them, what exactly it is that motivates them, as it were, to write and think in the way they do, particularly when the initial impression when confronted by these two works (Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle:NVC and Nietzsche and Philosophy:NP) is one of disorientation. As we approach an exam we need to supplement the detailed exegetical work done in the essays and the reading seminars with a ’step back’ that enables us to get a broad sense of dynamics and lines of thought. To that end it is important to remember, I suggested, that Nietzsche is one of the ‘masters of suspicion’ (along with Marx and Freud - the phrase itself originates form Paul Ricoeur) and that both Klossowski and Deleuze begin form a position congruent with such suspicion in that they begin thinking by distrusting the way we think and speak. We use words and as we use them assume we know what they mean, until we are asked what they mean when we find confusion and disagreement. The words we use are capable of possessing us with the feeling that we know something, they possess a sense (or affect, feeling) of sense that we need to be suspicious of in order to begin to think critically. This doers not mean we simply throw out our intuitive relation to meanings and the sense of things, since such a rejection would also imply that we somehow knew what it was we were meaning and now reject it. Uncritical rejection is no better than uncritical possession. Thus the task is to ask, how might we think about the concepts of subject when the language and sense of the concept already exists, how might we think, as it were, in spite of the possession of sense. To do this, I suggested, both Klossowski and Deleuze attempt something we can think of as a reframing of the questions, a redrawing of the lines of debate. This idea of a reframing of the problem is perhaps simplifying things but for now, as a kind of working device or ‘rule of thumb’ to enable us to develop understanding (what is called a ‘heuristic‘), it will suffice.
Blu19
This is an old Real audio radio programme I made. I’ve been thinking of doing some more work with sound and so dug this out and had a listen and I still find it interesting, so it has an audience of 1 at least 
Blu19 real audio file (right click to save-as)
If anyone can convert it to an MP3 then that would be cool (I don’t have an app on my machine and am not about to buy one just for this one task) - you can upload files to the anonymous FTP server at razorsmile.org if you do happen to convert it…