Archive for July, 2009
Critique traces an idea that shimmers, barely perceptible, in an artwork. Critics may accomplish this skoteinoscopy by making a correspondence between the artwork and one of several simulacra. They either relate it to a complex of commitments and fantasies called the “artist” or show the work’s inner relation to an intractable philosophical question; a certain [ READ MORE ]
Most celebrities are relatively simple. If the location of celebrity of is the triune relationship between the divine, the heroic, and the universal, the ordinary celebrity involves a simple connection with an aspect of this relationship. We, in turn, connect with the celebrity through this connection. The celebrity type involves a certain conflation of an [ READ MORE ]
One way in which religion is more rational than science. It says simply “because” and offers no further reasons for submitting to its code. The arbitrariness of the content of God’s will coincides with a historical view. These habits, customs, names, and — even — reasons have no other ground than the demand to submit [ READ MORE ]
Watching an American detective show with Korean subtitles, set in the Korea town of Las Vegas, I became witness to a most remarkable sleight of hand: the name 박 (Pak), anglicized into “Park,” became “바크” (pak’ŭ). A slight difference shatters the propriety of the proper name: a most remarkable property theft. Having passed through [ READ MORE ]
I was reading J.M.G. le Clézio’s extraordinary novel, and I began to wonder whether the place named in the title was real. And so I did what people do these days. I meant to type Onitsha, but my fingers, or was it my mind, slipped: I typed Onishta instead. Only a few hits came up. [ READ MORE ]
