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 [...]
Filed under: art critique | Leave a Comment
Tags: allegory, artworld, auctions, contemporary art, eBay, memory, miró, picasso, twombly, warhol
the strange celebrity
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 [...]
Filed under: cultural criticism | Leave a Comment
Tags: alain badiou, boy george, celebrity, david bowie, eccentricty, iggy pop, king of pop, lou reed, marilyn manson, michael jackson, philosophy of michael jackson, popular culture, strange celebrities, surreal numbers
A*theism
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 [...]
Filed under: apocalypse, biopolitics, cultural criticism, politics, religion | Leave a Comment
Tags: natural science
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 [...]
Filed under: Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, Philosophy, cultural criticism, politics | Leave a Comment
Tags: criticism, hangul, korea, korean, proper name, transliteration
songdo
The city (with all that belongs to it— art, literature, culture, philosophy — these are all its appurtenances, apparatuses, excrescences) is perhaps the greatest work of humankind. But the planned city, tailor-made to the reason of the times, only reveals the stupidity of the times: the stupidity that is the innermost, inertial kernel of its [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: ghetto globalization, global academic complex, incheon, new songdo city, planned cities, reason, songdo, south korea, yonsei university
allegory of reading
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. [...]
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Tags: french literature, le Clézio, onishta, onitsha
