Archive for August, 2009
Our current task
For current left political theories, there seem to be two possible foundations, two basic structures out of which develop distinct justifications for what at first appears to be a similar politics. One structure takes mathematics as its basis, the other hermeneutics. One bases its politics in an ontology in turn based on multiplicity. The other [...]
Filed under: Badiou, Deleuze, Difference, culture, evolution, multitude, political theory, politics | Leave a Comment
Automatic Thinking
Across what counts as the main elements of the modern psyche, the tendency toward automatic thinking is too high. By this I don’t mean what behavioral psychologists call a negative thought that comes to mind over and over during a day or in a specific situation. The tendency toward automatic thinking is not psychological; it [...]
Filed under: Richard Dawkins, anonymity, evolution, gossip, politics, scientism | Leave a Comment
demectomy
It is no accident that so many reality shows begin with 12 contestants. One genealogy of the reality show might indeed trace it back to the jury system, and the odd practice, so characteristic of the anxieties of liberal democracy, of sequestering. The reality show, indeed, brings to its breaking point a paradox endemic to modern [...]
Filed under: Literary Theory, Philosophy, biopolitics, politics, reality show | Leave a Comment
Tags: biopolitics, hannah arendt, jury, reality show, sequestering
Ghost and Crime
If the psychic has suddenly become such an important television personality, it is not only because of the rise of a vague “new age” spirituality. Nor is it that the psychic is essentially, radically telegenic: that the psychic’s vision is nothing but a form of tele-vision, and thus coincides perfectly with the medium that would [...]
Filed under: biopolitics, cultural criticism | Leave a Comment
Tags: christian marazzi, creativity, crime, detective, Hobbes, lydecker, medium, multitude, post-fordism, psychic, psychic detective, sovereign, television, visionary
“the sweatshops of hollywood”
The reality show is the Fordism of Post-Fordism: the attempt to impose the factory model of production, with its gestures of surveillance and control brought to a perverse refinement (the contestants are given only alcohol and no food, and are deprived of sleep for the sake of making them work badly) , on precisely those [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment
Tags: biopolitics, ernesto laclau, heidi klum, marxism, operaismo, paolo virno, post-fordism, project runway, reality show, roberto esposito, workerism
