The last quote today, I promise. But it’s too good not to be shared:
The rest of the article is also brilliant.
A Brilliant Link
Opinions, art, debate
Opinions, art, debate
The last quote today, I promise. But it’s too good not to be shared:
The rest of the article is also brilliant.
Clarissa's Blog 
Right the silent gloating and insistence on “unmournability”. That is what I have experienced whenever I’ve tried to tell my own historical story. Something wrong with the Anglo West.
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Anglos won’t like this article as they have a hard time with self-criticism, but I agree that it is spot on. It sees the Anglos and their tendencies for what they are, and the blind spots.
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I’m not sure if you recognized the writing, but that’s the War Nerd.
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http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2015/01/slavoj-i-ek-charlie-hebdo-massacre-are-worst-really-full-passionate-intensity
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I noticed something similar to what the article describes, though not of anglosaxon circles circles precisely. There’s a lot of young writers/journalists in Lithuania, and I’ve noticed a pattern where one would publicly decry an opponent or whole field of research entirely on the basis of a single book. This would typically be a good book, original and thought-provoking. I’m guessing that a kind of starry-eyed “it all makes sense now!” feeling overrides any judgement of their own. I’ve been calling such incidents “people of the book” since, and always wondered if reading the Bible way back when it was the only book around could have had any similarity to these kind of, uh, revelatory events.
Also, a strange tidbit. English francophobia is supposed to be well-ingrained specifically at the level of the ‘graduate seminar clergy’, but one of the problems he calls out is someone make too big a deal out of Lacan? I have limited experience of the graduate seminar left, but I’m pretty sure french authors are held in pretty high regard there.
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I noticed the seeming inconsistency about Lacan, as well. Postmodernism itself is/was basically French. It’s a muddled mix of melted down ideas, coming from Paris society and its idea of politics and chic. At the same time, the way the Anglos understand it and apply it is without the irony that must have been essential to the French way of thinking. French philosophy is like the high fashion of the Paris catwalk. The dresses are cut obviously too short and unevenly, the fabric is way too transparent and what you see is not designed to be worn on the street. It’s just testing ideas. But the Anglos apply these ideas very woodenly and with heavy-handed insistence about what is deemed politically right.
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At the very end, he talks about the “alleged brutality of the French Revolution.” He had me until then, and I agreed with almost the entire thing, but that word “alleged” stuck with me.
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Of course the French revolution was brutal rather than pretty. The degree to which we want to allege that others are brutal will also depend on our own sense of instilled normality and feelings of self-righteousness. I think the problem with the contemporary left is that they imagine a world without brutality whilst at the same time being often quite brutal themselves. For instance, if you forbid someone to mourn their lost past or their dead, you are extracting a great deal of blood from them. I mean quite literally that the person who harbors tremendous grief but has been denied legimation in the social sphere may die prematurely. It’s very stressful on the body and soul to walk around with such feelings of immense denial of one’s basic human emotions.
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http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-consistent-voice-for-freedom-of.html
The people who have LESS “relevancy” seem to be those who attempt to escape from the relevancy of Sacred Texts and, chagrinned, find they are more relevant
than they had hoped by virtue of the fact they are considered Sacred.
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http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-consistent-voice-for-freedom-of.html
The people who have LESS “relevancy” seem to be those who attempt to escape from the relevancy of Sacred Texts and, chagrinned, find they are more relevant
than the modernists had hoped.
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Why are you repeating your comments? 🙂 🙂
Just one is already superfluous. 🙂
“The people who have LESS “relevancy” seem to be those who attempt to escape from the relevancy of Sacred Texts and, chagrinned, find they are more relevant
than the modernists had hoped.”
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