Wednesday, November 26, 2008

***morons

A real estate slogan: Potential in its purest form

posted by Geist @ 9:56 am

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Rathbone Place Coterie

A year after his first marriage his first work, Poetical Sketches, was published at the expense of Flaxman and of some dilettanti friends, who were accustomed to gather at the Rev. Mr. Matthews', of 28, Rathbone Place. No. 28 is now a chair and umbrella mender's shop, but was then a very fashionable house on the most northernly fringe of London, upon the way to "the Jew's Harp house and Green Man."

W.B. Yeats, "Introduction", William Blake - Collected Poems, London, Routledge, 2002, p. xxvi

posted by Geist @ 6:40 pm

Eigentum am Lebenslauf 0.2

Der Gegensatz zwischen der reinen Theorie des auf den hermeneutischen Kult der Werke der Gründungsväter (wenn nicht der eigenen Schriften) festgelegten lector einerseits und der empirischen Forschung und der Methodologie andererseits ist durch und durch sozialer Natur. Er ist angelegt in den institutionellen und mentalen Strukturen des Berufs, verwurzelt in der Verteilung von Ressourcen, Stellen, Kompetenzen, und nicht umsonst genügt eine einzige Methode (z.B. die Konversationsanalyse oder die status attainment research) schon fast, um ganze Schulen zu begründen.

The opposition between pure theory grounded in the lector's hermeneutic cult of founding fathers' (if not one's own) works on the one hand, and empirical research and methodology on the other hand, is of a thoroughly social nature. It is built into the institutional and mental structures of the profession, rooted in the distribution of resources, tenure, competencies, and not for nothing a single method (e.g. conversation analysis or status attainment research) can almost suffice to found an entire school of thought.

P. Bourdieu, Reflexive Anthropologie, ibid., p.198, transl. mine.

posted by Geist @ 6:24 pm 0 comments

Monday, November 24, 2008

0.01

verschlimmbesserung = imworsement

posted by Anonymous @ 6:04 pm 0 comments

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

yo-yo stampede 0.2

Die Doktrin des Materialismus hat das 19. Jahrhundert umgebracht. Der sachliche Blick ist auch unrealistisch, weil sich alles bewegt, und es bewegt sich nicht aus sachlichen Gründen.

The doctrine of materialism killed the 19th century. The objective vantage point is also unrealistic, because everything is in motion, and it moves not for objective reasons.

"Strand of Fate". Heiner Müller in conversation with Alexander Kluge, in: Chronicle of Feelings, Vol 1, p. 101

posted by Anonymous @ 8:02 pm 0 comments

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

ARLANC 1.70

One: 12mb

posted by Geist @ 1:04 pm

dialectic yo-yos 0.1

Myth and Reason:

Die Theorie des rationalen Handelns ist ein typisches Beispiel für die scholastic fallacy, den gewöhnlichen Trugschluß der professionellen Hüter von logos und Logik, der darin besteht, "die Dinge der Logik für die Logik der Dinge zu halten", wie Marx über Hegel gesagt hat.

The rational actor theory is a typical example of the scholastic fallacy, of the habitual false conclusion of the professional guardians of logos and logic, which is "to mistake the objects of logic for the logic of objects", as Marx said about Hegel.
P. Bourdieu, Reflexive Anthropologie, Suhrkamp, 2006, p.156, transl. mine.

posted by Geist @ 10:14 am 0 comments

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Of mythic beasts untold

For Diego M and Barack O: "the middle betwixt"

[...] and which Dionysus of angels, will have several spirits for several countries, men, offices, etc., which live about them, and as so many assisting powers cause their operations; will have, in a word, innumerable, as many of them as there be stars in the skies. Marsilius Ficinus seems to second this opinion, out of Plato, or from himself, I know not [...] but it is most likely from Plato, for he, relying wholly on Socrates [...] made nine kinds of them; which opinion, belike, Socrates took from Pythagoras, and he from Trismegistus, he from Zoroaster: 1, God; 2, Ideae; 3, Intelligences; 4, Archangels; 5, Angels; 6, Devils; 7, Heroes; 8, Principalities; 9, Princes: of which some were absolutely good, as gods, some bad, some indifferent inter deos et homines [between Gods and men], as heroes and daemons, which ruled men, and were called genii, or as Proclus and Iamblichus will, the middle betwixt God and men [...] which commanded and swayed kings and countries [...]

Robert Burton, Some Anatomies of Melancholy, Penguin, pp.26-27

posted by Geist @ 8:50 pm 0 comments

Boil 2.07

“He talked about the stars you see at night, say when you’re driving from Des Moines to Lincoln on Route 80 and the car breaks down, the way they do, maybe it’s the oil or the radiator, maybe it’s a flat tire, and you get out and get the jack and the spare tire out of the trunk and change the tire, maybe half an hour, at most, and when you’re done you look up and see the sky full of stars. The Milky Way. He talked about star athletes. That’s a different kind of star, he said, and he compared them to movie stars, though as he said, the life of an athlete is generally much shorter. A star athlete might last 15 years at best, whereas a movie star could go on for 40 or 50 years if he or she started young. Meanwhile, any star you could see from the side of Route 80 . . . might have been dead for millions of years, and the traveler who gazed up at it would never know. It might be a live star or it might be a dead star. Sometimes, depending on your point of view, he said, it doesn’t matter, since the stars you see at night exist in the realm of semblance. They are semblances, the same way dreams are semblances.”

R. Bolano, 2666, excerpt and review found here

posted by Geist @ 10:41 am 0 comments

Saturday, November 08, 2008

this is your captain speaking

Űberkommt mich heute, wo man zumeist mit einer Vielzahl von Menschen auf das entsetzlichste zusammengezwängt und von der beständigen Betulichkeit des Personals aus der Fassung gebracht wird, nicht selten eine kaum mehr einzudämmende Flugangst...

Nowadays, when usually one is quite dreadfully crammed in together with one's fellow passengers, and aggravated by the unwanted attentions of the cabin crew, I am frequently beset with a scarcely containable fear of flying...

WG Sebald, Die Ausgewanderten, transl. M. Hulse.

posted by Geist @ 9:26 am 0 comments

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

eigentum am lebenslauf 0.1

Revolution nennt man unter Astronomen die große Bewegung des Sonnensystems um die Milchstrasse. Die braucht kleckerweise 250 Millionen Jahre. Aber immerhin: die Dinosaurier und damit kleine Lebewesen, die neben ihnen wohnten und unsere Vorfahren waren, haben schon mal die Milchstrasse damals von der andern Seite gesehen. Und Sie merken, daß das sehr weit entfernt ist als Erfahrungsgehalt. Und wenn Sie das nehmen, dann bin ich von Wichtigkeit. Sonst bin ich nicht wichtig [...] Unterschätzen Sie das nicht, das ist eine Waffe, nicht wichtig zu sein. [...] Es gibt eine Geschichte, an der ich sehr hänge: Warum entgingen die Frösche der großen Extinktion?

Among astronomers the enormous movement of the the solar system around the milky way is called revolution. It takes, one tiny step after the other, 250 million years. But at any rate, the dinosaurs and with them small beings, who lived alongside them, and were our ancestors, have seen the milky way from the other side. And you do realise that, as an experience, this is very far away from where we are now. And if you look at it that way, then I am of importance. Otherwise I am not important. [,,,] Do not underestimate this, to be unimportant is a weapon. [...] There is a story to which I am quite attached: „Why did frogs escape the great extinction?“


Alexander Kluge, in: Andreas Ammer, Eigentum am Lebenslauf. Das Gesamte im Werk des Alexander Kluge. Transcript, Track 13.


posted by Anonymous @ 4:40 pm 0 comments

Heraclite l'obscure
















We must expose the myths...

posted by Geist @ 10:50 am

File 1.99

Infinite Thought's Scratchings on Conjuncture or, "Dude, where's my economy?"

posted by Geist @ 9:05 am 0 comments

Monday, November 03, 2008

überdeutliche Klarheit 0.1

Plötzlich sehe ich alles mit überdeutlicher Klarheit. Ich habe alle Konditionierungen abgelegt, so daß ich die Szene auf dem Kopf stehend wahrnehme, so wie sie wirklich auf die Netzhaut fällt. Ich merke zum erstenmal, was es heißt, mitten in einer irrationalen Paranoia cool zu sein. Vor dem Trip hätte mich ihre Aggressivität beunruhigt, ich hätte versucht, zu erklären, zu verhandeln, Kompromisse zu schließen.

Suddenly I see everything with unusual clarity. I did cast off all conditionings, so that I perceive the scene as standing on its head, the way it actually falls on the retina. I realise for the first time what it means to be cool in the middle of an irrational paranoia. Before the trip I would have been worried by their aggressiveness, I would have tried to explain, negotiate, compromise.

Bernward Vesper, Die Reise, S. 222

posted by Anonymous @ 2:57 pm 0 comments

Sunday, November 02, 2008

posted by Geist @ 6:42 pm