Saturday, October 27, 2012

On apathy

Every election year, there are people eager to proclaim, quite ignorantly, that they “don’t care about politics.” A response to them, from Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault’s 1971 debate on human nature:

FOUCAULT: Your question is: why am I so interested in politics? But if I were to answer you very simply, I would say this: why shouldn’t I be interested? That is to say, what blindness, what deafness, what density of ideology would have to weigh me down to prevent me from being interested in what is probably the most crucial subject to our existence, that is to say the society in which we live, the economic relations within which it functions, and the system of power which defines the regular forms and the regular permissions and prohibitions of our conduct. The essence of our life consists, after all, of the political functioning of the society in which we find ourselves. 
So I can’t answer the question of why I should be interested; I could only answer it by asking why shouldn’t I be interested?
FONS ELDERS [moderator]: You are obliged to be interested, isn’t that so? 
FOUCAULT: Yes, at least, there isn’t anything odd here which is worth question or answer. Not to be interested in politics, that’s what constitutes a problem. So instead of asking me, you should ask someone who is not interested in politics and then your question would be well-founded, and you would have the right to say “Why, damn it, are you not interested?”

Sunday, October 14, 2012

'I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves."


Wittgenstein. Also, his Blue Book.

Sigh


If you live in Brooklyn, go to the Brooklyn Comics & Graphics Festival on November 10th and tell Chris Ware and Tim Hensley that I love them

I’ll be here in L.A., crying into my unsigned copy of Building Stories

Friday, October 5, 2012

Éminence grise

Thursday, October 4, 2012

You only live twice


John Barry, "A Drop in the Ocean"

Between the devil and the deep blue sea


I rarely go to the movies but last night Andrew and I saw The Master and though I liked it I think I need to mull it over for a while. During the car ride home I went on drunkenly about how it was “totally Freudian” and I don’t know why I feel so embarrassed by that but I do.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Anne Sexton, "The Black Arts"

"A woman who writes feels too much."

America minor


October 13th, 2 pm, Brown auditorium, LACMA - Katy Grannan and Charlie White lecture. Go. I'll be there.

Beautiful, I just want you to know



© CLUB SANDWICH
Maira Gall