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"As ever, weakness had taken refuge in a belief in miracles."
The prof is extending this unit until next week, which is great because there are no new readings, leaving me more time to send out resumes and freak out about my thesis data sets. The FAO can suck it, but the Philippines' Bureau of Agricultural Statistics is a friendly fellow, he can stick around.
Okay, what, Ideologies/Mythologies. Unit 2: Ideology & the Political-Theological
Lefort, "The Revolution as New Religion"
- Of the French revolution: When they left religion, they just became religious about something else. By believing in themselves instead of God, they brought the divine down to earth, within them.
- Quinet critizes religion, but he runs off with its metaphors.
- "All want their acts of violence, their iniquities, and their ferocity to be adored as sacred." Hello, Pevensies building the Narnian empire! Hello, Uther Pendragon! Ah, the legitimization of cruelty.
(- Relatedly, in confession, there is contrition. By articulating your trespasses, you are halfway to absolution, or at the very least you feel you are. This kind of reminds me of the awful time I had distributing stipends during the summer. Before they could get their stipends, they had to give me their travel rubbish (viz. boarding passes, airport tax, departure tax, whatever else), but it's not so easy. People's itineraries changed, the rubbish they gave me was not the rubbish I needed, and on top of that, they'd give me the whole sob story of their difficult travel. These stories will not soften my heart! Even if they did, I can't do anything about it, so in short, I do not care! Just give me the documents I need! I don't need to understand that you tried your best to catch your flight. I'm sure you did! But I do not have the authority to transform your sob stories into quicker stipend processing!)
Lefort, "The Permanence of the Theological-Political?"
- Symbolic vs. Imaginary. What is intangible is not necessarily unreal.
- "What philosophical thought strives to preserve is the experience of a difference which goes beyond differences of opinion; the experience of a difference which is not at the disposal of human beings, whose advent does not take place within human history, and which cannot be abolished therein; the experience of a difference which relates human beings to their humanity, and which means that their humanity cannot be self-contained, that it cannot set its own limits, and that it cannot absorb its origins and ends into those limits. Every religion states in its own way that human society can only open on to itself by beng held in an opening it did not create. Philosophy says the same thing, but religion said it first, albeit in terms which philosophy cannot accept."
- "Human beings populate the invisible with the things they see, naively invent a time that exists before time, organize a space that exists behind their space: they base the plot on the most general conditions of their lives."
- The following is talking about which of my beloved fictional monarchs?: Power is an empty place; it is a thing implied. Only its manifestations are truly tangible. "[P]ower belongs to no one; that those who exercise power do not possess it; that they do not, indeed, embody it; that the exercise of power requires a periodic and repeated contest; that the authority of those vested with power is created and re-created as a result of the manifestation of the will of the people."
(- It is an empty place because it has no positive determination: it is something else's negative space. It can be easy to mistake it for positive, the way the optical illusion can show both a couple kissing and a chalice, though it is the same picture either way. Unlike the illusion, however, power is not a relative thing.)
Marx, "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte"
- “In like manner the beginner who has learnt a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he has assimilated the spirit of the new language and can produce freely in it only when he removes in it without remembering the old and forgets in it his ancestral tongue.”
- "As ever, weakness had taken refuge in a belief in miracles."
How did I forget to glee that Leverage is (supposedly) set in Boston? Oh well, I glee about it now. Boston! \o/ Oh well, Portland is not extremely different from Boston. D'you guys ever catch that X-Files episode that was 'set in Worcester'? Because HAHAHAHAHA that's funny.
I just finished catching up up to the 'Two Live Crew Job' and man, what a great episode, if only because they get to meet their selves from a parallel universe. And also Parker makes a new friend! Her and that guy who is her from the other crew have lockpicking competitions! Aww, please continue hanging out and being delightful as such! Eliot and the hot Mossad chick do an inventory of their scars before they have hot kinky sex! I approve also.
I still don't give a shit about Nate/Sophie. I mean, I like Sophie, but Nate is a honkin' bore. I like him as part of the family, but as an individual, mehhhhh. Give me adorable group shenanigans any day!
Okay, what, Ideologies/Mythologies. Unit 2: Ideology & the Political-Theological
Lefort, "The Revolution as New Religion"
- Of the French revolution: When they left religion, they just became religious about something else. By believing in themselves instead of God, they brought the divine down to earth, within them.
- Quinet critizes religion, but he runs off with its metaphors.
- "All want their acts of violence, their iniquities, and their ferocity to be adored as sacred." Hello, Pevensies building the Narnian empire! Hello, Uther Pendragon! Ah, the legitimization of cruelty.
(- Relatedly, in confession, there is contrition. By articulating your trespasses, you are halfway to absolution, or at the very least you feel you are. This kind of reminds me of the awful time I had distributing stipends during the summer. Before they could get their stipends, they had to give me their travel rubbish (viz. boarding passes, airport tax, departure tax, whatever else), but it's not so easy. People's itineraries changed, the rubbish they gave me was not the rubbish I needed, and on top of that, they'd give me the whole sob story of their difficult travel. These stories will not soften my heart! Even if they did, I can't do anything about it, so in short, I do not care! Just give me the documents I need! I don't need to understand that you tried your best to catch your flight. I'm sure you did! But I do not have the authority to transform your sob stories into quicker stipend processing!)
Lefort, "The Permanence of the Theological-Political?"
- Symbolic vs. Imaginary. What is intangible is not necessarily unreal.
- "What philosophical thought strives to preserve is the experience of a difference which goes beyond differences of opinion; the experience of a difference which is not at the disposal of human beings, whose advent does not take place within human history, and which cannot be abolished therein; the experience of a difference which relates human beings to their humanity, and which means that their humanity cannot be self-contained, that it cannot set its own limits, and that it cannot absorb its origins and ends into those limits. Every religion states in its own way that human society can only open on to itself by beng held in an opening it did not create. Philosophy says the same thing, but religion said it first, albeit in terms which philosophy cannot accept."
- "Human beings populate the invisible with the things they see, naively invent a time that exists before time, organize a space that exists behind their space: they base the plot on the most general conditions of their lives."
- The following is talking about which of my beloved fictional monarchs?: Power is an empty place; it is a thing implied. Only its manifestations are truly tangible. "[P]ower belongs to no one; that those who exercise power do not possess it; that they do not, indeed, embody it; that the exercise of power requires a periodic and repeated contest; that the authority of those vested with power is created and re-created as a result of the manifestation of the will of the people."
(- It is an empty place because it has no positive determination: it is something else's negative space. It can be easy to mistake it for positive, the way the optical illusion can show both a couple kissing and a chalice, though it is the same picture either way. Unlike the illusion, however, power is not a relative thing.)
Marx, "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte"
- “In like manner the beginner who has learnt a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he has assimilated the spirit of the new language and can produce freely in it only when he removes in it without remembering the old and forgets in it his ancestral tongue.”
- "As ever, weakness had taken refuge in a belief in miracles."
How did I forget to glee that Leverage is (supposedly) set in Boston? Oh well, I glee about it now. Boston! \o/ Oh well, Portland is not extremely different from Boston. D'you guys ever catch that X-Files episode that was 'set in Worcester'? Because HAHAHAHAHA that's funny.
I just finished catching up up to the 'Two Live Crew Job' and man, what a great episode, if only because they get to meet their selves from a parallel universe. And also Parker makes a new friend! Her and that guy who is her from the other crew have lockpicking competitions! Aww, please continue hanging out and being delightful as such! Eliot and the hot Mossad chick do an inventory of their scars before they have hot kinky sex! I approve also.
I still don't give a shit about Nate/Sophie. I mean, I like Sophie, but Nate is a honkin' bore. I like him as part of the family, but as an individual, mehhhhh. Give me adorable group shenanigans any day!