Brian > Recent Status Updates

Jesus Christ!

"Is there no difference between 'telling people to change their desires' and asking ourselves what we want, why we want it, and what it is we want to want? Must the transformation of desire be a disciplinary project (willfully altering our desires in line with our politics) or can it be an emancipatory one (setting our desires free from politics)?"

"The question posed by radical self-love movements is not whether there is a right to sex (there isn't), but whether there is a duty to transfigure, as best we can, our desires."

The more I read of Ralph Ellison, and about Ralph Ellison, the less I like him. He comes off as pompous, reactionary, inflexible. But passages like this make me doubt that assessment. Speaking of cultural pluralism in the American experience...

"It is very difficult in this country to find a pure situation. Usually when you find some assertion of purity, you are dealing with historical, if not cultural ignorance."