Troy > Recent Status Updates

Paul Wittgenstein from Wittgenstein's Nephew and Joanna from Woodcutters both make their second Sportsnet. move to see the books share a world, even if it's only vaguely fictionalized.

pushes 50 to 54 are a hilarious anti-dog rant. Primo Bernhard.

When I was in the art world, the everyday functioning art world, the important thing wasn't any of the seven events she documents, but the "world" itself.

This book highlights everything I hated about the art world. I think I hate all seven things she focuses on.

Ugh. Die.

Got a little too lost in the historical details for a bit, but now it's intoxicating again.

History, power, knowledge, war, the way the right appropriated race struggle, and the way the State normalizes and accredits and destroys the amateur sciences... all here.

A great section on the rise of a race struggle (fantastic quotes on p.72) in the 17th c. and how that's both appropriated by the State as racism, "proved" by the medical-biological knowledge, and how it also creates a new history of the oppressed which turns into class struggle and drive for revolution, both in the 19th c.

He ends the third section by sketching out the rise of the race theory and it's corresponding race war, which is eventually appropriated to "class war" and which is ALSO appropriated by the State. (The enemy from within.)

From "We have to defend ourselves from society" to "We have to defend society from the other race, which we are bringing into existence."

Again, so current and relevant.

"This discourse is ... asking ... the god of battles to explain the long days of order, labor, peace, and justice. Fury is being asked to explain calm and order."

"Explaining things from below... means... explaining [from] what is most confused, ... most disorderly and most subject to chance, because what is being put forward ... for the interpretation of society ... is the confusion of violence, passions, hatreds... and all the minor incidents that bring about defeats and ensure victories.

So good.
He's talking about the shift from a toughts of the society as a body, to thoughts about binary structures. That is, universalities give way to subjects who fight for their decenered positions; for their own non-universal, but specific rights. This pushes out the millennial drive for "truth." An we see that today, everywhere. Truth is subjective, to a point, or cynically ignored.

Also,I notice that when I'm really reading something, I pull, tug, and roll my hair & leave hair balls everywhere.

Damn. So fantastic & easy to read.
Uh, there are 5 precautions, not 4.
35-6 Is a damn fine summary of Discipline & Power. The next pages are a short analysis of how the bourgeoisie "invented" surveillance.
"We should be looking for a new right that is both antidisciplinary & emancipated from the principle of sovereignty." (40)

His 4 methodological precautions to exploring power are amazing. Esp. his 3rd which is about the individual as created by power. All four are worth contemplating.

BTW, I think it's Foucault's fault that English speaking academics talk shit about science. What Foucault is talking about is not the scientific process, but the shitty atttempt but fields like psychotherapy and economics (and all the social sciences) to claim power by claiming status as "science." Which is bullshit. Science is a process, not a condition.

Foucault has a pretty cool defense of bookish people who would rather spend their time amongst dusty tomes in forgotten libraries. What he wants (to interrogate how power works and operates) is to a) look at forgotten technical expertise and b) singular, localized knowledge. So for example, the plans of prison and factory buildings based on the idea of the panopticon as (a) and the transcripts from prisoners as (b).

Not in love with his interjections (esp. when he inserted his comments into a conversation based on transcripts) but his questions about individualism and community are pretty great, and important to the book.

Not in love with his interjections (esp. when he inserted his comments into a conversation based on transcripts) but his questions about individualism and community are pretty great, and important to the book.

Goddamn it's good. This is the book I've been waiting for.

I'm now part of a reading group that meets on the first Tuesday of every month to talk about 100 pages of various texts.

I'm not loving this. It's slow and dense reading. I can see why Deleuze likes it though.

This book is pissing me off and boring me. After all this great stuff about semantics, he's veered off into Lacan/Freud world

Not loving this. Fine writer, but rambling and puerile.

Still kicking my ass, and still taking me an inordinate amount of time to read, but I'm getting into it.

Onto the second novel of this omnibus: "The Twilight of the Elephant"

Goddamn, this is a pain in the ass. 22 pages took me several hours, and a good amount of time hitting up Google, Wikipedia and other sites.

Stuff I haven't written about: a shitship, incest, Rossini vs. Beethoven, Rocketman, and endless orgies on the good ship Anibus.

Proverbs for Paranoids, 1: You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures.