Alexander > Recent Status Updates

Never letting anyone tell me that a modern text is "too violent" ever again. Strewth.

the main thing the men do in this book is weep and cry like they're always just sheading tears for one reason or another

Sad. I'm so sad after reading this book, which is about UBI, but is also actually about our capacities to dream and imagine a world other than this, and the diminution of those dreams into a matter of merely surviving the world we've been given. More words to come.

Incredibly good. Much more than just about the UBI, instead it uses it as an index to track entire shifting landscapes of political economy and attitudes towards it. Very US-UK focused so far though, waiting for the 'global' to really kick in.

"Capital requires us to recognise mental illness just enough to maintain a surplus class, but not enough for it to be forced to grant recognition and sufficient support where it is costly."

Federici: "To demand wages ... does not mean to say that if we are paid we will continue to do it. It means precisely the opposite. To say that we want money ... is the first step towards refusing to do it, because the demand for a wage makes our work visible, which is the most indispensable condition to begin to struggle against it."

"The houseworker is the greatest technological invention made by capital in the process of reproduction".

"An Isocratic-Aristotelian definition of politics: what starts when vengence stops".

Going in, I wasn't exactly sure what this book would be about, but now I can say it's about time - specifically the time or times of language, and the deformations to which language subjects time: the way in which the past(s) of language inheres in its present, and so puts precisely that presence of the present in question. Absolutely gripping.

"Expectation creates anæsthesia. Æsthetics tastes improbability. If you wish to live freely, drink singularly. If you wish to live singularly, drink freely."

//

"Taste is a kiss that our mouth gives itself through the intermediary of tasty foods. Suddenly it recognizes itself, becomes conscious of itself, exists for itself."

"Eurydice! What is life to me without her? I sought to create a body, here, now; all I have left is pure abstraction, this soft product of the voice: Eurydice, Eurydice, Eurydice, I so wanted to give you life and all I can do is write philosophy".

Come for the study of sensation. Stay for the discussion of what counts as human and the rich discussion of animals within. Also that is a turtle on the cover!!

A brisk stride through the problems of Western philosophy, as read with an existentialist bent. Wahl is a bit of syncretist, taking bits and pieces from different thinkers and showing what he reckons is necessary from each.

This book is astonishing actually.

I think this book is making me understand The Order of Things better.

"Doesn't all poetry consist in liberating the word from its context? Doesn't all philosophy consist in putting it back?"

They don't let you publish books like this any more.