Norman Mailer once said that at a certain age, we all have the face we deserve. The face doesn’t lie. The face is universal. We wear a face, it doesn’t wear us. The distinction is crucial. In Deleuze and Guattari’s work on the face in A Thousand Plateaus, entitled, Year Zero: Faciality, we find a … Continue reading »
Mysticism, Sufism and Positive Unknowing
I’ve been thinking about whether my spirituality can be classified as mystical. At the outset, it’s important to note that I define mysticism as a serious form of spiritual practice, but one that does not rely on tradition necessarily. But what is mysticism? I’ve seen two different, albeit similar types: The first is what I … Continue reading »
What is a Contradiction? Badiou’s Theory of the Subject
In a previous post on Badiou’s Theory of the Subject, I described how the subject disappears under the chain of the signifiers, and how the masses inhabit the dimension of the Lacanian real. In this post, I’m going to dig deeper into Badiou’s text by looking at his wrestling with the concept of contradiction and … Continue reading »
Martin Luther King – From Everyman to Blank Screen
On the occurrence of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we once again reflect on his legacy and meaning for today. My contention is that King’s legacy serves, as Obama did for a brief time when he ran for President, as a “blank screen, upon which Americans of vastly different political stripes project their desires.” Dr. … Continue reading »
Desire is Productive: Why Deleuze & Guattari Love Henry Miller
I’m reading Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia on the heels of a lot of work on Hölderlin, my favorite German schizophrenic next to Nietzsche. Of course it’s incredible. This text is talked about a lot, but maybe not very well understood. Is it relevant today as we face #OccupyWallStreet, the crumbling of dictatorships and plutocracies, rhizomatic … Continue reading »
The Best Books of 2011: A List
2011 brought about many great things. My daughter was born, I began my PhD at European Graduate School, (including a month residency in the Swiss Alps) and I reached 20,000 dialogues after four years of hard work. It was also a year of learning and study. A couple friends have asked me to share what … Continue reading »
How anti-Muslim bloggers ruined 2 days of my vacation – and what I learned from it
I grew up going by “Tutt”. Everyone back home grew accustomed to it and even though my last name is a bit masculine sounding, even my girl friends (not romantic) would call me Tutt. Since I have grown and come of age, I’ve gone by Daniel. I dislike “Dan” and always have for reasons I … Continue reading »
“The Eccentric Center” — Hölderlin and the Idea of Psychoanalytic Structure in the Artist
What we find occurring in the proximity to the eccentric center is also highly significant for Hölderlin’s work on the Gods. The Gods as they have come to be understood by humanity are, according to Hölderlin, “another humanity by which humanity devotes itself”, and as such, Gods are invented in order to escape from what is too difficult for man to think – its own contingency in the universe. This inability to think contingency is, one might suggest, the inability for humanity writ large to think the eccentric center. Continue reading »
Book Recommendation: “Holderlin and the Question of the Father”
Jean Laplanche’s text, “Holderlin and the Question of the Father” is really quite good. In it, I am finding many of my research questions addressed: artistic practice and social revolution, psychosis and poetic/mythical creation, the idea of proximity to otherness and its relation to ethics, and late Lacanian concepts of the symptom. This text is … Continue reading »
“Because God Wills It” Agamben’s Genealogy of the Will from Aristotle to Kant
Giorgio Agamben has been on my mind recently. His new text, The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government is winter reading list material. In going over my notes from my seminar with him at EGS this past summer, I realize that the second half of the seminar on the … Continue reading »
Trauma and the Unity of Thought
In understanding how the mind is represented through art, Freud preferred the metaphor of an abstract impressionistic piece with blotches and non-symmetrical lines. This has to do with the intellectual need to have unity. This is why we read only the whole of what we see, and we miss the small parts. It is what … Continue reading »
What is the Revolutionary Subject?
The revolutionary subject, who defines its politics in terms of the lack of the system’s structural excesses, is always caught between impatience and courage in Badiou’s Theory of the Subject. We should not forget that Badiou is developing a subject outside of identity, class, and gender. Badiou presents two primary historical and structural versions of … Continue reading »
Three Key Ideas About Conservatism. Review of “The Reactionary Mind”
1. The right is always in a dialectical tension with the left’s platforms, social movements, and ideas. Key to this dialectic is the fact that conservative thought begins and ends with nothing. Notice how the faith in the free market following the Cold War became a desolate and barren place to rest ones hat. Irving … Continue reading »
