Forgive Me

God is a possibility. 50 %, yes or no, but one has to lean on one of those two parts.

Unanswered prayers are prayers where the answer is a product of différance.

I like Seinfeld, I like intelligent humour which is not arrogant, and American humour which is not plump.

Please forgive me, but I will not be able to write much the next week, I’m going to do other things and watch Seinfeld when I need a break.

Karl Ove Knausgård is in Time Magazine this week. My Struggle deconstructs itself to a very extend, mostly in number six. Among other things the writer is criticizing Edvard Munch for doing much of the same as he himself is doing, and death is both a metaphor and an event. I’ll write more on this later. Here are some interesting words about Time Magazine:

The Partially Examined Life

 

I was just listening to episode #51 of the podcast named in the headline realizing how funny talk about deconstruction tends to be, at least if you by the end of the day manage to get past the anger and frustration that all the puns and (high level) nanny nanny boo boo stuff can give you. In the podcast jokes where made after one of the guys had compared Derrida-texts to the Bible. Mark than said something like: »there’s so much genesis in them!« A lot of cheerful laughter followed. It reminds me of a lecture I once was at, sitting in a room where a latch keeps locking the door for the students going to the toilet etc. We were reading Derrida’s Before The Law-essay, and could make some funny jokes and puns about it during the breaks. That’s one of the things I really like about deconstruction, the humor which squeezes out of its machinery of mazes.

 

Link to the episode: http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2012/02/29/derridas-structure-sign-and-play-in-the-discourse-of-the-human-sciences-dissection-part-i/

Judging Lies With Lies – Biography, Works And Moral

In Norwegian newspaper Morgenbladet writes author Kjartan Fløgstad this week about the double life of Paul de Man. Fløgstad claims that the deconstruction theory suited de Man with his life based on false CV’s and hidden Nazi pasts due to what Fløgstad says is th essence of deconstruction: the language is impossible in it’s nature to make truthful sentences, revealing nothing but irony and a cabinet of mirrors. If you are to make a definition of deconstruction, it’s clear that one has to be more sensitive than this. The trace of differences is not leading to a presence, but it would be a lie to claim that there’s a point in following the trace if nothing ever could be gained. One thing you can investigate with deconstruction is presuppositions of thing’s natural essence, when things in fact is cultural. An example of that is the biography fever of our time, claiming to reveal the truth about i.e. the theories of an philosopher by stating facts of his or her personal life. That is what Fløgstad is dangerously close to do in his text about de Man and intellectual’s moral responsibility (let me just underline that this is an important issue), which also includes paragraphs about Gertrude Stein among others.

Source: http://morgenbladet.no/boker/2014/paul_de_mans_dobbeltliv#.U4JDk62KDIU

There’s No News Under the Sun

 

In episode 5 of The Newsroom’s second season, Charlie Skinner and Shep Pressman is having a conversation which includes some small talk about Charlie’s daughters, whom one is studying philosophy. Shep asks: »What do you do with your philosophy degree?« Charlie answers: »It takes all my energy not ask about that at thanksgiving.« By the end of the conversation Charlie thinks Shep gives him a source for the Genova story, however later on he finds out it has more to do with personal matters, like life, death and empathy. I wonder if Charlie should have asked Sophie about the philosophy, maybe he’d care more for ideas, not just facts. Maybe he’d care more for the otherness of his fellows, not thinking that there’s nothing new under the sun, except for tips about Genoa.

This leads me to my thoughts on some of the other people at ACN and how they handle Maggie’s trauma from Uganda. Jim: »How long did it take you to straighten out after Africa?« Gary: »I wasn’t holding the kid.« The otherness of Maggie is best understood by the one who’s not directly trying to help her, so the differential chain of knowledge through Maggie –> Jim –> Gary doesn’t result in anything than a short responding (»Right,«) from Jim, no closer to a understanding of Maggie’s pain, leaving her alone, smelling of alcohol and nervous energy from unprocessed trauma, throwing indirect, but intended sarcasms about sluts and casual sex at Jim.

Faith In Words

»Show me the place where the Word became a man«

Leonard Cohen

On Tablet Magazine’s facebook-page there’s been some discussion after the publishing of the article Teaching My Son About Judaism – and Atheism. I  note that the author is proud over her son’s development from what she calls »obsession with Jesus« to atheism. The article ends with her son stating that he doesn’t believe in anything because he has asked his jewish teacher how one could know for sure that the Red Sea parted. The teacher replied to him that one doesn’t need evidence, only faith. The little boy than said »I need evidence«.

Some of the comments on Facebook claims that one can not both be jewish and atheist, other says the same about judaism and belief in Jesus. I don’t have time to dive into every aspect of this, I just quote my comment here, adding that science also requires belief, not in a religious understanding of the Word – »the Word became a man« – but in the sense that one must have trust in the people who researches for evidence, and what is that if not a religious understanding of the word (without capital letter):

»Erich Auerbach proved that christianity and judaism was linked together in the mimetic writing style unique for the time, the stories in the Torah can be read both literal and as parables of the stories in the gospel. Before the law stands a gatekeeper (Kafka), but the gatekeeper didn’t make the law. The word became a man, but man did not become the word«

Source for Tablet article: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/171223/teaching-son-judaism-and-atheism/2

(Source for linked page: Hacohen, M.H. Typology and the Holocaust: Erich Auerbach and Judeo-Christian Europe. Religions 2012, 3, 600-645.)

Church of Research

 

«We have to close down the church of Norway due to resent research providing evidence which proves that God does not exist. The good news is that the Nidaros Cathedral will be rebuild into a jumping castle for children.»

This is the translation of a cartoon published in Dagbladet, a norwegian newspaper. It shows caricatures of the bishops of the norwegian church, this church has been part of the state and recently started a process of dividing it. However the church remain connected to the state in economic and theological matters. The cartoon raises interesting questions about the relation between religious belief and science. One of the points for the bishops in the cartoon is to stay in tune with the newest research in science. A question could be: isn’t it also important to look at the unquestioned presuppositions of nature science? French sociologist of science and anthropologist Bruno Latour wrote a book on these subjects in 1987, Science in Action was the title. He showed there how the model of the DNA molecule as we know it today actually was not given from nature, but something people once decided to call natural even if there was a lot of researchers and a number of other models could have been canonized in the literature of biology and chemistry. Anyway nature scientists echoes the words of old encyclopedists when they talk about the physics and other sciences as something which can totally explain nature (like how this old quote looks like Dawkins): »Perfectly finished books make courses unnecessary. The book is Nature inscribed on a staff (like music) and completed.« (The last word underlined by Novalis).

Source for Cartoon (by Flu Hartberg): http://www.dagbladet.no/tegneserie/fagprat/?1400184735&d=-1

Stuck Inside Mobility

Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again

Bob Dylan

*

Yes, can this really be the end? To be stuck inside of Mobile (River), the landscape’s rift, the trace, continuous flow of constant change, you’ll never step into the same river twice, »Everything flows, nothing stands still« (Heraclitus, the father of Logos, but mama, can this really be the end? (»No this is not the end, just verse 1 of 9! A little joke about the length of the song.« (quote from Rock genius)) To be stuck inside of mobility (even social, the madmen’s climbing on Grand Street), with no direction (except to the mobile) home, drifting in circles from the very beginning, »Oh, the ragman draws circles / Up and down the block«.

And after the silent ragman (»I’d ask him what the matter was / But I know that he don’t talk«) comes Shakespeare, wearing bells and pointed shoes. The presence of the french girl he talks to, is not mediated in speech that the I is able to hear, the cartesian reflection of being or not being is blurred corresponding to the reversal of the objects which represent the french girl’s writing, thus making it impossible »[t]o find out if she’s talked«.

The small piece of paper is like the ticket’s to the senator’s son, also out of Bob’s hands, but the ticket’s are free, are a moment of grace, given from the representation of the law, G-d maybe, and that would be the shortcoming of deconstruction, a level which deconstruction does not reach. It doesn’t have the ticket, but it longs for presence, for being present in the wedding of the son.

In the Ruins of the Castle

I still have Being John Malkovich on my mind, I like it when movies or books stick to my mind for a while like that, more than plain melodramas it deals with the being itself. It reminds me about what I think while reading deconstruction versus skepticism, the latter is mainly psychology.

However, this dialogue between Dr. Lester and Craig could probably be both a result of skepticism of language and some kind of absurd labyrinthique semantic drift. It happens in the 7,5 floor, and like in Kafka’s castle the rhetoric games are part of the problem of getting anywhere:

Dr. Lester: Don’t toy with Floris, Schwartz.

Craig Schwartz: Oh, no.

Dr. Lester: If I was 80 years younger, I’d box your ears.

Craig Schwartz: I wasn’t toying with her sir, I wouldn’t – pardon me, how old are you, sir?

Dr. Lester: 105. Carrot juice, lots of it. I swear, sometimes it’s not worth it. I piss orange. I have to piss sitting down like a goddamn girlie-girl every fifteen minutes.

Dr. Lester: Ah to be a young man again, eh, Schwartz? “laughs” maybe then Floris would care for me.

Craig Schwartz: But the elderly have so much to offer, sir. they’re our link with history.

Dr. Lester: I don’t want to be your goddamn link, damn you.I want to feel Floris’ naked thighs next to mine. I want my body to inspire lust in that beautiful complex women. I want her to shiver with a spasm of ecstasy, Schwartz, as I penetrate her…

Craig Schwartz: Dr. Lester, while I’m flattered you would share your feeling with me, perhaps the workplace is not the most suitable environment for this type of discussion.

Dr. Lester: All right, your right. All right I tell you what: Meet me after work today at Jerry’s juiceteria on lex, and I’ll spill my goddamn guts for you.

(Photo taken from this site: http://freeyork.org/art/deconstruction-of-buildings-by-michael-jantzen)

Fables of the Reconstruction / Reconstruction of the Fables

Being John Malkovich (1999)                               The Great Beyond (1999)

starring John Malkovich                                by REM, from the film Man on the Moon

producer: Michael Stipe                                      entitled from the 1992 REM song

written by Charlie Kaufman                           »Andy Kaufman in the wrestling match

                                                                              (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)« (REM, 1992)

 

There’s more

Mastering and loosing control               Why can’t we pantomime

(Fort-Da (Freud))                                         just close our eyes

of an object (Malkovich)                             And sleep sweet dreams

and the pleasure (sleeping with             Me and you with wings on our feet

Maxine)

(the maxim)

I’ll be absent for a little while

An I That Is Both Part of the Spectacle and Part of the Audience

 

 

The name I call upon while writing this is the name of a dead man, a man that, even if he was a matter of facts of a case like Valdemar’s (Poe 1845), the words from his mouth would only mean »I’m mortal«. I’m dressing up in his name, crawling into the portal of his name, into his ‘I’: »An I that functioning as a pure passageway for operations of substitution is not some singular and irreplaceable existence, some subject or life.« Or is it he, his name, the present absence of the trace, who is taking over me, »Who is it that is addressing you? Since it is not an author, a narrator, or a deus ex machina, it is an I that is both part of the spectacle and part of the audience, an I that, a bit like you, undergoes its own incessant violent reinscription within the arithmetical machinery.«

If the I, like in John Malkovich, is a woman, we would have found a missing link, the biological factor of Judith Butler’s performative theory. »I think it’s kinda sexy that John Malkovich has a portal, y’know, sort of like, it’s like, like he has a vagina. It’s sort of vaginal, y’know, like he has a, he has a penis AND a vagina. I mean, it’s sort of like… Malkovich’s… feminine side. I like that.« Lotte Schwartz in Being John Malkovich (1999).