[Claude Monet's La Gare Saint Lazare (1877)] In the preface to the English edition of Difference and Repetition (1968; 1994), Gilles Deleuze writes “that there is a more or less implicit, tacit or presupposed image of thought which determines our goals when we try to think” (xvi). This is the infamous image of thought that…
Category Archives: Truth-Teller
, the media, supposedly is.
Walter Benjamin begins The Origin of German Tragic Drama with an “epistemo-critical prologue” in which, before he presents his idea of the baroque, he articulates his conception of philosophy, the activity by which he represents ideas and conceptualizes phenomena (such as the baroque).[1] Benjamin does this by charting a dichotomy, in which he situates philosophy…
[The "reformatory" of Mettray, north of Tours, France] [Continues "The Panoptic Society (of Surveillance)"] Despite (modal/technological) changes in the way that power is exercised—despite, that is to say, the (systemic/structural) change in the regime of power—one function/element remains central to society: namely, penality. This is true even of the panoptic society (of surveillance). The disciplinary…
[The psychoanalytic couch; An Associated Press photo by Bob Wands] [Continues "Another Bar"] As a preliminary formulation, Fink sums up the process by which the subject is “alienat[ed] by and in the Other [as language]” and then “separate[d] from the [m]Other [as desire]” through the prohibition of the fOther (as law (i.e. prohibitive/symbolizing/socializing language)) as…
[The New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street; Image from the New York Times] [Continues "Blood on Our Hands"] Roughly four decades earlier, in the midst of another war, the major newspapers performed an act against the government analogous to the exposés we witnessed of late. In 1971, the New York Times and the Washington…
[Image from masternewmedia.org] [Continues "The Surge"] As the war effort was going on abroad, another war was being waged at home: the war of information, with the news media at the forefront. Frontline chronicles how the mainstream media was used by the White House to help build its case for war in Iraq. The media,…
Five years after the invasion, Frontline presents a documentary on the war in Iraq. This latest broadcast is an effort to sum up Frontline‘s investigations of the various phases and aspects of the war. Taken together, these reports make up an excellent archive for studying (and remembering) the war. One important thing to remember, of…
[Bartholomäus Strobel's The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist] The current electoral season in America has been built up–especially on the Democratic side–by the mainstream media (as was also my impression) as one of the most exciting in recent history, where, after what seemed to be exceptionally dark days in American politics (that witnessed, among…
[A map of the "American Empire" from Double Standards] Thanks to occasional mentions over at John Protevi’s Blog, I was led to the incisive, large-scale, long-term, and always-thought provoking commentaries on contemporary politics by world systems scholar Immanuel Wallerstein. Analyzing political developments “from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term,”…
[This is a quasi-semiotic reading of the UF-Student-Tasered! video found floating on the web on Sept. 17, 2007, to which I was led by a post from Larval Subjects. Also see this brilliant satire by Stephen Colbert.] After the politician answered, in his usual, monotonous, contemplative manner–as though he was still giving his speech–a question…
