Warning: A Mea Culpa
WHY I'M AFRAID OF BEING A FASCIST:
OK, so Cornell people have already heard this rant..
Increasingly, I find myself not viewing people as "people" per se, but rather as conjunctions of cliches intersecting with each other. These semiotic indicators don't serve to cross-pollinate with each other, but rather, they stand independently. Consequently, I have ceased viewing people, close friends/myself included as human, but rather as cultural signifiers superimposed on each other. And these cultural signifiers naturally come from the vast and superficially dynamic body of common knowledge (see Guy Debord, "Society of the Spectacle," Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, "Empire," Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, "The Thousand Plateaus," etc.). By devaluing this spectacle, I am consequently devaluing the "humans" that are derived from this spectacle, and thus engaged in a sort of double-dehumanization in which non-people generate non-effort that informs the non-reality that creates more non-people. The only solution, it would seem, would be to drive towards some kind of gnostic, despectacularized other. But by fetishizing this other, I am by definition assuming some kind of spiritual connection with it. And the only thing that could bring the rest of the world to this other would be a rhetoric of prophecy. Combine this gnostic drive, with a popular rhetoric, and what we have is the spiritual profile of a fascist. Maybe I've read too much Céline, or maybe I just need the Virgin Mary to appear in my fucking sandwich or something.
That said, the one thing I still find profound beauty in is the absolute contortion of the human form... that space where biology intersects with the absurd, the intersection of the absolute rational and irrational. When human process distorts and implodes, there's a refreshing shattering of any kind of ideas about the purity and sanctity of the body. The body ceases to be a rigid object that can either be or not be, but becomes plastic and fluid.
I went to Saint Louis. I was supposed to go to Minneapolis, but I didn't. I'm studying sediment right now. Go me.
OK, so Cornell people have already heard this rant..
Increasingly, I find myself not viewing people as "people" per se, but rather as conjunctions of cliches intersecting with each other. These semiotic indicators don't serve to cross-pollinate with each other, but rather, they stand independently. Consequently, I have ceased viewing people, close friends/myself included as human, but rather as cultural signifiers superimposed on each other. And these cultural signifiers naturally come from the vast and superficially dynamic body of common knowledge (see Guy Debord, "Society of the Spectacle," Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, "Empire," Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, "The Thousand Plateaus," etc.). By devaluing this spectacle, I am consequently devaluing the "humans" that are derived from this spectacle, and thus engaged in a sort of double-dehumanization in which non-people generate non-effort that informs the non-reality that creates more non-people. The only solution, it would seem, would be to drive towards some kind of gnostic, despectacularized other. But by fetishizing this other, I am by definition assuming some kind of spiritual connection with it. And the only thing that could bring the rest of the world to this other would be a rhetoric of prophecy. Combine this gnostic drive, with a popular rhetoric, and what we have is the spiritual profile of a fascist. Maybe I've read too much Céline, or maybe I just need the Virgin Mary to appear in my fucking sandwich or something.
That said, the one thing I still find profound beauty in is the absolute contortion of the human form... that space where biology intersects with the absurd, the intersection of the absolute rational and irrational. When human process distorts and implodes, there's a refreshing shattering of any kind of ideas about the purity and sanctity of the body. The body ceases to be a rigid object that can either be or not be, but becomes plastic and fluid.
I went to Saint Louis. I was supposed to go to Minneapolis, but I didn't. I'm studying sediment right now. Go me.