Quote of the day

Isabelle Stengers on two transcendences of our epoch: the intrusion of Gaia and global capitalism.

"That I have been led to characterize both the assemblage of coupled material processes that I named Gaia and the regime of economic functioning that Marx named capitalism by a mode of transcendence highlights the particularity of our epoch, that is to say, the global character of the questions to which they oblige us in both cases. The contemporaneity of these two modes of transcendence is evidently no accident: the brutality of the intrusion of Gaia corresponds to the brutality of what has provoked her, that of a development that is blind to its consequences, or which, more precisely, only takes its consequences into account from the point of view of the new sources of profit they can bring about. But the questions of contemporaneity they pose don’t imply any confusion within the responses. Struggling against Gaia makes no sense – it is a matter of learning to compose with her. Composing with capitalism makes no sense – it is a matter of struggling against its stranglehold." (Isabelle Stengers, In Catastrophic Times: Resisting the Coming Barbarism)

Plans, feelings, updates

This writing was not planned but I had such a strange day that I cannot help myself but write. So what is to be said? Here I will briefly try to go through my thoughts and feelings in the last few weeks. These were the weeks in which my personal experiences got strongly if unexpectedly intersected with my thoughts again. So where to start?

1.) I will start by mentioning sexuality and love because these were the topics I preoccupied myself with in the last few weeks. I was writing one essay in which I investigated the way sexuality was understood and represented in European art from the 60s to 80s focusing on some specific artists whose poetics I found very similar. Writing this essay coincided with me finally realizing a meeting with a person whom I wanted to meet for almost two years. 

2.) In the same period came my decision to distance myself from the humanities. I came to the conclusion that this is the best way to fight against what Brassier termed once as "mammalian stupidity". I feel myself wanting to go in that direction - liberation of thought of its human constraints. But this is also not to be understood as some philosophical misanthropy. No, on the contrary, I think that philosophy can help people (serve them) but in order to do it, it (philosophical thinking) must first liberate itself from human phenomenological experience.

3.) Returning back to what I started with - sexuality and love, or even more general male-female relationship. I'm going to remember this day because this afternoon as I was walking the streets, going to visit one exhibition and then returning from the exhibition, I went pretty far in elaborating my thoughts on the male-female relationship and how it can be rethought. Then the same afternoon I had such an unexpected "meeting" (eye-contact actually) with a person whom I don't know and whom I shall maybe never meet again, but if it wasn't for that person and missed opportunity to talk to her, I probably wouldn't be writing this text now. 

4.) I want to conclude with plans for this blog. I will soon stop writing this blog for at least a couple of months, the two biggest reasons being my personal problems (loneliness, depression, etc.) and loss of readership. I just don't want this blog to turn into self-analysis. That's it for now. I hope to finish soon a few more texts and then put a blog to sleep.