Ironicwarcriminal posted:

you must have a long bus trip

2 hrs

stegosaurus posted:

babyfinland posted:

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

you must have a long bus trip

2 hrs

where do you live, thats nuts.

i just make that trip when i visit my parents

babyfinland posted:

i read half of another agamben book on the bus today, the open: man and animal

some fun kojevecdotes:

At this point the note articulates a series of theses on the end of history and on the present state of the world, in which it is impossible to distinguish between absolute seriousness and an equally absolute irony. We thus learn that in the years immediately following the writing of the first note (1946), the author understood that the "Hegelo-Marxist end of history" was not a future event but something already completed. After the battle of Jena, the vanguard of humanity virtually reached the end of man's historical evolution. Everything that followed-including two world wars, Nazism, and the sovietization of Russia-represented nothing but a process of accelerated alignment of the rest of the world with the position of the most advanced European countries. Yet now, repeated trips to the United States and Russia, taken between 1948 and 1958 (by which time Kojeve had become a high functionary in the French government), convinced him that, on the road toward reaching the posthistorical condition, "the Russians and the Chinese are only Americans who are still poor but are rapidly proceeding to become richer," while the United States has already reached the "final stage of Marxist 'communism. 1112 This then led him to the conclusion that the "American way of life" was the type of life proper to the post-historical period, the current presence of the United States in the World prefiguring the future "eternal present" of all humanity. Thus, man's return to animality appeared no longer as a possibility that was yet to come, but as a certainty that was already present.'

In 1959, however, a trip to Japan brought about a further shift in perspective. In Japan, Kojeve was able to see with his own eyes a society which, though living in a condition of posthistory, had nevertheless not ceased to be "human." "Post-historical" Japanese civilization undertook ways diametrically opposed to the "American way." No doubt, there were no longer in Japan any Religion, Morals, or Politics in the "European" or "historical" sense of these words. But Snobbery in its pure state created disciplines negating the "natural" or "animal" given which in effectiveness far surpassed those that arose, in Japan or elsewhere, from "historical" Action-that is, from warlike and revolutionary Struggles or from forced Work. To be sure, the peaks (equalled nowhere else) of specifically Japanese snobbery-the Noh theatre, the ceremony of tea, and the art of bouquets of flowers-were and still remain the exclusive prerogative of the nobles and the rich. But in spite of persistent economic and social inequalities, all Japanese without exception are currently in a position to live according to totally formalized values-that is, values completely empty of all "human" content in the "historical" sense. Thus, in the extreme, every Japanese is in principle capable of committing, from pure snobbery, a perfectly "gratuitous" suicide (the classical sword of the samurai can be replaced with an airplane or a torpedo), which has nothing to do with the risk of life in a Struggle waged for the sake of "historical" values that have social or political content. This seems to allow one to believe that the recently begun interaction between Japan and the Western World will finally lead not to a rebarbarization of the Japanese but to a "Japanization" of the Westerners (including the Russians). Now, since no animal can be a snob, every "Japanized" post-historical period would be specifically human. Hence there would be no "definitive annihilation of Man properly so called," as long as there were animals of the species Homo sapiens that could serve as the "natural" support for what is human in men.'

that was some garbage

-Snobbery, in it's purest, capitalized form.

"Does the author wish to come across as a poseur for some reason, or attract a woman of substance? If his goal is (inexplicably) the former, the female contingent offered the following names: Madness and Civilization; The Power Broker; Žižek (any), The Brothers Karamazov. (All worthy reads, needless to say, but often used for ostentatious or intimidating purposes.) And, added one, “I like DFW, but he’s the novelist equivalent of a neg.”"

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

is Power Broker the robert moses book they're referring to?

probably