nasty things

Nothing is therefore more important than a revision of the

concept of security as the basic principle of state politics.

European and American politicians finally have to consider the

catastrophic consequences of uncritical use of this figure of

thought. It is not that democracies should cease to defend

themselves, but the defense of democracy demands today a

change of political paradigms and not a world civil war which is

just the institutionalization of terror. Maybe the time has come to

work towards the prevention of disorder and catastrophe, and

not merely towards their control. Today, there are plans for all

kinds of emergencies (ecological, medical, military), but there is

no politics to prevent them. On the contrary, we can say that

politics secretly works towards the production of emergencies. It

is the task of democratic politics to prevent the development of

conditions which lead to hatred, terror, and destruction -- and

not to reduce itself to attempts to control them once they occur.

Thought is the courage of hopelessness: an interview with philosopher Giorgio Agamben

halo

In general, kairos and chronos are opposed or heterogeneous, which is certainly true. But decisive here is not simply the opposition, but the relationship between them. What do we have when we have a kairos, an occasion? The most beautiful definition of kairos I have ever found is in the Corpus Hippocraticum, and it is one which in fact characterizes kairos with respect to chronos. I will quote this definition: chronos esti en ho kairos kai kairos esti en ho ou pollos chronos, "the chronos is where we have kairos and the kairos is where we have a little chronos." Mark the extraordinary implication of the two concepts, which are literally the one within the other. The kairos—to translate it simply as "occasion" or "chance" would be trivial—is not another time: what we get when we grasp a kairos is not another time, but only a contracted and abridged chronos. The precious pearl in the ring of chance is only a small portion (porzione) of chronos, a time which is left. This is the same as the old rabbinic apologue that Benjamin once told to Bloch, according to which the messianic world is not another world; it is this same profane world, but with just a little shift, a very small difference. But this little shift, which results from my having grasped the disconnection with respect to chronological time, is in every way decisive.

..
Paul defines the relationship between chronological time—that is to say, the item that goes from "creation to" resurrection of Christ—and messianic time, by means of two fundamental concepts. The fist one is typos, foreshadowing, prefiguring, figure. Paul recalls here, in I Cor. 10:1–11, a series of episodes in the history of Israel: "Brothers, I want you to know that our fathers were all under the cloud, that they all crossed the sea and all were dipped in the sea and they all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink. They drank from a rock who was the messiah." Then he adds, "all these things happened to them as types, as figures of us, in order that we do not desire bad things, as they did." And a few lines later, he takes up the same mode: "these things occurred to them in a figural way [typicos], and were then written for our instruction, for us, for whom the extremities of the times have met (ta tele ton aionon katenteken; anatao— the "anti" signifies ‘face to face’.")
Auerbach has shown the importance of this "figural" conception in medieval culture (I say "figural" because Jerome translates typoi in I Cor. 10:6 with in figura), when it becomes the ground for a general theory of allegorical interpretat ion. Through the concept of t ypes, Paul establ ishes a relationship—which we from now on call typological relationship—between each event of the past and ho nym kairos, the now-time, present-messianic time. Thus in Romans 5:16, Adam, through whom sin entered the world, is defined typos tou mellontos, "figure (or foreshadow) of the future," that is to say, of the messiah, through whom peace will abound among men. And in Hebrews 9:26, the temple built by men is an antitype of the heavenly one, which could indicate a symmetrical relationship with respect to the type.

The point here is not simply that each event of the past becomes a figure or allegory of the present time and finds its fulfillment in it; decisive is rather the transformation of the time structure that the typological relationship brings about. It must imply a question of interpretation of the scripture, of the hermeneutical relationship that is established between two texts, between types and antitypes, as in the allegoric paradigm that prevailed in medieval culture. The hermeneutical relationship is only a secularization of the typological-messianic relationship. What is at stake in the figure, is not a hermeneutical problem, but a tension that transforms and binds together past and present, types and antitypes, in an inseparable constellation. The messianic is not one of the terms of the typological relationship: it is the relationship itself. And this is what Paul means when he says "for us, for whom the extremities of the times have met, are face to face." The two extremities of the olam hazzeh and the olam habba contact one another—their face-to-face is messianic time.
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/giorgio-agamben/articles/the-time-that-is-left/

flint / chalk /

Each event, however commonplace and insignificant, thus became the speck of impurity around which experience accrued its authority, like a pearl.

Agamben / Infancy & History / 14

The majority of silica found in flint nodules is biogenic (produced by living organisms or biological processes). Although today's flint nodules are inorganic, the silica that formed them was originally sourced from the remains of sea sponges and siliceous planktonic micro-organisms (diatoms, radiolarians) during the late cretaceous period (60-95 million years ago). Flints are concretions that grew within the sediment after its deposition by the precipitation of silica; filling burrows/cavities and enveloping the remains of marine creatures, before dehydrating and hardening into the microscopic quartz crystals which constitute flint.

 

 The exact mode of formation of flint is not yet clear but it is thought that it occurs as a result of chemical changes in compressed sedimentary rock formations, during the process of diagenesis. One hypothesis is that a gelatinous material fills cavities in the sediment, such as holes bored by crustaceans or molluscs and that this becomes silicified. This theory certainly explains the complex shapes of flint nodules that are found. The source of dissolved silica in the porous media could arise from the spicules of silicious sponges.^[3] Certain types of flint, such as that from the south coast of England, contains trapped fossilised marine flora. Pieces of coral and vegetation have been found preserved like amber inside the flint. Thin slices of the stone often reveal this effect.

 

How flint is formed

David Bone – West SussexGeology

The formation of flint is a complex process which began in the chalk seas millions of years ago and is, summarised below:

Organisms such as sponges (on the macro scale) and radiolaria/diatoms (on the micro scale) use silica from sea water to manufacture the biogenic opal which forms their skeletons. When the organisms die and the organic parts decay the microscopic silica is scattered on the sea bed and becomes incorporated in the accumulating sediment.

At depths of 1 to 5m within this sediment, the biogenic opal breaks down, enriching the water between the sediment particles (sediment pore water) with silica.

At sediment depths of less than 10m, there is an oxic-anoxic boundary where hydrogen sulphide rising from the decomposing organic material within the sediment diffuses upwards meets oxygen diffusing downwards from the water column above. At this interface, the hydrogen sulphide is oxidised to sulphate with hydrogen ions as a by-product. The hydrogen ions lower the local pH, dissolving the chalk and thereby increasing the concentration of carbonate ions. These act as a seeding agent for the precipitation of silica.

Silica precipitates by the molecule-by-molecule replacement of chalk. The silica is initially in the form of crystalline opal but gradually transforms to quartz (flint) during later burial and with time.

The chalk sea bed is deeply burrowed by many different organisms, such as shells, echinoids and worms etc. Some of these burrows are quite deep or branching, or have open living spaces. The burrows fill with sediment after the organism has died, this is slightly different material from the sediment around it. These filled burrows act as preferential pathways (conduits) for the chemical reactions to occur. Flint formed within these old burrows often has a nodular shape which reflects the whole, or part of, overgrown remnants of such burrow systems.

There are two possible explanations for why flint forms in bands or layers. Firstly because chalk sedimentation occurs in cycles and secondly because the process above exhausts the silica within a given depth of sediment and flint formation can only recommence when there is enough silica to start the process again.

 

nymphs

The exchange of letters with Adorno in the Summer of 1935 clarifies the sense in which the extremes of this polar tension are to be understood. Adorno defines the concept of dialectical image starting from Benjamin's notion of allegory in the Trauerspielbuch, which speaks of a 'hollowing out of meaning' carried out in objects  by the allegorical intention.

With the vitiation of their use value, the alienated things are hollowed out, and as ciphers, they draw in meanings. Subjectivity takes possession of them insofar as it invests them with intentions of fear and desire. And insofar as defunct things stand in as images of subjective intentions, these latter present themselves as immemorial and eternal. Dialectical images are constellated between alienated things and incoming and disappearing meaning - and instantiated in the moment of indifference between death and meaning.

Copying this passage onto his notecards, Benjamin comments 'with regard to these reflections it should be kept in mind that, in the nineteenth century, the number of 'hollowed-out' things increases at a rate and on a scale that was previously unknown, for technical progress is continually withdrawing newly introduced objects from circulation. Where meaning is suspended, dialectical images appear. The dialectical image is, in other word, an unresolved oscillation between estrangement and a new event of meaning.  Similar to the emblematic intention, the dialectical image holds its object suspended in a semantic void.

Agamben/ Nymphs / 28-30

-->

The 3-D body is hollow...

Her anxiety doesn’t seem to come from the threat of physical pain. Rather, she is overwhelmed with the amount of information she must process: coordinates, shuttle manuals, ornate procedures.

Gravity presents the body as mere operational device, a cursor, an avatar who performs a set of actions. It is workflow cinema.

Her task, like ours, is simply to organize the overwhelming flow of visual data she receives through her visor.

Gravity shows a contemporary ideal of femininity still more sinister than the pinup. It presents woman as an intricate machine, strapped to dozens of wires, working her ass off with the goal of appearing weightless.

http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/body-mass-index/

cursus

 a concrete singular historical phenomenon, but also

a model of function generalised which can be

a principle of assembly which allows to define and establish new sets

a figure of political technology

diagram of a mechanism of power in its ideal form

it functions as a paradigm, an example which defines the set to which it belongs and constitutes

juridical enquiry

an historical concrete phenomenon which functions as a paradigm - making the context intelligible

metonymical context

difference between metaphor and paradigm

...

Whereas syntagmatic analysis studies the 'surface structure' of a text, paradigmatic analysis seeks to identify the various paradigms (or pre-existing sets of signifiers) which underlie the manifest content of texts.

• Paradigmatic transformations
  • substitution;
  • transposition;
• Syntagmatic transformations
  • addition;
  • deletion. 
  
  
  
   "The Saviour's Transfiguration", an early-15th century icon from the Tretyakov Gallery, attributed to :Theophanes the Greek.
  

wb/ prehistory /

V

Works of art are received and valued on different planes. Two polar types stand out; with one, the accent is on the cult value; with the other, on the exhibition value of the work. Artistic production begins with ceremonial objects destined to serve in a cult. One may assume that what mattered was their existence, not their being on view. The elk portrayed by the man of the Stone Age on the walls of his cave was an instrument of magic. He did expose it to his fellow men, but in the main it was meant for the spirits. Today the cult value would seem to demand that the work of art remain hidden. Certain statues of gods are accessible only to the priest in the cella; certain Madonnas remain covered nearly all year round; certain sculptures on medieval cathedrals are invisible to the spectator on ground level. With the emancipation of the various art practices from ritual go increasing opportunities for the exhibition of their products. It is easier to exhibit a portrait bust that can be sent here and there than to exhibit the statue of a divinity that has its fixed place in the interior of a temple. The same holds for the painting as against the mosaic or fresco that preceded it. And even though the public presentability of a mass originally may have been just as great as that of a symphony, the latter originated at the moment when its public presentability promised to surpass that of the mass.

With the different methods of technical reproduction of a work of art, its fitness for exhibition increased to such an extent that the quantitative shift between its two poles turned into a qualitative transformation of its nature. This is comparable to the situation of the work of art in prehistoric times when, by the absolute emphasis on its cult value, it was, first and foremost, an instrument of magic. Only later did it come to be recognized as a work of art. In the same way today, by the absolute emphasis on its exhibition value the work of art becomes a creation with entirely new functions, among which the one we are conscious of, the artistic function, later may be recognized as incidental. This much is certain: today photography and the film are the most serviceable exemplifications of this new function.

 ....

Agamben / philosophical archaeology/ 2009
 
And it is something similar that Benjamin might have had in mind, when, in Overbeck’s footsteps, he wrote that in the monadological structure of the historical object are contained both ‘prehistory’ and ‘post-history’ (Vor- und Nachgeschichte), or when he suggested that the entire past must be immersed into the present in a ‘historical apocatastasis’ (Benjamin 1982, p. 573). (Apocatastasis is the restitution in the origin which, according to Origenes, takes place at the end of times; qualifying an eschatological reality as ‘historical’, Benjamin uses an image very similar to the foucaultian ‘a priori’.)

denuded

 Spoliation entails a forcible transfer of ownership. The spoliated object [animal, person, monument or culture] is denuded of its portable assests [skin, wealth, ornament, artistic patrimony] and the assets - the spolia - are taken as booty or salvaged. Spolia are survivors of violence, about which they might be mute [if they bear no visible signs] or eloquent.

kinney / reuse value


The fact is that history and prehistory, united in origin, at a certain point separate irrevocably:
In the history of every organism there comes the time in which the boundaries which separate it from the world are not any longer subject to change. In this moment, prehistory and emergence-history (Entstehungsgeschichte) separate from history. Thence the similarity that likens this moment to death, and the ease with which we can identify, in any history in the usual sense of the term, the signs of a history of decadence (Verfallsgeschichte). Verfallsgeschichte dissolves the bonds that prehistory had created between elements ... If, therefore, in the realm of things that have a life and a historical efficacy, one has to distinguish between their pre-historical epoch and the historical one, it is prehistory which lays the foundations of their historical efficacy (ibid., p. 53).
Not only prehistory and history are distinct and nonetheless connected: the historical efficacy of a phenomenon itself is inseparably linked to this distinction.

agamben / philosophical archaeology / 2009 / overbeck

dim stockings

In the early 1970s there was an advertisement shown in Paris movie theaters that promoted a well-known brand of French stockings, 'Dim' stockings. It showed a group of young women dancing together. Anyone who ever watched even a few of its images, however distractedly, would have a hard time forgetting the special impression of synchrony and dissonance, of confusion and singularity, of communication and estrangement that emanated from the bodies of the smiling dancers. This impression relied on a trick: Each dancer was filmed separately and later the single pieces were brought together over a single sound track. But that facile trick, that calculated asymmetry of the movement of long legs sheathed in the same inexpensive commodity, that slight disjunction between the gestures, wafted over the audience a promise of happiness unequivocally related to the human body.

 Agamben, The Coming Community

Giorgio Agamben - We Refugees

Giorgio Agamben. "We Refugees." Symposium. 1995, No. 49(2), Summer, Pages: 114-119, English, Translation by Michael Rocke.

7. Before the extermination camps are reopened in Europe (which is already starting to happen), nation-states must find the courage to call into question the very principle of the inscription of nativity and the trinity of state/nation/territory which is based on it. It is sufficient here to suggest one possible direction. As is well known, one of the options considered for the problem of Jerusalem is that it become the capital, contemporaneously and without territorial divisions, of two different states. The paradoxical condition of reciprocal extraterritoriality (or, better, aterritoriality) that this would imply could be generalized as a model of new international relations. Instead of two national states separated by uncertain and threatening boundaries, one could imagine two political communities dwelling in the same region and in exodus one into the other, divided from each other by a series of reciprocal extraterritorialities, in which the guiding concept would no longer be the ius of the citizen, but rather the refugium of the individual. In a similar sense, we could look to Europe not as an impossible "Europe of nations," whose catastrophic results can already be perceived in the short term, but as an aterritorial or extraterritorial space in which all the residents of the European states (citizens and noncitizens) would be in a position of exodus or refuge, and the status of European would mean the citizen's being-in-exodus (obviously also immobile). The European space would thus represent an unbridgeable gap between birth and nation, in which the old concept of people (which, as is well known, is always a minority) could again find a political sense by decisively opposing the concept of nation (which until now has unduly usurped it).
This space would not coincide with any homogeneous national territory, nor with their topographical sum, but would act on these territories, making holes in them and dividing them topologically like in a Leiden jar or in a Moebius strip, where exterior and interior are indeterminate. In this new space, the European cities, entering into a relationship of reciprocal extraterritoriality, would rediscover their ancient vocation as cities of the world

The Endless Crisis as an Instrument of Power: In conversation with Giorgio Agamben

The Endless Crisis as an Instrument of Power: In conversation with Giorgio Agamben

http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?id=1729&fulltext=1

One day humanity will play with law just as children play with disused objects, not in order to restore them to their canonical use but to free them from it for good…. This liberation is the task of study, or of play. And this studious play is the passage that allows us to arrive at that justice that one of Benjamin’s posthumous fragments defines as a state of the world in which the world appears as a good that absolutely cannot be appropriated or made juridical.

WE HAVE A NEW ATTORNEY, Dr. Bucephalus 

We have a new attorney, Dr. Bucephalus. Little in his external appearance reminds one of the time when he was still Alexander of Macedon's battle steed. But those who are familiar with the circumstances notice certain things. Indeed, I recently saw, on the outside staircase, even a quite simple court employee admire the attorney with the professional look of a modest regular of the races as, lifting his thighs high, he went up from step to step, his footfalls ringing out on the marble.

In general the bar approves of the admission of Bucephalus. With amazing understanding they tell themselves that Bucephalus is in a difficult position in today's social order and that therefore, as well as because of his world-historical significance, he deserves some accommodation anyway. Today -- no one can deny it -- there is no great Alexander. Yes, many people try to murder; also there is no lack of people with the skill to strike their friend over the banquet table with a spear; and many find Macedonia too cramped, so that they curse Philip, the father -- but no one, no one can lead to India. Even back then, the gates to India were unreachable, but the king's sword showed the way. Today the gates are elsewhere entirely and further and higher; no one shows the way; many have swords, but only to wave them about; and the gaze that wants to follow them gets tangled up.

So maybe it's really best, as Bucephalus has done, to sink into law books. Free, his sides unvexed by the loins of the rider, by a quiet lamp, far from the racket of Alexander's battles, he reads and turns the pages of our old books.

neither interruption nor end

according to Christian theology there is only one legal institution which knows neither interruption nor end: hell. The model of contemporary politics - which pretends to an infinite economy of the world - is thus truly infernal.

para

alongside, altered, beyond, contrary
beside, next to, near, from
against, contrary to 


para / a presence that distends time, an already that is also a not yet, a delay that does not put off until later but, instead, a disconnection within the present moment that allows us to grasp time.

agamben / the church and the kingdom / 26

About dates and times, my friends, we need not write to you

"Sojourning" translates the Greek word paroikousa . Paroikein means "to sojourn, to live as an alien," as opposed to katoikein, "to have a permanent residence, to live as a citizen with full rights." The true residence of the Christian is heaven; the time of his earthly life is only a preparation for his permanent residence with Christ. Similarly, the Church will obtain its permanent residence only when the heavenly Jerusalem of which the Apocalypse speaks has come to pass. The same idea is felicitously expressed in Preface 1 for a Mass of the Dead in the Toman Missal; dissoluta terrestris huius incolatus domo aeterna in caelis habitatio comparatur [literally: "when the house in which they sojourn on earth has been destroyed, an eternal dwelling place awaits them in heaven"]... The paroikousa formula also occurs in the address of the Martyrdom of Polycarp.

The meaning of "to live as an alien" lies behind the use of paroikia [Latin: paroecia], "parish", to designate a group of Christians in a city or territory, with a religious leader at their head and with a place in which to gather for the worship of God. But the term parochus which the Code of Canon Law uses for "parish priest" has a different origin: the parochus is a "provider" one whose function is to distribute [Greek: parechein] spiritual goods to his flock.

The Eucharist of the Early Christians / Johanny / 1992



Paul reminds the Thessalonians, "About dates and times, my friends, we need not write to you, for you know perfectly well that the Day of the Lord comes like a thief in the night. [1 Thess 5.1-2;262]. In this passage 'comes [erchetai]" is in the present tense, just as in the Gospels the messiah is called ho erchomenos, 'he who comes' - that is, he who never ceases to come. Having perfectly understood Paul's meaning, Walter Benjamin once wrote that 'every day, every instant, is the small gate through which the messiah enters.

The Church & The Kingdom / Agamben

Early Neurological Tools

http://www.movementdisorders.org/james_parkinson/early_neurological.html
Gilles de la Tourette and Footprint Diagrams
A. French neurologist George Gilles de la Tourette (1857-1904).
B. Footprint diagrams from the doctoral thesis of Gilles de la Tourette (1885) entitled Etudes Cliniques et Physiologiques sur la Marche.  This student work analyzed normal gait as well as the walking patterns of patients with Parkinson’s disease, locomotor ataxia, Friedreich’s ataxia and numerous neuropathies.


Agamben - Notes on Gesture

Cossa, Francesco del (1435(36)-1477) Allegory of March: Triumph of Minerva

protocols of escape / suffocating town

...besides, people around here are obsessed with anything like that -safari parks, dolphinaria, stunt flying, it's all the same to them, they're forever dressing up as beefeaters or Hanoverian infantry and re-enacting the battle of Austerlitz...

ballard/ the unlimited dream company


the "political action" which is at stake ... is ... liturgy [ returned to its etymological meaning  of "public practice".]

agamben / the kingdom & the glory

hetoimasia

Hold tight, we're in for nasty weather

I still notice the burned house, mornings, when I walk along the beach. Well, obviously I do not notice the house. What I notice is the remains of the house. One is still prone to think of it as a house, however, even if there is not remarkably much left of it.

markson /wittgenstein's mistress

According to the principle by which it is only in the burning house that the fundamental architectural problem becomes visible for the first time, art at the furthest point of its destiny, makes visible its original project.

agamben / man without content / 115



















It is said of an old African man who is dying that he is a burning library - except that [as compared with the old African man] the burning of a library [which is itself a souvenir object] is an accident: in principle, the library lasts. Whereas, in principle, death is inscribed in life itself [this is why the man is old], as its 'normal' or 'natural' term, so to speak.

stiegler / discrete image / echographies/ 148

denkbild/ a state of history

…travellers in a train that has met with an accident in a tunnel, and this at a place where the light of the beginning can no longer be seen, and the light at the end is so very small a glimmer that the gaze must continually search for it and is always losing it again, and, furthermore, it is not even certain whether it is the beginning or the end of the tunnel.

kafka / the blue octavo noteboks / 15

agamben / melancholy angel/ 112