I’ve captured some wood blewits freed from the earth. The year ended here but I’ve yet to finish with them. The issue is not one of faith but how to avoid it. Temptation is heaven born, all the more delightful for that. So, eyes open till the end, violet like leaves on the forest …
Author archives: pasdelasbas
ruskin the cataloguer
I went on a tour of the Ruskin Gallery and stores with Louise Pullen curator and archivist of the Ruskin Collection.
contest and context
A conversation with J: Me: I’ve taken the lead on a campaign to negotiate with the Council to keep our local Park House open and in community use. J: That’s so good, to be involved in some form of activism. Me: Activism today is different to the past. There was a time that the activist …
paracademia
Paracademia is where you bring academic knowledge to work in fields not strictly academic, or where the non-academic works within academia as a partner. The paracademic is ever more present as on one hand academic paid work is in retreat and on the other academia is obliged by new regimes to engage with the outside …
integration
I’ve been writing or am always about to be writing about integration. My current stock reply to any questions is that the Jews died in Germany not because they weren’t integrated but precisely because they were integrated. Integration is a question of what is it into which you are integrated. Everyone is integrated even if …
protecting bodies
The furore over Kate Middleton’s body and the film of the Prophet share an important feature – outrage protects the body of the believed and the offending article (the photo/the film) both offend the believer. In the west few believe in Royalty and it is the young woman to-be-Queen who believes in herself and as …
sharing fate
I found something unpleasant about the film Horton when I first saw it. My reaction may just have been to the character of the Kangaroo who reminded me of Tigger in the Disney version of Winnie the Pooh, a translation I found very annoying. Anyhow apart from my directly racist issues with the film I …
public humiliation & stocks but missing the point perhaps
The examination of Mr Buckles, head of G4S, by a House of Commons committee is currently being broadcast. Such processes are tantamount to public humiliation, being put in the stocks, virtually of course. When someone was, say, accused of stealing, they were held in the stocks to keep them in place, exposed to ridicule and …
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babylonian virtues – minority report
Babylonian Virtues – Minority Report is the title of the second chapter by Gunjević in God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse. I didn’t read directly a reference to the film Minority Report in the chapter which is, effectively, an evaluation of Negri and Hardt’s book Empire in the context of their use of Augustinian ideas to …
apocalyptic prevarication
Far from luring us into a perverse self-destructive rapture, adopting the properly apocalyptic stance is – today more than ever – the only way to keep a cool head. This is Zizek (should I say of course) turning an idea on its head with a hope filled lucidity. The idea is that the apocalyptic stance …