the indistinct judgement

(blog from the laptop of ben gook)

January 21st 2012

Slavoj Žižek · The Revolt of the Salaried Bourgeoisie: The New Proletariat · LRB 26 January 2012

Posted at 11:28am.

“
the chance to be exploited in a long-term job is now experienced as a privilege.
”

January 18th 2012

Reblogged from occupiedterritories|4 notes

J. Hoberman, The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties

(Via Jessica Winter)

(Source: occupiedterritories)

Posted at 7:43am.

“
My emphasis is on cinema as shared fantasy and social myth. In that sense Spartacus, The Manchurian Candidate, Dr. Strangelove, Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, and Dirty Harry may be understood as movies that, in effect, directed their directors. (Filmmakers may make movies, but they do not necessarily make them as they please.)
”

January 6th 2012

Insider Baseball by Joan Didion

Posted at 10:23pm.

“
What it all comes down to, after all the shouting and the cheers, is the man at the desk,” George Bush had said in New Orleans. In other words what it was “about,” what it came “down to,” what was wrong or right with America, was not an historical shift largely unaffected by the actions of individual citizens but “character,” and if “character” could be seen to count, then every citizen—since everyone was a judge of character, an expert in the field of personality—could be seen to count. This notion, that the citizen’s choice among determinedly centrist candidates makes a “difference,” is in fact the narrative’s most central element, and also its most fictive.
”

January 6th 2012

Insider Baseball by Joan Didion.

Posted at 9:49pm.

“
American reporters “like” covering a presidential campaign (it gets them out on the road, it has balloons, it has music, it is viewed as a big story, one that leads to the respect of one’s peers, to the Sunday shows, to lecture fees and often to Washington), which is one reason why there has developed among those who do it so arresting an enthusiasm for overlooking the contradictions inherent in reporting that which occurs only in order to be reported.
”

December 5th 2011

Freud

Posted at 4:10pm.

“
Think of the depressing contrast between the radiant intelligence of a healthy child and the feeble intellectual powers of the average adult.
”

November 9th 2011

Adrian Johnston

Posted at 8:14pm.

“
Like freedom, hope, despite false ideologi­cal depictions of it in romanticized hues—freedom and hope often are celebrated as wonderful blessings to be treasured with pleasure—is, in reality, a painful burden. Losing hope, in the same way as self-deceptively attempting to slough off freedom with excuses to the effect that one has no choices thanks to inconsiderate, unaccommodating circumstances, usually results in the oblivion of depoliticized relaxation, in a soothing sense of soporific relief.
”

November 9th 2011

Adrian Johnston

Posted at 7:54pm.

“
The anemic humanism of tepidly moderate leftists has proven itself to be unsurprisingly unable to galvanize the imagination of the body politic. A perplexing, clumsy inability to master the affect-laden aesthetics of mass-media politics is merely one of many sad failings of today’s Left. Where is its Leni Riefenstahl?
”

November 8th 2011

No, no. Nothing to protest here. Via.

Posted at 4:10pm.

“
The Australian Bureau of Statistics report on Household Income and Distribution that came out on 30 August this year shows 20 per cent of low net worth households in Australia account for only 1 per cent of total household wealth while the wealthiest 20 per cent account for 62 per cent of total household net worth.
”

October 30th 2011

4 notes

Jungian Complexes at the Multiplex | marksimpson.com

Posted at 3:56pm.

“
As Freud feared, Jung and his mythological mumbo-jumbo proved to be a rallying point for many who rejected the pessimistic and difficult view of the human condition that psychoanalysis put forward, preferring Jung’s romantic metaphysics of ‘the collective unconscious’ and ‘archetypes’ to serious enquiry into the nature of human desire. To this day people at parties talking about being in therapy often say, ‘Oh, but it’s not Freudian, of course. It’s Jungian.’ As if this were something to brag about.
”

October 27th 2011

1 note

Letter from Oakland

Posted at 8:29am.

“
The revolution” does not exist. It is not a horizon to be struggled toward, and no movement in the history of struggles has “failed.” The real movement is the movement of bodies, working on what exists. If the occupation is inevitable, it is because it is what is happening everywhere, now. If we have to make it, it is because our bodies are the material collective that it is. If it is repressed, its inevitability remains. The twenty-first century is the time of that inevitability, because the limit it surges against, repression, is also the dynamic of its movement: in its death throes, the openly repressive forces of capital are the manifestation of its own weakness, returning people to the destitution from which they revolt. “This occupation is inevitable, but we have to make it,” because in a time of mass debt, of mass foreclosures, of ruthless austerity, of sprawling slums, there will be no alternative to the material necessity of taking what we need and using it amongst ourselves.
”