Reading Suspended Sentences

Beware all photographers! wink emoticon

"He thought a photographer was nothing, that he should blend into the surroundings and become invisible, the better to work and capture- as he said- natural light. One shouldn't hear the click of the Rolleiflex. He would have liked to conceal his camera. The death of his friend Robert Capa could in fact be explained, as he saw it, by this desire, the giddiness of blending into the surroundings once and for all."

'Afterimage' -- the first of the three novellas is a calm journey into the dead time of photographs and a narrative that conjures the dead to make them speak. And when they speak, they hollow out the differences between the self and the other.

Derrida

Thanks Dasgupta Debraj for sharing this link of Jacques Derrida's 2003 talk on Racism and Deconstruction. A lucid and characteristically brilliant presentation. Some synoptic points:

For Derrida,

1 Racism is both a speech act in the performative sense and yet it's "speechless" because it addresses a blank scientific content. This is the first aporia.

2. The second aporia is the fact that it is racism that founds the notion of race and not the other way round. Racist discourse tries to naturalise something that isn't natural.

3. Deconstruction is the historical condition of racism when racism is defined as the "trace" of "another otherness of the other which does NOT appear as such"

4. The remarks on the possible collusions of racism and humanism are interesting. So are the small discussions on "state racism", "imperial racism", archeology and so on. We could think through the two formulations "racism is not political in the strict sense" and "every racism tends to be a state racism" in the political dialectic of the aporia.

5. Racism offers a "plasticity" of the theological-political case where the political and the non-political and the religious and the non-religious are mixed up.

There's of course a lot more in the talk. As Derrida says, racism is always already a reaction against racism or "post-racism". This is all the more important in our officially "multicultural" times where I think (this isn't Derrida) multiculturalism itself has become yet another racist strategy that over-emphasises "difference" and paves the way for discrimination.

https://vimeo.com/25689804

Malabou...Dipesh

Catherine Malabou on the philosophical and historical implications of the 'anthropocene':

It's hilarious how she confuses 'Dipesh' Chakrabarty's first name with 'Pradesh' tongue emoticon She is correct in calling Chakrabarty 'Dipesh' to begin with but gets it wrong while writing the name on the blackboard. It's a pure slip as she doesn't correct what's written on the board in spite of concentrating on Chakrabarty's essay on the Anthropocene and looking back at the board as she discusses it.

The slip beautifully connects the signifier 'Pradesh' which is a spatial term meaning province with her discourse. Not only does it connect with the 'scene' of Anthropo(s)cene but also Dipesh Chakrabarty's discourse on 'Provincializing Europe'. I am not sure if Malabou is aware of the signifier 'Pradesh' but the slip again goes to show how our unconscious knows more than what we think we know wink emoticon

Psychoanalysis apart, the talk engages with Dipesh Chakrabarty and Daniel Smail to analyse the philosophical underpinnings of the paradigmatic shift in history from the human to the geological as the human is reoriented from a biological to a geological subject of history. She critiques Chakrabarty for his reduction of the neural to the biological via Smail's ideas of history as neuro-physiological and psychotropic 'addiction'. In this dialectic of indifference and addiction, I am not entirely convinced what Malabou adds to the Chakrabarty-Smail 'deep history' debate. She only foreshadows a Hegelian re-reading of this debate. A fascinating lecture nevertheless for anyone interested in philosophical time and history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDdTqr-5APg

Reading Banville's The Blue Guitar

"Soft rain was falling on the glass above our heads. I'm fond of that kind of rain. I pity it, in my sentimental way; it seems to be trying so hard to say something and always just failing."

John Banville's latest leaves a soft taste of sadness in your mouth. The lump is lost without a trace before you can feel it in all its shapes and colours. This self-indulgent and yet self-deprecating confessional account combines kleptomania and art with love, both in stealing and in being stolen.

The tale of lost love and lost self responds to Banville's characteristic dwellings on mourning, ghosts, objects, memory and infinite worlds. It's perhaps his most grumpy and "sentimental" novel! If one thing it is, as always with Banville, it's a great read. Not many novelists today write from this poetic and synesthetic intensity of language. Banville's "painster" Oliver Orme is delectable for that, if not anything else.

Watching Hamlets on Screen and Stage

It was a Hamlet double-header this weekend in Sydney. Bendict Cumberbatch's Hamlet on the big screen was a disappointment. It was a confusing and confused performance of the great play with strange anachronism, lack of layering and a tragedy that completely failed in having any catharsis whatsoever. Benedict was strictly good in a dismal and populist production. Without taking away from his fantastic voice and rhetorical flourish in delivery, it felt as if he was putting words out of his mouth to pull them back within as an epitome of interiority with a largely inexpressive face. The Bell Shakespeare production on stage in Sydney Opera House was better, though uneven. It was less stony overall but oddly melodramatic at times. The modern implication of surveillance and technology was interesting.

If all speech is demand for love as Lacan said, all social media is demand for 'like' wink emoticon Have we managed to banish love with like?

Ma's Birthday

মানুষ চলে যাবার পর দিনগুলো থেকে যায়, যতক্ষণ না ফিরে আসতে পারছে। মানুষ না পারলেও রয়ে যাওয়া দিনগুলো তো ফিরে আসে। আজ যেমন এল আবার। শুভ দ্বিতীয় জন্মদিন, মা। আমি জানি অন্যকোথাও হয় না, এই পৃথিবীর বাইরে। পৃথিবীর ভেতরেই সব অন্যকথা, অন্যকোথা। সেখানেই আমদের অন্যমধ্যে আছো তুমি। আমরা যতদিন থাকবো, থাকবে। তারপর শূন্য দিন ফিরে এসে অনুপস্থিত উপস্থিতি জানান দেবে। ততদিন থাকো আমাদের সঙ্গে, যতদিন আমরা থাকি। আমি বিশেষ কিছু পারি না, একটু আধটু গল্পগাছা ছাড়া। তাই লিখলাম আজ একটা। আমি জানি তোমায় সে লেখা প্রকাশিত হওয়া অব্দি অপেক্ষা করতে হবে না।