Search Results for "anal"

The Famous Letter Where Freud Breaks His Relationship with Jung (1913)

in Letters, Psychology | June 17th, 2014

FreudJung

Freud and Jung. Jung and Freud. His­to­ry has close­ly asso­ci­at­ed these two who did so much exam­i­na­tion of the mind in ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry Europe, but the sim­ple con­nec­tion of their names belies a much more com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship between the men them­selves. At the top of the post, you can see the let­ter that Sig­mund Freud, father of psy­cho­analy­sis, wrote to Carl Gus­tav Jung, founder of ana­lyt­i­cal psy­chol­o­gy, in order to end that rela­tion­ship entire­ly. “At first Freud saw in Jung a suc­ces­sor who might lead the psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic move­ment into the future,” say the cura­tor’s com­ments at the Library of Con­gress’ web site, “but by 1913 rela­tions between the two men had soured.

While Freud claims in his let­ter that it is ‘demon­stra­bly untrue’ that he treats his fol­low­ers as patients, in the very same let­ter we find him allud­ing to Jung’s ‘ill­ness.’ ” Freud calls it “a con­ven­tion among us ana­lysts that none of us need feel ashamed of his own neu­ro­sis. But one [mean­ing Jung] who while behav­ing abnor­mal­ly keeps shout­ing that he is nor­mal gives ground for the sus­pi­cion that he lacks insight into his ill­ness. Accord­ing­ly, I pro­pose that we aban­don our per­son­al rela­tions entire­ly.”

“I shall lose noth­ing by it,” he con­tin­ues, “for my only emo­tion­al tie with you has been a long thin thread — the lin­ger­ing effect of past dis­ap­point­ments — and you have every­thing to gain, in view of the remark you recent­ly made to the effect that an inti­mate rela­tion­ship with a man inhib­it­ed your sci­en­tif­ic free­dom.” This rela­tion­ship, writes Lionel Trilling in a review of The Cor­re­spon­dence Between Sig­mund Freud and C.G. Jung, “had its bright begin­ning in 1906 and came to its embit­tered end in 1913,” when Freud wrote this let­ter.  “Freud and Jung were not good for one anoth­er; their con­nec­tion made them sus­cep­ti­ble to false atti­tudes and ambigu­ous tones. [ … ] The intel­lec­tu­al and pro­fes­sion­al dif­fer­ences between the two men, pro­found as these even­tu­al­ly became, would per­haps not of them­selves have brought about a break so dras­tic as did take place had not their alien­at­ing ten­den­cy been rein­forced by per­son­al con­flicts.” Only a com­par­a­tive study of Freud and Jung’s meth­ods would yield a com­plete under­stand­ing of their roles in the strug­gle for the soul of psy­cho­analy­sis. But on a more basic lev­el, this hard­ly counts as the first nor the last col­lapse, in any field of human endeav­or, of a per­haps overde­ter­mined suc­ces­sion between an emi­nence and his would-be pro­tege — though it may count as one of the most elo­quent­ly doc­u­ment­ed ones.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sig­mund Freud Speaks: The Only Known Record­ing of His Voice, 1938

Face to Face with Carl Jung: ‘Man Can­not Stand a Mean­ing­less Life’

Carl Gus­tav Jung Explains His Ground­break­ing The­o­ries About Psy­chol­o­gy in Rare Inter­view (1957)

Carl Gus­tav Jung Pon­ders Death

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Sound Effects Genius Michael Winslow Performs the Sounds of 32 Typewriters (1898–1983)

in Technology, Writing | June 12th, 2014

“When forced to leave my house for an extend­ed peri­od of time, I take my type­writer with me,” once wrote essay­ist-humorist David Sedaris. “Togeth­er we endure the wretched­ness of pass­ing through the X‑ray scan­ner. The lap­tops roll mer­ri­ly down the belt, while I’m instruct­ed to stand aside and open my bag. To me it seems like a nor­mal enough thing to be car­ry­ing, but the typewriter’s declin­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty arous­es sus­pi­cion and I wind up elic­it­ing the sort of reac­tion one might expect when trav­el­ing with a can­non. ‘It’s a type­writer,’ I say. ‘You use it to write angry let­ters to air­port secu­ri­ty.’ ” But Sedaris, one of the last high-pro­file hold-outs against elec­tron­ic word pro­cess­ing, wrote those words almost fif­teen years ago — even before air­port secu­ri­ty real­ly cracked down in our post‑9/11 real­i­ty. Sure­ly he has since picked up and pre­sum­ably learned to use a com­put­er. We now find our­selves in an age when type­writer usage has tran­scend­ed the sta­tus of an act of nos­tal­gia and attained the sta­tus of an act of rebel­lion; if you insist on using a clas­sic old Under­wood Rem­ing­ton, or an Invic­ta, or a Con­ti­nen­tal Stan­dard, or Olympia Moni­ka Deluxe, well, you must real­ly have a state­ment to make.

Yet I dare­say that for all their mechan­i­cal heft, free­dom from inter­net-borne dis­trac­tion, and thor­ough­ly ana­log aes­thet­ic appeal, type­writ­ers bring with them a num­ber of bur­dens. We have their dif­fi­cul­ty in clear­ing TSA lines, yes, but also their thirst for phys­i­cal ink and paper (“I can always look at my loaded wastepa­per bas­ket and tell myself that if I failed,” said Sedaris, “at least I took a few trees down with me”), and their noise — oh my, their noise. You can hear the vary­ing sounds of 32 mod­els belong­ing to many suc­ces­sive type­writer gen­er­a­tions in the video at the top of the post. They don’t come as straight record­ings, but as sounds repro­duced by mouth to per­fec­tion by that one-in-a-mil­lion mim­ic Michael Winslow, best known from the Police Acad­e­my movies as Sergeant Larvell “Motor Mouth” Jones. “The His­to­ry of the Type­writer Recit­ed by Michael Winslow” orig­i­nat­ed in the mind of Span­ish artist Igna­cio Uri­arte, who, accord­ing to Frieze, “has employed stan­dard office sup­plies such as Biros, high­lighters and jot­ters,” not to men­tion “the ubiq­ui­tous spread­sheet tool Microsoft Excel, per­haps soon fac­ing its own obso­les­cence.” This pro­duc­tion “telling­ly cul­mi­nates with the sounds of a machine from 1983, the year before the arrival of the first home com­put­er with a graph­i­cal inter­face.” Which leads one to won­der: can Winslow do hard dri­ve nois­es?

We’ll def­i­nite­ly add “The His­to­ry of the Type­writer Recit­ed by Michael Winslow” to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Endur­ing Ana­log Under­world of Gramer­cy Type­writer

Woody Allen’s Type­writer, Scis­sors and Sta­pler: The Great Film­mak­er Shows Us How He Writes

Dis­cov­er Friedrich Nietzsche’s Curi­ous Type­writer, the “Malling-Hansen Writ­ing Ball”

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

Dis­rup­tive Tech­nol­o­gy: Stu­dent Brings Type­writer to Class

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Free Math Textbooks

in | June 8th, 2014


Free text­books (aka open text­books) writ­ten by knowl­edgable schol­ars are a rel­a­tive­ly new phe­nom­e­non. Below, find a meta list of Free Math Text­books, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion 200 Free Text­books: A Meta Col­lec­tion. Also see our online col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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Free Textbooks: Computer Science

in | June 8th, 2014

Free text­books (aka open text­books) writ­ten by knowl­edgable schol­ars are a rel­a­tive­ly new phe­nom­e­non. Below, find a meta list of Free Com­put­er Sci­ence Text­books, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion 200 Free Text­books: A Meta Col­lec­tion. Also see our online col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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Read 9 Free Books By Noam Chomsky Online

in Books, Politics | May 28th, 2014

Image by Andrew Rusk, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

The gross and ever-increas­ing degree of eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty in the Unit­ed States has become a phe­nom­e­non that even the country’s elites can no longer ignore since the explo­sive pub­li­ca­tion of Thomas Piketty’s Cap­i­tal in the 21st Cen­tu­ry. The book’s high­ly tech­ni­cal mar­shal­ing of data speaks pri­mar­i­ly to econ­o­mists and sec­on­dar­i­ly to lib­er­al pol­i­cy­mak­ers. Piket­ty’s calls for redis­tri­b­u­tion have lead to charges of “Marx­ism” from the oth­er end of the polit­i­cal spectrum—due to some inevitable degree to the book’s provoca­tive title. Yet in the reck­on­ing of actu­al Marx­ist Slavoj Žižek, the French econ­o­mist is still “a good Keyn­sian” who believes that “cap­i­tal­ism is ulti­mate­ly the only game in town.”  While the Marx­ist left may cri­tique Piketty’s pol­i­cy rec­om­men­da­tions for their reliance on state cap­i­tal­ism, anoth­er fierce left­ist thinker—Žižek’s some­time intel­lec­tu­al rival Noam Chomsky—might cri­tique them for their acqui­es­cence to state pow­er.

Chomsky’s role as a pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al has placed him at the fore­front of the left-anar­chist fight against neolib­er­al polit­i­cal econ­o­my and the U.S. for­eign and domes­tic poli­cies that dri­ve it. Whether those poli­cies come from nom­i­nal­ly lib­er­al or con­ser­v­a­tive admin­is­tra­tions, Chom­sky asserts time and again that they ulti­mate­ly serve the needs of elites at the expense of mass­es of peo­ple at home and abroad who pay the very dear cost of per­pet­u­al wars over resources and mar­kets. In his 2013 book On Anar­chism, Chom­sky leaves lit­tle room for equiv­o­ca­tion in his assess­ment of the role elites play in main­tain­ing a state appa­ra­tus that sup­press­es pop­u­lar move­ments:

If it is plau­si­ble that ide­ol­o­gy will in gen­er­al serve as a mask for self-inter­est, then it is a nat­ur­al pre­sump­tion that intel­lec­tu­als, in inter­pret­ing his­to­ry or for­mu­lat­ing pol­i­cy, will tend to adopt an elit­ist posi­tion, con­demn­ing pop­u­lar move­ments and mass par­tic­i­pa­tion in deci­sion mak­ing, and empha­siz­ing rather the neces­si­ty for super­vi­sion by those who pos­sess the knowl­edge and under­stand­ing that is required (so they claim) to man­age soci­ety and con­trol social change.

This excerpt is but one minute exam­ple of Chom­sky’s fierce­ly inde­pen­dent stance against abuse of pow­er in all its forms and his tire­less advo­ca­cy for pop­u­lar social move­ments. As Hen­ry Giroux writes in a recent assess­ment of Chomsky’s volu­mi­nous body of work, what his many diverse books share is “a lumi­nous the­o­ret­i­cal, polit­i­cal, and foren­sic analy­sis of the func­tion­ing of the cur­rent glob­al pow­er struc­ture, new and old modes of oppres­sive author­i­ty, and the ways in which neolib­er­al eco­nom­ic and social poli­cies have pro­duced more sav­age forms of glob­al dom­i­na­tion and cor­po­rate sov­er­eign­ty.” And while he can sound like a doom­say­er, Chom­sky’s work also offers “the pos­si­bil­i­ty of polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic alter­na­tives” and “a fresh lan­guage for a col­lec­tive sense of agency and resis­tance.”

Today we offer a col­lec­tion of Chomsky’s polit­i­cal books and inter­views free to read online, cour­tesy of Znet. While these texts come from the 1990s, it’s sur­pris­ing how fresh and rel­e­vant they still sound today. Chomsky’s gran­u­lar pars­ing of eco­nom­ic, social, and mil­i­tary oper­a­tions explains the engi­neer­ing of the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion Piket­ty details, one ever more char­ac­ter­ized by the title of a Chom­sky inter­view, “The Pros­per­ous Few and the Rest­less Many.” See links to nine books below. To read, click on links to either the “Con­tent Overview” or “Table of Con­tents.” The books can also be found in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

Nec­es­sary Illu­sions: Thought Con­trol in Demo­c­ra­t­ic Soci­eties (1989): Based on the Massey Lec­tures, deliv­ered in Cana­da in Novem­ber 1988, Nec­es­sary Illu­sions argues that, far from per­form­ing a watch­dog role, the “free press” serves the needs of those in pow­er.

Deter­ring Democ­ra­cy (1991): Chom­sky details the major shift in glob­al pol­i­tics that has left the Unit­ed States unchal­lenged as the pre­em­i­nent mil­i­tary pow­er even as its eco­nom­ic might has declined dras­ti­cal­ly in the face of com­pe­ti­tion from Ger­many and Japan. Deter­ring Democ­ra­cy points to the poten­tial­ly cat­a­stroph­ic con­se­quences of this new imbal­ance, and reveals a world in which the Unit­ed States exploits its advan­tage ruth­less­ly to enforce its nation­al inter­ests — from Nicaragua to the Philip­pines, Pana­ma to the Mid­dle East.

Year 501: The Con­quest Con­tin­ues (1993): Ana­lyz­ing Haiti, Latin Amer­i­ca, Cuba, Indone­sia, and even pock­ets of the Third World devel­op­ing in the Unit­ed States, Noam Chom­sky draws par­al­lels between the geno­cide of colo­nial times and the mur­der and exploita­tion asso­ci­at­ed with mod­ern-day impe­ri­al­ism.

Rethink­ing Camelot: JFK, the Viet­nam War, and U.S. Polit­i­cal Cul­ture (1993)

What Uncle Sam Real­ly Wants (1993): A bril­liant dis­til­la­tion of the real moti­va­tions behind U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy, com­piled from talks and inter­views com­plet­ed between 1986 and 1991, with par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. [Note: If you have prob­lems access­ing this text, you can read it via this PDF.]

The Pros­per­ous Few and the Rest­less Many (1994): A fas­ci­nat­ing state-of-the-world report from the man the New York Times called “arguably the most impor­tant intel­lec­tu­al alive.”

Secrets, Lies and Democ­ra­cy (1994): An inter­view with David Barsami­an

Keep­ing the Rab­ble in Line (1994): Inter­views with David Barsami­an

Excerpts from Pow­ers and Prospects: Reflec­tions on Human Nature and the Social Order (1996): A scathing cri­tique of ortho­dox views and gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. See full text in pdf form here.

And for expo­nen­tial­ly more Chom­sky, see Chomsky.info, which hosts well over a hun­dred of his top­i­cal arti­cles from the Viet­nam era to the present.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Calls Post­mod­ern Cri­tiques of Sci­ence Over-Inflat­ed “Poly­syl­lab­ic Tru­isms”

Film­mak­er Michel Gondry Presents an Ani­mat­ed Con­ver­sa­tion with Noam Chom­sky

Clash of the Titans: Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er on Dutch TV, 1971

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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The Acid Test Reels: Ken Kesey & The Grateful Dead’s Soundtrack for the 1960s Famous LSD Parties

in History, Music | May 27th, 2014

“If you remem­ber the ‘60s, you weren’t there.” The quote was sup­pos­ed­ly uttered by Grace Slick. Or Paul Kant­ner. Or Den­nis Hop­per. The truth is no one real­ly remem­bers who said it first.

Of course, the “60s” was not sim­ply the decade that came between the ‘50s and the ‘70s but a short­hand for a gen­er­a­tional revolt fueled in part by one stu­pid war and a gen­er­al dis­il­lu­sion­ment with con­sumer cap­i­tal­ism. The ground zero for the “60s,” at least in the Unit­ed States, was in San Fran­cis­co and, at the cen­ter of the scene, there was Ken Kesey, the Mer­ry Pranksters and their leg­endary coun­ter­cul­ture bac­cha­na­lias called Acid Tests. These hap­pen­ings fea­tured groovy flash­ing lights, live music from the likes of The Grate­ful Dead, and copi­ous amounts of LSD. Up top, Kesey explains the mean­ing of the Acid Tests for you:

Thanks to the inter­net, you can expe­ri­ence a bit of what these orig­i­nal hip­pie fests were like. Above is audio from two shows in Jan­u­ary 1966 which had Kesey and long­time Mer­ry Prankster Ken Babbs crack­ing jokes and drop­ping truth bombs in between songs from the Grate­ful Dead. Below is the set list of that show along with the audio of two more shows with Kesey and the Dead. Some of the track list­ings might be incom­plete prob­a­bly because every­one was hav­ing too much fun to take notes. So crank it up and turn on, tune in and drop out.

The Fill­more Acid Test

Fill­more Audi­to­ri­um, San Fran­cis­co, CA
Jan­u­ary 8, 1966
1. Stage Chaos/More Pow­er Rap
2. King Bee
3. I’m A Hog For You Baby
4. Cau­tion: Do Not Step On Tracks >
5. Death Don’t Have No Mer­cy
6. Star Span­gled Ban­ner / clos­ing remarks

The Sound City Acid Test
363 6th Street, San Fran­cis­co, CA
Jan­u­ary 29, 1966
7. Ken Kesey inter­viewed by Frank Fey
8. Ken Babbs and har­mon­i­ca
9. Take Two: Ken Kesey
10. Bull
11. Peg­gy The Pis­tol
12. One-way Tick­et
13. Bells And Fairies
14. Lev­i­ta­tion
15. Trip X
16. The End

The Pico Acid Test
Dan­ish Cen­ter, Los Ange­les, CA
March 12, 1966
1. Vio­la Lee Blues
2. You See A Bro­ken Heart
3. In The Mid­night Hour
[mis-dat­ed, accord­ing to David Lemieux, and not cor­re­spond­ing to the vault copy­’s setlist; these are prob­a­bly from 3/19/1966]

The San Fran­cis­co State Acid Test
What­ev­er It Is Fes­ti­val
San Fran­cis­co State Uni­ver­si­ty, San Fran­cis­co, CA
Stereo Con­trol Room Mas­ter (rec. 4:00AM — 6:00AM)
Octo­ber 2, 1966
4. The Head Has Become Fat Rap
5. A Mex­i­can Sto­ry: 25 Ben­nies
6. A Tar­nished Gala­had
7. Get It Off The Ground Rap >
8. It’s Good To Be God Rap >
9. Nir­vana Army Rap >
10. The Butch­er Is Back
11. Acid Test Grad­u­a­tion Announce­ment
12. Send Me To The Moon >Clos­ing Rap
Cred­its on 10/2/66:
Voic­es: Ken Kesey and Hugh Rom­ney
Gui­tar: Ken Kesey
Vio­lin: Dale Kesey
Organ: Jer­ry Gar­cia
Engi­neer­ing: Steve New­man, Ken Kesey, Moun­tain Girl

The San Fran­cis­co State Acid Test
What­ev­er It Is Fes­ti­val
San Fran­cis­co State Uni­ver­si­ty, San Fran­cis­co, CA
Octo­ber 2, 1966
1. Ken Kesey’s dia­logue (iso­lat­ed remix)

Mer­ry Prankster Sound Col­lage Sequences
Octo­ber 2, 1966
2. Prankster Music/Sound Col­lage #1(sequence 1)
3. Kesey Rap > Prankster Music/Sound Col­lage #2 (sequence 2)
4. Prankster Sound Col­lage #3 > Prankster Raga(sequence 3)
Prankster Record­ings broad­cast over the P.A.

End of What­ev­er It Is Fes­ti­val
Octo­ber 2, 1966
5. Clos­ing Jam
6. Prankster Elec­tron­ics

Acid Test Grad­u­a­tion Jam
Win­ter­land, San Fran­cis­co, CA
Octo­ber 31, 1966
7. Jam Ses­sion (musi­cians unknown)
from The World Of Acid film sound­track

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ken Kesey Talks About the Mean­ing of the Acid Tests in a Clas­sic Inter­view

UC San­ta Cruz Opens a Deadhead’s Delight: The Grate­ful Dead Archive is Now Online

The Grate­ful Dead Rock the Nation­al Anthem at Can­dle­stick Park: Open­ing Day, 1993

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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Slavoj Žižek Tells Jokes (NSFW)

in Comedy, Philosophy, Politics | May 16th, 2014

For Sig­mund Freud, a joke was nev­er just a joke, but a win­dow into the uncon­scious, laugh­ter an anx­ious symp­tom of recog­ni­tion that some­thing lost has resur­faced, dis­tort­ed into humor. For Sloven­ian psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic philoso­pher Slavoj Žižek, jokes func­tion sim­i­lar­ly. And yet, in keep­ing with his com­mit­ment to left­ist pol­i­tics, he uses jokes not to expose the hid­den ter­rain of indi­vid­ual psy­ches but “to evoke binds of his­tor­i­cal cir­cum­stances hard to indi­cate by oth­er means.” So writes Ken­neth Bak­er in a brief SFGate review of the recent Žižek’s Jokes, a book-length com­pi­la­tion of Žižekisms pub­lished by MIT Press. Bak­er also points out a defin­ing fea­ture of Žižek’s humor: “Many of Žižek’s jokes pre­serve or even ampli­fy the vul­gar­i­ty of their demot­ic or pop cul­tur­al ori­gins.” Take the NSFW joke he tells above at the expense of a Mon­tene­grin friend. Žižek explains the joke as part of his maybe dubi­ous strat­e­gy of coun­ter­ing racism with “pro­gres­sive racism” or the “sol­i­dar­i­ty” of “shared obscenity”—the use of poten­tial­ly uncom­fort­able eth­nic humor to expose uncom­fort­able polit­i­cal truths that get repressed or papered over by polite­ness.

Some of Žižek’s humor is more trig­ger-warn­ing wor­thy, such as his retelling of this old Sovi­et dis­si­dent joke or this “very dirty joke” he report­ed­ly heard from a Pales­tin­ian Chris­t­ian acquain­tance. On the oth­er hand, some of his “dirty jokes” replace vul­gar­i­ty with the­o­ry. For exam­ple, Žižek likes to tell a “tru­ly obscene” ver­sion of the famous­ly filthy joke “The Aris­to­crats,” which you’ll know if you’ve seen, or only read about, the film of the same name. And yet in his take, instead of a series of increas­ing­ly dis­gust­ing acts, the fam­i­ly per­forms “a short course in Hegelian thought, debat­ing the true mean­ing of the neg­a­tiv­i­ty, of sub­la­tion, of absolute know­ing, etc.” This is per­haps an exam­ple of what Bak­er refers to as Žižekian jokes that are “baf­fling to read­ers not con­ver­sant with the gnarly dialec­tics of his thought, which does not lend itself eas­i­ly to sam­pling.” Be that as it may, much of Žižek’s humor works with­out the the­o­ret­i­cal con­text, and some of it is even tame enough for water cool­er inter­ludes. Below are four exam­ples of “safe” jokes, culled from web­site Crit­i­cal Theory’s list of “The 10 Best Žižek Jokes to Get You Through Finals” (which itself culls from Žižek’s Jokes). “Some of the jokes [in Žižek’s book] pro­vide hilar­i­ous insights into Hegelian dialec­tics, Lacan­ian psy­cho­analy­sis or ide­ol­o­gy,” writes Crit­i­cal The­o­ry, “Oth­ers are just fun­ny, and most are some­what offensive—a char­ac­ter­is­tic Žižek admit­ted­ly doesn’t care to cor­rect.”

#1 There is an old Jewish joke, loved by Derrida…

about a group of Jews in a syn­a­gogue pub­licly admit­ting their nul­li­ty in the eyes of God. First, a rab­bi stands up and says: “O God, I know I am worth­less. I am noth­ing!” After he has fin­ished, a rich busi­ness­man stands up and says, beat­ing him­self on the chest: “O God, I am also worth­less, obsessed with mate­r­i­al wealth. I am noth­ing!” After this spec­ta­cle, a poor ordi­nary Jew also stands up and also pro­claims: “O God, I am noth­ing.” The rich busi­ness­man kicks the rab­bi and whis­pers in his ear with scorn: “What inso­lence! Who is that guy who dares to claim that he is noth­ing too!”

#4 When the Turkish Communist writer Panait Istrati visited the Soviet Union in the mid- 1930s, the time of the big purges…

and show tri­als, a Sovi­et apol­o­gist try­ing to con­vince him about the need for vio­lence against the ene­mies evoked the proverb “You can’t make an omelet with­out break­ing eggs,” to which Istrati terse­ly replied: “All right. I can see the bro­ken eggs. Where’s this omelet of yours?”

We should say the same about the aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures imposed by IMF: the Greeks would have the full right to say, “OK, we are break­ing our eggs for all of Europe, but where’s the omelet you are promis­ing us?”

#7 This also makes meaningless the Christian joke…

accord­ing to which, when, in John 8:1–11, Christ says to those who want to stone the woman tak­en in adul­tery, “Let him who is with­out sin among you be the first to throw a stone!” he is imme­di­ate­ly hit by a stone, and then shouts back: “Moth­er! I asked you to stay at home!”

#8 In an old joke from the defunct German Democratic Republic,…

a Ger­man work­er gets a job in Siberia; aware of how all mail will be read by cen­sors, he tells his friends: “Let’s estab­lish a code: if a let­ter you will get from me is writ­ten in ordi­nary blue ink, it is true; if it is writ­ten in red ink, it is false.” After a month, his friends get the first let­ter, writ­ten in blue ink: “Every­thing is won­der­ful here: stores are full, food is abun­dant, apart­ments are large and prop­er­ly heat­ed, movie the­aters show films from the West, there are many beau­ti­ful girls ready for an affair—the only thing unavail­able is red ink.”

And is this not our sit­u­a­tion till now? We have all the free­doms one wants—the only thing miss­ing is the “red ink”: we “feel free” because we lack the very lan­guage to artic­u­late our unfree­dom. What this lack of red ink means is that, today, all the main terms we use to des­ig­nate the present con­flict —“war on ter­ror,” “democ­ra­cy and free­dom,” “human rights,” etc.—are false terms, mys­ti­fy­ing our per­cep­tion of the sit­u­a­tion instead of allow­ing us to think it. The task today is to give the pro­test­ers red ink.

For more of Slavoj Žižek’s wit­ti­cism, vul­gar­i­ty, and humor­ous cri­tiques of ide­o­log­i­cal for­ma­tions, polit­i­cal his­to­ry, and Hegelian and Lacan­ian thought, pick up a copy of Žižek’s Jokes, and see this Youtube com­pi­la­tion of the polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect left­ist philosopher’s humor caught on tape.

via Crit­i­cal The­o­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Slavoj Žižek: What Full­fils You Cre­ative­ly Isn’t What Makes You Hap­py

Žižek!: 2005 Doc­u­men­tary Reveals the “Aca­d­e­m­ic Rock Star” and “Mon­ster” of a Man

In His Lat­est Film, Slavoj Žižek Claims “The Only Way to Be an Athe­ist is Through Chris­tian­i­ty”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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The British Library Puts Online 1,200 Literary Treasures From Great Romantic & Victorian Writers

in History, Literature | May 16th, 2014

Earliest known writings of Charlotte Brontë

We’ve long known the inter­net’s pow­er to facil­i­tate access to the great books (see, for instance, our col­lec­tion of 600 eBooks free online), but recent projects like the British Library’s Dis­cov­er­ing Lit­er­a­ture have shown us that it can also help us engage with those great books. The site, says a MetaFil­ter user who goes under Horace Rumpole, offers “a por­tal to dig­i­tized col­lec­tions and sup­port­ing mate­r­i­al. The first install­ment, Roman­tics and Vic­to­ri­ans, includes work from Austen, the Bron­tës, Dick­ens, and Blake, and forth­com­ing mod­ules will expand cov­er­age of the site to encom­pass every­thing from Beowulf to the present day.” For now, if you enjoy clas­sic Eng­lish Roman­tic and Vic­to­ri­an nov­els, pre­pare to take that enjoy­ment to a high­er lev­el by immers­ing your­self in all man­ner of ear­ly man­u­scripts, authors’ papers and per­son­al effects, and relat­ed pieces of con­tem­po­rary media.

wilde-oscar-acting-B20129-68

If you count your­self a Jane Austen fan, for instance, you can now scroll down her Dis­cov­er­ing Lit­er­a­ture author page and find “a host of texts” to do with her life, her work, and the inter­sec­tion between them, “includ­ing the opin­ions — most­ly pos­i­tive — her friends and fam­i­ly had of her nov­els, copied out by the author (though ‘her imme­di­ate fam­i­ly is shown to have dis­agreed over which of her books was bet­ter’).” That comes from The Guardian’s Ali­son Flood, writ­ing up the site’s col­lec­tion of not just Austen accou­trements but items from writ­ers like William Wordsworth, Oscar Wilde, and Mary Shel­ley, “as well as diaries, let­ters, news­pa­per clip­pings from the time and pho­tographs, in an attempt to bring the peri­od to life.”

dl-portriat-npg-jane-austen

Flood cites “a sur­vey of more than 500 Eng­lish teach­ers, which found that 82% believe sec­ondary school stu­dents ‘find it hard to iden­ti­fy’ with clas­sic authors” on their class­es’ syl­labi. In response, Dis­cov­er­ing Lit­er­a­ture appears to have giv­en spe­cial atten­tion to oft-assigned writ­ers like Charles Dick­ens, whose col­lec­tion of mate­ri­als on the site includes a lit­er­ary sketch pub­lished at age 23, col­or illus­tra­tions for both an 1885 and 1911 edi­tion of Oliv­er Twist (as well as the 1848 review that destroyed his rela­tion­ship with the book’s pre­vi­ous illus­tra­tor), and “The Ital­ian Boy,” an ear­ly work of jour­nal­ism on “a bru­tal crime that occurred in Lon­don in 1831, a ‘copy-cat’ mur­der fol­low­ing upon those of the infa­mous Burke and Hare in Edin­burgh.” The site’s archives also con­tain ana­lyt­i­cal essays on each writer’s body of work, like “Oliv­er Twist and the Work­house” and “Sta­tus, Rank, and Class in Jane Austen’s Nov­els” — ide­al for when these re-enthused stu­dents, pre­vi­ous­ly unable to con­nect to the Roman­tic and Vic­to­ri­an eras’ most respect­ed authors, reach grad school.

The image at the very top shows the ear­li­est known writ­ings of Char­lotte Bron­të.

dickens-charles-italian-K90108-51

Relat­ed Con­tent:

15-Year-Old Jane Austen Writes a Satir­i­cal His­to­ry Of Eng­land: Read the Hand­writ­ten Man­u­script Online (1791)

Read Jane Austen’s Man­u­scripts Online

Charles Dick­ens’ Hand-Edit­ed Copy of His Clas­sic Hol­i­day Tale, A Christ­mas Car­ol

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

An Online Gallery of 30,000 Items from The British Library, Includ­ing Leonar­do da Vinci’s Note­books And Mozart’s Diary

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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13 Lectures from Allen Ginsberg’s “History of Poetry” Course (1975)

in Online Courses, Poetry | May 15th, 2014

Allen Ginsberg - 1979

Image by Michiel Hendryckx, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

If you want to under­stand poet­ry, ask a poet. “What is this?” you ask, “some kind of Zen say­ing?” Obvi­ous, but sub­tle? Maybe. What I mean to say is that I have found poet­ry one of those dis­tinc­tive prac­tices of which the prac­ti­tion­ers themselves—rather than schol­ars and critics—make the best expos­i­tors, even in such seem­ing­ly aca­d­e­m­ic sub­ject areas as the his­to­ry of poet­ry. Of course, poets, like crit­ics, get things wrong, and not every poet is a nat­ur­al teacher, but only poets under­stand poet­ry from the inside out, as a liv­ing, breath­ing exer­cise prac­ticed the world over by every cul­ture for all record­ed his­to­ry, linked by com­mon insights into the nature of lan­guage and exis­tence. Cer­tain­ly Allen Gins­berg under­stood, and taught, poet­ry this way, in his sum­mer lec­tures at the Jack Ker­ouac School of Dis­em­bod­ied poet­ics, which he co-found­ed with Anne Wald­man at Chogyam Trung­pa Rinpoche’s Naropa Uni­ver­si­ty in 1974.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured some of Ginsberg’s Naropa lec­tures here at Open Cul­ture, includ­ing his 1980 short course on Shakespeare’s The Tem­pest and his lec­ture on “Expan­sive Poet­ics” from 1981. Today, we bring you sev­er­al selec­tions from his lengthy series of lec­tures on the “His­to­ry of Poet­ry,” which he deliv­ered in 1975. Cur­rent­ly, thir­teen of Ginsberg’s lec­tures in the series are avail­able online through the Inter­net Archive, and they are each well worth an atten­tive lis­ten. Actu­al­ly, we should say there are twelve Gins­berg lec­tures avail­able, since Ginsberg’s fel­low Beat Gre­go­ry Cor­so led the first class in the series while Gins­berg was ill.

Cor­so taught the class in a “Socrat­ic” style, allow­ing stu­dents to ask him any ques­tions they liked and describ­ing his own process and his rela­tion­ships with oth­er Beat poets. You can hear his lec­tures here. When Gins­berg took over the “His­to­ry of Poet­ry” lec­tures, he began (above) with dis­cus­sion of anoth­er nat­ur­al poet-edu­ca­tor, the idio­syn­crat­ic schol­ar Ezra Pound, whose for­mal­ly pre­cise inter­pre­ta­tion of the Anglo-Sax­on poem “The Sea­far­er” intro­duced many mod­ern read­ers to ancient allit­er­a­tive Old Eng­lish poet­ics. (Poet W.S. Mer­win sits in on the lec­ture and offers occa­sion­al lacon­ic com­men­tary and cor­rec­tion.)

Gins­berg ref­er­ences Pound’s pithy text The ABC of Read­ing and dis­cuss­es his pen­chant for “ransack[ing] the world’s lit­er­a­ture, look­ing for usable verse forms.” Pound, says Ginsberg—“the most hero­ic poet of the century”—taught poet­ry in his own “cranky and per­son­al” way, and Gins­berg, less cranky, does some­thing sim­i­lar, teach­ing “just the poems that I like (or the poems I found in my own ear,” though he is “much less sys­tem­at­ic than Pound.” He goes on to dis­cuss 18th and 19th cen­tu­ry poet­ics and sound and rhythm in poet­ry. One of the per­son­al quirks of Ginsberg’s style is his insis­tence that his stu­dents take med­i­ta­tion class­es and his claim that “the Eng­lish verse that was taught in high school” is very close to the “pri­ma­ry Bud­dhist under­stand­ing of tran­sien­cy.” But one can leave aside Ginsberg’s Bud­dhist preoccupations—appropriate to his teach­ing at a Bud­dhist uni­ver­si­ty, of course—and still prof­it great­ly from his lec­tures. Below, find links to eleven more of Ginsberg’s “His­to­ry of Poet­ry” lec­tures, with descrip­tions from the Inter­net Archive. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it appears that sev­er­al of the lec­ture record­ings have not been pre­served, or at least haven’t made it to the archive, but there’s more than enough mate­r­i­al here for a thor­ough immer­sion in Gins­berg’s his­tor­i­cal poet­ics. Also, be sure to see AllenGinsberg.org for tran­scrip­tions of his “His­to­ry of Poet­ry” lec­tures. You can find these lec­tures list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es, part of our larg­er list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Part 3: class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, in a series of class­es in the Sum­mer of 1975. Gre­go­ry Cor­so helps teach the class. Per­cy Bysshe Shel­ley and Thomas Hood are dis­cussed exten­sive­ly. The class reads from Shel­ley, and Gins­berg recites Shel­ley’s “Ode to the west wind.”

Part 10: A class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, in a series of class­es from 1975. Gins­burg dis­cuss­es William Shake­speare and Ben John­son in detail. Putting poet­ry to music, and the poet James Shirley are also dis­cussed.

Part 11: A class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, in a series of class­es by Gins­berg in the sum­mer of 1975. Gins­berg dis­cuss­es the meta­phys­i­cal poets dur­ing the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry, specif­i­cal­ly John Donne and Andrew Mar­vell. Gins­berg reads and dis­cuss­es sev­er­al of Don­ne’s and Mar­vel­l’s poems. There is also a dis­cus­sion of the meta­phys­i­cal poets and Gnos­ti­cism.

Part 12: [Gins­berg con­tin­ues his dis­cus­sion of Gnos­ti­cism and talks about Mil­ton and Wordsworth]

Part 14: Sec­ond half of a class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, from a series of class­es dur­ing the sum­mer of 1975. Gins­berg talks about the songs of the poet William Blake. He sings to the class accom­pa­nied with his har­mo­ni­um, per­form­ing sev­er­al selec­tions from Blake’s “Songs of inno­cence” and “Songs of expe­ri­ence.”

Part 15: First half of a class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg. from a series of class­es dur­ing the sum­mer of 1975. Gins­berg dis­cuss­es the 19th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can poet, Walt Whit­man, and a French poet of the same peri­od, Arthur Rim­baud. He also dis­cuss­es the poets’ biogra­phies and their inno­v­a­tive approach­es to style and poet­ics, fol­lowed by a read­ing by Gins­berg of a selec­tion of Whit­man’s and Rim­baud’s work.

Part 16: Sec­ond half of a class, and first half of the fol­low­ing class, on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, from a class series dur­ing the sum­mer of 1975. The first twen­ty min­utes con­tin­ues a class from the pre­vi­ous record­ing, on the work and inno­va­tion of the Amer­i­can poet Walt Whit­man and the French poet Arthur Rim­baud. The remain­der of the record­ing begins an intro­duc­tion and analy­sis of the French poet Guil­laume Apol­li­naire.

Part 17: A class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, from a series of class­es dur­ing the sum­mer of 1975. Gins­berg dis­cuss­es the poets Guil­laume Apol­li­naire, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Fed­eri­co Gar­cia Lor­ca. The New York School poet Frank O’Hara is also briefly dis­cussed. Gins­berg reads a selec­tion of poems from the their works, fol­lowed by a class dis­cus­sion.

Part 18: First half of a class about the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, from a series of class­es dur­ing the sum­mer of 1975. Gins­berg dis­cuss­es the Amer­i­can poet, and one of his men­tors, William Car­los Williams. Gins­berg reads selec­tions from Williams’ work, and dis­cuss­es his style and back­ground.

Part 19: Sec­ond half of a class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, from a series of class­es dur­ing the sum­mer of 1975. Gins­berg dis­cuss­es the poets William Car­los Williams, Gre­go­ry Cor­so and Jack Ker­ouac. He includes sev­er­al per­son­al anec­dotes about the poets and reads selec­tions from their works. A class dis­cus­sion fol­lows.

Part 20: A snip­pet of mate­r­i­al that may con­clude a class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, from a class series dur­ing the sum­mer of 1975. The record­ing includes three min­utes and six sec­onds of Gins­berg talk­ing about the moral­i­ty of William Car­los Williams and the sub­ject of poet­ry and per­cep­tion

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Allen Ginsberg’s Short Free Course on Shakespeare’s Play, The Tem­pest (1980)

Allen Ginsberg’s “Celes­tial Home­work”: A Read­ing List for His Class “Lit­er­ary His­to­ry of the Beats”

“Expan­sive Poet­ics” by Allen Gins­berg: A Free Course from 1981

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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Jean-Luc Godard Gives a Dramatic Reading of Hannah Arendt’s “On the Nature of Totalitarianism”

in Film | May 13th, 2014

If you have watched any movie by Jean-Luc Godard you know that he’s nev­er been one to hide behind the façade of film nar­ra­tive. His movies are per­son­al. Sure they are also intel­lec­tu­al­ly demand­ing, unabashed­ly polit­i­cal, and occa­sion­al­ly impen­e­tra­ble but they are def­i­nite­ly per­son­al. This is a guy, after all, who made Pier­rot le Fou, a film that is, among oth­er things, a painful­ly hon­est inves­ti­ga­tion of the break­down of his mar­riage with Anna Kari­na star­ring Anna Kari­na.

But you wouldn’t think of Godard as a film­mak­er who would read­i­ly step in front of the cam­era like Orson Welles or (regret­tably) Quentin Taran­ti­no. But if you’ve been itch­ing to see Godard per­form an extend­ed mono­logue then check out the video above.

The piece is from the 1997 movie We’re Still Here (Nous sommes tous encore ici), direct­ed Anne-Marie Miéville who is Godard’s long­time cre­ative and roman­tic part­ner, and it shows the rum­pled, unshaven direc­tor quot­ing from Han­nah Arendt’s essay “On the Nature of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism.” The solil­o­quy, pre­sent­ed on a bare stage to an emp­ty the­ater, is about tyran­ny, iso­la­tion and free will and is deliv­ered with a sur­pris­ing amount of skill and emo­tion. You can read along below:

If it were true that eter­nal laws exist­ed, rul­ing every­thing, human in an absolute way and which only required of each human being com­plete obe­di­ence, the free­dom would only be a farce. One man’s wis­dom would be enough. Human con­tacts would no longer have any impor­tance, pre­served per­fect activ­i­ty alone would mat­ter, oper­at­ing with­in the con­text set up by this wis­dom which rec­og­nizes the Law. This is not the con­tent of ide­olo­gies, but the same log­ic which total­i­tar­i­an lead­ers use which pro­duces this famil­iar ground and the cer­tain­ty of the Law with­out excep­tion.

Log­ic, that’s to say pure rea­son with­out regard for facts and expe­ri­ence, is the real vice of soli­tude. But the vices of soli­tude are caused unique­ly by the despair asso­ci­at­ed with iso­la­tion. And the iso­la­tion which exists in our world, where human con­tacts have been bro­ken by the col­lapse of our com­mon home, again fol­low­ing the dis­as­trous con­se­quences of rev­o­lu­tions, them­selves a result of pre­vi­ous col­lapse.

This iso­la­tion has stopped being a psy­cho­log­i­cal ques­tion to which we can do jus­tice with the help of nice expres­sions devoid of mean­ing, like ‘intro­vert­ed’ and ‘extravert­ed’. Iso­la­tion as a result of absence of friends and of alien­ation is, from the point of view of man, the sick­ness which our world is suf­fer­ing from, even if it is true, we can notice few­er and few­er peo­ple than before who cling on to each oth­er with­out the slight­est sup­port. Those peo­ple do not ben­e­fit from com­mu­ni­ca­tion meth­ods offered by a world with com­mon inter­ests. These help us escape togeth­er, from the curse of inhu­man­i­ty, in a soci­ety where every­one seems super­flu­ous and con­sid­ered as such by oth­ers.

Iso­la­tion is not soli­tude. In soli­tude, we are nev­er alone with our­selves. In soli­tude we are always two in one, and we become one, a com­plete indi­vid­ual with rich­ness and the lim­its of its exact fea­tures, only in rela­tion to the oth­ers and in their com­pa­ny. The big meta­phys­i­cal ques­tions, the search for God, lib­er­ty and immor­tal­i­ty, rela­tions between man and the world, being and noth­ing­ness or again between life and death, are always posed in soli­tude, when man is alone with him­self, there­fore, in the vir­tu­al com­pa­ny of all. The fact of being, even for a moment, divert­ed from one’s own indi­vid­u­al­i­ty allows it to for­mu­late mankind’s eter­nal ques­tions, which go beyond the ques­tions posed in dif­fer­ent ways by each indi­vid­ual.

The risk in soli­tude is always of los­ing one­self. It could be said that this is a pro­fes­sion­al risk for the philoso­pher. Since he seeks out truth and pre­oc­cu­pies him­self with ques­tions, which we describe as meta­phys­i­cal but which are indeed the only ques­tions to pre­oc­cu­py every­one. The philosopher’s solu­tion has been to notice that there is appar­ent­ly in the human mind itself one ele­ment capa­ble of com­pelling the oth­er and thus cre­at­ing pow­er. Usu­al­ly we call this fac­ul­ty Log­ic, and it inter­venes each time that we declare that a prin­ci­ple or an utter­ance pos­sess­es in itself a con­vinc­ing force, that is to say a qual­i­ty which real­ly com­pels the per­son to sub­scribe to it.

Recent­ly we real­ized that the tyran­ny, not of rea­son but argu­men­ta­tion, like an immense com­pul­sive force exer­cised on the mind of men can serve specif­i­cal­ly polit­i­cal tyran­ny. But this truth also remains that every end in his­to­ry nec­es­sar­i­ly con­tains a new begin­ning. This begin­ning is the only promise, the only mes­sage which the end can ever give. St Augus­tine said that man was cre­at­ed so that there could be a begin­ning. This begin­ning is guar­an­teed by each new birth, it is, in truth, each man.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Han­nah Arendt Dis­cuss­es Phi­los­o­phy, Pol­i­tics & Eich­mann in Rare 1964 TV Inter­view

Han­nah Arendt’s Orig­i­nal Arti­cles on “the Banal­i­ty of Evil” in the New York­er Archive

A Young Jean-Luc Godard Picks the 10 Best Amer­i­can Films Ever Made (1963)

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick (1971)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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