From Spectres Of Marx

http://twitter.com/#!/EnterDuration/status/127595049163816960

was my reply to

http://twitter.com/#!/lifeasweshowit/status/127495762199326720

Masha tweeted that right after she multi-tweeted the following bit from Spectres Of Marx:

http://twitter.com/#!/lifeasweshowit/status/127495012014501889
http://twitter.com/#!/lifeasweshowit/status/127495105425842176
http://twitter.com/#!/lifeasweshowit/status/127495175676239873
http://twitter.com/#!/lifeasweshowit/status/127495225995296769
http://twitter.com/#!/lifeasweshowit/status/127495264469655552

Three Unrelated Essays

Still part of my ongoing “organization” of the numerous browser tabs I’ve had open for a month or so now, three more links to essays I find interesting:

1. “Zombie Economy” by Ben Woodard (originally written with the following subtitle: “Understanding Capitalism, Ideology and Desire through the Zombic text”)
2. “Honeymoon in Disneyland” by Mark Fisher (moves from Philip K. Dick to Eurodisney to Michael Jackson)
3. “What You’ve Done to My World” by Mark Greif (on Fugazi’s self-titled debut EP but also about the punk rock experience)

Ian Bogost

Great interview with Ian Bogost, who I think I’ll concisely refer to as someone engaged, in the broadest and fullest sense of the term, with videogaming. (He’s also appeared on The Colbert Report.)

His background in philosophy and literary studies is married to his work as a videogame developer; married is the operative term, as these interests are brought together in the spirit of not interdisciplinarity but love*.

He’s written about reading online and Facebook, and his recent reflections on an as-yet hypothetical metaphysics videogame are so insightful that they almost read like pieces on the metaphysics of videogames.

I wish I could have more to say about these things I’ve been coming across lately, instead of just sharing links here and there. But I really need to do some mental reshuffling these days, with the help of these things I turn up here and there.

 

* Different context, but Marjorie Perloff also has an interesting article that, among other things, criticizes the unthinking manner in which the term “interdisciplinary” is often used these days.

Five Online Essays

…whose tabs I’ve now closed on my browser, though I still have to read them:

1. “Kristeva and Poetry as Shattered Signification” by Calvin Bedient
2. Philosophical Aphorisms: Critical Encounters with Heidegger and Nietzsche by Daniel Fidel Ferrer
3. “Zarathustra and the Children of Abraham” by James Luchte
4. “The Wreckage of Stars: Nietzsche and the Ecstasy of Poetry” by James Luchte
5. “Confessionalography: A GNAT (Grossly Non-Academic Talk) on the ‘I’ in Poetry” by Rachel Zucker

Five Books I’d Like to Browse Through NOW

1. Holderlin: The Poetics of Being by Adrian Del Caro
2. The American Poet at the Movies: A Critical History by Laurence Goldstein
   
3. Zarathustra’s Dionysian Modernism by Robert Gooding-Williams
4. Thinking and Singing: Poetry and the Practice of Philosophy, edited by Tim Lilburn
5. Early Stevens: The Nietzschean Intertext by B. J. Leggett

Ricky Martin?

Something tells me I may be setting myself up with the title of this entry. You see, I’m really talking about living la vida existencialista: Nietzsche and Heidegger.

Which Dark Tome?

DISCLAIMER: These aren’t really dark tomes, but that’s a popular horror cliche trope, after all.

I’m not absolutely certain, but I think this semester will mark my fourth time to teach the Horror Film course (officially called COM105.9: Film Seminar – The Horror Film). While warnings abound about fixing something that isn’t broken, I believe every course can be improved, even without needing actual fixing.

My most immediate concern is the course text, i.e., the book from which I will assign readings for my students. I’ve always used Mark Jancovich (ed.)’s Horror, The Film Reader (the leftmost cover with Kurt Russell from The Thing on it), but I’m now wondering if I should change to Brigid Cherry’s Horror or Ken Gelder (ed.)’s The Horror Reader:

From left to right: Mark Jancovich, Brigid Cherry, Ken Gelder.

Waggish

I’m pretty sure I’ve read one of Waggish‘s blog entries before, but one of those I read this morning cracked me up. I wish I knew enough to take a crack at Choose Your Own Philosophical Adventure #1: Escape from the Dialectic.

ASIDE: I’m unsure why Waggish mentions Erica Weitzman there (it doesn’t seem like they’re the same person) but so far, I’m enjoying what I find online.

This includes poems and an essay about punk entitled “I Wanna Destroy: Towards an Aesthetic of Violence” (PDF). That and “No fun: aporias of pleasure in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory” seem to reveal what might be Weitzman’s pattern of writing essays with punk rock allusions in their titles.

Back to Waggish: other highlights include a brief discussion on “Freud on the Uncanny/Unheimlich” and a series of pieces entitled “Thoughts on Genre.” Three entries under the latter focuses on blogs and ties in with my own attempts to figure out what’s up with this blog:

• “Blogs and Genre”
• “Blogs and Improvisation”
• “Blogs and Practice”

Editions of You “fails” on most counts.

Apophenia 1: Harrison, Derrida, Lacan, Poe, Public Enemy

I’m a big fan of M. John Harrison‘s writing in general: not just his novels and stories but also his blog entries.

Lately, Harrison’s been posting lists of works in the related genres of fantasy and science fiction. It would be an understatement to refer to these lists as unorthodox; while most of the entries are books, some are films, computer games, and pop songs.

In a comment on one of Harrison’s follow-up lists, an artist named Edwin Rostron mentions something called The Codex Seraphinianus. Following the link Rostron left, I found myself thrilled by both the book itself and that essay about it. Additionally, I was also thrilled by the mention of a professor named Terry Harpold.

That was when things became apophenic.