X avec Y

SIMMON RITTER VON STAMPFER STROBOSCOPE DISC AVEC CRYTPO-FASCIST MYSTIC ICONOGRAPHY

2009-12-24T08:36:00.000-08:00

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Found the former in this remarkable old MOMA catalogue on "The Machine" (hence the bad photo taken from laptop). For some reason, kept crossing visualwires in my head, between esoteric semi-Nazi and Irminenschaft occult symbols and an early industrial moving image process that, in this case, is used to depict the process of craft production. A black sun of industry turns the gears outward, and the hammer falls...

LAO-TSE AVEC MARX

2009-11-12T11:56:00.000-08:00

From Perry Anderson, 'The River of Time', NLR 26 (2004):

Classically, utopias were imagined as islands, enclaves or colonies—

delimited spaces, either segregated within the world, or projected beyond

it. Today, would not the appropriate utopia have to be globalized, the

whole earth brought under the wing of that butterfly, fluttering so well

and so fast? But we can also envisage the renewal of utopian energies

more historically. No-one has captured that other tempo more strikingly

than Jameson, in one of those unexpected sentences that are his signature.

It comes from Brecht and Method, where he writes:

Stasis today, all over the world—in the twin condition of market and globalization,

commodification and financial speculation—does not even take on

a baleful religious sense of an implacable human nature; but it certainly

seems to have outstripped any place for human agency, and to have rendered

the latter obsolete. That is why a Brechtian conception of activity

must go hand in hand with a revival of the older precapitalist sense of time

itself, of the change or flowing of all things; for it is the movement of this

great river of time or the Tao that will slowly carry us downstream again to

the moment of praxis.

Lao Tse floating towards Marx. Is the torrent of capital now churning

too fast for such a rendezvous? Later, Jameson raises that objection himself.

Others might question the paradox of an activism delivered by a

drift with the stream. But the power of the image remains. It requires

no attentisme. The Tao Te Ching is also a cry of social anger, a ça ira of

its times. ‘Exterminate benevolence, discard righteousness’—‘the people

will be a hundred times better off’. Few words knock so sharply on our

door, in an age of institutional piety of which Confucius could only have

dreamt. Should we call them too utopian?

(sent from Mr. Toscano)

ZULAWSKI AVEC HALL & OATES

2009-10-14T19:21:00.000-07:00

[the awkward result of YouTube's "Related Videos" generator]

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RIDICULOUS "I BELIEVE IN CAPITALI$M" LIVESTRONG-ESQUE BRACELETS AVEC THE ONION

2009-07-19T13:14:00.001-07:00

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(These godawful things found here, connected to this steaming pile of very ordinary shit.)

And hell, if it's very trumpeting apologists are employing a cultural figure based on support for cancer survivors, it's a good sign that the sickness of the system is as deeply terminal as we've been saying.

GLENN BECK AVEC TOM WILSONBERG

2009-07-16T20:24:00.001-07:00

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Thank you, Katie.

Global Financial Meltdown avec AK-47

2009-04-22T09:12:00.000-07:00

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...efficient, simple, deadly.

PAUL BLART MALL COP AVEC JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

2009-03-14T17:53:00.000-07:00

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Why is man alone subject to becoming an imbecile?

- Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

WEN JIBAO AVEC MODEST MOUSE

2009-03-13T17:35:00.000-07:00

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Worry ain't nothing but the promise of global shit luck.

OBAMA AVEC ZIZEK

2009-02-26T16:35:00.000-08:00

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Another from the Gringo. Here's his analysis of the following Obama statement:

“The scale of the US economy and the capital markets are so vast, and the problem in terms of managing and overseeing anything of that scale, I think...wouldn’t make sense. And we also have different traditions in this country and we want to retain a strong sense of private capital fulfilling the core investment needs of our country.”

HITCHENS AVEC BERLUSCONI

2009-02-26T16:33:00.001-08:00

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From the Gringo.

THE MELVINS AVEC AUTOGENERATED INTERNET KARAOKE MACHINE

2009-02-13T10:00:00.000-08:00

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WEBER AVEC WEBER

2009-02-12T18:33:00.000-08:00

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FOURIER AVEC TEXAS

2009-02-03T09:33:00.000-08:00

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Courtesy of the Institute. The odd red legacy of a state for which red usually signifies something quite different.

Witness the historical anomaly that is Victor Prosper Considérant and his commune La Réunion.

"It has been suggested that Karl Marx himself once considered coming to Texas. Or, possibly, he only mentioned the idea as a ruse to throw authorities off his trail."

POLLOCK AVEC TALENT PORTION OF A BEAUTY PAGEANT

2009-01-30T08:32:00.000-08:00

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FOUCAULT AVEC POLANYI

2009-01-29T16:10:00.000-08:00

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From Benjamin.

FREUD AVEC BONOBO PORNO

2009-01-26T09:45:00.001-08:00

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From the NY Times on bonobos and female arousal:

"She found footage of bonobos, a species of ape, as they mated, and then, because the accompanying sounds were dull — “bonobos don’t seem to make much noise in sex,” she told me, “though the females give a kind of pleasure grin and make chirpy sounds” — she dubbed in some animated chimpanzee hooting and screeching. She showed the short movie to men and women, straight and gay."

(from the same article)

"These researchers and clinicians are consumed by the sexual problem Sigmund Freud posed to one of his female disciples almost a century ago: “The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my 30 years of research into the feminine soul, is, What does a woman want?”"

BEYONCÉ AVEC MARX

2009-01-17T11:40:00.001-08:00

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From the Institute.

EISENSTEIN AVEC MEATLOAF

2009-01-17T11:29:00.000-08:00

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From my main blog, Socialism and/or Barbarism.

X avec Y

2009-01-17T11:16:00.001-08:00

This will be a collective blog, where I'll post whatever is sent to me.

The point here is a compendium of X avec Y couples, departing from Lacan's "Kant Avec Sade," in which y is the "truth of" x. Or, as I prefer it, the symptom that reveals the full extension of the logic of x which x itself is incapable of bearing out. Here's Žižek's take on this.

What is the point of this collection? Because I find this formulation - or thought-form, if we like - capable of being at once quite funny and quite productive. The work of odd coupling thinks linkages, unholy ones if done correctly, that track out histories and lineages we might miss otherwise.

Send me your pairings, and they will appear here.