I'm quoting from Judy Butler's grappings with foucault, subjectivity and power.
I'm grappling with subjectivity, grappling with my own confounding sense of the impossible, the imperative of impossibility, of acting, sliding towards spaces where I hope gaps open up. I'm spending a lot of time reading theory - sometimes I even write a little
"the conclusion would be that the political, ethical, social, philosophical problem of our days is not to try to liberate us both from the state, and from the state's institutions, but to liberate us from the state and the type of individualzation which is linked to the state. We have to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of individuality which has been imposed on us for several centuries"
(JB: Between Freud and Foucault in 'the Psychic Life of Power, 1997 , p101)
I, as some of YOUSE may have noticed, tend to treat philosophy in an epicurian sense - no I don't mean gourmette olives - but in a stoic sense - and I don't mean biting my lip and eating porridge either...
I see philosophy as a means of considering how it is possible to actually live. how is it possible to reflect honestly, critically and imaginatively upon my desires, my actions, and those of others around me?
How is it possible to get out of bed?
today has been a shit day. My coffee was bitter, the milk oily and coagulated, there were no bananas in the house and insufficient dunny paper for my exploding entrails....
I meditated, I checked my emails, I walked to uni under the fallen sky, i'm here - still trying to work, and not doing very well. I've munched on junk food and painkillers. anything to stop me feeling, stop me shitting, stop me, ohh oh oh stop me, stop me if you think that you've heard this one before....
so. the life.
tomorrow Schappylle Scragg is heading off to take the piss out of the idea of an 'australian public'.
Hysterical flaunting mimesis anyone?
I'm hoping the rain holds off enough so the fake tan stays on, and then i'm meeting up with some earnest and estimable colleagues to discuss judy Butlers take on Foucault and subjectivity, and power....
and my life is so divinely silly sometimes I can't help but smile.
and thank god for this, because I am still so often so damnably hellishly fucking sad.
today has been major lump in chestitis. zits on my face, zits on my scalp, a yucky tummy, an aching body... I woke up wiht a headache but it went away, but I still feel so shite, physically shite, emotionally shite, and I can't think my way out of this, can't steer my whirring mind around to some ohter way of looking at the situation... I just try to distract meself, seal up lips, block off ears, bury myself in assiduous tomeness and hope that time will take me away from this.
Even YOGA ain't helping at the mo... I feel unbalanced, uncoordinated and exhausted.
anway - my committment to slivers of possibility means that I *will* be doing bits and pieces to protest the APEC security circus.... Overpaid, stir crazy cutlery confiscating coppers make a mockery of any notion of citizenship that is not fundamentally bound up wiht really full on coercive relations...
I *am* feeling a bit scared of all the shit about rubber bullets and tear gas and water cannons, but my mind got changed in yoga last week.
I was standing in tadasana, across from an aquaintance who I *KNOW* will definitely be marching on saturday... and I thought - 'fuck. how can I stand here, saying 'Aum' and breathing the same air as someone who is likely to to get the shit beaten out of them this time next week?'
and i decided that I have to go to the march - if only to bear witness to what the stte is, and what it does to it's citzens. I *know* the media will report nothing of this side of the protest; of the dignity and power and beauty of marching, as a public, as a group of people into the city, just to say - hang on isn't this society meant to be ours?'
I *know* that the overpaid, stir crazy cutlery confiscating coppers will do anything they can to provoke violence - even if it means dressing in civvvies and chucking a couple of rocks at their colleagues...
but the whole Apec security circus, the war on terror etc. makes a mockery out of any ideas of the state being anything but a ludicrous spectacle of enforcing invisible power of capitalist speculation - and all we are meant to doo as subjects is play the role of passive compliant consumer... then... well.... hell1 i'ts time to take the piss!
I love the chaser, and I love the greens, and Schazza and Dazza are going out to be 'ordinary aussies' tomorra - doing their bit to fight the war on terror!
I'd rather die laughing than crying
my favourite thing I've seen all week is this: http://www.bumsnotbombs.org/
hope to see some pretty cheeks at 3pm tomorrow!
4 comments:
Thinking of you and everyone at the protest and hope you don't get the shit beaten out of you.
The yogic tradition has two paths - the path of renunciation most people are more familiar with, but there is also Arjuna at the batlefield of Kurukshetra in the Bhagavad Gita, the yoga of action. You are a brave warrior yogi of the mind/body/spirit.
namaste, Carolyn
Wikipedia:
The Kurukshetra War (Devangari: कुरुक्षेत्र युद्ध) forms an essential component of the Hindu epic Mahabharata. According to Mahabharata, a dynastic struggle between sibling clans of Kauravas and the Pandavas for the throne of Hastinapura resulted in a battle in which a number of ancient kingdoms participated as allies of the rival clans. The location of the battle was Kurukshetra in the modern state of Haryana in India.
Mahabharata states that the war lasted eighteen days during which vast armies from all over ancient India fought along the sides of the two rivals. The importance given to the narration of this war is evident from the fact that while the duration of the entire story of the epic lasts centuries dealing with a number of generations of the warring families, the narration of the war forming more than a quarter of the book deals with the events of a mere eighteen days. Much of the narration describes the individual battles of the various heroes of both sides, the battle-field deaths of some of the prominent heroes, the military formations employed on each day by both armies, the war diplomacies, meetings and discussions among the heroes and commanders before the commencement of war on each day, the weapons used, etc. The chapters (Parvas) dealing with the war, from chapter six to ten, are considered amongst oldest in the entire Mahabharata. Bhagavad Gita, a sacred text of Hindu philosophy, is considered a later addition to Mahabharata which recounts the conversation between the Pandava Arjuna and Krishna arising out of Arjuna's reluctance to fight members of his own family.
Wow!
Is it such a suprise how many yoga devotees I saw marching yesterday?
and no - we weren't beaten up
I thought stoics were the people Lars Von Trier makes films about - and that's the limit of my knowledge on that point! I like the way you think about philosophy. I think that is exactly what philosophy is about - how to live. And that means it's for the everyperson. IMHO. I've enjoyed reading your writing of late - on your various blogs. Especially, lately, the sadness.
SJxx
yoga is not helping me at the moment either...
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