John Crowley’s The Translator is a beautiful and deceptively simple novel, with surprisingly little of the fantastic in comparison to Crowley’s other books. The novel is set during the Kennedy presidency, in the early 1960s; it concerns the relationship between I. I. Falin, a middle-aged, exiled Russian poet, and Kit Malone, an undergraduate woman at an unnamed Midwestern university where Falin teaches, and who helps him render his (unpublished in Russia) poems into English.
It’s hard to say whether almost nothing happens in the course of the book, or whether almost everything does. This is because the novel’s style is clear and crisp, and seemingly naturalistic; and yet everything important is elided, not by authorial whim, but because what is most important is what somehow cannot be said, cannot be recognized, cannot be narrated.
For instance, Kit and Falin are certainly in love in some sort of way, but it is never clear whether they ever have sex – years later, Kit sincerely cannot remember. When finally, toward the end of the book, they spend a night together, “It seemed to her that they spent a very long time there together: not hours but days, years even, the whole course of a long deep love affair… And yet she couldn’t actually remember it, long afterward, remembered nothing of what really happened.”
The Translator is about many things: about the trickiness of language and the impossibility of translation; about the nature of poetry, always trying to say the nothing that cannot be said, and of inspiration, that is as real as it is transient, and that can be passed on to another, but not really possessed by oneself; about the deepest passions, not those that dominate our every waking moment, but those that creep upon us when we are asleep, as it were in spite of our wills, those that make us demand things impossible and impalpable, the mysterious otherness of the person we love, rather than his or her simple, self-evident presence; and also how the personal relates to the political, to the inescapability of history, of society, of the sinister forces that rule us.
For the novel takes place during the Cold War, with all its creepiness, paranoia, and repression. (In fact, it is one of the best portraits I have read of the anxiety of that period, and of its pressures of conformism and groupthink. Kit is free neither from social censoriousness, nor from the spying of the FBI). As for Falin, exiled from the Soviet Union (instead of being sent to prison), he finds himself in an America where he is still under surveillance, still under suspicion, still able to live only under the sufferance of powers who are, themselves, accountable to no one. And the book culminates during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962; Crowley’s conceit is that, in some inexplicable way, Falin must sacrifice himself (relinquishing both his life and his poetry) in order to avert the ultimate catastrophe of all-out nuclear war.
The Translator is mysterious, exactly to the extent that it is utterly lucid. Reading it is a haunting experience, because everything is right there on the surface, both the naturalistic descriptions and the metaphors and themes; and yet this supreme lucidity points to something that is intrinsically ungraspable, so that, after I had finished reading the book, only then did I start to be possessed by all the details that I had read through or read over without any difficulty, but that in retrospect turned out to be dense and labyrinthine, as if it were only in the clear light of unambiguous evidence that we could stumble upon what is truly enigmatic.
John Crowley’s The Translator is a beautiful and deceptively simple novel, with surprisingly little of the fantastic in comparison to Crowley’s other books. The novel is set during the Kennedy presidency, in the early 1960s; it concerns the relationship between I. I. Falin, a middle-aged, exiled Russian poet, and Kit Malone, an undergraduate woman at an unnamed Midwestern university where Falin teaches, and who helps him render his (unpublished in Russia) poems into English.
It’s hard to say whether almost nothing happens in the course of the book, or whether almost everything does. This is because the novel’s style is clear and crisp, and seemingly naturalistic; and yet everything important is elided, not by authorial whim, but because what is most important is what somehow cannot be said, cannot be recognized, cannot be narrated.
For instance, Kit and Falin are certainly in love in some sort of way, but it is never clear whether they ever have sex – years later, Kit sincerely cannot remember. When finally, toward the end of the book, they spend a night together, “It seemed to her that they spent a very long time there together: not hours but days, years even, the whole course of a long deep love affair… And yet she couldn’t actually remember it, long afterward, remembered nothing of what really happened.”
The Translator is about many things: about the trickiness of language and the impossibility of translation; about the nature of poetry, always trying to say the nothing that cannot be said, and of inspiration, that is as real as it is transient, and that can be passed on to another, but not really possessed by oneself; about the deepest passions, not those that dominate our every waking moment, but those that creep upon us when we are asleep, as it were in spite of our wills, those that make us demand things impossible and impalpable, the mysterious otherness of the person we love, rather than his or her simple, self-evident presence; and also how the personal relates to the political, to the inescapability of history, of society, of the sinister forces that rule us.
For the novel takes place during the Cold War, with all its creepiness, paranoia, and repression. (In fact, it is one of the best portraits I have read of the anxiety of that period, and of its pressures of conformism and groupthink. Kit is free neither from social censoriousness, nor from the spying of the FBI). As for Falin, exiled from the Soviet Union (instead of being sent to prison), he finds himself in an America where he is still under surveillance, still under suspicion, still able to live only under the sufferance of powers who are, themselves, accountable to no one. And the book culminates during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962; Crowley’s conceit is that, in some inexplicable way, Falin must sacrifice himself (relinquishing both his life and his poetry) in order to avert the ultimate catastrophe of all-out nuclear war.
The Translator is mysterious, exactly to the extent that it is utterly lucid. Reading it is a haunting experience, because everything is right there on the surface, both the naturalistic descriptions and the metaphors and themes; and yet this supreme lucidity points to something that is intrinsically ungraspable, so that, after I had finished reading the book, only then did I start to be possessed by all the details that I had read through or read over without any difficulty, but that in retrospect turned out to be dense and labyrinthine, as if it were only in the clear light of unambiguous evidence that we could stumble upon what is truly enigmatic.
Norman Kelley‘s A Phat Death, or, The Last Days of Noir Soul is the third in his series of Nina Halligan detective novels (following Black Heat and The Big Mango). Like the others, A Phat Death offers a convoluted mystery plot, with ample doses of murder, mayhem, and steamy sex. This time Kelley focuses on the music business, with an ample assortment of murdered hip hop artists, thuggish black record company owners, and slimy, corrupt white politicians and media moguls. Nina Halligan, the detective protagonist and first-person narrator, is a strong black woman – but an emotional and impulsive one, deeply angry as any thoughtful black person in America will inevitably be, able to kick ass when the need arises, and NOT one of those “Mammy” figures who “endures,” and who is filled with comfort and wisdom. (Also, while Nina herself is straight, her close women friends are straight, gay, bi, and hermaphroditic).
But what’s most noteworthy about A Phat Death, and its predecessors in the series, is Kelley’s hard-hitting analysis of the crisis of Black America, and his exceedingly, wonderfully sharp and nasty satire. All the characters in the three novels have invented names, but the books are virtually romans a clef. It’s not hard to recognize the venomous portraits of African American businessmen, intellectuals, political and religious leaders, and musicians and entertainers (with a few powerful white figures thrown in for good measure). Kelley’s vision is a bracing and disturbing one: he portrays a devastated black America, in total social, cultural, and economic collapse, being torn apart and peddled to whites for profit by entrepreneurs, charlatans, and self-appointed saviors, all wanting only to “get paid.”
Norman Kelley‘s A Phat Death, or, The Last Days of Noir Soul is the third in his series of Nina Halligan detective novels (following Black Heat and The Big Mango). Like the others, A Phat Death offers a convoluted mystery plot, with ample doses of murder, mayhem, and steamy sex. This time Kelley focuses on the music business, with an ample assortment of murdered hip hop artists, thuggish black record company owners, and slimy, corrupt white politicians and media moguls. Nina Halligan, the detective protagonist and first-person narrator, is a strong black woman – but an emotional and impulsive one, deeply angry as any thoughtful black person in America will inevitably be, able to kick ass when the need arises, and NOT one of those “Mammy” figures who “endures,” and who is filled with comfort and wisdom. (Also, while Nina herself is straight, her close women friends are straight, gay, bi, and hermaphroditic).
But what’s most noteworthy about A Phat Death, and its predecessors in the series, is Kelley’s hard-hitting analysis of the crisis of Black America, and his exceedingly, wonderfully sharp and nasty satire. All the characters in the three novels have invented names, but the books are virtually romans a clef. It’s not hard to recognize the venomous portraits of African American businessmen, intellectuals, political and religious leaders, and musicians and entertainers (with a few powerful white figures thrown in for good measure). Kelley’s vision is a bracing and disturbing one: he portrays a devastated black America, in total social, cultural, and economic collapse, being torn apart and peddled to whites for profit by entrepreneurs, charlatans, and self-appointed saviors, all wanting only to “get paid.”
From a review of a forthcoming book, Killing Freud: 20th-century culture and the death of psychoanalysis by Todd Dufresne:
“Dufresne suggests that the upshot of Freud’s moribund triumph has been, intellectually, little short of catastrophic. Psychoanalysis subverts the essence of western rationality, substituting a bastard discourse for the fact-honouring conventions of dialogue that, intermittently, have served civilization well since Socrates. Rightly, Dufresne identifies the excesses of post-structuralism and postmodernism as Freud’s progeny, without wholly condemning all such movements. Yet his basic point rings true: wherever the bearded shadow of Freud falls, something unwholesome festers.”
This is precisely why, for all my suspicion and distrust of psychoanalysis (on grounds that have been worked through by Foucault, Deleuze, and others) I still consider it to be necessary, indeed indispensable.
From a review of a forthcoming book, Killing Freud: 20th-century culture and the death of psychoanalysis by Todd Dufresne:
“Dufresne suggests that the upshot of Freud’s moribund triumph has been, intellectually, little short of catastrophic. Psychoanalysis subverts the essence of western rationality, substituting a bastard discourse for the fact-honouring conventions of dialogue that, intermittently, have served civilization well since Socrates. Rightly, Dufresne identifies the excesses of post-structuralism and postmodernism as Freud’s progeny, without wholly condemning all such movements. Yet his basic point rings true: wherever the bearded shadow of Freud falls, something unwholesome festers.”
This is precisely why, for all my suspicion and distrust of psychoanalysis (on grounds that have been worked through by Foucault, Deleuze, and others) I still consider it to be necessary, indeed indispensable.
I always find Slavoj Zizek alternately (or simultaneously) enthralling and infuriating, and nowhere more so than in his new book Organs Without Bodies in which he takes on Gilles Deleuze.
I always find Slavoj Zizek alternately (or simultaneously) enthralling and infuriating, and nowhere more so than in his new book Organs Without Bodies in which he takes on Gilles Deleuze.
Continue reading “Zizek on Deleuze”
Peter Watts‘ Maelstrom is the sequel to his Starfish (which I discussed here). Maelstrom envisions the possible extinction of the human species, and indeed of all terrestrial life, due to the competition of a nanobacterium brought back from the deep oceans. But the book is much more sympathetic to Lenie Clarke, the woman (from Starfish) who is the (not entirely unwitting) vector of this infection, than it is to the “corpses” (people with power, money, and influence) who are trying to stop it. Emotionally, the book emphasizes victimization, on the one hand, and bitter revenge on the other: these seem to be the only alternatives – since rebellion is largely futile, and not much more than a fashion statement anyway – to craven collaboration with the dominant powers.
But the book’s larger vision is more technopolitical than psychological. It envisions a world in which travel restrictions and other suspensions of civil liberties are the norm, less for explicitly political reasons, than for environmental ones, in order to contain the various biomedical and chemical disasters that Watts presents as a regular feature of mid-21st-century life. (This also includes the control of refugees, who have fled to North America to escape environmental disasters in Asia and other parts of the world). Foucault showed how our ubiquitous technologies of surveillance and control arose, in part, out of efforts to contain things like plague; Watts envisions these technologies returning to their roots, as it were, as a result of our rapacious destruction of the environment (as well as of continued terrorism in a time of extreme technologies).
There’s also a lot about re-engineering the human body, not just to allow physical adaptations to extreme conditions, but also to control behavior; this ranges from the implantation of false memories (of things like having been abused as a child), to implanting triggers for violence and aggression (very useful for breeding and training assassins), to neurochemical manipulations of emotions like guilt. The novel asks us to consider what “free will” might mean under such conditions (and it doesn’t allow us any easy answers).
And then there is the book’s vision of Maelstrom itself, which is the mid-21st-century descendant of the Internet. Instantaneous, worldwide wireless communication is the norm; but cyberspace is infested by “wildlife”, rogue programs of all sorts that are the rapidly-evolved descendants of the spam and viruses and worms of today. There’s a whole online ecology in Maelstrom, and it isn’t pretty: it’s characterized by vicious Darwinian competition. This “wildlife” doesn’t stop people from using the Net for information or for social contact, so much as it insinuates itself within those human uses. blurring lines between fact, rumor, and innuendo, and making all communication rife with suspicion and conflict. (Not to mention Watts’ brilliant and wholly original take on the nature, and the possibilities, of “artificial intelligence”…).
What makes this all work is the way Watts grounds his overall vision of apocalyptic dread (or better, vengeful, don’t-give-a-fuck bitterness) within a wholly concrete framework of techno/bio/politics.
Peter Watts‘ Maelstrom is the sequel to his Starfish (which I discussed here). Maelstrom envisions the possible extinction of the human species, and indeed of all terrestrial life, due to the competition of a nanobacterium brought back from the deep oceans. But the book is much more sympathetic to Lenie Clarke, the woman (from Starfish) who is the (not entirely unwitting) vector of this infection, than it is to the “corpses” (people with power, money, and influence) who are trying to stop it. Emotionally, the book emphasizes victimization, on the one hand, and bitter revenge on the other: these seem to be the only alternatives – since rebellion is largely futile, and not much more than a fashion statement anyway – to craven collaboration with the dominant powers.
But the book’s larger vision is more technopolitical than psychological. It envisions a world in which travel restrictions and other suspensions of civil liberties are the norm, less for explicitly political reasons, than for environmental ones, in order to contain the various biomedical and chemical disasters that Watts presents as a regular feature of mid-21st-century life. (This also includes the control of refugees, who have fled to North America to escape environmental disasters in Asia and other parts of the world). Foucault showed how our ubiquitous technologies of surveillance and control arose, in part, out of efforts to contain things like plague; Watts envisions these technologies returning to their roots, as it were, as a result of our rapacious destruction of the environment (as well as of continued terrorism in a time of extreme technologies).
There’s also a lot about re-engineering the human body, not just to allow physical adaptations to extreme conditions, but also to control behavior; this ranges from the implantation of false memories (of things like having been abused as a child), to implanting triggers for violence and aggression (very useful for breeding and training assassins), to neurochemical manipulations of emotions like guilt. The novel asks us to consider what “free will” might mean under such conditions (and it doesn’t allow us any easy answers).
And then there is the book’s vision of Maelstrom itself, which is the mid-21st-century descendant of the Internet. Instantaneous, worldwide wireless communication is the norm; but cyberspace is infested by “wildlife”, rogue programs of all sorts that are the rapidly-evolved descendants of the spam and viruses and worms of today. There’s a whole online ecology in Maelstrom, and it isn’t pretty: it’s characterized by vicious Darwinian competition. This “wildlife” doesn’t stop people from using the Net for information or for social contact, so much as it insinuates itself within those human uses. blurring lines between fact, rumor, and innuendo, and making all communication rife with suspicion and conflict. (Not to mention Watts’ brilliant and wholly original take on the nature, and the possibilities, of “artificial intelligence”…).
What makes this all work is the way Watts grounds his overall vision of apocalyptic dread (or better, vengeful, don’t-give-a-fuck bitterness) within a wholly concrete framework of techno/bio/politics.
Windows and Mirrors : Interaction Design, Digital Art, and the Myth of Transparency, by Jay David Bolter and my former colleague Diane Gromala (who left the University of Washington, where I still teach, for Georgia Tech, at least in part because of UW’s stupidity and failure to give her the recognition she deserved) is a book about rethinking the philosophy of web design. It’s a theoretically informed book, but one that is aimed at an audience of Web designers rather than theorists, and hence is lucid and highly accessible. The book’s main thesis is that the value of “transparency” in Web and interface design has been greatly exaggerated. The interface should not simply disappear, as if it were just a window through which we see naked data. Rather, the interface should also be valued for itself; this is what makes “interactivity” possible, as well as being where aesthetic pleasure resides. Web design should be pleasurable, rather than just nakedly utilitarian in the way “usability” experts like Jakob Nielsen have recommended. A good interface is one that oscillates between usability and reflectivity, between being a “window” and being a “mirror.”
I don’t think that Bolter and Gromala’s thesis is new, at least among people who are familiar with theory. But rarely has this sort of argument been presented so elegantly and at the same time so accessibly (in doing both, the book practices what it preaches). Taking off from analyses of art works displayed at SIGGRAPH 2000, Windows and Mirrors shows how self-consciousness and self-reflection are intrinsic dimensions of digital media (indeed, of all media), and how trying (never successfully) to eliminate them in favor of a supposedly unmediated and direct experience has disastrous consequences. Along the way, they Bolter and Gromala affirm the importance of embodiment in digital or virtual experience, debunk totalizing notions of media “convergence,” and look further at the consequences of “remediation” (the way new media take up and alter older media — this was the title and subject of a previous book by Bolter, written in collaboration with Richard Grusin).
Web designers should definitely read this book. Anyone else with an interest in digital media should find it interesting and informative, if only for the clarity and focus it brings to its themes.
Windows and Mirrors : Interaction Design, Digital Art, and the Myth of Transparency, by Jay David Bolter and my former colleague Diane Gromala (who left the University of Washington, where I still teach, for Georgia Tech, at least in part because of UW’s stupidity and failure to give her the recognition she deserved) is a book about rethinking the philosophy of web design. It’s a theoretically informed book, but one that is aimed at an audience of Web designers rather than theorists, and hence is lucid and highly accessible. The book’s main thesis is that the value of “transparency” in Web and interface design has been greatly exaggerated. The interface should not simply disappear, as if it were just a window through which we see naked data. Rather, the interface should also be valued for itself; this is what makes “interactivity” possible, as well as being where aesthetic pleasure resides. Web design should be pleasurable, rather than just nakedly utilitarian in the way “usability” experts like Jakob Nielsen have recommended. A good interface is one that oscillates between usability and reflectivity, between being a “window” and being a “mirror.”
I don’t think that Bolter and Gromala’s thesis is new, at least among people who are familiar with theory. But rarely has this sort of argument been presented so elegantly and at the same time so accessibly (in doing both, the book practices what it preaches). Taking off from analyses of art works displayed at SIGGRAPH 2000, Windows and Mirrors shows how self-consciousness and self-reflection are intrinsic dimensions of digital media (indeed, of all media), and how trying (never successfully) to eliminate them in favor of a supposedly unmediated and direct experience has disastrous consequences. Along the way, they Bolter and Gromala affirm the importance of embodiment in digital or virtual experience, debunk totalizing notions of media “convergence,” and look further at the consequences of “remediation” (the way new media take up and alter older media — this was the title and subject of a previous book by Bolter, written in collaboration with Richard Grusin).
Web designers should definitely read this book. Anyone else with an interest in digital media should find it interesting and informative, if only for the clarity and focus it brings to its themes.
Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music, edited by Rob Young, is a collection of columns that originally appeared in the music magazine The Wire, dealing with the backgrounds and developments of 20th century experimental music. All in all, I found it a useful volume. If some of the essays are little more than lists strung together with anecdotes, they are at least useful lists. And a number of the essays are truly brilliant and thought-provoking (especially those by Erik Davis, on “the esoteric origins of the phonograph,” Marcus Boon, on the history of drones, Peter Shapiro, on turntablism, and the always insightful David Toop, on a number of subjects .
Still, Undercurrents only intimates, without really discussing, the questions in this realm that most interest me. How important will 20th century experimental currents (whether those of the dadaists and futurists in the first half of the century, or those of John Cage in the second) continue to be in the changed technological and socio-political climate of the 21st? (Might not it be time to leave them all behind?) In what ways are technological experiments with sound charting new, ‘posthuman’ ways of being, or at least possibilities of new perceptions, as Kodwo Eshun argues? What relevance, if any, does the old high/low distinction have in this context (or even the distinction between more fringe and more mainstream pop music, when Timbaland is arguably more experimental – in any meaningful sense of that word – than, say Sonic Youth)? And is there any useful way of hooking up the discussion about formal experimentation with discussions about the socio-cultural dimensions of music, e.g. questions of race in the US? (since both these dimensions are unavoidably important).
I seriously mean all these as open questions, ones I haven’t begun to work out for myself.
Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music, edited by Rob Young, is a collection of columns that originally appeared in the music magazine The Wire, dealing with the backgrounds and developments of 20th century experimental music. All in all, I found it a useful volume. If some of the essays are little more than lists strung together with anecdotes, they are at least useful lists. And a number of the essays are truly brilliant and thought-provoking (especially those by Erik Davis, on “the esoteric origins of the phonograph,” Marcus Boon, on the history of drones, Peter Shapiro, on turntablism, and the always insightful David Toop, on a number of subjects .
Still, Undercurrents only intimates, without really discussing, the questions in this realm that most interest me. How important will 20th century experimental currents (whether those of the dadaists and futurists in the first half of the century, or those of John Cage in the second) continue to be in the changed technological and socio-political climate of the 21st? (Might not it be time to leave them all behind?) In what ways are technological experiments with sound charting new, ‘posthuman’ ways of being, or at least possibilities of new perceptions, as Kodwo Eshun argues? What relevance, if any, does the old high/low distinction have in this context (or even the distinction between more fringe and more mainstream pop music, when Timbaland is arguably more experimental – in any meaningful sense of that word – than, say Sonic Youth)? And is there any useful way of hooking up the discussion about formal experimentation with discussions about the socio-cultural dimensions of music, e.g. questions of race in the US? (since both these dimensions are unavoidably important). And, how do we situate all these musical developments in the context of the larger McLuhanesque changes in sensibility that “electronic culture,” now in digital form, continues to bring us?
I seriously mean all these as open questions, ones I haven’t begun to work out for myself. Recent books and articles by Eshun, by Simon Reynolds, by Jonathan Sterne (from appearances – I haven’t read it yet), and by Alex Weheliye (warning: may not be accessible except through a college library or some other such gateway) have begun to tackle these questions, but there is still a lot of work to do – not to mention, of course, the continuing inventions by musicians themselves.
China Mieville’s The Tain is a novella, of 70 or so pages, most easily found in Peter Crowther’s anthology, Cities (UK only). It’s an eerie tale, based on Jorge Luis Borges’ fable about the fauna of mirrors. The mirror people, Borges writes, used to be free, but when they invaded our earth they were imprisoned behind their mirrors, and forced by magic to imitate even the least of our gestures. One day, however, Borges continues, the magic will wear off, and the mirror people will escape the mirrors and invade our world…
Mieville’s novella imagines the aftermath of that invasion. It’s partly an uncanny account (reminiscent of a number of last-man science fiction texts) of the horror that ensues for the few human survivors; and partly a poetic meditation on what it might mean to lose resemblance. If we were to lose our reflections, what would become of us? And what would happen to the reflections, when they were no longer constrained to take our own forms upon themselves? On one side, it’s a story of self-alienation; on the other, of an otherness that offers us no common measure by which we could apprehend and describe it. Nonetheless, these two sides do communicate with one another. To say more would spoil the surprises of this beautifully luminous text. (I use the word luminous, even though – or rather precisely because – the tale is awash in strange descriptions of a “hard” light, a light that “was oppressive: it scoured colours of depth”, being without reflections;”no light rebounded, there were no specular highlights”).
China Mieville’s The Tain is a novella, of 70 or so pages, most easily found in Peter Crowther’s anthology, Cities (UK only). It’s an eerie tale, based on Jorge Luis Borges’ fable about the fauna of mirrors. The mirror people, Borges writes, used to be free, but when they invaded our earth they were imprisoned behind their mirrors, and forced by magic to imitate even the least of our gestures. One day, however, Borges continues, the magic will wear off, and the mirror people will escape the mirrors and invade our world…
Mieville’s novella imagines the aftermath of that invasion. It’s partly an uncanny account (reminiscent of a number of last-man science fiction texts) of the horror that ensues for the few human survivors; and partly a poetic meditation on what it might mean to lose resemblance. If we were to lose our reflections, what would become of us? And what would happen to the reflections, when they were no longer constrained to take our own forms upon themselves? On one side, it’s a story of self-alienation; on the other, of an otherness that offers us no common measure by which we could apprehend and describe it. Nonetheless, these two sides do communicate with one another. To say more would spoil the surprises of this beautifully luminous text. (I use the word luminous, even though – or rather precisely because – the tale is awash in strange descriptions of a “hard” light, a light that “was oppressive: it scoured colours of depth”, being without reflections;”no light rebounded, there were no specular highlights”).
Gilbert Simondon (1926-1987) is another obscure French philosopher championed by Gilles Deleuze. I’ve just finished reading his book L’individu et sa genese physico-biologique. (The Individual and its Physico-biological Individuation; It doesn’t seem to have been translated into English, aside from the Introduction which appeared in Zone 6: Incorporations). And once again, as with other forgotten thinkers recommended by Deleuze, Simondon has proved a revelation, both for his influence upon Deleuze, and for what his own thought suggests.
Gilbert Simondon (1926-1987) is another obscure French philosopher championed by Gilles Deleuze. I’ve just finished reading his book L’individu et sa genese physico-biologique. (The Individual and its Physico-biological Individuation; It doesn’t seem to have been translated into English, aside from the Introduction which appeared in Zone 6: Incorporations). And once again, as with other forgotten thinkers recommended by Deleuze, Simondon has proved a revelation, both for his influence upon Deleuze, and for what his own thought suggests.
Continue reading “Gilbert Simondon”
Chester Brown’s graphic novel Louis Riel, which he has been working on and publishing in serial form since 1999, is finally done, and published as a single volume. I couldn’t be happier…
Chester Brown’s graphic novel Louis Riel, which he has been working on and publishing in serial form since 1999, is finally done, and published as a single volume. I couldn’t be happier…
Continue reading “Louis Riel”