eruthros: Delenn from Babylon 5 with a startled expression and the text "omg!" (Default)
So I was reading a New Yorker article about Krystian Bala, a Polish author accused of murder, and I came across the following paragraph and was just -- boggled. One of these sentences is not like the others, guys:
Bala cast himself as an enfant terrible who sought out what Foucault had called a "limit-experience": he wanted to push the boundaries of language and human existence, to break free of what he deemed to be the hypocritical and oppressive "truths" of Western society, including taboos on sex and drugs. Foucault himself was drawn to homosexual sadomasochism. Bala devoured the work of Georges Bataille, who vowed to "brutally oppose all systems" and who once contemplated carrying out human sacrifices; and William Burroughs, who swore to use language to "rub out the word"; and the Marquis de Sade, who demanded, "O man! Is it for you to say what is good or what is evil?" Bala boasted about his drunken visits to brothels and his submission to temptations of the flesh. He told friends that he hated "conventions" and was "capable of anything," and he insisted, "I will not live long but I will live furiously!"
Now, okay, I'd like to smack the author of this article for other reasons, yes, but the sentence there that begins "Foucault himself?" Dude, what does that have to do with this paragraph, which is about things-Bala-read-that-he-liked? Did he READ about Foucault's sex life? No evidence of same here! What then does Foucault's sex life have to do with Bala reading about limit-experiences? Nothing, except that this is already an article about the ways Bala was influenced by postmodernism to ignore "truth" and "morality" and only do language games and thus kill people, and sadomasochism seems similarly edgey, dubious, and weird.
eruthros: Delenn from Babylon 5 with a startled expression and the text "omg!" (Default)
Speaking of Foucault (as I'm sure we all were), I've had a sudden media revelation. I think you could do fabulous, fabulous things with a Foucault-The Matrix deal. The world is not real; nothing is real but the discourses that create the world. Humans are creatures with no inherent nature, deluded into thinking the world is real and limited by their concept of "human nature." Keanu Reeves would be the genius -- okay, I acknowledge that there's a problem there. Keanu Reeves would play the genius who, by virtue of his unique cunning insight, could see through the unreal world to the real discourses.

Then, of course, he could use these discourses to do really cool backflips. And it would turn out that we're all living in pods.

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eruthros: Delenn from Babylon 5 with a startled expression and the text "omg!" (Default)
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