reading Wittgenstein

i was reading Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigation on the toilet, and a question came out of me: "what is a perfect piece of shit?"

Deleuze rhizome intro in chinese

5、反基础主义。后现代主义者否认各种知识之间存在着等级和从属关系，否认可以依照知识之间的这种等级和从属关系，通过归纳和演绎、分析和综合等途径将知识整合成一种总体性的话语体系或“宏大叙事”，认为它们之间真正存在着的乃是一种交互指涉、交互缠绕的“互文性”（Intertextual）关系或网络关系；不可能简单地从一种知识中推论出另一种知识来，每一种知识都具有同等的重要性，反对各种“总体性理论”或“宏大叙事”的有效性，转而鼓励各种“局部性理论”或“小叙事”。

在《千高原》一书中，德勒兹和瓜塔里提出了“块茎（Rhizome）结构”模型来取代现代主义思想家们的“根-树（root-tree）结构”模型，用以描述知识之间的关系。德勒兹和瓜塔里认为“块茎”结构具有着与“根-树”结构完全不同的特点：第一，连结的异质性：与根-树结构中的每一点作为多层次的“主干-分支”体系中的一个环节都只能与体系中特定方向的树干或分支连接不同，“块茎中的任何一点都能够并且必须与任何其它一点相连接”[i]；第二，复杂多样性：与根-树结构中表面上看繁华多样的枝叶最终都可以也必须归结于树根这个“一”不同，在块茎结构中所有的点都“不再与一有任何关系”[ii]，不必再归结于或附属于某一个“一”；“就它们填充和占据了它们所有的维度而言，所有的多样性都是平展的：我们因此可以谈论一种多样性的连贯平面，即使这个平面的维度随着在它上面创造的连接的数量的增加而增加。”[iii]第三，“非意指断裂”性：与根-树结构中那种将不同结构分离开来或单一结构切割开来的断裂不同，块茎在特定地点上虽然也可能被破裂和粉碎，“但它却可以在某条旧的路线或新的路线上重新开始”[iv]，这些路线总是相互联系、相互交错着的，从而使得块茎结构中事物的演化将不再遵循树状的模式，“不同路线之间的横向交流搅乱了谱系树”[v]；第四，无中心性：“树状系统是一种具有意指和主观化的中心、像有组织的记忆一样进行中央自动控制的等级系统”[vi]；与此相反，块茎结构则是“一种无中心、无等级、无意指的系统，没有将军，没有组织化的记忆或中央自动控制，仅仅只被状态的运行所限定”[vii]。德勒兹和瓜塔里明确地提出“思想不是树状的”[viii]，并感叹“树喻”何以“一直统治着西方的现实和所有的西方思想”[ix]，“所有树状文化，从生物学到语言学，都是在它们的基础上建立起来的”[x]；他们疾呼“我们已经厌倦了树；我们应该停止相信什么树和根了。它们已经让我们遭受了太多的痛苦”[xi]；他们提出的口号是：“制造块茎，不要根，决不要植根！”[xii]
在《两个讲座》中，福柯也从另一角度对各种“通用的、总体化的理论”进行了批评，极力倡导各种“特殊的、局部的、区域性的知识”。从他的权力的微观物理学观点出发，福柯提出我们应该将社会研究的焦点放在微观的、局部的日常生活领域，而既有的那些“通用的、总体化的理论”对于这种“权力的微观物理学”的研究不仅不能提供一种有效的指引，而且还构成了一种障碍[xiii]：除了不能恰当地揭示弥散在日常生活各个不同领域中的那些局部性的、其起源和运作机制各各特殊的权力关系与权力技术之外，这些既定的总体化理论本身也构成了一种支配性的权力，“这种理论以真正的知识的名义和独断的态度对之进行筛选、划分等级和发号施令”[xiv]，凡是与这些总体化的理论不一致的理论与知识生产都将受到压制，从而使一大批“局部的、特定的、缺乏普遍意义的”知识成为被忽略、被埋葬的知识，使得权力的微观运作机制永远得不到恰当的揭示。福柯指出，要想使权力的微观运作机制真正得以揭示，就必须“废除总体性话语及其等级体系在理论上的特权地位”[xv]，建构一些以“冷僻知识和局部记忆的结合”为特征的“特殊的、局部的、区域性的知识”。福柯把这样一种知识称为“谱系学”知识。这种谱系学知识的任务不是要提出一整套与既有理论不同的理论或思想体系，而是要“对抗整体统一的理论”、“关注局部的、非连续性的、被取消资格的、非法的知识”[xvi]，以获得对于权力机制的另类认知，为人们理解和批判现实提供一些“有用的零件和工具”。[xvii]福柯认为，只有这样，我们才能走出压制、斗争、新的压制这样的恶性循环，为人类反抗支配的斗争开辟新的可能性

my first summer painting

 

Maurice Blanchot - Waiting (1959)

To be waiting, only waiting.
Since when had he been waiting? Since he had freed himself for waiting by losing the desire for things in particular and even the desire for the end of things. waiting begins when there is nothing more to wait for, not even the end of this waiting. Waiting is unaware of and abandons what it is waiting for. Waiting is waiting for nothing.
Whatever the importance of the object of waiting, it is always infinitely surpassed by the movement of waiting. Waiting renders all things equally important, equally vain. To wait for the slightest thing we command an infinite power of waiting which seems unable to be exhausted.
Waiting is always a waiting for waiting, resuming the beginning, suspending the end and, inside this interval, opening the interval of another waiting. The night in which there is nothing awaited represents this movement of waiting.
The impossibility of waiting belongs essentially to waiting.

Christian Wolf

On quiet music...

...composer Christian Wolff writes:

"...The quiet of this music requires that you listen actively. The music requires your engagement with it. It has no rhetoric, or, you could say, its peculiar rhetoric is conversational. Not a rhetoric of power but of the distribution of power (potentially), between where the sound comes from and where it is going (listeners).

The limitations of such a music, you might think, would be its tendency to be private, conversation among just a few people. But this may also be its strength: it may be oppositional, a counter rhetoric to what we are mostly, "normally" offered. To be with this music is to find a kind of refuge from the violence of the times. But then the real strength of quiet music would be to make that refuge a waystation (there are no refuges): to begin to undo and unmask that violence."

Taken from Christian Wolff, "Quiet Music: On a Compositional Seminar in Boswil," in Cues: Writings and Conversations (Cologne: MusikTexte, 1998), 232.

Robert Lax - writing career

among the other dreams that haunt me i suppose is that of being able to make something that will stand, something that will last. what lasts better than the dreams of man and which of his dreams is he most eager to have last, if not the good. the good dream of man is to live happily in a blessed city. to live blessedly in a happy city. the good dream of man is to live happily in a blessed city. to rise in the morning and find himself in a blessed city, and to live in it through the day, and indeed through all the days of his life. the good dream of man is the dream of a blessed city. a city in heaven. a city on earth. the work of the poet is to make that dream real, at least in words, at least on paper. (many poems and good poems too seem to work far from this ideal. yet this ideal, so it seems to me, in some way, underlies them all) 
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i have admired the ancient writers for the weight of their words, the simplicity and strength of their expression. homer, dante, david of the psalms, basho of the haiku being among my favorites. of modern writers james joyce and st. john perse seem most admirable & blake and isaiah among the timelessly prophetic. from homer, to dante to joyce runs a clear, conscious, even self-conscious tradition (from one blind poet to on persecuted to one both blind and persecuted. i have not stopped here to do reverence to vergil, but if dante revered him he has been forever revered.) the way of using words in all of these poets has been stated by the psalmist david: ‘the words of the Lord are pure words: refined seven times.’ and this refinement can be to no other purpose but ultimately to the Lord’s. for we do not refine to achieve a base metal but only to attain to pure gold.

Jon Cowan made this

Attentiveness is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
(Simone Weil)

Thought is absorbed into attention to things, and the attention thereby becomes thoughtful.

(David Miller on Robert Lax's 21 Pages)

Zizek: The Pervert's Guide To Cinema