Weaponized Joy

Here's a small review of Agamben's The Man Without Content , which I thoroughly enjoyed - as a read - but was ultimately kind of disappointed by. I need to mention - right after I finished reading the Agamben book, I started Hito Steyerl's Duty Free Art , and the contrast, which I won't really go into, is stark beyond measure. Steyerl really gets into issues of art's production and transmission, the so-called 'material conditions' that everyone likes to bang-on about, and it just reads so much closer  to the grain of what art is today, than anything in Agamben's book. Reading Agamben in Steyerl's light, Agamben comes off as story-telling, a just-so story told through rarefied categories whose purchase on the world is... questionable at best. This comes off as super critical, but I should emphasize that I really liked Agamben's book! What I want is a Steyerl and  an Agamben, together. Until then... here's the review: Art, we have been told, b

Badiou’s Handbook of Inaesthetics is now the 8th book I’ve read of Badiou’s since finishing his Being and Event back in October last year (2023). I’ve been looking forward to it because the topics it deals with are, on the face of it, on the farther reaches of what Badiou’s philosophy seems geared to engage. Mathematics and art: how to bring these together? Well, I read it, and, it’s probably the first book of Badiou’s that I’ve been somewhat disappointed by. So, as usual with things that bother me, I wrote something small about it. Here’s my mini-review of the book: Now three months deep into my dive into Badiou, his Handbook of Inaesthetics marks, for me, something of a test. Not one for me, mind you, but for Badiou (or better: for me yes, but for Badiou too!). After all, how does a philosopher for whom “philosophy is an insensate act” deal wth the thorny question of aesthetics? Aesthetics, the sensorial field par excellence . Can Badiou, arch-rationalist, ontologist of mathematic

I like to write small reviews - recapitulations, really - of some of the books I've read. Here's one for Agamben's The Time that Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans:  It’s hard to get to the end of The Time That Remains without feeling that one has been tricked in some way. The avowed goal is straightforward enough: to “restore (Saint) Paul’s letters to the status of the fundamental messianic text for the Western tradition”. The method, even more so: to read and comment on the first ten words(!) of the first verse(!) of the Letter to the Romans as the means of such a restoration. One would think this would entail a simple exercise in exegesis, especially since the book's format is set up so as to go through the verse almost word by word - chapter two is on "calling" ( Kletos ), three on "separated" ( Aphorismenos ) and so on. Ten words in all, over six chapters. Easy, right? Not in the slightest! As it turns out, Agamben's commenta