Productive procrastination
Posted on | January 13, 2005 |
While the competition is stiff, the award for most productive procrastination of the summer thus far goes to Rowan Wilken, who has just forwarded me his “A-Z of Cultural Theory”. Pin it to your hearts, comrades, and tell potential publishers:
As We Were Saying
As Agamben says, “Remember that the word enclosed within quotation marks is only waiting its moment of revenge. And no vendetta is more subtle and ironic than its.”
As Bataille says, “I think the way a girl takes off her dress.”
As Cixous says, “Writing is the very possibility of change, the space that can serve as a springboard for subversive thought, the precursory movement of a transformation of social and cultural structures.”
As Derrida says, “To write means to graft.”
As Eco says, “Thought abhors tights.”
As Foucault says, “How does one introduce desire into thought, into discourse, into action?”
As (Deleuze and) Guattari say, “Write to the nth power.”
As Heidegger says, “Man acts as though he were the master and shaper of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.”
As Irigaray says, “Isn’t thinking waiting to return to that which in the faraway is imperceptibly near, so as to be able to dwell in the repose of a proximity at a distance?”
As Jabès says, “Writing puts us into words to make us part of its movement. Then no one can help us.”
As Kafka says, “All things resist being written down.”
As Leiris says, “Anyone who likes to think with a pen in their hand is a writer.”
As Mallarmé says, “Cede the initiative to words.”
As Nietzsche says, “Language cannot get over its coarseness and continues to speak of antitheses where there are only degrees and many subtleties of gradation.”
As Ong says, “Writing is a kind of faking.”
As Perec says, “Writing protects me.”
As Queneau says, “Thank goodness for the art of erasure, that gives one the right to speak of literature.”
As Roland Barthes says, “Intellectual things resemble erotic ones.”
As Sartre says, “Words are loaded pistols.”
As Todorov says, “A word’s meaning is the sum of its possible relations with other words.”
As Ulmer says, “Inventive thinking [...] is goal-directed without knowing exactly where it is going (it is tele-illogical).”
As Virilio says, “When I am writing, I am somewhere else.”
As Wittgenstein says, “In order to draw a limit to thinking, we should have to think both sides of this limit.”
As Xerxes says, “Only by great risks can great things be achieved.”
As Yerushalmi says, “Some books cannot be taken by direct assault; they must be taken like Jericho.”
As Zizek says, “I hate writing. I so intensely hate writing - I cannot tell you how much. [...] My whole economy of writing is in fact based upon an obsessional ritual to avoid the actual act of writing.”
What’s your favourite?
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9 Responses to “Productive procrastination”
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January 13th, 2005 @ 2:36 pm
Bataille and Kafka are my favourites.
I can just see this as a line of t-shirts, coffee mugs, fridge magnets, bbq aprons with tits… You could sell them in Australia Post!
January 13th, 2005 @ 2:37 pm
The bbq apron would have to have Ong’s quote on it. Or Eco’s?
January 13th, 2005 @ 2:44 pm
Favourite? My massive man-crush on Eco means I feel obliged to suggest tights but Cixous provokes hope, Ong speaks my fears, Virilio my desire and Zizek my current state.
January 13th, 2005 @ 3:02 pm
As always, I’d love to be able to embody (Deleuze) and Guattari but come up woefully inadequate, and the B-side of the mixtape in my head insists I agree with Zizek, but in my better moments I strive to live up to Sartre.
January 13th, 2005 @ 4:34 pm
Josh you are so right about the Eco-tights thing. Makes me think of Batman and Robin.
I like Wittgenstein’s comment. How the hell can you think both sides of the limit of thought? To think the limit only means the return of the limit, like a horizon. Feels like what I do when I try to make up my mind when ordering at Macca’s drive thru.
Bataille is giving me pick-up lines. Awesome.
Lastly, I like Irigaray’s because it seems to make no sense and it confuses the hell out of me, such poetry… Actually I think it may relate to the problematic moving horizon of Wittgenstein’s thought-limit.
January 13th, 2005 @ 5:01 pm
Do you think Bataille is giving you pick up lines? It reads as if it was full of promise but perhaps it’s more about coquettishness. I am again reminded of Marquez’s references to horses in Love in the Time of Cholera. Like most things of course, undressing is contextually bound and perhaps I’m too stuck in a grind at the moment to see thinking in that languid, sensual fashion. This is certainly the way I would like to think but lately it seems to be a perfunctory reveal or a hurried strip and discard. Not that the latter isn’t hot, of course…(sometimes even with two “t’s”)
January 13th, 2005 @ 5:05 pm
While I have avoided reading him (for no other good reason than he is someone I *should* read), Zizek is definitely my theorist here. Guess what I’m (not) doing now?
January 13th, 2005 @ 7:47 pm
Not so much pick-up but clothes-off lines and probably only in the glimpse of a fantasy I had when I read the line. Ho hum…
Although, I was flicking through one of my sister’s girl-mags once, infinitely frustrated by the still-sealed sealed section, and came across a wonderful story about how men and woman undress differently. Besides different clothes, apparently the most telling difference is the way men and woman take off jumpers. Men allegedly do some both-hands-in-and-then-over removal and women allegedly do some delicate-arm-at-a-time removal. Who knows the sorts of girls who would’ve associated with Bataille? Can you take a dress off like a boy?
Speaking of taking dresses off, well not really, but, anyway, check out the preview to _Garden State_ if you have not already seen it!! Looks kind of interesting, but it already almost lurches on the too self-aware interesting that _Sunshine on a Spotless Mind_ avoids:
http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/garden_state/
I was struck by Portman’s discussion of doing something singular and the hugging shot next to an emtpy airport baggage carousel. Non-places? Gitfuct!
January 14th, 2005 @ 3:20 am
I have a wonderful book, a huge collection of diary entries from great writers, public figures and.. err.. diarists, throughout the ages. Cocteau during wartime was wonderful…. he remembers stories from earlier in his life. He wanted to call a painting “Opium and Cock” but Pablo wouldn’t let him.
The best part is that it is sorted by date, not by person. So each morning for a year, you can realise how important it is to write feverishly and live with the intent to infect.
To add my own quote: Cao Cao (historical general of the Wu people during the Romance of the Three Kingdoms period, is quoted is the historical document / trashy computer game “Dynasty Warriors 4″ as saying:
“I will smash your name from history! I will forever shatter he who attempts to write or sing it! Not even a hair of yours will be left in this world!”
Glen, I don’t know Wittgenstein at all, but I think he’s trying to say “yo yo / yo yo yo yo / yo yo yo yo / yo yo there’s no limits!”.
(feeling silly tonight…)