Roland Boer's Blog, page 88

Deleuze, Guattari and I staring at a goat's arse

Gilles, Felix and I have just passed from the segmented tribe into the imperial city. We've entered the gates of the city, passed by the temple with the priests engaged in debate over the interpretation of an interpretation, and stepped into the palace of the despot, with whom we wish to come face to face.

It's Solomon we seek, but what do we see? We're standing between 'a goat's arse and the face of the god' - between scapegoat and despot, sorcerer and priest. One wants to decorate us, curse us

Sexy writers, or, the erotics of knowledge

The discussion over my previous post on not liking Deleuze brought up a key topic: the erotics of knowledge. Why do we fall for some writers and not others? Why do we find the thought of one person sexy and another not? Why are some texts so seductive while others leave us cold?

I know the writers I find sexy: Rosa Luxemburg, Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch, Max Horkheimer, Louis Althusser, Henri Lefebvre, Fred Jameson, Alain Badiou, Georg Lukacs, E.P. Thompson, Karl Kautsky, Jacques Lacan, and of co

How do you write on Deleuze when you don't like him

I'm up to the last chapter of Criticism of Theology. It's on Deleuze, I have been putting it off but now there are no more other chapters to write and I need to write this one. The only way to cope is to keep watch for sentences like this from A Thousand Plateaus:

The first organ to suffer privatization, removal from the social field, was the anus

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Why the hell does one blog?

Jim West let's rip on the issue of what you should or shouldn't say on your blog over here. What gets to Jim is the way people look over their shoulder while blogging, thinking 'is this a good career move?' 'If I write that piece about some dropkick in the next office or maybe that deadbeat at the conference, will it cost me peer brownie points?' Or as Jim puts it:

If you blog for position or prestige, or publication potential, you are merely one of the many who do what they do for the purpose of

Start your blow-dryers - NOW!

That was the opening moment of something I have never attended before - the annual hairdressing competition for the Hunter Valley here in Newcastle. That command was given at the opening act - to the 20 or so hairdressers who had to cut, style and dye hair in 35 minutes.

You may well ask - what in the world was I doing at the annual hairdressing competition? My daughter, Stephanie, had been asked to model for it. Apparently, she walked into a shop and was asked on the spot if she would do it, so

New online publishing with All Voices

I've become part of a new online publishing venture called 'All Voices'. You can see my first piece - 'On the Dalmatian Coast' - with them here.[image error]

Criticism of Heaven - the paperback

For those of you who have felt that you need to sell an organ or two in order to get hold of a copy of Criticism of Heaven, I have some good news: those great people at Haymarket Books will publish a paperback version on 1 September 2009. Information about Haymarket, one of the best progressive book publishers, can be found here, and an advance note on Criticism of Heaven is here.

The price: USD 28.00

Eventually all five volumes of the Criticism of Heaven and Earth series will appear with Haymarke

Great moment in church's attitude to women

Conrad, abbot of Marchtal Monastery from 1089 to 1122, once said: “We and our whole community of canons, recognizing that the wickedness of women is greater than all the other wickedness of the world...and that the poison of asps and dragons is no more curable and less dangerous to men than the familiarity of women, have unanimously decreed for the safety of our souls, no less than for that of our bodies and goods, that we will on no account receive any more sisters to the increase of our perdit

The March of the Bloody Snotballs

Those of you not accustomed to multiple long haul flights (20 plus hours in the air) may not be familiar with this experience, but one of the great joys of flying is the march of the bloody snotballs. It begins after about 8 hours into the first flight: your nose dries out, massive balls of snot form, the nose attempts to compensate for the dryness and before you know it, those balls take on a familiar reddish tinge. And if you don't start stuffing your nose with some derivative of engine grease

Michael Carden joins my slender list of blogs

Michael Carden's Jottings (found here) is now part of my daily blog-read. Michael's a queer activist and biblical schoilar with a solid left politics - what more could you want! And he's from Brisbane (I won't hold that against him).[image error]