“The fundamental thesis of generative anthropology is that the principal concern of human culture is and has been from the outset to defer the potential violence of mimetic desire. To this mode of thought, constructing a model of the good society in any but the general terms of “exchange” and “reciprocity” is unfaithful to the human community, whose operations have been from the beginning beyond the grasp of any individual mind whitin the society, and in which since the rise of the market system we participate largely unmediated by ritual.”
―
―
“We invited each other into our spaces when parents would allow – girls only in these altars of beauty. We were christened into girlhood, not by holy water or the consumption of Christ’s body and blood, but with these rituals – painting each other’s faces, playing with each other’s hair, making each other over, doing our worst because we were allowed and laughing until we lost all control of our limbs, collapsing in a heavy pile of happy tears. There was an intimacy that was so pure, as deep as if we were real sisters. Our lips frosted with sugar, giggling under duvets, talking about kisses and crushes and trying our hardest not to fall asleep – fighting to keep the night alive.”
― Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women
― Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women
“In a world divided between theistic enthusiasts and secularist depressives there is little patience for the atheist who nurtures a passionate hatred for God. The mixture of naturalism and blasphemy that characterizes the Sadean text occupies the space of our blindness, to which Bataille’s writings are not unreasonably assimilated. If there is contradiction here it is one that is coextensive with the unconscious; the consequence of a revolt incommensurate with the ontological weight of its object. That God has wrought such loathesomeness without even having existed only exacerbates the hatred pitched against him. An atheism that does not hunger for God’s blood is an inanity, and the anaemic feebleness of secular rationalism has so little appeal that it approximates to an argument for his existence. What is suggested by the Sadean furore is that anyone who does not exult at the thought of driving nails through the limbs of the Nazarene is something less than an atheist; merely a disappointed slave.”
― The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism
― The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism
“For now, we live in the mall, but I think it's closing soon.”
― Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts
― Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts
“All health, beauty, intelligence, and social grace has been teased from a vast butcher’s yard of unbounded carnage, requiring incalculable eons of massacre to draw forth even the subtlest of advantages. This is not only a matter of the bloody grinding mills of selection, either, but also of the innumerable mutational abominations thrown up by the madness of chance, as it pursues its directionless path to some negligible preservable trait, and then — still further — of the unavowable horrors that ‘fitness’ (or sheer survival) itself predominantly entails. We are a minuscule sample of agonized matter, comprising genetic survival monsters, fished from a cosmic ocean of vile mutants, by a pitiless killing machine of infinite appetite. (This is still, perhaps, to put an irresponsibly positive spin on the story, but it should suffice for our purposes here.)”
―
―
Mona’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Mona’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Biography, History, Non-fiction, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Religion, Science fiction, linguistics, time-travel, cyberpunk, artificial-intelligence, theology, ancient-history, anthropology, archaeology, geography, european-history, government, presidents, political-science, sociology, social-issues, social-science, education, words, humanities, classical-studies, world-history, cultural-studies, internet, society, academic, grad-school, material-culture, theory, american-history, art-history, microhistory, and books-about-books
Polls voted on by Mona
Lists liked by Mona



























