michal k-c > Recent Status Updates

countering Houellebecq’s urban malaise with some Scandinavian whimsy

when a romcom trades in the tired cliché of someone being so overworked that they forget christmas it’s hack. when Houellebecq does it it is a careful deconstruction of western decadence

for the love of god won’t someone please think of the technocrats

time for new Houellebecq. all of the reviews are either “this is wonderful” or “this is dreadful” which means Michel has surely done it again!

for someone who seems to have a pretty good grasp on what’s going on in Anti-Oedipus, Theweleit sure does love doing exactly that kind of psychoanalytic narrativizing that Deleuze and Guattari are talking about

finally getting around to finishing this. volume 2 definitely feels more like reading a dissertation

they sure don’t make neurosis like they used to

Freud casually tosses off that a fixed semiotic gesture might acquire “a series of symbolic meanings…” sorry D+G looks like someone else was already taking the first steps towards schizoanalysis

was reading Freud to understand Lacan + Kristeva better but i think i need to go back to Lacan (seminar on Transference) to understand Freud better

the discussion and postscript of the Little Hans case are some of the most lucid and straightforward articulations of the goals of Freudian psychoanalysis. a real treat

“Hans was a homosexual (as all children may very well be)”

every time i read “Little Hans” i imagine it’s Üter from the Simpsons

it’s funny to read Beckett chronologically because you get to watch him pare down his language in real time, and slowly any sense of traditional “setting” is completely obliterated

Beckett extended universe, including fan favourite characters like “Molloy”, “Malone”, and “I”

crazy that Beckett’s output was just hit after hit. hell i’ll even defend Dante and the Lobster

First Love, one of the greatest short stories of all time

“faced with the shock of the pandemic, the West will be forced to give up its liberal principles.” oh nooo we hate having to do that

“… I this feel I understand the pain of today’s refugees.” a couple pages ago we were talking about how Libya has become an open air slave trade. now Han is saying that because he moved to Germany from Korea to do a PhD he is in a uniquely understanding opinion.
look i’m not a Maoist but we might need to start sentencing academics to hard labour

1st essay - watered down rehash of Bataille’s La Part Maudite
2nd essay - misappropriation of Deleuze’s term “control society”, doesn’t cite Deleuze
3rd essay - diminished repetition of Deleuze’s control society (in ref. to the digital panopticon). still does not cite Deleuze

Bakers are so ubiquitous in Norwegian lit

put simply: that is not what a control society means. Han is working overtime here to not cite Deleuze but we would all be better off if he would

20 pages in, already i have some qualms

initially started reading the Septology because i wanted to write an article on the non-man and the unnameable. now my analysis has turned to mathematically deducing how many beers it would take for a Norwegian bartender to cut someone off