New on Intercapillary Space...
I've put up a couple of little notes on Intercapillary Space. They are not much more than annotated links but they cover quite a lot of interesting ground (of a modern-poetry-and-poetics variety, but also taking in militancy and civil unrest, tiger economies, friendship...).
http://intercapillaryspace.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/some-links-that-i-liked-visiting-in.html
http://intercapillaryspace.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/links-of-transnational-friendship.html
Labels: Andrea Brady, Elisa Gabbert, Georges Bataille, Jacob Edmond, Jennifer Cooke, Lisa Samuels, Maurice Blanchot, Robert Archambeau
Permalink posted by Michael Peverett @ 11:32 am
4 comments
4 Comments:
Left a comment on Intercapillary Space.
Good comment! (Edmund has finally been onto IS and processed the comments). No, I haven't read Bataille, or any of the theorists really. I think I'd like to, but these busy days I seem to leave the choice of books I read almost to chance. Nearly all my feeble acquaintance with continental philosophy is second- or third-hand, just as it is for scientists or sociologists I suppose.
NB But I wait with interest to get more pre-digested Bataille via your views of the Religion book!
Ah, I have so many notes for a new post, but a current project has been taking up all my time. It's for Ellie, who often comments on my blog and usually mentions Blake. I've been helping her publish a small book called Divine Economy consisting of 64 aphorisms, each of which is accompanied by a Blake picture. Once I have her go-ahead, we'll make it freely available (downloadable in pdf format) on a Creative Commons licence.
I imagine it to be unique in world literature, in that it expresses the essence of the religious impulse, and its answering consolations, in 552 words total. Which is economy in another sense.
It tends to put me off Georges Bataille; but I've discovered the best way to read Theory of Religion is to open it at a random page, then ask "how could we have possibly got here?" So I turn back a few pages and realize he does after all have something to say.
But then, his agenda is to explain how religion is what it is, warts and all (mainly warts, as it happens) whereas I am not much interested in religion as manifests in this sublunary world. It's the hunger, not the junk food usually available, which provides my focus of study: to find expression for proper nutrition, as sought by the soul. This is the wavelength Ellie & Blake are also tuned to.
Here's an aphorism one might imagine coming from Bataille:
"We experience time as a thread not yet woven into the cloth."
And another:
"Time is a cross-section of eternity."
But there is an important difference: the position of the observer. Each invites you to look through their eyes, and see things you had failed to notice thus far. It's fascinating to look through Bataille's eyes; but till now, I find this outlook bereft of edification.
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