Fragments From A Long Lunch …
May be paraphrased, and not in chronological order (am working from memory … should have jotted down some notes)
1. ‘I’ve been thinking of writing a manifesto …’
‘You’re a manifesto bi-polar. One minute your posting on how you can’t write manifestos any more and the next your trying to write one …’
2. ‘It’s the expansion of the disciplinary gaze … since the disciplinary gaze needs to see everything, the next logical progression – and you can see it in fashion ... look at how clothing –female clothing in particular – is becoming more and more revealing ... you can see more and more – would be towards nudity …’
‘Except for those who shouldn’t be seen naked …’
‘They won’t exist … the normalisation discourses will get rid of them …’
‘In various ways …’
‘Yes … medical normalisation will have a considerable role in this … look at classical Sparta, the closest thing to a proto-typical disciplinary society, nudity and fitness were complementary because of the disciplinary gaze …’
3. ‘[Michel] Houellebecq is all about unrequited desire …’
4. ‘The reason Plato gives the Sophists such a bad reputation is that their relativism disagreed with his absolutism.’
[RB and SD, feel free to add other fragments and edit this one. Let's aim at some level of accuracy]
1. ‘I’ve been thinking of writing a manifesto …’
‘You’re a manifesto bi-polar. One minute your posting on how you can’t write manifestos any more and the next your trying to write one …’
2. ‘It’s the expansion of the disciplinary gaze … since the disciplinary gaze needs to see everything, the next logical progression – and you can see it in fashion ... look at how clothing –female clothing in particular – is becoming more and more revealing ... you can see more and more – would be towards nudity …’
‘Except for those who shouldn’t be seen naked …’
‘They won’t exist … the normalisation discourses will get rid of them …’
‘In various ways …’
‘Yes … medical normalisation will have a considerable role in this … look at classical Sparta, the closest thing to a proto-typical disciplinary society, nudity and fitness were complementary because of the disciplinary gaze …’
3. ‘[Michel] Houellebecq is all about unrequited desire …’
4. ‘The reason Plato gives the Sophists such a bad reputation is that their relativism disagreed with his absolutism.’
[RB and SD, feel free to add other fragments and edit this one. Let's aim at some level of accuracy]
posted by MH at 7:13 pm
1 Comments:
On 3: Thinking back on the conversation, it seems as though the desire is for that thing – which, historically, has been mistaken for love or wealth – that will synergistically make life worthwhile. It seems to be this that the main characters search for in Houellebecq’s novels to-date, and the absence of which compounds the ‘absurdity’ of their existence. Further, it seems to be the desire for this unknown quantity that Houellebecq proposes to remove from human nature (via genetic modification programs in ‘Atomised’ and ‘Possibility of an island’).
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