I was recently asked to do a remote lecture on Louis Hjelmslev’s work. I accepted. It was mainly on the ‘Prolegomena to a Theory of Language’, mixed with ‘Structural Analysis of Language’ and ‘La stratification du langage’. I won’t comment on that lecture, considering it’s already in the past. Instead, what I want to do […]
I’ve already covered parts I, II, and III of Baruch Spinoza’s ‘Ethics’ and I thought I’d move on to cover part IV, which continues from part III. It’s titled ‘Of Human Bondage, or the Strength of the Emotions’. There’s a short preface. I thought I’d get through it quickly, but I was wrong as it […]
I covered parts one and two of Baruch Spinoza’s ‘Ethics’ in a previous essay and this time I’ll cover the third part of it, dealing with emotions. I was going to include the fourth part in this essay as well but getting through the third part turned out to be more of a slog than […]
I was browsing through ‘Desert Islands and Other Texts: 1953–1974’, a collection of short texts by Gilles Deleuze, not really knowing what to read, not being sure what I had already read, while I noticed something that tickled my fancy. It’s contained in ‘“He Was my Teacher”’. Deleuze (79) mentions Jean-Paul Sartre as having created […]
I was writing another essay, which led me to crawl through Baruch Spinoza’s ‘Ethics’. There is this bit in Sartre’s ‘Being and Nothingness’ where he (lvi) makes note of people’s tendency to attribute whatever it is that they fail to explain to the will of God. I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve mentioned this issue […]
I thought I’d do something short(er) this time, but, as you’ll quickly notice, that didn’t happen. I had gone through this text before and thought I’d be able to make a quick summary of it, highlighting what I like about it, while also providing some related commentary. I honestly didn’t realize how good this text […]
I was going to write about the current situation and how media plays a role in it, or, should I say its role in it, but I haven’t really finished that, so it’ll just have to wait. It’s something that I managed to forget, that I had written about it, and the recent events made […]
To be productive, rather than just commenting on commenting, this time I’ll be looking at the work of Gabriel Tarde, best known for being effectively erased from the history books by Émile Durkheim or, rather, by those who loyally followed Durkheim. There’s that something about disciples or acolytes, those who follow some great leader. They […]
You may have already thought that this month is going to be an exceptional month, that nothing is coming out in December. I’ve been busy, with a bit of this and a bit of that, attending a funeral, doing requested and suggested changes to a manuscript, that seemingly never ending task that it tends to […]
Maybe this time I get to where I’m trying to be at, examining ‘Marxism and the Philosophy of Language’ by Valentin Vološinov. The last time I attempted to tackle this book I got sidetracked by a related matter, how language itself plays a role in how we come to make sense of the world. Perhaps […]