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I want to like Sinclair, but I can't, except in patches. His description of Bluewater in London Orbital, for instance, is wonderful. But, in general, his writing is not only obscure, it is obscurantist - deliberately making an equivalence between 'poetic' and 'difficult'. For me, the most...

The latest twist to this is the bizarre cooked-up controversy concerning John Reid and Paxman. For those who haven't followed this, in a preamble to an interview Paxman described Reid as 'Labour's attack dog'. Reid thereupon refused to answer any questions until Paxman took back this 'insult'...

Yes, interesting and informative Dominix... I'm fascinated with Strauss, too( and btw I didn't think the doc necessarily scapegoated Strauss - his position came over as complex and serious, not at all glib and facile - for that we have Mark Steyn :p ). I've been reading a book on Strauss and...

The coverage of the Paris bid reveals the way in which the IOC function politically as big Other... ooh, look, industrial action, this might damage their bid... as if (1) getting the Olympics was of such transcendent importance that it dwarfs issues of social justice, pay, conditions etc and (2)...

Lots of my students are into this stuff. But there can't be anything to it. Surely? ??????? :o

Quality photos Matt... the night one especially impressive.... but I want to see the PsychFolk shot of Jim in Hadleigh Castle...

I'd be much more ready to accept that a striking trade unionist could be engaged in theoretical work than that a postmodern academic could be. :D

Just read Herobone if you want to know the appeal of rubbish-strewn paths!

you're in danger of ending up with what we've had in British universities forever: PoMo faux radicalist textualist posturing posing as political intervention. Hey, why do anything but metaphorensic text-quibbling, coz EVERYTHING is acting, right? Surely the point following on from your earlier...

Punctured bubble LOL. I'm still laughing. But the one thing that the current American cultural regime cannot check is reality. Republican saddoes like to pose as 'economic realists' but you only have to read the likes of Steyn to see that their position is a patchwork of ludicrous...

Good point. But I don't think that the Nature Spinoza insists upon is necessarily the same one that Baidou rejects. Because, for one thing, no-one can know what Nature is. Even God. Because God is unconscious. :)

Be realistic, demand the impossible Alright, name one serious philosopher who holds to this navie psychological realism. This DOES NOT include your beloved Herr Heidegger, obv, whose whole philosophy is based on denying that complete self-knowledge is possible. There are too many too quick...

On the contrary, it is a very rigorous metaphyiscal claim - not at all dippy and certainly not zen. You're right that is an a priori argument - i.e. it is not empirical/factual. And of course it all applies to all people - NO ONE can know what they are. But this is not an especially...

But the point is not that there are NO limits, but we simply don't KNOW what the limits in any given situation will be. The 'time trave'l idea is simply that we can only know what the limits WERE... that is, you only have knowledge after the fact. You will and can never know what you are, you...

I agree with Bat; is there a worse place to start than this? For a start, aren't all the important transformative political questions begged: to wit, isn't politics about changing 'you' and therefore redefining what counts as a limitation? Perhaps the greatest thing that Zizek, Badiou and...

Of course, if you want to see REAL racism, you only had to watch the documentary on the treatment of asylum seekers last night. 'Tweaking the irons', groping female asylum seekers, advising fellow officers to do their beatings in places out of reach of CCTV, forcing mentally ill, traumatized...

Yes, I think about this a great deal. I take it that Zizek is interested in Lenin primarily because his was not only a theory of action, but a theory that produced, and was continually being informed by, action. Isn't that partly why he excoriates anti-capitalism? It is action, but action...

OK ---- but doesn't Badiou to some extent equivocate between his own thought-based version of an event and a historical event in a more everyday sense? For instance, strictly speaking, it wouldn't be the occurences on the street of 68 that would be the Event, but the change in thought that...

I agree with Badiou, obviously. I wanted to hear about what the ppl who disagree thought: if ppl disagree, which bits, and why?

Jesse, that certainly wasn't aimed at anyone in particular, certainly not you... and i obv expect ppl to disagree with what i write, that doesn't bother me at all, but i'm sometimes bemused about the inconsistencies in ppl's objections... Seems to me that the 'offence' thing reveals the real...