My friend Stephen thinks you can deduce a lot about bloggers' romantic lives from the waxing and waning of their content. I wish it were that sweet. Autumn approacheth on scholastic springs, and one feels the rhythm of many a poblog ticking down a bit, as other clocks take tempo. That's the depressing truth/dirty secret of most such venues, this one included: we all freewheelin' outlaws, but not. I believe such blogs are meant (at least in part) to be a departure from the managed discourses of professional academia, are nonetheless (is nonetheless, like and yet, one of the propositional integuments indicating dialectics?) managed, albeit passively, by the material realities of academia. More "work," less of the "free writing" that spaces such as these, despite everything, seem at least relatively to provide. There's no outside to the administered life, though that's no argument for not smashing your head againt the boundary: pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will, as many believe was said by Gramsci, though apparently it was Romain Rolland. Pessimism of the syllabus, optimism of the blog? If "the metaphysical subject does not belong to the world but is a boundary of the world," as Bertrand Russell summarized a couple of Wittgenstein's propositions, the argument for expansivity becomes even stronger, the form of a contemplatable rather than mystical religion. Hmm, is that last clause simply the ideal formulation of the concept science? Perhaps so, in the sense of the "single science."
This academic year, though we are saddled with more duties than ever, we at the reference desk hope to keep sugarhigh! as a going concern, with occasional notes on the usual things that ongoingly concern us: music, poetics, movies, politics. "Philosophy is not a theory but an activity," (Bertrand on Ludwig again) is what I should have said to Erin when she kept asking what Benjamin's theory was, in last year's Arcades course. This is obvious in relation to, say, immanent critique or negative dialectics; less so, and thus more important to keep in mind, in regard to history.
Posted by jane at August 28, 2005 09:41 AM | TrackBack