Publication date: 22 December 2020 Source: International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences Vol. 89 Author: Temitope A. Ogunweide The study sought to assess the social context of solid waste disposal pattern of residents in Ibadan metropolis, in order to assess the Solid waste disposal patterns of people in Ibadan metropolis, Oyo State, Nigeria. Specifically, the study identified solid waste disposal habits of residents, frequency of clearing the dumpsters, accessibility of waste dumpsters to (...) people determines the waste disposal pattern of people; and analyze the willingness of people in Ibadan to pay for improved service. Solid waste management has been part of human activities right from time. Efforts by Oyo State Government is seen in the collection of dirt that have been placed on the medians. Waste generation is an unavoidable product of man activities, however, sustainable management of such waste is a challenge faced in many countries today. Nigeria, a developing country in Africa, has been in a quandary of how to efficiently manage the municipal solid waste its population generates. Many states in the country lack adequate plans and infrastructure required for efficient and sustainable management of municipal solid waste. For Ibadan, the largest city in Nigeria, the problem is further compounded by its rather large and still increasing population. In this research, Ibadan metropolis is taken as a case study; the rate of solid waste handling in households as regards solid waste management from household collection to final disposal are focused upon. The study found out that 45.6% drop their refuse in the dumpsters as 18.8% burns their refuse, 17.7% of the respondents drops their waste on the median, 12% in the drainage while 6% opts to drop their waste in the streams. On the effectiveness of the Private operators collecting waste from the respondents, the study found out that 7.6% effective, 37.5% of the respondents says the operators waste collection is poor, 7% says it is abysmal while 43.5% said it is not applicable to them because they do not have storage containers in their houses and as a result did not subscribe to their service. Many countries, particularly the developed ones, have employed options in the waste management hierarchy for sustainable management of their municipal solid waste and the blend of options employed is usually highly dependent on local factors. Following the waste management hierarchy, possible options for sustainable municipal solid waste management in Ibadan are discussed. It is concluded that waste reduction, reuse, and recycling are potential management options for the state. Landfilling will remain an important option for final disposal but reliance on this method could be significantly reduced if management options are exploited to the maximum in a sustainable solid waste management structure in Ibadan metropolis. Key Words: Waste handling, Ibadan Metropolis, Landfill, Municipal Solid Waste Word Count: 435. (shrink)

El estudio persigue el objetivo de contribuir a la capacitación para elevar la competencia de los trabajadores del hospital general de Kuanza Sul, Angola, en la educación ambiental para la gestión de residuos sólidos en consonancia con la preservación del medio ambiente y la promoción de la salud de los pueblos. Se caracteriza al Hospital en sus dimensiones estructural y funcional. Contiene el análisis, la interpretación y el tratamiento de los datos obtenidos a través de encuestas, entrevistas y observación. This (...) study has the objective to contribute to train the workers at Kuanza Sul, General Hospital in environmental education for the management of solid waste in keeping with the protection of the environment and peoples health promotion. The hospital is characterized in its structural and functional dimensions. it contains the analysis, the interpretation and treatment of the data obtained by means of surveys, interviews and observation. (shrink)

The neutrosophic cubic hesitant fuzzy set can efficiently handle the complex information in a decision-making problem because it combines the advantages of the neutrosophic cubic set and the hesitant fuzzy set. The algebraic operations based on Dombi norms and co-norms are more flexible than the usual algebraic operations as they involve an operational parameter. First, this paper establishes Dombi algebraic operational laws, score functions, and similarity measures in neutrosophic cubic hesitant fuzzy sets. Then, we proposed Dombi exponential operational laws in (...) which the exponents are neutrosophic cubic hesitant fuzzy values and bases are positive real numbers. To use neutrosophic cubic hesitant fuzzy sets in decision-making, we are developing Dombi exponential aggregation operators in the current study. In the end, we present applications of exponential aggregation operators in multiattribute decision-making problems. (shrink)

Canada is the world’s highest per capita municipal solid waste producer. By 2000, Canadians produced more annual waste per person than Americans; and by 2005, Canada produced nearly twice as much garbage as Japan (Conference Board of Canada 2008). By 2006, Canadians produced over 1000 kg of waste per person; 35 million tons of waste in a single calendar year (Statistics Canada 2008). The bulk of this waste ended up in landfills (ibid). In 2010, (...) thirty percent of existing Canadian landfills reached or surpassed capacity. Over one million tons of waste were exported out of Canada in 2002, much of it headed from southern Ontario to rural regions of Canada or to the United States (Statistics Canada 2005). Some cities .. (shrink)

From the 5th edition of Beauchamp and Childress' Principles of Biomedical Ethics, the problem of common morality has been given a more prominent role and emphasis. With the publication of the 6th and latest edition, the authors not only attempt to ground their theory in common morality, but there is also an increased tendency to identify the former with the latter. While this stratagem may give the impression of a more robust, and hence stable, foundation for their theoretical construct, we (...) fear that it comes with a cost, namely the need to keep any theory in medical ethics open to, and thereby aware of, the challenges arising from biomedical research and clinical practice, as well as healthcare systems. By too readily identifying the moral life of common morality with rule-following behaviour, Beauchamp and Childress may even be wrong about the nature of common morality as such, thereby founding their, by now, classic theory on quicksand instead of solid rock. (shrink)

E-waste, also known as waste from electrical and electronic equipment, is a solid waste that accumulates quickly due to high demand driven by the market for replacing newer electrical and electronic products. The global e-waste generation is estimated to be between 53.6 million tons, and it is increasing by 3–5% per year. Metals make-up approximately 30% of e-waste, which contains precious elements Au, Ag, Cu, Pt, and other high-value elements, valued at USD 57 billion, (...) which is driving the e-waste recycling industry. It is noteworthy that the recycling of precious elements from e-waste has emerged as a profitable enterprise in several parts of developing nations. E-waste contains 50–100 times higher levels of precious metals compared to natural ores, making it suitable for mining. E-waste recycling in developing nations, mostly occurs through the informal sector comprising manual collection, crushing, segregation and selling of precious elements, such as Au, Ag, Cu, Pb, Pt, and other rare elements (Nd, In, and Ga). The organized sector, on the other hand, mostly employs mechano-chemical methods, such as pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy, and bio-hydrometallurgy, which have serious environmental consequences. Both the informal and formal sectors of e-waste processing lead to the leaching of toxic elements into groundwater and soils. Owing to the lesser efficiency of greener technologies, such as phytoremediation and bioremediation, their use in precious metal extraction is very limited. However, this review explores several hyper-accumulating and tolerant plants viz. Brassica juncea and Berkheya coddii, which holds great potential in phytomining of precious metal from e-waste. Thus, the state of the art in precious metal extraction from e-waste as well as the advantages and disadvantages of different metal extraction technologies has been reviewed. (shrink)

This paper examines the ethical implications of the Clean Development Mechanism, the United Nation’s climate change initiative that provides incentives to countries and firms in developed countries to motivate investments in greenhouse gas reduction projects in developing countries. Using the tenets of agency theory, we present a solid waste management project in El Salvador as an illustrative example of how the CDM can produce a disproportionately high social cost for the most marginalized populations in the developing world. We (...) suggest that the UN needs to reformulate the CDM so that it more effectively aligns the divergent goals of multiple actors and upholds the UN’s principles for sustainable development, including ethical firm-level behavior. By providing incentives for environmental, economic, and social value creation, the CDM would not only promote ethical norms for profit-seeking firms that participate in the program but also reinforce the UN’s twin pro-poor and environmental objectives. (shrink)

Food Services generate solid waste from the production process and distribution of meal. The raw material, after a rational flow, is transformed into meals for consumption generating solid waste of variable composition and quantity. Waste recovery actions in the recycling and selective collection in these services act as inhibitors of the inadequate disposal of these wastes in the environment, contributing to environmental sustainability. The objective of this study is to analyze the generation and viability of (...) commercialization of recyclable solid waste in Food Services of companies located in Cuiabá and Várzea Grande, Mato Grosso – Brazil. This is a cross-sectional exploratory study with a convenience sample. The analysis of the generation of residues was carried out using the weighing method and generation indices using descriptive statistics. In order to verify the economic potential of recyclable waste, the value of intermediate consumption was used and sales price data were obtained by means of the publication "Compromisso Empresarial para Reciclagem" CEMPRE. It was found that in six services the largest part of waste was made of plastic, and in two services it was paper and cardboard. The generation of aluminum was more significant in one service, being the residue that added more economic value in the commercialization. The generation of glass and tetra pack packaging were not significant, and the recycling of both is not of interest to the scavengers. The results indicate that the commercialization of recyclable solid waste is viable. (shrink)

Growth in entrepreneurial activity has been associated with the establishment of new markets, the development of new products, and increases in national and international income disparity. Before embracing all market activity as good and beneficial, we should carefully consider the environmental and social impacts that have followed the adoption of social values, which confer status with increased ownership and consumption. These impacts include severely entrenched poverty, increased consumption of disposable products leading to increased solid waste, increased consumption of (...) nonrenewable resources, and high rates of personal bankruptcy. To counteract these trends, a balance of ecologizing and economizing drives is required within entrepreneurial activity. (shrink)

The choice of new technology in a resource-based industry has far-reaching implications for its ethical performance. The kraft pulping industry uses considerable amounts of wood as raw material, and regulatory agencies have been tightening their control limits for effluent, solid waste and air emissions. The technological solutions required to reduce the environmental impact of the industry are shown to have the potential of causing social hardship for the mill's employees, the affected communities, lenders, and owners. In some instances, (...) the technological solutions give rise to new environmental challenges. Forestry practices are influencing the public's perception of the kraft pulping industry, its ethical and environmental performance, its profitability, and the properties of its product, which may increase wood requirements. New forestry practices have the potential to reduce the forest land area required to sustain the kraft pulp production at a given level but ethical problems associated with genetic manipulation, phenodiversity, and biodiversity are identified. This paper analyzes the interface between environmental protection, ethics, and choice of technology. (shrink)

Along with urban development globally, the NIMBY crisis has been a complex social problem, which requires urgent remedial action. The inevitable management of Municipal Solid Waste has been one of the toughest risk management tasks in the worldwide modernization process. At present, certain fuzzy and unstructured results and methods have been formed for MSW-NIMBY crisis response, mainly focusing on the sociology and politics which scatter in complex and sensitive reports and news. Aiming at enhancing the effectiveness of data (...) mining from specific sparse text of MSW-NIMBY crisis, an improved knowledge extraction method is developed. Through rule-based text mining and complex network analysis, the Entity Relationship network of MSW-NIMBY crisis is reconstructed. Meanwhile, a novel transitivity for relationship between entities in semantic analysis is proposed to improve the feasibility and accuracy of information extraction. Characteristics and regularity of MSW-NIMBY crisis evolution and experience of crisis governance could be identified effectively. Results show that knowledge integration and ER transitivity can enhance knowledge recognition and major other factors, which could help formulate the governance strategies of NIMBY crisis from academic texts. (shrink)

Technological innovation has an important impact on environmental pollution. In this paper, first, we analyze the influence mechanism of technological innovation on environmental pollution and then design the index system of technological innovation. Then, we use the entropy method to calculate the technological innovation level of different regions in China based on provincial panel data from 2004 to 2016. Finally, the panel vector autoregression model is adopted, and taking the discharge of sewage, solid waste, and exhaust gas as (...) the research objects, the impact of technological innovation on them is empirically analyzed. The results show that China’s technological innovation level is steadily improving, but there are significant differences in the impact of technological innovation on wastewater, waste gas, and solid waste. Specifically, technological innovation can contribute to an increase in wastewater and solid waste emissions. However, the impact of this technological innovation on them is not equal. Secondly, the impact of technological innovation on exhaust emissions is to inhibit exhaust emissions in the short term and promote exhaust emissions in the long term. Finally, there are clear differences between them in terms of the specific impact of changes in wastewater, solid waste, and exhaust emissions. Changes in wastewater discharges and solid waste generation are largely derived from their own effects, while the role of technological innovation is supportive and insignificant. The change in exhaust emissions is initially influenced by itself, but in the long run, the influence of technological innovation gradually increases and eventually exceeds its own influence. Based on these research results, this paper puts forward corresponding policy suggestions to speed up environmental pollution control. (shrink)

Discourse-based processes seek to arrive at socially acceptable decisions by adhering to a specific set of procedures. In this case study, we empirically test how successful the,Cooperative Discourse' was in identifying a socially acceptable site for a solid-waste landfill in Switzerland. Our results indicate that even individuals living in the community designated as the prospective site think highly of the,Cooperative Discourse', but they know close to nothing about this procedure. This ignorance is rational, because, under Swiss laws, the (...) recommendations of the discourse are not legally binding and siting projects can easily be thwarted by town hall meetings. In this case, the,Cooperative Discourse' may have reached a consensus proposal because this proposal is socially not very relevant. (shrink)

Discourse-based processes seek to arrive at socially acceptable decisions by adhering to a specific set of procedures. In this case study, we empirically test how successful the,Cooperative Discourse' was in identifying a socially acceptable site for a solid-waste landfill in Switzerland. Our results indicate that even individuals living in the community designated as the prospective site think highly of the,Cooperative Discourse', but they know close to nothing about this procedure. This ignorance is rational, because, under Swiss laws, the (...) recommendations of the discourse are not legally binding and siting projects can easily be thwarted by town hall meetings. In this case, the,Cooperative Discourse' may have reached a consensus proposal because this proposal is socially not very relevant. (shrink)

A test was administered to 102 engineering students to ascertain how engineering education influences their environmental knowledge and attitudes. Answers to definitional and factual questions in a forced-answer section demonstrated that students were improving their technical knowledge, but responses to more subtle questions were mixed. Answers to attitudinal questions exhibited a trend towards increased environmental awareness. For open-ended questions, posttest results showed an increase in knowledge of engineering work. Over 80% of the students considered themselves to have a caring attitude (...) toward the environment, with the “three R’s” and green transportation choices most commonly cited. Engagement in research, education, or advocacy doubled from pretest to posttest. Air pollution and solid waste disposal most frequently influenced students’ attitudes toward the environment. Outdoor experiences were the most frequently mentioned source of information; university courses rose from 4% to 15% on the posttest. Only 40% of the students could name an environmental role model. (shrink)

This study examines the hydrolysis of lignocellulose extracted from poultry manure for the purpose of investigating low-cost feedstocks for ethanol production while providing an alternative solid waste management strategy for agricultural livestock manures. Poultry manure underwent various pretreatments to enhance subsequent enzymatic hydrolysis including untreated, alkaline pretreatment with 0.5N KOH, drying, and grinding. The KOH-treated, dried, and grinded poultry manure yielded the highest glucose conversions. When poultry manure without pretreatment was hydrolyzed at 40°C with an enzyme loading 400 (...) units/g feedstock, 7.1 ± 0.3% was converted to glucose in 24 hours. This increased to 27.6 ± 1.2% when a KOH pretreatment followed by drying and grinding was applied. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy analyses were used to examine differences in the composition of the pretreated feedstock before and after enzymatic hydrolysis. These indicate that the cellulose content in pretreated poultry manure was removed during enzymatic hydrolysis. (shrink)

Growth in entrepreneurial activity has been associated with the establishment of new markets, the development of new products, and increases in national and international income disparity. Before embracing all market activity as good and beneficial, we should carefully consider the environmental and social impacts that have followed the adoption of social values, which confer status with increased ownership and consumption. These impacts include severely entrenched poverty, increased consumption of disposable products leading to increased solid waste, increased consumption of (...) nonrenewable resources, and high rates of personal bankruptcy. To counteract these trends, a balance of ecologizing and economizing drives is required within entrepreneurial activity. (shrink)

The river Portoviejo crosses four cantons of the province of Manabí and is the main source of water for the inhabitants of the area to be used in various uses. The objective of this bibliographic review article is to carry out a historical analysis of the water pollution of the Portoviejo River. The qualitative and descriptive documentary research methodology was used. The authors conclude that the factors that influence the pollution of the Portoviejo River are the constant direct discharges of (...) wastewater and solid waste along its route by the residents of the area and the contribution of the water treatment plant waste from the area. (shrink)

Ecological and livable cities need an objective method to be judged. This paper is in search of a method to determine the level of livability, ecology, and energy efficiency, beginning with ecovillages, ecocities, ending with Tirana capital of Albania. Examples chosen for this methodology are: Ecovillages: 1. Auroville; India; 2. Sieben Linden, Europe; 3. Ecovillages at Ithaca, USA; 4. Ecoovila, Brazil; 5. Mbam and Faoune, Senegal. Ecocities: 1. DongTang, Shangai, China; 2. Masdar, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; 3. Arcosanti, Arizona, (...) USA; 4. Chang Chun, China; 5. Zira island, Baku Azerbaijan; 6. Globe Town, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. A special device is introduced for comprising analyze of this paper. Weighing and final score are evaluated in the conclusion. The livable city should be merged with the overall development, ecological progress, sustainable, passive, and bioclimatic design in order to withstand the test of time. Ecological and sustainable cities need to properly make up for the existence weakness of cities construction under fine ecological environment. The intention of this comparative study is an attempt to assess, even improve the lives of the citizens of Tirana, Albania. There are some attempts nowadays to environmentally render the city but due to the lack of a genuine ecological and renewable energy study in Tirana, the city suffers the consequences. The first settlements which consider the renewable energies are known as Ecovillages. They demonstrate their impact on the community and the energy consumption. Ecovillages have evolved into ecocities of the future, most of them not completed yet or in design phase. For both groups (ecovillages and ecocities) tables of matrixes are constructed in order to better understand their potential and functionality, and their special features and characteristics. This chapter is in search of analyzing the eco-potential and renewable energies for further development of future cities, considering ten case studies all over the world and ending with Tirana. The fossil fuel age is quickly coming to an end, so, the world must be prepared for the implementation strategies and utilization of renewable and alternative energies. (shrink)

Para las empresas recolectoras de residuos sólidos es indispensable controlar los factores de riesgos asociados a la calidad del aire del entorno laboral de sus empleados con el objetivo de minimizar las afecciones de salud de sus trabajadores. El propósito del estudio es desarrollar un prototipo de un sensor inalámbrico de medición de calidad de aire. Este instrumento de medición será implementado en ambientes laborales para trabajadores de recolección de residuos sólidos. A partir del estudio se concluye que para empresas (...) de este sector es indispensable el control de factores de riesgos asociados a la exposición a gases y vapores. (shrink)

To practice environmental awareness is to leave a legacy for a better world and this will be achieved with the support of students and society, for this reason the main objective of this research is to describe and analyze the perspectives of environmental awareness in university students, for which the methodology of quantitative approach is used, correlational between its elements and predictive, in which 1324 university students who responded to a survey of 17 questions divided into four dimensions participated.

There are not enough solid organs available to meet the needs of patients with organ failure. Thousands of patients every year die on the waiting lists for transplantation. Yet there is one currently available, underutilized, potential source of organs. Many patients die in intensive care following withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment whose organs could be used to save the lives of others. At present the majority of these organs go to waste.In this paper we consider and evaluate a range (...) of ways to improve the number and quality of organs available from this group of patients. Changes to consent arrangements (for example conscription of organs after death) or changes to organ donation practice could dramatically increase the numbers of organs available, though they would conflict with currently accepted norms governing transplantation.We argue that one alternative, Organ Donation Euthanasia, would be a rational improvement over current practice regarding withdrawal of life support. It would give individuals the greatest chance of being able to help others with their organs after death. It would increase patient autonomy. It would reduce the chance of suffering during the dying process. We argue that patients should be given the choice of whether and how they would like to donate their organs in the event of withdrawal of life support in intensive care.Continuing current transplantation practice comes at the cost of death and prolonged organ failure. We should seriously consider all of the alternatives. (shrink)

continent. 1.1 : 3-13. / 0/ – Introduction I want to propose, as a trajectory into the philosophically weird, an absurd theoretical claim and pursue it, or perhaps more accurately, construct it as I point to it, collecting the ground work behind me like the Perpetual Train from China Mieville's Iron Council which puts down track as it moves reclaiming it along the way. The strange trajectory is the following: Kant's critical philosophy and much of continental philosophy which has followed, (...) has been a defense against horror and madness. Kant's prohibition on speculative metaphysics such as dogmatic metaphysics and transcendental realism, on thinking beyond the imposition of transcendental and moral constraints, has been challenged by numerous figures proceeding him. One of the more interesting critiques of Kant comes from the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land stating, “Kant’s critical philosophy is the most elaborate fit of panic in the history of the Earth.” And while Alain Badiou would certainly be opposed to the libidinal investments of Land's Deleuzo-Guattarian thought, he is likewise critical of Kant's normative thought-bureaucracies: Kant is the one author for whom I cannot feel any kinship. Everything in him exasperates me, above all his legalism—always asking Quid Juris? Or ‘Haven’t you crossed the limit?’—combined, as in today’s United States, with a religiosity that is all the more dismal in that it is both omnipresent and vague. The critical machinery he set up has enduringly poisoned philosophy, while giving great succour to the academy, which loves nothing more than to rap the knuckles of the overambitious [….] That is how I understand the truth of Monique David-Menard’s reflections on the properly psychotic origins of Kantianism. I am persuaded that the whole of the critical enterprise is set up to to shield against the tempting symptom represented by the seer Swedenborg, or against ‘diseases of the head’, as Kant puts it. An entire nexus of the limits of reason and philosophy are set up here, namely that the critical philosophy not only defends thought from madness, philosophy from madness, and philosophy from itself, but that philosophy following the advent of the critical enterprise philosophy becomes auto-vampiric; feeding on itself to support the academy. Following Francois Laruelle's non-philosophical indictment of philosophy, we could go one step further and say that philosophy operates on the material of what is philosophizable and not the material of the external world. [1] Beyond this, the Kantian scheme of nestling human thinking between our limited empirical powers and transcendental guarantees of categorical coherence, forms of thinking which stretch beyond either appear illegitimate, thereby liquefying both pre-critical metaphysics and the ravings of the mad in the same critical acid. In rejecting the Kantian apparatus we are left with two entities – an unsure relation of thought to reality where thought is susceptible to internal and external breakdown and a reality with an uncertain sense of stability. These two strands will be pursued, against the sane-seal of post-Kantian philosophy by engaging the work of weird fiction authors H.P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti. The absolute inhumanism of the formers universe will be used to describe a Shoggothic Materialism while the dream worlds of the latter will articulate the mad speculation of a Ventriloquil Idealism. But first we must address the relation of philosophy to madness as well as philosophy to weird fiction. /1/ – Philosophy and Madness There is nothing that the madness of men invents which is not either nature made manifest or nature restored. Michel Foucault. Madness and Civilization. The moment I doubt whether an event that I recall actually took place, I bring the suspicion of madness upon myself: unless I am uncertain as to whether it was not a mere dream. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Idea, Vol. 3. Madness is commonly thought of as moving through several well known cultural-historical shifts from madness as a demonic or otherwise theological force, to rationalization, to medicalization psychiatric and otherwise. Foucault's Madness and Civilization is well known for orientating madness as a form of exclusionary social control which operated by demarcating madness from reason. Yet Foucault points to the possibility of madness as the necessity of nature at least prior to the crushing weight of the church. Kant’s philosophy as a response to madness is grounded by his humanizing of madness itself. As Adrian Johnston points out in the early pages of Time Driven pre-Kantian madness meant humans were seized by demonic or angelic forces whereas Kantian madness became one of being too human. Madness becomes internalized, the external demonic forces become flaws of the individual mind. Foucault argues that, while madness is de-demonized it is also dehumanized during the Renaissance, as madmen become creatures neither diabolic nor totally human reduced to the zero degree of humanity. It is immediately clear why for Kant, speculative metaphysics must be curbed – with the problem of internal madness and without the external safeguards of transcendental conditions, there is nothing to formally separate the speculative capacities for metaphysical diagnosis from the mad ramblings of the insane mind – both equally fall outside the realm of practicality and quotidian experience. David-Menard's work is particularly useful in diagnosing the relation of thought and madness in Kant's texts. David-Menard argues that in Kant's relatively unknown “An Essay on the Maladies of the Mind” as well as his later discussion of the Seer of Swedenborg, that Kant formulates madness primarily in terms of sensory upheaval or other hallucinatory theaters. She writes: “madness is an organization of thought. It is made possible by the ambiguity of the normal relation between the imaginary and the perceived, whether this pertains to the order of sensation or to the relations between our ideas” Kant's fascination with the Seer forces Kant between the pincers of “aesthetic reconciliation” – namely melancholic withdrawal – and “a philosophical invention” – namely the critical project. Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis is a combination and reversal of Kant's split, where an aesthetic over engagement with the world entails prolific conceptual invention. Their embrace of madness, however, is of course itself conceptual despite all their rhizomatic maneuvers. Though they move with the energy of madness, Deleuze and Guattari save the capacity of thought from the fangs of insanity by imbuing materiality itself with the capacity for thought. Or, as Ray Brassier puts it, “Deleuze insists, it is necessary to absolutize the immanence of this world in such a way as to dissolve the transcendent disjunction between things as we know them and as they are in themselves”. That is, whereas Kant relied on the faculty of judgment to divide representation from objectivity Deleuze attempts to flatten the whole economy beneath the juggernaut of ontological univocity. Speculation, as a particularly useful form of madness, might fall close to Deleuze and Guattari’s shaping of philosophy into a concept producing machine but is different in that it is potentially self destructive – less reliant on the stability of its own concepts and more adherent to exposing a particular horrifying swath of reality. Speculative madness is always a potential disaster in that it acknowledges little more than its own speculative power with the hope that the gibbering of at least a handful of hysterical brains will be useful. Pre-critical metaphysics amounts to madness, though this may be because the world itself is mad while new attempts at speculative metaphysics, at post-Kantian pre-critical metaphysics, are well aware of our own madness. Without the sobriety of the principle of sufficient reason we have a world of neon madness: “we would have to conceive what our life would be if all the movements of the earth, all the noises of the earth, all the smells, the tastes, all the light – of the earth and elsewhere, came to us in a moment, in an instant – like an atrocious screaming tumult of things”. Speculative thought may be participatory in the screaming tumult of the world or, worse yet, may produce its spectral double. Against theology or reason or simply commonsense, the speculative becomes heretical. Speculation, as the cognitive extension of the horrorific sublime should be met with melancholic detachment. Whereas Kant's theoretical invention, or productivity of thought, is self -sabotaging, since the advent of the critical project is a productivity of thought which then delimits the engine of thought at large either in dogmatic gestures or non-systematizable empirical wondrousness. The former is celebrated by the fiction of Thomas Ligotti whereas the latter is espoused by the tales of H.P. Lovecraft. /2/ – Weird Fiction and Philosophy. Supernatural horror, in all its eerie constructions, enables a reader to taste treats inconsistent with his personal welfare. Thomas Ligotti Songs of a Dead Dreamer. I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination best—one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve,momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which forever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis H.P. Lovecraft. “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” Lovecraft states that his creation of a story is to suspend natural law yet, at the same time, he indexes the tenuousness of such laws, suggesting the vast possibilities of the cosmic. The tension that Lovecraft sets up between his own fictions and the universe or nature is reproduced within his fictions in the common theme of the unreliable narrator; unreliable precisely because they are either mad or what they have witnessed questions the bounds of material reality. In “The Call of Cthulhu” Lovecraft writes: The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. Despite Lovecraft's invocations of illusion, he is not claiming that his fantastic creations such as the Old Ones are supernatural but, following Joshi, are only ever supernormal. One can immediately see that instead of nullifying realism Lovecraft in fact opens up the real to an unbearable degree. In various letters and non-fictional statements Lovecraft espoused strictly materialist tenets, ones which he borrowed from Hugh Elliot namely the uniformity of law, the denial of teleology and the denial of non-material existence. Lovecraft seeks to explore the possibilities of such a universe by piling horror upon horror until the fragile brain which attempts to grasp it fractures. This may be why philosophy has largely ignored weird fiction – while Deleuze and Guattari mark the turn towards weird fiction and Lovecraft in particular, with the precursors to speculative realism as well as contemporary related thinkers have begun to view Lovecraft as making philosophical contributions. Lovecraft's own relation to philosophy is largely critical while celebrating Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. This relationship of Lovecraft to philosophy and philosophy to Lovecraft is coupled with Lovecraft's habit of mercilessly destroying the philosopher and the figure of the academic more generally in his work, a destruction which is both an epistemological destruction and an ontological destruction. Thomas Ligotti's weird fiction which he has designated as a kind of “confrontational escapism” might be best described in the following quote from one of his shortstories, “The human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion each of which winds itself on the supreme insanity. That there are persons of any kind when all there can be is mindless mirrors laughing and screaming as they parade about in an endless dream”. Whereas Lovecraft's weirdness draws predominantly from the abyssal depths of the uncharted universe, Ligotti's existential horror focuses on the awful proliferation of meaningless surfaces that is, the banal and every day function of representation. In an interview, Ligotti states: We don't even know what the world is like except through our sense organs, which are provably inadequate. It's no less the case with our brains. Our whole lives are motored along by forces we cannot know and perceptions that are faulty. We sometimes hear people say that they're not feeling themselves. Well, who or what do they feel like then? This is not to say that Ligotti sees nothing beneath the surface but that there is only darkness or blackness behind it, whether that surface is on the cosmological level or the personal. By addressing the implicit and explicit philosophical issues in Ligotti's work we will see that his nightmarish take on reality is a form of malevolent idealism, an idealism which is grounded in a real, albeit dark and obscure materiality. If Ligotti's horrors ultimately circle around mad perceptions which degrade the subject, it takes aim at the vast majority of the focus of continental philosophy. While Lovecraft's acidic materialism clearly assaults any romantic concept of being from the outside, Ligotti attacks consciousness from the inside: Just a little doubt slipped into the mind, a little trickle of suspicion in the bloodstream, and all those eyes of ours, one by one, open up to the world and see its horror [...] Not even the solar brilliance of a summer day will harbor you from horror. For horror eats the light and digests it into darkness. Clearly, the weird fiction of Lovecraft and Ligotti amount to a anti-anthrocentric onslaught against the ramparts of correlationist continental philosophy. /3/ – Shoggothic Materialism or the Formless Formless protoplasm able to mock and reflect all forms and organs and processes—viscous agglutinations of bubbling cells—rubbery fifteen-foot spheroids infinitely plastic and ductile—slaves of suggestion, builders of cities—more and more sullen, more and more intelligent, more and more amphibious, more and more imitative—Great God! What madness made even those blasphemous Old Ones willing to use and to carve such things? H.P. Lovecraft. “At the Mountains of Madness” On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit. Georges Bataille. “Formless”. The Shoggoths feature most prominently in H.P. Lovecraft's shortstory “At the Mountains of Madness” where they are described in the following manner: It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train – a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self -luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter. The term is a litmus test for materialism itself as the Shoggoth is an amorphous creature. The Shoggoths were living digging machines bio engineered by the Elder Things, and their protoplasmic bodies being formed into various tools by their hypnotic powers. The Shoggoths eventually became self aware and rose up against their masters in an ultimately failed rebellion. After the Elder Ones retreated into the oceans leaving the Shoggoths to roam the frozen wastes of the Antarctic. The onto-genesis of the Shoggoths and their gross materiality, index the horrifyingly deep time of the earth a concept near and dear to Lovecraft's formulation of horror as well as the fear of intelligences far beyond, and far before, the ascent of humankind on earth and elsewhere. The sickly amorphous nature of the Shoggoths invade materialism at large, where while materiality is unmistakably real ie not discursive, psychological, or otherwise overly subjectivist, it questions the relation of materialism to life. As Eugene Thacker writes: The Shoggoths or Elder Things do not even share the same reality with the human beings who encounter them—and yet this encounter takes place, though in a strange no-place that is neither quite that of the phenomenal world of the human subject or the noumenal world of an external reality. Amorphous yet definitively material beings are a constant in Lovecraft's tales. In his tale “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadatth” Lovecraft describes Azathoth as, “that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe,” that, “last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blashphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity,” who, “gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time”. Azathoth's name may have multiple origins but the most striking is the alchemy term azoth which is both a cohesive agent and a acidic creation pointing back to the generative and the decayed. The indistinction of generation and degradation materially mirrors the blur between the natural and the unnatural as well as life and non-life. Lovecraft speaks of the tension between the natural and the unnatural is his short story “The Unnameable.” He writes, “if the psychic emanations of human creatures be grotesque distortions, what coherent representation could express or portray so gibbous and infamous a nebulousity as the spectre of a malign, chaotic perversion, itself a morbid blasphemy against Nature?”. Lovecraft explores exactly the tension outlined at the beginning of this chapter, between life and thought. At the end of his short tale Lovecraft compounds the problem as the unnameable is described as “a gelatin—a slime—yet it had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory”. Deleuze suggests that becoming-animal is operative throughout Lovecraft's work, where narrators feel themselves reeling at their becoming non-human or of being the anomalous or of becoming atomized. Following Eugene Thacker however, it may be far more accurate to say that Lovecraft's tales exhibit not a becoming-animal but a becoming-creature. Where the monstrous breaks the purportedly fixed laws of nature, the creature is far more ontologically ambiguous. The nameless thing is an altogether different horizon for thought. The creature is either less than animal or more than animal – its becoming is too strange for animal categories and indexes the slow march of thought towards the bizarre. This strangeness is, as aways, some indefinite swirling in the category of immanence and becoming. Bataille begins “The Labyrinth” with the assertion that being, to continue to be, is becoming. More becoming means more being hence the assertion that Bataille's barking dog is more than the sponge. This would mean that the Shoggotth is altogether too much being, too much material in the materialism. Bataille suggests that there is an immanence between the eater and the eaten, across the species and never within them. That is, despite the chaotic storm of immanence there must remain some capacity to distinguish the gradients of becoming without reliance upon, or at least total dependence upon, the powers of intellection to parse the universe into recognizable bits, properly digestible factoids. That is, if we undo Deleuze's aforementioned valorization of sense which, for his variation of materialism, performed the work of the transcendental, but refuse to reinstate Kant's transcendental disjunction between thing and appearance, then it must be a quality of becoming-as-being itself which can account for the discernible nature of things by sense. In an interview with Peter Gratton, Jane Bennett formulates the problem thusly: What is this strange systematicity proper to a world of Becoming? What, for example, initiates this congealing that will undo itself? Is it possible to identify phases within this formativity, plateaus of differentiation? If so, do the phases/plateaus follow a temporal sequence? Or, does the process of formation inside Becoming require us to theorize a non-chronological kind of time? I think that your student’s question: “How can we account for something like iterable structures in an assemblage theory?” is exactly the right question. Philosophy has erred too far on the side of the subject in the subject-object relation and has furthermore, lost the very weirdness of the non-human. Beyond this, the madness of thought need not override. /4/ - Ventriloquial Idealism or the Externality of Thought My aim is the opposite of Lovecraft's. He had an appreciation for natural scenery on earth and wanted to reach beyond the visible in the universe. I have no appreciation for natural scenery and want the objective universe to be a reflection of a character. Thomas Ligotti. “Devotees of Decay and Desolation.” Unless life is a dream, nothing makes sense. For as a reality, it is a rank failure [….] Horror is more real than we are. Thomas Ligotti. “Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror”. Thomas Ligotti's tales are rife with mannequins, puppets, and other brainless entities which of replace the valorized subject of philosophy – that of the free thinking human being. His tales such as “The Dream of the Manikin” aim to destroy the rootedness of consciousness. James Trafford has connected the anti-egoism of Ligotti to Thomas Metzinger – where the self is at best an illusion and we plead desperately for someone else to acknowledge that we are real. Trafford has stated it thus, “Life is played out as an inescapable puppet show, an endless dream in which the puppets are generally unaware that they are trapped within a mesmeric dance of whose mechanisms they know nothing and over which they have no control”. An absolute materialism, for Ligotti, implies an alienation of the idea which leads to a ventriloquil idealism. As Ligotti notes in an interview, “the fiasco and nightmare of existence, the particular fiasco and nightmare of human existence, the sense that people are puppets of powers they cannot comprehend, etc.” And then further elaborates that,“[a]ssuming that anything has to exist, my perfect world would be one in which everyone has experienced the annulment of his or her ego. That is, our consciousness of ourselves as unique individuals would entirely disappear”. The externality of the idea leads to the unfortunate consequence of consciousness eating at itself through horror which, for Ligotti, is more real than reality and goes beyond horror-as-affect. Beyond this, taking together with the unreality of life and the ventriloquizing of subjectivity, Ligotti's thought becomes an idealism in which thought itself is alien and ultimately horrifying. The role of human thought and the relation of non-relation of horror to thought is not completely clear in Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Ligotti argues in his The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,that the advent of thought is a mistake of nature and that horror is being in the sense that horror results from knowing too much. Yet, at the same time, Ligotti seems to suggest that thought separates us from nature whereas, for Lovecraft, thought is far less privileged – mind is just another manifestation of the vital principal, it is just another materialization of energy. In his brilliant “Prospects for Post-Copernican Dogmatism” Iain Grant rallies against the negative definition of dogmatism and the transcendental, and suggests that negatively defining both over-focuses on conditions of access and subjectivism at the expense of the real or nature. With Schelling, who is Grant's champion against the subjectivist bastions of both Fichte and Kant, Ligotti's idealism could be taken as a transcendental realism following from an ontological realism. Yet the transcendental status of Ligotti's thought move towards a treatment of the transcendental which may threaten to leave beyond its realist ground. Ligotti states: Belief in the supernatural is only superstition. That said, a sense of the supernatural, as Conrad evidenced in Heart of Darkness, must be admitted if one's inclination is to go to the limits of horror. It is the sense of what should not be- the sense of being ravaged by the impossible. Phenomenally speaking, the super-natural may be regarded as the metaphysical counterpart of insanity, a transcendental correlative of a mind that has been driven mad. Again, Ligotti equates madness with thought, qualifying both as supernatural while remaining less emphatic about the metaphysical dimensions of horror. The question becomes one of how exactly the hallucinatory realm of the ideal relates to the black churning matter of Lovecraft's chaos of elementary particles. In his tale “I Have a Special Plan for This World” Ligotti formulates thus: A: There is no grand scheme of things. B: If there were a grand scheme of things, the fact – the fact – that we are not equipped to perceive it, either by natural or supernatural means, is a nightmarish obscenity. C: The very notion of a grand scheme of things is a nightmarish obscenity. Here Ligotti is not discounting metaphysics but implying that if it does exist the fact that we are phenomenologically ill-equipped to perceive that it is nightmarish. For Ligotti, nightmare and horror occur within the circuit of consciousness whereas for Lovecraft the relation between reality and mind is less productive on the side of mind. It is easier to ascertain how the Kantian philosophy is a defense against the diseases of the head as Kant armors his critical enterprise from too much of the world and too much of the mind. The weird fiction of both Lovecraft and Ligotti demonstrates that there is too much of both feeding into one another in a way that corrodes the Kantian schema throughly, breaking it down into a dead but still ontologically potentiated nigredo. The haunting, terrifying fact of Ligotti's idealism is that the transcendental motion which brought thought to matter, while throughly material and naturalized, brings with it the horror that thought cannot be undone without ending the material that bears it either locally or completely. Thought comes from an elsewhere and an elsewhen being-in-thought. The unthinkable outside thought is as maddening as the unthought engine of thought itself within thought which doesn't exist except for the mind, the rotting décor of the brain. /5/ - Hyperstitional Transcendental Paranoia or Self -Expelled Thought Weird fiction has been given some direct treatment in philosophy in the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land. Nick Land along with others in the 1990s created the Cyber Culture Research Unit as well as the research group Hyperstition. The now defunct hyperstitional website, an outgrowth of the Cyber Culture Research Unit, defined hyperstition in the following fourfold: 1-Element of effective culture that makes itself real. 2-Fictional quantity functional as a time-traveling device. 3-Coincidence intensifier. 4-Call to the Old Ones. The distinctively Lovecraftian character of hyperstition is hard to miss as is its Deleuzo-Guattarian roots. In the opening pages of A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari write, “We have been criticized for over-quoting literary authors. But when one writes, the only question is which other machine the literary machine can be plugged into”. The indisinction of literature and philosophy mirrors the mess of being and knowing as post-correlationist philosophy, where philosophy tries to make itself real where literature, especially the weird, aims itself at the brain-circuit of horror. The texts of both Lovecraft and Ligotti work through horror as epistemological plasticity meeting with proximity as well as the deep time of Lovecraft and the glacially slow time of paranoia in Ligotti. Against Deleuze, and following Brassier, we cannot allow the time of consciousness, the Bergsonian time of the duree, to override natural time, but instead acknowledge that it is an unfortunate fact of existence as a thinking being. Horror-time, the time of consciousness, with all its punctuated moments and drawn out terrors, cannot compare to the deep time of non-existence both in the unreachable past and the unknown future. The crystalline cogs of Kant's account of experience as the leading light for the possibility of metaphysics must be throughly obliterated. His gloss of experience in Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics could not be more sterile: Experience consists of intuitions, which belong to the sensibility, and of judgments, which are entirely a work of the understanding. But the judgments which the understanding makes entirely out of sensuous intuitions are far from being judgments of experience. For in the one case the judgment connects only the perceptions as they are given in sensuous intuition [....] Experience consists in the synthetic connection of appearances in consciousness, so far as this connection is necessary. Here it is difficult to dismiss the queasiness that Kant's legalism induces upon sight for both Badiou and David-Menard. Kant's thought becomes, as Foucault says when reflecting on Sade's text in relation to nature, “the savage abolition of itself”. For Badiou, Kant's philosophy simply closes off too much of the outside, freezing the world of thought in an all too limited formalism. Critical philosophy is simply the systematized quarantine on future thinking, on thinking which would threaten the formalism which artificially grants thought its own coherency in the face of madness. Even the becoming-mad of Deleuze, while escaping the rumbling ground, makes grounds for itself, mad grounds but grounds which are thinkable in their affect. The field of effects allows for Deleuze's aesthetic and radical empiricism, in which effects and/or occasions make up the material of the world to be thought as a chaosmosis of simulacra. Given a critique of an empiricism of aesthetics, of the image, it may be difficult to justify an attack on Kantian formalism with the madness of literature, which does not aim to make itself real but which we may attempt to make real. That is, how do Lovecraft's and Ligotti's materials, as materials for philosophy to work on, differ from either the operative formalisms of Kant or the implicitly formalized images of Deleuzian empiricism? It is simply that such texts do not aim to make themselves real, and make claims to the real which are more alien to us than familiar, which is why their horror is immediately more trustworthy. This is the madness which Blanchot discusses in The Infinite Conversation through Cervantes and his knight – the madness of book-life, of the perverse unity of literature and life a discussion which culminates in the discussion of one of the weird's masters, that of Kafka. The text is the knowing of madness, since madness, in its moment of becoming-more-mad, cannot be frozen in place but by the solidifications of externalizing production. This is why Foucault ends his famous study with works of art. Furthermore extilligence, the ability to export the products of our maligned brains, is the companion of the attempts to export, or discover the possibility of intelligences outside of our heads, in order for philosophy to survive the solar catastrophe. To borrow again from Deleuze, writing is inseparable from becoming. The mistake is to believe that madness is reabsorbed by extilligence, by great works, or that it could be exorcised by the expelling of thought into the inorganic or differently organic. Going out of our heads does not guarantee we will no longer mean we cannot still go out of our minds. This is simply because of the outside, of matter, or force, or energy, or thing-in-itself, or Schopenhauerian Will. In Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zahn” an “impoverished student of metaphysics” becomes intrigued by strange viol music coming from above his room. After meeting the musician the student discovers that each night he plays frantic music at a window in order to keep some horridness at bay, some “impenetrable darkness with chaos and pandemonium”. The aesthetic defenses provided by the well trained brain can bear the hex of matter for so long, the specter of unalterability within it which too many minds obliterate, collapsing everything before the thought of thought as thinkable or at least noetically mutable on our own terms. Transcendental paranoia is the concurrent nightmare and promise of Paul Humphrey's work, of being literally out of our minds. It is the gothic counterpart of thinking non-conceptually but also of thinking never belonging to any instance of purportedly solid being. As Bataille stated, “At the boundary of that which escapes cohesion, he who reflects within cohesion realizes there is no longer any room for him” Thought is immaterial only to the degree that it is inhuman, it is a power that tries, always with failure, to ascertain its own genesis. Philosophy, if it can truly return to the great outdoors, if it can leave behind the dead loop of the human skull, must recognize not only the non-priority of human thought, but that thought never belongs to the brain that thinks it, thought comes from somewhere else. To return to the train image from the beginning “a locomotive rolling on the surface of the earth is the image of continuous metamorphosis” this is the problem of thought, and of thinking thought, of being no longer able to isolate thought, with only a thought-formed structure. [1] One of the central tenets of Francois Laruelle's non-philosophy is that philosophy has traditionally operated on material already presupposed as thinkable instead of trying to think the real in itself. Philosophy, according to Laruelle, remains fixated on transcendental synthesis which shatters immanence into an empirical datum and an a prori factum which are then fused by a third thing such as the ego. For a critical account of Laruelle's non-philosophy see Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Four Prose PoemsRosmarie Waldrop (bio)Conversation 9 On Varieties of OblivionAfter bitter resistance the river disappears into the night, he says. Washes the daily war out into tides of wounded dream. I know no word to dive from, the dark so dense, so almost without dimension, swallowing the sounds back into eclipse while making love to my body. Fish smell travels the regions of sleep, westward like the dawn. Then (...) I wake, too early to bring anything back, unsure of what I want, terrified I’ll fail to seize it by a hair.We need a grand decor for oblivion, she says. But the sea takes all with equal tenderness. As the past does. Already it suffuses the present with more inclusive tonalities. Not constraining it in melodic sequence, but setting a rooster next to the silence that molds my words. Or injured flesh. Impersonal. Only an animal could be so.An avatar of the holy ghost, he chuckles. Or the angel of the annunciation beating his wings against a door slammed shut. Behind it, love already plays the organ. With or without him. He is invisible because we have rejected his message.On old photos, she says, I see a stranger standing in my skin. As if an apple could fall too far from the tree. Yet she is called my past and functions as near-certainty. The way some beliefs are exempt from doubt, are as it were the hinges on which my doubts and questions turn. So that I seem the same to you while I’ve already moved through the next door. From left to right. [End Page 63]Conversation 10 On SeparationMy separation from the landscape started even earlier, she says. In my mother’s mirror, which staged dialectic and confused my instincts. There are few trains in the thick smoke, the run-down station, more waste of grain, more images lost. I carry a mirror in my cortex, but cannot inhabit my womb. Or the silence that is the matter between parts of speech.A pebble in an eddy, he says, reveals the course of the current. Sometimes it’s a small difference that makes our closeness arch, for a moment, into a solid vault, a space thick with birdsong and green sun. Then it again slips through my fingers. I search for a word, and nothing exists but the gap beckoning me to some strange horizon without event.Only out of body could we be out of the panic of time, she says. Momentarily bracket it maybe, in illness, degrees of withdrawal. But hours reproduce, days go by consumed by heat, the flimmer above the lake. I can’t distinguish gravity from other distortions of space, or sign from symbol. My sense of time begins six billion years ago, when the fish stretched their fins onto dry land though the sea groaned in their belly, or forty, with breasts and monthly bleeding. The now always already darkening, the way a sentence anticipates the period it will stiffen in.The galaxies avoid collapsing onto each other by virtue of their recessional motion, he says. Father and son walk away from the bed in opposite directions. But sweat clings to our names, the secretions of closeness. As if we were submerged in one and the same sleep. If I withdraw into more impermeable regions, your shadow grows. All respiratory passages lead to you. As if you were the certainty the game of doubting presupposes. The niggling voice of death. [End Page 64]Conversation 11 On DepthIt would take more than a pebble, she says, to sound your undertones. Something slips away as you speak, tense with life, like a startled beast in the woods. Is it a lizard, snake, or unused thought that runs alongside your words, while the rustling vines close over the trace of flight?Isn’t this a case, he says, of deep breathing pulled into spasms of interpretation the way children are pulled into the future by the very gravity of their innocence. And with a speed unlimited by the young space. The joints between future and present swell and sweep apart whole galaxies, but even the... (shrink)

We may now ask the question: In what historical perspective should we place the work of Richard Goldschmidt? There is no doubt that in the period 1910–1950 Goldschmidt was an important and prolific figure in the history of biology in general, and of genetics in particular. His textbook on physiological genetics, published in 1938, was an amazing compendium of ideas put forward in the previous half-century about how genes influence physiology and development. His earlier studies on the genetic and geographic (...) distribution of the various species and races of Lymantria contributed soundly to an understanding of the inheritance and development of sex, as well as the genetics of speciation. He was a curious mixture of the experimentalist, empiricist, and theorizer, who could grasp both the large and the small at once and wrap them into the same integrated and coherent package.In insisting on trying to relate genetics to development, Goldschmidt was continually forced to speculate and to forsake experimental fact for generalized theory. In refusing to reconcile a physiological and developmental conception with a corpuscular theory of the gene, he forced himself to substitute for a large body of experimentally verified evidence, vague and general speculations which did not lead in any precise direction. L. C. Dunn summarizes succinctly the effect of Goldschmidt's thinking on the development of genetic theory: Although Goldschmidt's ideas had a considerable influence in directing attention to the developmental processes intervening between genes and characters, they did not lead to the establishment of a general theory of development in genetical terms. In fact, at the end of the period, as signalized by Goldschmidt's book of 1938 [Physiological Gentics] doubt remained whether there was a field with a defined problem which could be identified as developmental genetics.Yet the frequency with which Goldschmidt is cited by later writers suggests that there is a more positive side to his contribution than this. The early Mendelians had recognized the genic constitution of organisms and the Drosophila workers had uncovered in detail the chromosomal mechanism of heredity. These great discoveries were of classical character, solidly based on a multitude of well established facts. By themselves, however, they would not have been sufficient to place genetics in the central position within biology which it was to assume. Beyond the “static” analysis of gene transmission an insight was needed into the dynamic role of genes in cellular physiology, biochemistry, and development. Goldschmidt recognized this aspect and outlined in brilliant generalizations a physiological theory of genetics. Necessarily the prophetic nature of this achievement — romantic in the sense of Ostwald's classification of great scientists and their discoveries — transcended its factual basis. It was the audacity of the theoretician unimpeded by the still scanty data which gave a new focus to biological thought.Some have called Goldschmidt an “obstructionist” in the history of genetics—one whose efforts were largely directed toward useless and continual criticism — challenge for the sake of challenge. As this line of argument goes, time wasted answering Goldschmidt's poorly conceived criticisms could have been better used to pursue new lines of thought within the classical gene theory. Sometimes historians are upbraided for studying the work of such “obstructionists,” or even the work of those whose ideas have later proved to be inadequate. This argument misses the point of history and the lessons which it can teach. Perhaps Goldschmidt did take the time of a number of the classical geneticists who tried to answer his objections to the gene theory; and perhaps many of his own ideas about genes were, by today's view, “wrong.” These are always easier judgments to make by hindsight than at the moment. But that is not the point. Goldschmidt had a considerable influence on his contemporaries, and to dismiss him as an obstructionist because his opponents later proved to be more nearly right, distorts history and obscures significant questions which we might well be asking. It might be valuable to know why Goldschmidt felt compelled to be an iconoclast —and how that impulse, psychological in orgin, led him to overlook critical items of evidence which his opponents considered more carefully. It might also be valuable to try and understand how a contemporary of Goldschmidt or. Morgan really viewed the gene theory — what were its strong and weak point? Such questions are not readily answered by studying the work of only those men who were correct by later standards.Answers to some of the above questions can be gleaned from this study of Goldschmidt — though the first, and most psychologically oriented, question is largely untouched here.On the one hand, Goldschmidt forced classical geneticists to reexamine the foundation of their ideas about the nature, inviolability, and even physical dimensions of genes. He also kept alive the very real problems of gene physiology and its relations to development — a relationship that was given less attention by the Drosophila school in their pursuit of the transmission process. On a broader level he emphasized to the biological community a principle that was in danger of being lost in the enthusiasm surrounding the expansion of the Mendelian-chromosome theory. The point was that all theories in science are transient, logical constructs which should not be held as sacred. Time and again, as the history of science has shown, theories become rigid structures which retard new modes of thought. From Goldschmidt's perspective, the gene theory was in danger of performing just that function, for it was preventing workers from viewing the gene in a functional as well as a structural light.On the other hand, examining the work of critics (or even of outright “obstructionists”) gives the historian an opportunity to observe how the more established community of scholars at some point in time reacts to challenges of its cherished ideas. The fact that many workers in his own day (such as Beadle, Luria, Delbruck, Sturtevant, Bridges, and others), as well as most geneticists today, saw Goldschmidt as having been largely “obstructionist” is useful historical (and/or sociological) data. Clearly, as this paper has tried to show, Goldschmidt's ideas were not all obstructionist, and his viewpoint that genes must be considered functionally was one which was clearly valid, premature as it may have been from an experimental and technique point of view. Perhaps Goldschmidt's major fault was that he developed alternative theories which were not easily testable. Nonetheless, his challenge to a fundamental and established idea brought forth a reaction from many members of the genetic community which indicates how unwilling they were to reconsider the formalized theory on which their work was based. While many of Goldschmidt's criticisms — and particularly his way of making them — arose out of his own idiosyncrasies, they were also a product of his times. His view of the nature of theory-construction, and his rejection of old-style reductionism and mechanism, were part of a growing awareness within the world scientific community that explanations based on reducing complex phenomena to ultimate particles or units were clearly inadequate. The success of the Mendelian-chromosome theory had obscured that fact for many geneticists, but to Goldschmidt it was a point that could not be allowed to pass unnoticed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Proust and the Phenomenology of MemoryThomas M. Lennon"I still believe that anything that I do outside of literature and philosophy will be so much time wasted." Thus did the twenty-two year old Marcel Proust (1871–1922) write to his father, reluctantly agreeing to consider a career in the foreign service as an alternative to the legal profession otherwise being urged upon him. ("I should vastly prefer going to work for (...) a stockbroker," was his comment.)1 Happily for us all, Proust was obliged to do neither, and in fact was able to do both philosophy and literature. As André Maurois puts it, "[Proust's] great novel is philosophy incarnate."2 Certainly, In Search of Lost Time is saturated with philosophy, the appreciation of which cannot help but enhance our understanding of this great work. The thesis here will be that a loosely phenomenological account of the work's central concept of memory gives us the structure of the work as a whole.The biographical facts suggest such an approach. Proust received a license from the Sorbonne in 1895, and, more importantly, had previously been a student of the philosopher Alphonse Darlu at the Lycée Condorcet. Although he published very little, Darlu was a charismatic, inspirational figure for his students—not least of all for Proust himself, who described him as "the great philosopher whose inspired words, more certain to last than any writing would, gave birth in me as in so many others to thought itself."3 A touching artifact of Proust's time with Darlu is his report card, preserved in the Proust Museum at Illiers-Combray. Not incidentally, it shows a concentration on the classical authors who will be deployed here. We also have a wonderful little text that argues a kind of phenomenalism influenced perhaps by Hume, and certainly by Kant.4 The one author important to our account whose name does not figure as such in any of this material is Malebranche; but we know [End Page 52] that Proust was familiar with the great Oratorian since he quotes him.5 In fact, the only author appearing below who could not have been on Proust's shelf is Kundera, the most philosophical and Proustian of all recent novelists.We begin with a text; it is the most famous of all in French literature, the episode of the madeleine from the Search. The text has become so well known—through hearsay more than from having been read, no doubt—that it has invited "kitchification."6 Even so, it is an exquisite piece of writing, which, in any case, is essential to the thesis here.Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray... had any existence for me, when one day in winter as I came home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing that I did not ordinarily take.... She sent out for one of those plump little cakes called 'petites madeleines'.... I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body.... And suddenly the memory [le souvenir] returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of 'madeleine' which on Sunday mornings at Combray... my Aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or lime-flower tea.... Immediately the old grey house upon the street rose up like the scenery of a theatre... in a moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann's park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.7There are other such episodes of the past springing into being, but not many, and they occur but infrequently, until the very end of this vast work, when they come upon the narrator rapidly and almost... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Stumbling Block its IndexBrian Catling (bio)The Stumbling Block is a graphic font. This black plinth was once a brush or similar terminal that was the lips of an intense electrical arc. Industries proud and violent need spoke through it to turn the wheel or smelt and cast the constructed challenge. Now abandoned it finds benediction in seclusion. It has softened its mouth to hold water, so that small (...) animals and disjointed humans may drink or sign themselves in their passage. [End Page 218]The Stumbling Block has been used like an entrance step to sharpen knives on. Its fossil bristle of bright stone forcing the heavy blades down to a hiss along one edge. These are knives of gleaming hubris, long intentions honed for malice. They are magnetized and have been placed to construct a lectern. Each blade holding the next to form the platform. It may hold this index at its centre, hovering, placed outside in the aorta of streets. The removal of any of the blades from the assembled cluster will spill their fish bodies to the ground. The paper will drink any of the stains of their usage. [End Page 219]The Stumbling Block is an ark of extinction. A bouillon hive of the murdered past, frozen dry to a mass. Something has warmed its corner, the oxoed grit bleeds a vein of contagion, virulent in its passion to embrace and swim in human tides. [End Page 220]The Stumbling Block is unfound to the stained and unclear eye. But its nest, its negative hollow can be discovered in the mounds of waste and detritus that choke the streets. Its possible wedge, sphere or beam form is there; a vacant socket, easily trampled, destroyed or cleared away. It is watching. Its obstinate grace squinting across the demonstrations of power. It is the light in the eye of the needle grown solid with anger, a fat sugar that clogs the passage to any kind of paradise. [End Page 221]The Stumbling Block is a bell that sounds a deeper voice than the throats of men. Their image and cry shrinks the world.The communication of global gossip becomes a barbed wind of trivial penning; television enclosures of wired indifference, the reduction of memory removes the open field and causes blurred shivers to be understood as the same thing. The bell hums as acceleration eradicates silence, the foundation for stillness is removed. The speed of language clones its own restless manic hunger. The portable telephone, miniature televisions, satellites and their collection dishes are the cutlery for this gluttony.The inedible thinness they devour is obvious. To feed this addiction soapy fictions are boiled from the skin and bone of poverty. Tribes, villages, jungles and the very air itself can be wasted or burnt to secure a dry armpit in puppeted dramas of nightmare lives. Condensation is sweating inside the bell; a human modes sound that is unwelcome. It drips from the rim in whispers and pools beneath its limited protection. [End Page 222]The Stumbling Block is a shape shifter, a spirit bench that dwells in the cuffs of the expanding city. Over its warn layers of woven scars many forms have been stretched, clamped and tasted, licked and cut; reshaped. Anointed by abstraction, they are put back on the blinking streets, patted and set loose. In the deep pocketed burrows of the bench, termite-size clones dream white directions to colour the tiredness of their somnambulistic donors. [End Page 223]The Stumbling Block is a barrel organ dragged to the site of a crime. Its tin cup catching rain as it judders on the pounding box. The moon is caught between its throat and the water, and in the black gleam of its varnished vibration. It spills dance into the causeways, sucking revelers along the spindle of its cranked tune. They will spin and curl their lumpen massed centrifuge around the bellowing thing. The laughter is momentary but has soaked away the blood, only the scuffs of shoes and the scratched cobbles sing on. [End Page 224]The Stumbling Block is not a coffer, disguised by a wig of artifice. It cannot offer erudition or... (shrink)

continent. 1.3 (2011): 201-207. “Poetry is experience, linked to a vital approach, to a movement which is accomplished in the serious, purposeful course of life. In order to write a single line, one must have exhausted life.” —Maurice Blanchot (1982, 89) Nikos Karouzos had a communist teacher for a father and an orthodox priest for a grandfather. From his four years up to his high school graduation he was incessantly educated, reading the entire private library of his granddad, comprising mainly (...) the Orthodox Church Fathers and the ancient classics. Later on in his life he sold the library for money, only to buy a little more time before he went broke again: “I carry sorrow like a cage/ I got no birds/ as I come back from her hair/ I see the profit emptied/ cool from terror.” (1993, Ι, 101) Nowadays—and ridiculously recently—we are more than apt to speak of a certain insouciance pertaining to the Greek form of expenditure: expenditure without any type of investment, sometimes not (even) symbolic. In the vaults of the European unconscious, this imprudent stance still conjures a “capital punishment” in the form of de-capitation, reflecting back the fear of excess and the terror of its consequences.1 Thus the Greek way of living is very close to what a stranger could have termed as “the Greek way of dying.” Yet, what is not often understood is that the Greek esprit , the same one that invented the maxim μηδ?ν ?γαν (“nothing in excess”), does not experience death solely as an imminent fear of bankruptcy. For it miraculously combines its unconditional acceptance with the promise of a resurrection that is always there in the scents of Spring, from Dionysus to the orthodox Christ: “Everyone resurrects himself through dying [….] Resurrection is the switching of mortalities.” (2002, 94) Hence, if an entire library was imprudently traded for a plate with seven olives, a sliced tomato and some fresh goat cheese, let us not be fooled: this is not the meal of the pauper, but that of “an aristocrat from God” (1993, II, 491) feeding his eloquent loudmouth, ridiculously cut open in an otherwise rock-solid caput . *** To speak of the Greek experience is to speak about a half-dead language that still utters in life what is seemingly excluded from it and thus forbidden to be talked about: death. Death as anything that is out of this world, as something that will never return . Still, along with an experience of death that recently waned as a worn-out academic fashion, the Greek experience is dead too. Nearly 2300 years of written words separating Homer from the fall of Byzantium equal 500 books on a library traded for money: “I am with the killed. Hence my deepest solitude. I do not feel this tremendous macho society, beyond from the fact that it is a ruthlessly consuming one. It is me who pays all the time .” (2002, 57) Let us do the math and see how much this dealing with the Greek experience is costing the poet and how much dealing with the Greek experience might cost us today. *** “I do not guarantee a single word.” (Karouzos, 1993, II, 454) Through its various dialects and forms, the Greek language speaks through an incessant historical dissemination. Anyone who is aware of this terrifying polymorphy and still calls himself a poet, must stand against a white sheet of paper, pen-in-hand, with a very particular duty: to be as fully inconsistent as possible. In the formally ironic uniqueness of the poem, the poet functions as “a band-aid for lesser and greater antinomies.” (1993, I, 251) Of course these antinomies are not exhausted in language—they are historical, political and, alas, existential. Yet, beyond appearances , it is language that ruthlessly encodes them through history, submitting the poet to the temptation of placing them one next to the other on a single white sheet. The closer their neighboring, the greater the scattering of the writer in the ironic uniqueness of the paper. In a work where poetic license is described as a “freedom-impasse” (2002, 51), this task is undertaken in full conscience of its personal consequences: “what I am interested in is to escape my individuality (envisioning the non-ego) […] Nevertheless, my dissociations never achieve duration.” (2002, 74-75) Hence, though poetry is the “deserted direction of will,” (1998, 62) the stance of the poet is not that of a Nietzschean “great man.”2 Whereas drunkenness provides a thread between the poem and the excess it both presupposes and infuses (“Poetry always enlarges. ‘Drunkenness’ is nothing more than that,” (2002, 85)), whereas language flashes in loudmouth spurts of déraison (“When I am alone I do something else. I utter words. For example, while having my ouzo and listening to music I am most likely capable of randomly shouting ‘Electricity!’” (2002, 138)), the poet never gives in to the double affirmation that would eventually risk the “element of pleasure in discourse.” (2002, 80)” It is exactly because the gap of the antinomies is so vast that poetry is not meant to be written with a hammer. Neither does writing consist in a reevaluation of those elements. In short, poetry is not an affirmation of difference, but the surprising beauty of chiming antinomies. We might never transcend them, but it is up to us to put them together. Yet again, this voisinage is not to be identified with the necessity of chance as an eternal return.4 On the contrary it is a return from that very return : Let us treat Yes as a No to No and No as a Yes […] And let us not forget that this pissed affirmation crumbled down Nietzsche’s intellect in the dark paths of this world. (2002, 88) This return from the “vicious circle” should in no way be taken as a form of artistic prudence. Rather it can be seen as a dribble of demonic inconsistency as Dionysus transforms himself into a Christ that is in turn de-theologized: “Who can forbid that? Every man is capable of his own theology, nothing can stop him.” (2002, 73-74) This is a turn towards an existential vision of the world, historically coinciding with a particular political defeat of the Left, to which the poet devoted all his life: after the defeat of the popular front I raised the question “why do we exist?” while others were asking “why we failed.” (2002, 57)5 But most of all it is a return to poetry that exceeds the existential question itself, going beyond the issue of faith. Poetry comes in as a question of return after a defeat that is confessed in full profanity. Though it accepts the necessity of the defeat, it does not affirm it. Though it negates it, the negation is not in the name of a promise to be delivered in the kingdom of heavens. Following a historical and existential defeat, poetry is born post mortem . It signals a return to Christ as “groundless religiousness in the surprise of the real as such” (2002, 72) which is at once a return to the refuge of childhood. It is not a question of endurance towards an eternal return. Rather it is a question on the possibility of an existential return. Returning in a world as someone who cannot enjoy any returns exactly because he is averse to guarantees. A return without returns. *** PHOTOCOPY OF HAPPINESS When I was young I used to pin down cicadas and step on ant nests. I used to stand there silent for hours. With threads I decapitated bees. Now I am a dead man breathing. (Karouzos, 1993, II, 336.) The return to the “paradise of childhood” (2002, 68) constitutes the devouring refuge of its own memory when defeat becomes the synonym of adulthood. The political struggles of a young communist in a country torn up by a civil war right after World War II fraught with incarcerations and exiles. Historically they resulted in the defeat of the communist movement in Greece and opened up a long turbulent road that would peak in the dictatorship of 1967. Existentially they led to a series of disillusionments: mental breakdown, divorce, abandonment of studies in law school. To the question “why do we exist” the answer was poetry. Still this exposé should not be read as a sweeping chronography of a man. For it actually happens to coincide with the historical fate of a nation that after its modern constitution never stopped dreaming of the glories of its past youth, in a present that was (and is) sweepingly disappointing. But isn’t this return to youth finally a way of compensating for a loss of youth that necessarily results in a losing adulthood? Will Greeks, the eternal children of Plato and Nietzsche, ever learn? How to return without dying, how to remember without wasting time? WE ARE IN THE OPEN MEANING Living the coldest mauve night right across Parthenon I went to take a piss on some foliage and I was enjoying the foliage as it was steaming. (Karouzos, 1993, II, 340) Beyond the historical tragedies of modern Greece and away from any personal disappointments, the relation that this land holds with language and history is mediated through the Greek light—whose omnipresence is the very condition of its transcendence. All historical contradictions from Dionysus to Christ took place under this light; all those disseminated dialects were spoken beneath its warmth. To paraphrase Lévinas,6 light is both the condition of the world and of our withdrawal from it—a withdrawal towards the invisibility of God, of the dead, of meta-physics, resulting from the temptation that all is still here, behind this light the visibility of which they once evaded: “birds, the allurement of God.” (1993, I, 17) Under that luminous sky, if Greeks can do anything at all, it is to envision a return that will never come. All they can do is write poetry—which is doing nothing; other than lending an ear to a disseminated language whispering a unity that cannot be promised, as an adulthood in defeat is ready to recognize. Trying “to trap the invisible in visibility” (1993, II, 483) they forget that they have grown up and one day they die—with the promise of return. Hence an additional meaning must be given to this return to childhood. It does not signal salvation but rather its promise. To the ears of an aged continent it means that the return to/of poetry is a losing game, a return without returns. “Europe, Europe… you are nothing more than the continuation of Barabbas.” (1993, I, 295) *** “Life is not there to verify theories.”7 The records show that Karouzos was finally given a second-class pension from the Greek government, at the time when he was being recognized by the literary press as one of Greece’s major contemporary poets. Being neither a bourgeois nor a nobelist, he proclaimed himself to be an anarcho-communist, unconditionally faithful to the utopia of a classless society. He also drank, heavily. “Capitalism made an animal out of man/ Marxism made an animal out of truth/ Shut up.” (1993, II, 369) Perhaps one of the most scandalous divides of our times has been the one between the living and the dead, the latent prohibition that the living should not be concerned with the dead based on the mere impossibility of the dead to be concerned with the living in the first place. What adds to this scandal is that this divide abuses anything that cannot return to us by subsuming it under the same futility. Hence death is no longer “loss” in the usual sense. It no more refers to the things we lost but to our “loss” (of time, money and well-being) as we insist to dwell on them. Death is a waste —of time. It is this waste that we find in the insouciance of Greek expenditure; the waste in dealing with a language that most of its historical part is no longer spoken (a dead language); the waste in translating a poet who is ex definitio untranslatable; the waste of his vision, his money, his life. The waste of dealing with anything that cannot return and that cannot bring in any returns . But it is also the waste of life that poetry itself presupposes, the waste of dealing with invisibility, with anything that is out of this world and thus invokes the fear of death that is in turn—and surprisingly— nowhere to be found. Instead of death, what is there, beyond the light, is the being without us (to recall the Lévinasian il y a ), the mumble of our own nothingness which constitutes the price to be paid for writing poetry under an evergreek light. To understand this to-and-fro, is to realize that poetry is something out of this world that nevertheless takes place in this world, by virtue of this world. But to ridiculously equate this to-and-fro with death as non-existence, is to exile poetry along with its own possibility from this same old world: I do not believe that poetry will ever disappear from this world. […] But I am also sure that it does not have many chances of playing, as you say, a redemptive role in our vertiginous technological future. Without being endangered as a creative need, it will be placed on the side of history. (2002, 32) It is mainly there that we would like to locate the meaning of Nikos Karouzos’s poetry today. If we are willing to include the Greek original it is because we consider that it will be both a waste of time for us to do so (since most of you cannot read Greek) and because it might induce you to the even larger waste of learning it. We would additionally be glad if this small introduction served as an equally wasteful, academically useless piece of reading, gesturing towards a taboo of investing in anything Greek—that is in anything dead among the living, in anything that will never come back and maybe was never here in the first place. This is the only way to reserve for ourselves the possibility of poetry and preserve the light of its promise. “To return: that is the miracle.” (1993, I, 17) Athens, Greece July 10, 2011 NOTES 1 “ Capitale (a Late Latin word based on caput “head”) emerged in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries in the sense of funds, stock of merchandise, sum of money or money carrying interest.[…] The word and the reality it stood for appear in the sermons of St. Bernardino of Siena (1380-1444) ‘… quamdam seminalem rationem lucrosi quam communiter capitale vocamus ’, ‘that prolific cause of wealth that we commonly call capital’” (Braudel, 1992, 232-233). 2 “A great man – a man whom nature has constructed and invented in the grand style – what is he? First : there is a long logic in all of his activity, hard to survey because of its length, and consequently misleading; he has the ability to extend his will across great stretches of his life and to despise and reject everything petty about him, including even the fairest, ‘divinest’ things in the world.” (Nietzsche, 1968, 505, §962) 3 Cf. Deleuze, 1986, 186-9. 4 “Return is the being of becoming, the unity of multiplicity, the necessity of chance: the being of difference as such or the eternal return.” (Deleuze, 189)5 In this 1982 interview Karouzos refers to the defeat of the communist movement in Greece after the civil war of 1946-1949 between the Governmental Army and the Democratic Army of Greece, the military division of the Greek communist party. Karouzos’s father was a member of the communist National Liberation front (EAM) members of which formed the mainl resistance movement (ELAS) in Greece during WWII. The poet was a member of the United Panhellenic Organization of Youth (EPON), which was a youth division of EAM. After the end of the war, ELAS was called to disarmament in view of the formation of a National Army. The members of EAM resigned from the government of national unity and a series of protests led to a 3 year civil war between ELAS and the Government Army. After the defeat of ELAS the Communist party was outlawed and many communists were exiled in deserted Greek islands. Karouzos, who took action in the Greek resistance and was active during the Greek civil war, was exiled in Icaria on 1947 and in Makronisos on 1953 where he was called two years earlier to do his military service. 6 “Existence in the world qua light, which makes desire possible, is then, in the midst of being, the possibility of detaching oneself from being. To enter into being is to link up with objects; it is in effect a bond that is already tainted with nullity. It is already to escape anonymity. In this world where everything seems to affirm our solidarity with the totality of existence, where we are caught up in the gears of a universal mechanism, our first feeling, our ineradicable illusion, is a feeling or illusion of freedom. To be in the world is this hesitation, this interval in existing, which we have seen in the analyses of fatigue and the present.” (Lévinas, 1988,43-4) 7from a TV interview. THE POETRY OF NIKOS KAROUZOS From Redwriter [ Ερυθρογρ?φος ], in Collected Works, Vol . II, Athens: Ikaros. 1993, 463-4. [Athens: Apopeira, 1990, 9-10.] JESUS ANTI-OEDIPUS* Why were we once saving till the fifth day the Paschal lamb? The scriptures say: with this victim’s meat we ought to cleanse all of our senses. To give life to the whitest wave miraculous odors in the extension of the chest. Ideals to death. For us to witness the illustrious dawns of Absinthe and for the soul to be a deeply carved ornament on the fore we named will. Then many deer running amidst the evergreen growth with watery hymns, then, the unintended angels descending with heights spiraling in their momentum offer themselves to the luminous Adventure. Whence the need for speech and our sufferings covered with flags like the glorified dead. An incorporeal finger pointing at the flamboyant and fragrant holocausts within the tired horizons and the exhausted breadths with joys of the mistletoe on fire and shivering all of the green-leaved love. Something would have chirped again had we not driven it away— maybe the ewe’s grass. Something would have called us to the eternal resurrection— maybe the grace of spring. But now our heart is fiercely blinded, withdrawn to the appearances of Hades. Silence and ice incessantly cover the Infant Spirit in thatched times. While the cherry trees are dreaming faintly glowing in absolute darkness there’s nothing the Babylonians can contemplate in labs with automatic colored lights. How to rejoice now in the fifth day of the lamb? We have forked the stars. We’ve gradually become supposedly sublime with plucked chimeras in our hands. Avenged relentlessly by science. *Though the poem appears in a 1990 collection, it was actually written in 1968. Hence the reader must be aware in not associating Karouzos’ Anti-Oedipus with the famous 1972 work of Deleuze and Guattari, given that the former precedes the latter. ΙΗΣΟΥΣ ΑΝΤΙ-ΟΙΔΙΠΟΥΣ Γιατ? κρατο?σαμε κ?ποτε ?ς την π?μπτη μ?ρα το πασχαλιν? πρ?βατο; Τα κε?μενα λ?νε: μ’ αυτο? του θ?ματος το κρ?ας ?πρεπε να καθαρ?σουμε ?λες τις αισθ?σεις. Για να δ?σουμε κ?μα στη ζω? λευκ?τατο θαυμ?σιες ευωδι?ς στην ?κταση του στ?θους. Ιδανικ? στο χ?ρο. Για να βλ?πουμε τα λαμπρ? χαρ?ματα του ?ψινθου και να ’ναι η ψυχ? στ?λισμα βαθυχ?ρακτο της πλ?ρης που την ε?παμε θ?ληση. Τ?τε πολλ?ς δορκ?δες τρ?χοντας αν?μεσα στην καταπρ?σινη φ?ση με τους υδ?τινους ?μνους, τ?τε, κατεβα?νοντας οι αθ?λητοι ?γγελοι με κυλινδο?μενο το ?ψος στην ορμ? τους χαρ?ζονται της αστραφτερ?ς Περιπ?τειας. ?θεν η μιλι? γι’ αυτ? χρει?ζεται και τα δειν? σκεπ?ζονται ωσ?ν τους τιμημ?νους νεκρο?ς με σημα?ες. Ασ?ματο δ?χτυλο δε?χνει τα φλογ?δη και μοσχοβ?λα ολοκαυτ?ματα στους κουρασμ?νους ορ?ζοντες στα εξουθενωμ?να πλ?τη καθ?ς αν?βουν οι χαρ?ς του νερα?δ?ξυλου και τρ?μει ολ?κληρη η πρασιν?φυλλη αγ?πη. Κ?τι θα κελαηδο?σε π?λι αν δεν το δι?χναμε— μπορε? της προβατ?νας το χορτ?ρι. Κ?τι θα μας καλο?σε στην απ?ραντη αν?σταση— μπορε? του ?αρος η χ?ρη. Μα η καρδι? μας ?γρια τυφλ?θηκε π?ρασε στα φαιν?μενα του ?δη. Σιγ? και π?γος αδι?κοπα σκεπ?ζει στους αχυρ?νιους καιρο?ς το Ν?πιο Πνε?μα. Την ?ρα που ονειρε?ονται οι βυσσινι?ς και λ?μπουν αμυδρ? μεσ’ στο απλ?τατο σκοτ?δι τ?ποτα δε στοχ?ζονται οι βαβυλ?νιοι στα εργαστ?ρια με τ’ αυτ?ματα χρωματιστ? φ?τα. Π?ς να χαρο?με πια την π?μπτη μ?ρα του προβ?του; Φουρκ?σαμε τ’ αστ?ρια. Γ?ναμε σιγ?-σιγ? δ?θεν υπ?ροχοι με μαδημ?νες χ?μαιρες στα χ?ρια. Μας ν?μεται σκληρ? η επιστ?μη. From: Redwriter [Ερυθρογρ?φος], in Collected Works, Vol. II, Athens: Ikaros. 1993, 472. [Athens: Apopeira, 1990, 18.] DIALECTΙCS OF SPRING Christ the straight angle; Christ the Pythagorean theorem. Christ the infinitesimal calculus from above the blessed Sets Christ. Christ the tessellation of massive particles Christ the zero mass. Hence we spray numbers and fields of lust. We are carabineers of diseased logic plus something— Observed means observer and Hekate The darkness luminous and light in the dark Astarte banqueters demons from today. ΔΙΑΛΕΚΤΙΚΗ ΤΟΥ ΕΑΡΟΣ Χριστ?ς η ορθ? γων?α· Χριστ?ς το πυθαγ?ριο θε?ρημα. Χριστ?ς ο απειροστικ?ς λογισμ?ς ?νωθεν ?λβια Χριστ?ς τα Σ?νολα. Χριστ?ς η ψηφιδογραφ?α στα μαζικ? σωμ?τια Χριστ?ς η μ?ζα μηδ?ν. ?ρα ψεκ?ζουμε αριθμο?ς και πεδ?α λαγνε?ας. Ε?μαστε τυφεκιοφ?ροι νοσο?σης λογικ?ς και κ?τι-- παρατηρο?μενο σημα?νει παρατηρητ?ς και Εκ?τη σκ?τος το π?μφωτο και φως εν τ? σκοτ?? η Αστ?ρτη συνδαιτημ?νες δα?μονες απ’ ?ρτι. From: Redwriter [Ερυθρογρ?φος], Athens: Apopeira, 1990, 18. [1993, II, 472]. CREDO (as we are used to say in Latin) Α I believe in one Poet expelled from heavens / fugitive from the god and vagabond, Empedocles / and here on earth / exile on the earth etc. of Baudelaire /. Β I believe in one Computer inside thunder and through matter. Γ Suffering undefiled / substantive / the Poet uplifts himself slow-burning suicidal implying lengthy sleeps. Δ Cutting down on prospective mistakes. Ε Of all things visible and invisible officiating the onion-peelings. Ζ The Poet has nothing / see the departed /. Η I believe in one Poet that says: madness I enjoy; he ridicules existence; let me light up from my mana. Θ Syntax he doesn’t care about when musicality commands him. Along with still more licenses, and Ts are played according to the concept sound anywhere. E.g. the winters here, he winters there; it will not come—I will not rest, etc. etc. Ι The Poet exercises thought until it’s stripped down. Κ And if he’s Greek he must always study the fineness of Attica, in light, mountains, fields and sea. For this fineness teaches language. Λ And if he’s deeply destined the Poet expresses the unexplainable of the explained; he happens to be a rightful heir to the scientist and his predecessor. Μ On the froth he does not last; the Poet blusters at the bottom of the pot. Ν Flamebred and never redeemed. Ξ The Poet must sometimes say: what a consumption of presence — be a bit lonely for a change! Ο The Poet is twilit. Π He is susceptible of deaths and resurrections. Ρ He looks from the corner of his eye and exists in a glance. Σ He follows behind the mother. Τ Eveningless when it comes to age. Υ I believe in one Poet who says: let the purities coincide. Until the Corinth of the Universe or even further. Φ In a higher despair. Χ In a brighter quintessence. Ψ In one sensation that lifts off. Ω Forgiving everyone. CREDO (ως ε?θισται να λ?με λατινιστ?) Α Πιστε?ω εις ?να Ποιητ?ν εκτ?ς ουρανο? / φυγ?ς θε?θεν και αλ?της, Εμπεδοκλ?ς / και επ? της γης / εξ?ριστος π?νω στη γη κ.λπ. του Βωδελα?ρου /. Β Πιστε?ω εις ?να Υπολογιστ?ν εντ?ς κεραυνο? και δια της ?λης. Γ Υποφ?ροντας ?χραντα / ουσιαστικ?ν / ο Ποιητ?ς ανατε?νεται βραδυφλεγ?ς αυτ?χειρας εξυπακο?οντας πολ?ωρους ?πνους. Δ Τα υποψ?φια λ?θη λιγοστε?οντας. Ε Ορατ?ν τε π?ντων και αορ?των ιερουργ?ντας την αποκρομμ?ωση. Ζ Ο Ποιτ?ς ?χει τ?ποτα / βλ?πε τους αναχωρ?σαντες /. Η Πιστε?ω εις ?να Ποιητ?ν που λ?ει: η τρ?λα μ’ αρ?σει· γελοιοποιε? την ?παρξη· ας αν?ψω απ’ τη μ?να μου. Θ Συνταχτικ? δεν το γνοι?ζεται στην προσταγ? της μουσικ?τητας. Μαζ? και μ’ ?λλες ακ?μη λευτερι?ς, και τα νυ πα?ζονται κατ? την ?ννοια ?χος οπουδ?ποτε. Π.χ. τον χειμ?να εδ?, το χειμ?να εκε?· δε θ? ’ρθει – δεν θα καταλαγι?σουμε, κ. λπ. κ.λπ. Ι Ο Ποιητ?ς γυμν?ζει τη σκ?ψη σε απογ?μνωση. Κ Κι αν ε?ναι ?λληνας οφε?λει να σπουδ?ζει π?ντοτε της Αττικ?ς τη λεπτ?τητα, σε φως, βουν?, χωρ?φια και θ?λασσα. Διδ?σκει γλ?σσα η λεπτ?τητα το?τη. Λ Κι αν ε?ναι βαθι? πεπρωμ?νος ο Ποιητ?ς εκφρ?ζει το ανεξ?γητο του εξηγητο?· τυγχ?νει ν?μιμος δι?δοχος του επιστ?μονα και προκ?τοχ?ς του. Μ Στον αφρ? δεν ?χει δι?ρκεια· στο πατοκ?ζανο μα?νεται ο Ποιητ?ς. Ν Φλογοδ?αιτος και ποτ? ξελυτρωμ?νος. Ξ Ο Ποιητ?ς κ?ποτε πρ?πει να λ?ει: μεγ?λη καταν?λωση παρουσ?ας – γενε?τε και λ?γο μοναξι?ρηδες! Ο Ο Ποιητ?ς ε?ναι αμφ?φλοξ. Π Επιδ?χεται θαν?τους και αναστ?σεις. Ρ Ακροθωρ?ζει και υπ?ρχει σε ξαφνοκο?ταγμα. Σ Ε?ναι ουραγ?ς της μητ?ρας. Τ Αν?σπερος απ? ηλικ?α. Υ Πιστε?ω εις ?να Ποιητ?ν που λ?ει: να συμπ?σουν οι αγν?τητες. Μ?χρι την Κ?ρινθο του Σ?μπαντος ? μακρ?τερα. Φ Σε αν?τερη απελπισ?α. Χ Σε φαειν?τερη πεμπτουσ?α. Ψ Σε μια α?σθηση που πτηνο?ται. Ω Συγχωρ?ντας τους π?ντες. From Large Sized Logic [ Λογικ? μεγ?λου σχ?ματος ], Athens: Erato, 1989, n.p. [1993, II, 521-3]. (shrink)

In a letter drafted at age forty-eight, Jean-Jacques Rousseau confessed that he passed his days "vainly looking for solid attachments."1 Two years later, he again lamented that he had wasted much time pursuing attachments that "did not exist."2 At age fifty-eight, he confessed that he had "always felt some void."3 And, at the very end of his life, he still bemoaned that he had been cast "into the whirlwind of the world" only to discover that he "was not made (...) to live in it."4 In response to these persistent disappointments, Rousseau undertook a careful examination of his formative experiences. In so doing, he founded a science of consciousness.I argue that Rousseau's Confessions and epistolary novel, Julie, are a... (shrink)

As the world’s population grows and urbanization continues, the global waste crisis is becoming more severe, especially in developing countries. Without proper waste management, they may encounter various environmental and health risks. Biological technologies are regarded as promising waste management and recycling approaches in developing countries due to their cost-effectiveness and capability to handle diverse waste categories. One prominent technology in this aspect is the vermicomposting of organic waste utilizing the black soldier fly larvae. Nevertheless, (...) significant financial resources are still necessary to advance and expand biological waste treatment, which requires the participation of businesses. By examining waste management companies listed on the Vietnamese stock market, we highlight two challenges that hinder the adoption and scaling of the waste treatment system using black soldier flies and potentially other biological technologies in Vietnam. Specifically, the business regards the environmental services they offer primarily as a means to generate profit rather than as a genuine commitment to environmental preservation, and the values of companies operating in the environmental sector, particularly in waste management, have been significantly undervalued by the Vietnamese investing public. Therefore, we advocate for societal shifts toward the eco-surplus culture and apply the semiconducting principle of monetary and environmental values exchange to address the problem. (shrink)

Solid state physics, the study of the physical properties of solid matter, was the most populous subfield of Cold War American physics. Despite prolific contributions to consumer and medical technology, such as the transistor and magnetic resonance imaging, it garnered less professional prestige and public attention than nuclear and particle physics. Solid State Insurrection argues that solid state physics was essential to securing the vast social, political, and financial capital Cold War physics enjoyed in the twentieth (...) century. Solid state’s technological bent, and its challenge to the “pure science” ideal many physicists cherished, helped physics as a whole respond more readily to Cold War social, political, and economic pressures. Its research kept physics economically and technologically relevant, sustaining its cultural standing and policy influence long after the sheen of the Manhattan Project had faded. (shrink)

Invited media scholars and journalists examine the general issue of nuclear waste, risk and the sicentific promises that were made, but not kept, about safe disposal. The mass media uncovered and reported on nuclear waste problems at Rocky Flats in Colorado and Hanford in Washington. Two environmental journalists review efforts to expose problems at these sites, how secrecy hampered reporting, and the effects of media coverage on nearby residents. An environmental communications scholar evaluates media coverage, the role of (...) the U.S. Department of Energy, and the impact of secrecy on public risk perceptions and attitudes toward government nuclear waste policies. (shrink)

Ten years after the publication of the special issue of Social Epistemology on feminist epistemology, this paper explores recent feminist interest in the inhuman. Feminist science studies, cultural studies, philosophy and environmental studies all build on the important work feminist epistemology has done to bring to the fore questions of feminist empiricism, situated knowledges and knowing as an intersubjective activity. Current research in feminist theory is expanding this epistemological horizon to consider the possibility of an inhuman epistemology. This paper explores (...) these developments through the subject of waste. Waste, as both an epistemological and material phenomenon, invites timely questions about possibilities for acknowledging an inhuman epistemology. These questions appear to be particularly urgent from an environmental perspective. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to consider the socio-anthropological issues raised by the deep geological repository project for high-level, long-lived nuclear waste. It is based on fieldwork at a candidate site for a deep storage project in eastern France, where an underground laboratory has been studying the feasibility of the project since 1999. A project of this nature, based on the possibility of very long containment, involves a singular form of time. By linking project performance to geology’s very (...) long timescale, the project attempts “jump” in time, focusing on a far distant future, without understanding it in terms of generations. But these future generations remain measurements of time on the surface, where the issue of remembering or forgetting the repository comes to the fore. The nuclear waste geological storage project raises questions that neither politicians nor scientists, nor civil society, have ever confronted before. This project attempts to address a problem that exists on a very long timescale, which involves our responsibility toward generations in the far future. (shrink)

(1999). Sublime Waste: Kant on the Destiny of the ‘Races’. Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 29, Supplementary Volume 25: Civilization and Oppression, pp. 99-125.

Solid Biomechanics is the first book to comprehensively review the mechanical design of organisms.

Waste has often been a target of literature and policy promoting pro-environmental behaviour. However, little attention has been paid to how subjects interpret and construct waste in their daily lives. In this article we develop a synthesis of practice theory and psycho-social concepts of attachment and transitional space to explore how biographically patterned relationships and attachments to practice shape subjects' understandings of resource consumption and disposal. Deploying biographical interview data produced by the Energy Biographies Project, we illustrate how (...) tangible, intersubjective and interdependent experiences rub up against cultural and behavioural norms, reshaping the meanings and strategies through which subjects interpret and manage waste. (shrink)

After reviewing the use of isolation in US prisons and public restrooms to confine transgender people in solitary cells and single‐occupancy bathrooms, I propose an explanatory theory of eliminative space. I argue that prisons and toilets are eliminative spaces: that is, spaces of waste management that use layers of isolation to sanctify social or individual waste, at the outer and inner limits of society. As such, they function according to an eliminative logic. Eliminative logic, as I develop it, (...) involves three distinct but interrelated mechanisms: 1) purification of the social center, through 2) iterative segregation, presuming and enforcing 3) the reduced relationality of marginal persons. By evaluating the historical development and contemporary function of prisons and restrooms, I demonstrate that both seek to protect the gender binary through waves of segregation by sex, race, disability, and gender identity. I further argue that both assume the thin relationality of, in this case, transgender people, who are conceived of as impervious to the effects of isolation and thus always already isolable. I conclude that, if we are to counter the violence of these isolation practices, we not only need to think holistically about eliminative spaces and logic, but also to richly reconceptualize relationality. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: “Solid Objects” and Its Interpretations Towards an Alternative Interpretation “Solid Objects” as a reductio ad absurdum of One Kind of Aesthetic Theory Rapture does not Suffice.

Waste is a major global environmental issue that assembles socio-cultural and bio-geological processes in complex indeterminate relationships. Drawing on three case studies, this article explores the shifting environmental politics concerned with waste’s material, economic, political, and cultural ‘management’. The Canadian case studies – determining a new waste management technology in a mid-sized city in central Ontario, an open dump in a remote Nunavut community, and an abandoned gold mine in the Northwest Territories – suggest waste occasions (...) particular material and political mobilizations. Landfill leachate, colonialism, disinterested publics, freezing arsenic, global corporate investments, country food, land claims, neoliberal governance, permafrost, ravens, and a host of other socio-material forces both empower and thwart ‘management’ politics. Through these case studies, this article explores Isabelle Stengers’s assertion that participating citizenship is an ‘Empty Great Idea’, and a provocation to consider the contexts in which waste may generate acquiescent or objecting publics. (shrink)