Lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living

Curse you, Richard Dawkins

I had intended to return to a more regular blogging schedule with one or more tremendously scholarly posts about silent films. Obviously, the problem there is that I then don’t write anything at all until I’ve got time to discuss the finer details of Hegel’s relationship to Buster Keaton. So, thanks to Rachel for tagging me with a so-called “meme,” a blog-related obligation which can obviously not be passed up.

5 books:

  1. Karl Marx, Capital (predictable, but it really is great)
  2. Jean-Paul Sartre, The Age of Reason
  3. Michel Foucault, The Will To Knowledge (just re-read this recently, it’s an almost perfect book: a startling central idea, beautifully written, with Foucault’s extraordinarily precise, dispassionate style).
  4. Aristotle, The Nicomahean Ethics
  5. John Brunner, The Sheep Look Up

5 songs (conveniently already listed for a not-yet-made post):

  1. Joy Division, “Love Will Tear Us Apart”
  2. Girls Aloud, “The Show”
  3. Dubstar, “Stars (Motiv8 Mix)”
  4. White Town, “Your Woman”
  5. Tatu, “All the Things She Said”

5 addictions:

I don’t think I believe in the concept of addiction, at least, not as distinguished from all other human behaviour. Doesn’t it depend on a spurious mind/body distinction (sometimes sublimated into an equally spurious conscious/unconscious distinction)? As if the mind was usually free and insulated from the physical world, with addictions somehow improperly subordinating the mind to the body.

5 famous people:

  1. Britney Spears (again, obvious)
  2. Walter Benjamin (I don’t know if he’s famous enough to count, but I think he would have enjoyed being a celebrity if he had gotten the chance).
  3. Paris Hilton (Ian Penman recently wrote about the underlying misogyny in a lot of criticism of Paris Hilton ; I think one could also add that the dislike of Hilton simply for being rich is an example of the same anti-structural impulse that leads right-wingers to blame poor people for being poor)
  4. Hala Gorani (at some point, I may post something about why I find American news anchors so mezmerizing).
  5. Yulia Volkova/Lena Katina (one can’t have one without the other).

In other Richard Dawkins news, Terry Eagleton’s review of Dawkins new book prompted this fatuous letter from A. C. Grayling (scroll down). I wonder, actually: was there ever a public “intellectual” stupider than A. C. Grayling? It’s difficult to imagine.