Resources for February 20, 2014

Lee, Kevin. "Finding Freedom the Second Time Around: The Politics of Before Sunset." Senses of Cinema (October 2004)

Carlin, Dan. "Neutral Nets & Reform Bets." Common Sense #268 (January 20, 2014) ["President Obama floats some reform ideas for the gathering of data by the NSA and a judge strikes a blow against Net Neutrality. Dan has a few long-winded thoughts on both these subjects."]




serendipity \sair-un-DIP-uh-tee\

noun : the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for; also : an instance of this

EXAMPLES

We found the restaurant by pure serendipity, rather than careful research, but it turned out to be the best deal in town.

"Many young people today have never had the experience of getting lost.… They have not experienced the pleasure of wandering while lost and discovering by serendipity interesting new places." — From an op-ed by Katie Davis and Howard Gardner in the Seattle Times, January 7, 2014

In the mid-1700s, English author Horace Walpole stumbled upon an interesting tidbit of information while researching a coat of arms. In a letter to his friend Horace Mann he wrote: "This discovery indeed is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity, a very expressive word, which as I have nothing better to tell you, I shall endeavor to explain to you: you will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called 'The Three Princes of Serendip': as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of…." Walpole's memory of the tale (which, as it turns out, was not quite accurate) gave "serendipity" the meaning it retains to this day.


Democracy Now headlines for February 19, 2014:



Cox, Laverne and CeCe McDonald. "'Black Trans Bodies Are Under Attack': Freed Activist CeCe McDonald, Actress Laverne Cox Speak Out." Democracy Now (February 19, 2014)

Sustainable World Coalition. Sustainable World Sourcebook. Berkeley, CA: New Society Publishers, 2010.

Feldman, Karen. "Walter Benjamin and his 'Artwork' essay." Entitled Opinions (July 3, 2013) [They are discussing Benjamin's 1936 essay: "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

Anti-Oedipus was lobbed into the fray like an intellectual cluster bomb -- it had multiple targets, from the primacy of the signifier in linguistics to the dependency on lack in psychoanalysis, but its primary objective was (as Michel Foucault astutely points out in his highly influential preface to the English translation) to caution us against the fascist inside, the desire to seize power for oneself. The principle thesis of Anti-Oedipus, around which its many conceptual inventions turn, is that revolution is not primarily or even necessarily a matter of taking power. Insofar as taking power means preserving all the old institutions and ideas in which power is invested it could even be said that revolutions of this type are actually counter-revolutionary in purpose and intent because they change nothing essential. By the same token, Deleuze and Guattari were concerned about the allure of power, its apparent ability to drive us to desire to be placed under its yoke. The most important political question, as far as Deleuze and Guattari are concerned, is how it is possible for desire to act against its interest. (Buchanan, Ian. Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus. NY: Continuum, 2008: 21.)

Benton, Michael Dean. "Notes on Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophernia." Dialogic (February 20, 2014)