1st Question: Can we construct a history of the alienation of Subjectivty, which starts with Hegel’s recognition of its existence, as the most valuable product of Modernity?

 2nd Question: If Subjectivity is a sign, if it is a product for the human consumption, is there a possibility to exploit this reality while trying to construct a Communism of Subjectivity? But does such a term make any sense? (After reading Benjamin Moscow Journal) Is there any point in such an attempt? How could one turn upside donw the conditions of possibility of a contemporary Subjectivity? Can one make something out of a falsified Subjectivity?

3rd Question: What remains there after one eliminates subjectivity? There’s a black void which promises to frighten the Human Kind once it becomes approachable.

- the critical discourse in Romania has no conscience about how much it has appropriated the structures and concepts of the very ideology it criticizes. The public of this kind of open talks comes armed with the means to criticize, but at the same time it proves that it has no more time to listen. Consumption of time is one of the most subtle means of capitalist accumulation. Accumulation – whether this is performed under material prerequisites or not – makes us forget the sense of a private time, a time upon which we master, a time to be disposed as we like. Appropriation of knowledge seems to follow the same capitalist logic, and this has the air of being the most natural aspect of our contemporary society. How actual should Nietzsche be, with his gaia scientia.  That is – how much do we need a type of knowledge appropriation which is free from competition and which recoveres the pleasure of exchanging ideas! Last Wednesday’s public  – which still proved some patiennce to what I had to say (thesis: the historical demonization of the image, whether known under the headline of Marx’s critique of ideology or Situationism’s critique of the spectacle, ends with Debord and with the begining of the 70s there is clearly another approach towards images, which says that we should reconcile with them. Most notable representatives: WJT Mitchell and maybe Nelson Goodman. Question: How is this reconciliation to be treated?) has lost it.

- philosphy has been expelled from the public forums. This is something that I have learned by practice – by seeing – and maybe these are the most dissapointing facts: that the question about the logic of our discourse have lost their relevance for the contemporary rushed man, that conceptual clarification is not a priority, that dadaist poetry is the actuality we live in.

- the democratical equality between speaker and public is nothing but an illusion: the public likes to be mastered as it likes to be tought, disciplined, directed towards strategies of coping with life. The most important physical object which symbolizes this situation is the microphone. The microphone magically  behaves like a whip which represents the call to flagellation. From this point of view, the public conscience is perversely splitted: on the one hand it accepts domestication, all the more so if the speaker shows the microphone regularly: the speaker masters the public. On the other hand, the democracy of speaker-and-public is refuted by the second term of this relation, a public which is eager to consume the equality which the speaker favourably assumes. There is a relation of power whose dynamics and tension is translated in the level of the public’s boredom. That the speaker wants to learn something, that the art of talking in the public space is – or better said, should give the best results following a socratic logic of the discourse, with other words, a maieutics – this is not an accepted fact.  This is why I don’t agree with Vasile Ernu, who said that it is good that the discussions took place in that way: there is nothing at the end, no provisional conclusion (the Platonic dialogues always ended in some provisional conclusion which would be approached again and again). Nothing foreseeable.

Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times

Lawrence B. Salander, 59, pleaded not guilty to all charges in his indictment, his lawyer said.

A once-prominent art dealer was arrested on Thursday on an indictment charging that he stole $88 million from investors, collectors and artists who had consigned paintings and sculpture to his Upper East Side gallery, the authorities said.

The Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, said the dealer, Lawrence B. Salander, sometimes sold the same painting to more than one buyer. Aides to Mr. Morgenthau said Mr. Salander sold one painting to three people, promising each a 50 percent share.

“Why sell it once when you can sell it three times?” Mr. Morgenthau said at a news conference called to announce a 100-count indictment accusing Mr. Salander of grand larceny, falsifying business records, scheming to defraud investors, forging documents and perjury.

Mr. Morgenthau said the charges covered transactions with 26 victims going back to 1994, among them the tennis star John McEnroe. Mr. Morgenthau said the investigation was continuing, raising the possibility that the extent of the theft could climb. One official with direct knowledge of the investigation said the authorities believed that Mr. Salander’s take actually exceeded $100 million.

At the news conference, prosecutors portrayed Mr. Salander as a master manipulator who operated out of a lavish gallery but trafficked in art he did not own.

At one point, they likened Mr. Salander’s dealings to the fraud at the heart of the Broadway musical “The Producers.”

“As I recall, Max Bialystock in that play said, ‘How many halves make up a whole?’ ” said Patrick Dugan, the chief of the investigations division in Mr. Morgenthau’s office.

Mr. Morgenthau said Mr. McEnroe believed that he was buying a 50 percent interest in two paintings by Arshile Gorky, the Abstract Expressionist, for $2.03 million in October 2003. Then Mr. McEnroe heard that one of the paintings was hanging in another dealer’s home and confronted Mr. Salander, Mr. Morgenthau said. Aides to Mr. Morgenthau said Mr. McEnroe later settled for full ownership of one of the two paintings. But even that was called into question in 2008, when another Salander customer laid claim to the same painting, “Pirate II.”

Mr. Morgenthau also said Mr. Salander, 59, listed “Pirate II” and the other Gorky painting, “Pirate I,” as security for a $2 million loan from Bank of America, even though he owned neither painting.

Mr. Morgenthau said the Gorkys were not the only paintings Mr. Salander sold that he did not own. “He was a master salesman,” Mr. Morgenthau said in a telephone interview. “People trusted him, and so he was able to sell to investors paintings two or three times. And when he didn’t pay, he always had a lot of excuses.”

Mr. Morgenthau said Mr. Salander used the money he pocketed “to finance his self-imposed mission to corner the market in Renaissance art” and to support “his extravagant lifestyle,” which included travels in a private jet. Mr. Morgenthau also said Mr. Salander had spent $60,000 on a party for his wife at the Frick Collection, around the corner from the Salander-O’Reilly Galleries on East 71st Street.

The arrest came 17 months after Mr. Salander’s gallery was shut down and 16 months after he filed for bankruptcy. If convicted, he could face up to 25 years in prison on each of 13 counts of first-degree grand larceny and up to 15 years on each of 10 counts of second-degree grand larceny, along with additional time for the other charges.

Mr. Salander was arrested at his home in upstate Millbrook on Thursday morning, and arraigned before Justice Michael J. Obus in State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Thursday afternoon. He wore a gray, hooded sweatshirt splattered with red paint, and looked unshaven. From time to time he looked over his shoulder at his wife, Julie, who was sitting in the courtroom with one of their children.

Mr. Salander’s lawyer, Charles A. Ross, said Mr. Salander was pleading not guilty to all charges. Justice Obus ordered Mr. Salander held in $1 million bail and set two conditions if he posted the money: hand over his passport, and restrict his travel to within New York State.

An assistant district attorney, Micki Shulman, told Justice Obus that Mr. Salander had defrauded friends and lived lavishly, at one point spending half a million dollars on jewelry at Sotheby’s while telling associates he could not repay money he owed them.

“For over a decade he lied to and stole millions from people who trusted him,” she said at the arraignment. “He looted the estates of others who entrusted him with their family legacies.”

Ms. Shulman told the judge that when Mr. Salander’s longtime friends questioned his business practices, he responded by berating and bullying them, and threatening them with lawsuits.

Mr. Salander’s gallery displayed paintings as different as English landscapes by John Constable and modernistic scenes by Robert De Niro Sr., the actor’s father, who died in 1993. But someone with direct knowledge of the investigation said the actor had not returned calls from investigators who wanted to know who had the paintings and what his own dealings with Mr. Salander had been since his father died.

A spokesman for Mr. De Niro did not return a call for comment on Thursday.

At the arraignment, Ms. Shulman said Mr. Salander’s family was being supported with $25,000 a month by a benefactor. That person, whom she did not name, was considering buying the family’s 66-acre estate in Millbrook for $5.1 million and letting the Salanders remain there, she said.

Now, I cannot find the right means to express the sickness I felt when reading that chapter. It was not that this sickness had as its origin a presumed turn-of-the-mind  facing the historical truth (I should reckon that I was a bit surprised, although i have always suspected some of Brechts’ choices), but it was the style in which it was written – impardonable, I think – and the writer’s pleasure of providing spicy details from Brecht’s personal life. And even if one might agree that Brecht was morally vicious, Johnson would still not be entitled to perform the kind of symbolical rape he is up to which is specific to scandal magazines or tabloids (again for the Romanian readers, a kind of much stylized OTV).

So curious about who the author is, I googled his name, to find out that he is a right wing catholic conservative, former adviser of Margaret Thatcher, famous for re-writing histories…the right-wing way. But look also on what I have found. That will be funny to read and reflect on those who gospel the contemporary morals. (find the home-site at http://www.salon.com/media/1998/05/28media.html)

T H E_.R I S E_.A N D_.F A L L_.O F
_______Paul “Spanker” Johnson

THE RIGHT-WING HISTORIAN’S LONGTIME MISTRESS DEALS HIM THE UNKINDEST WHACK OF ALL.

- – - – - – - – - -

BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

There is almost no English surname, however ancient and dignified, that cannot be instantly improved by the prefix “Spanker.” So deeply is the habit and culture of corporal punishment imbricated with the national psyche that whole shelves of specialist literature, to say nothing of entire racks of newspapers and magazines, are regularly devoted to the subject. A decade or so ago, I outed the barking Tory pamphleteer Paul Johnson as an enthusiast or votary of this cult. For evidence, I had no more to go upon than certain suggestive and repetitive elements in his “work.”

So it was decidedly invigorating to learn, in the dog days of mid-May, that he had been exposed by his mistress of 11 years, the writer Gloria Stewart, as a spankee:

“Paul loved to be spanked and it was a big part of our relationship. I had to tell him he was a very naughty boy.”

A pretty easy task (the second bit, I mean). Johnson has made a career as an especially bilious and persecuting moralizer. His disgraceful book “Intellectuals,” a foul-minded assault on the Enlightenment, laid a feverish stress on the private lives of secular and rationalist intellectuals. Rousseau was not only “vain, egotistical and quarrelsome,” but he “enjoyed being spanked on his bare bottom.” Ibsen “would not expose his sexual organ even for the purpose of medical examination. Was there something wrong with it — or did he think there was?” I don’t need to draw you a picture: With sermonizers like this it’s just a matter of setting one’s watch. Give it just a little time and — presto! We open the tabloids to see their withered haunches bared to the slipper, and the haggard remnants of their Johnsons exposed to the cruel light of day. (Oxford English Dictionary: Johnson. A common surname, used in low slang to designate: a)The penis. b) A man who is kept by a prostitute or prostitutes; a ponce.)

Stewart unmasked Spanker Johnson to the tabloids because she could not bear to read another word of his “family values” tripe in the press. As recently as March, interviewed by Jacob Weisberg for the New York Times Magazine, he had claimed to be an advisor to the late Princess Diana. “Don’t commit adultery,” he said, was his “chief advice” to the divine one. When various Tory MPs were found in a trouser-free condition not long ago, Johnson predicted the ruin of the state and said that adultery, especially when committed by those who opposed it in public, should be severely punished.

But here’s the bizarre thing. Johnson is not just a cult figure wherever two or three spankers are gathered together. He is an adored object of the American Right. Norman Podhoretz loved “Intellectuals.” Nixon used to send out Johnson volumes for Christmas. Oliver North was once overcome with admiration at seeing William Casey read a whole Johnson on a plane flight. Dan Quayle kept a copy of Johnson’s awful “Modern Times” by him, and employed it as a prop against those who accused him of being no great reader. (When pressed for an exegesis of its content, he announced contentedly that it was “a very good historical book about history.”) To be fair to Quayle, “Modern Times” is almost technically unreadable. And so is Johnson’s most recent extrusion, “A History of the American People.” Of this pseudo-scholarly atrocity — slavery a mere blip, the New Deal a monstrous tyranny, Watergate a liberal conspiracy, Reagan the summa of statesmanship — Newt Gingrich has stepped forward in the Weekly Standard to announce it as “perhaps (sic) the most important history of the American people in our generation.” And Steve Forbes, in the Wall Street Journal, terms it “a magnificent achievement.” And neither of them, I feel confident, agrees with Johnson’s grand, risk-taking, entrepreneurial claim that Thomas Edison invented the telephone.

Perhaps there is an element of anti-American self-hatred involved: a surreptitious contempt for American freedom and democracy and a slavish need for approval from a Brit Spanker? (On meeting James Baldwin, Johnson once famously said: “I’m not unaware of prejudice. If you’re born like me, red-haired and left-handed and Catholic, you know exactly what prejudice is.” Baldwin’s impassivity on that occasion did him credit.) But perhaps, also, there is a bodice-ripping Right that hides behind the mild visage of Steve Forbes. So, since Johnson’s “novels” are now remaindered beyond recall, I consider it my stern duty to give you a flavor of his magnificent and sweeping style. Here’s an extract from “Merrie England,” where the blurb promises “cabinet ministers and ponces”:

Felix Appleby, dressed for the office, sat on the edge of Lady Titty Ross’s rumpled four-poster bed, his eyes anchored firmly on the ample cleavage displayed by her negligee… “There, you don’t see a pair like that every day, do you darling?”

And here’s another, from “Left of Center”:

Henry found his gaze straying to her round and rosy bottom, which rose and fell gently to the rhythm of her breathing. What to do? Henry pondered in the doorway. … “There’s nothing more calculated, old man, to excite a woman than a good hard slap on her behind. None of your playful taps, mind. A real stinger. They come up foaming at the mouth.”

Dora’s bottom invited him. Here was his chance, at one blow, to reassume his masculine, paramount role in their relationship. Draining his glass and setting it down decisively on the dressing table, he advanced purposefully over Dora’s sleeping form and brought his hand down with tremendous force.

It’s both satisfying and unsatisfying that Spanker Johnson is now, conclusively and forever, a figure of ridicule and contempt. He ought also to be remembered for his bigotry and spite and bullying. (And maybe for an accidental tincture of literary prescience: One light smack and he “comes up foaming at the mouth.”) But not all the perfumes of Araby can sweeten that spanking hand; nay, not all the genius of the Pfizer Corporation can make this Johnson rise again.
SALON | May 28, 1998

Christopher Hitchens is a regular contributor to Salon.

Aşa cum au explicat organizatorii (si cum au preluat diverse bloguri si site-uri, precum SdC, Observatorul, Noua Literatură, etc), criteriul central de acordare al premiilor l-a reprezentat prezenţa regulată într-o publicaţie culturală, gala răsplătind “acei jurnalişti care publică cel puţin lunar în presa culturală şi au minimum doi ani de experienţă în domeniul presei culturale.” Dacă aruncăm o privire  către secţiunea “critică de arte vizuale şi critică muzicală”, al cărei responsabil era Răzvan Ţupa, vom descoperi ca nominalizaţi pe  Raluca Voinea, Mihai Plămădeală şi Cosmin Costinaş. “Avem cîştigător” am putea să exclamăm, de vreme ce juriul s-a oprit doar la aceste trei persoane, şi de vreme ce, din punct de vedere tehnic (noi vrem să urmăm regulile pe care juriul le-a anunţat) doar Mihai Plămădeală scrie cel puţin o dată pe lună în Observatorul Cultural. Aşadar, din oficiu, Mihai Plămădeală este cîştigător, pentru că Raluca Voinea, dincolo de prezenţele ocazionale în diverse saptămînale culturale, este redactor al unei reviste care apare de trei ori pe an (Idea. Artă+Societate, al cărei colaborator sînt şi eu) iar prezenţa lui Cosmin Costinaş în presa românească, după ce acesta este plecat de peste 2 ani din ţară, locuind astăzi la Berlin şi Viena, se face remarcată aproape exclusiv prin intermediul aceleiaşi reviste din Cluj – mai explicit spus, prin intermediul coperţilor sale, unde este trecut drept colaborator permanent, curatorul român nemaipublicînd un text în interiorul paginilor sale de la numărul 22/2005 . Şi totuşi Cosmin Costinaş a cîştigat acest premiu, iar motivaţia juriului a fost următoarea: “A scris cel mai puternic text artistic din 2008 pornind de la obsesiile politice şi sociale ale ultimilor ani şi a aplicat judecăţile sale la constituirea unei identităţi artistice”. Foarte frumos spus, dar nu sîntem lămuriţi cum se numeşte textul (sînt tare curios să îl citesc) şi mai ales unde a fost el publicat. Să fie oare vorba despre revista Verson din Cluj/Paris (anunţată şi de juriu) editată de Ciprian Mureşan (redactor la aceeaşi Idea) şi Mircea Cantor, care, de asemenea, nu a mai apărut din 2006? Spuneam despre Cosmin Costinaş (care -bag mîna în foc – nu are habar de acest premiu) că  apare “aproape exclusiv” în Idea şi Version, pentru că nu trebuie să uităm că uneori îl mai regăsim publicat şi în alte reviste culturale. De aceea, ne putem gîndi că juriul s-a referit poate la “Manifestul strîmb – Amprenta Brynjar Bandlien” apărută şi la liternet.ro în mai 2008, numai că…textul respectiv este o cronică teatrală, şi dacă lucrurile stau aşa, trebuie să o avertizăm pe Iulia Popovici cîştigătoarea (de data asta, să spunem, că sînt de acord cu argumentele juriului) secţiunii “critică de teatru”, că la anul ar putea să aibă o concurenţă serioasă, chiar fără voia lui Costinaş însuşi! Ca să n-o mai lungim: este jenant şi ridicol ce s-a întîmplat. Dacă distinşii membrii ai juriului aveau disponibilitatea necesară, puteau să arunce pur şi simplu o privire în curtea vecinului (adică la Suplimentul de Cultură) şi să-i descopere cronicile lunare ale lui Constantin Vică, sau chiar mai departe, pe la Bucureşti prin Dilema sau Bucureştiul Cultural, aveau şi acolo de unde alege.

Nu pot să închei fără să mă mir de altă enormitate: cum poţi să pui alături wikipedismele ieftine ale Luizei Vasiliu din SdC şi textele substanţiale ale unuia din cei mai promiţători tineri intelectuali români (e vorba despre Alex Cistelecan, care, pe lîngă intervenţiile din aceeaşi Idea, Noua literatură şi Observator Cultural, şi contribuţia provocatoare din Iluzia anticomunismului, are meritul de a fi tradus în limba română cărţile unuia din cei mai influenţi gînditori contemporani – Giorgio Agamben) şi să le dai drept cîştigător pe primele, motivînd prin faptul că Luiza Vasiliu se evidenţiază prin “neastîmpărul intelectual şi vioiciunea stilului”? De fapt, dacă mă gîndesc mai bine, răspunsul e foarte simplu: prietenii ştiu de ce … În dulcele Iaşi cultura trece mai întîi prin farfuria de sarmale însoţită de lingura cu mămăliguţă şi dulce-acrişorul vinişor de Bucium sau Cotnari.

The announce of my (and Vector’s) participacion at the 5th MSE Meeting. Please see the attachment.

mse_programme

This message has been taken from Bogdan Ghiu’s weblog published at liternet.ro. The initiative of a common protest follows the open letter that Bogdan Ghiu has sent to Romania’s Prime Minister, Călin Popescu Tăriceanu, in response of his decision to cut 40% of the funds of the Romanian Cultural Institute. Please acces the link below and sign.

Buna ziua,

Reducerea bugetului Institutului Cultural Roman pe anul 2009 este un act anticultural al Guvernului Romaniei condus de dl. Calin Popescu Tariceanu !

Arta romaneasca are nevoie de bani pentru a se face cunoscuta in strainatate iar artistii romani trebuie sa fie prezenti in circuitele culturale internationale!

Semnati petitia deschisa pentru sustinerea bugetului in forma propusa de echipa ICR la adresa http://www.petitiononline.com/ICR/petition.html

Va rog trimiteti mai departe acest mesaj in adresa dvs. de date.

Cu multumiri,

Cosmin Manolescu
coregraf si manager cultural

Intenţionat sau nu, Adrian Păunescu a operat în discuţia de la Realitatea din această seară o mică substituţie care a reuşit să păcălească pe ceilalţi invitaţi din platou: cînd a citit articolul 2 din legea de funcţionare a ICR, Păunescu a introdus în locul sintagmei “cultură şi civilizaţie naţională” sintagma “identitate naţională”. Cu alte cuvinte a substituit un concept absolut neutru cu unul ideologic, pe care şi-a construit apoi întreaga argumentaţie. Strategia a dat roade în momentul în care şi-a permis să introducă asemenea concepte precum “esenţa culturii române” “majoritate naţională”, etc, fără să îi semnaleze nimeni derapajul. Sofistică, şi nici măcar nu trebuia foarte mult ca să o depistezi.

Cît despre ceea ce face Stan … nu pot spune decît că este vorba despre acelaşi tip de retorică ieftină, dar extrem de flamboaiantă, de data aceasta mult mai spilcuită. A se vedea eroarea fundamentală în care să găseşte Stan în postarea de ieri.