… stupidity…

“ … For the writer, the problem of stupidity occupies a place of deliberate latency; ever on the prowl for your moment of greatest vulnerability, it prepares another sneak attack. Unless you really know what you re doing – and then it s in your face, all over you, in fact, showing no pity. It seizes your autobiographical effort, taking the place of you „I“, henceforth enfeebled, dominated by shame. Thus Barthes, delicate and watchful, writes of himself when he s on himself in the third person: „It is curious that an autor, having to speak about himself, is so obsessed by Stupidity, as though it were the inner thing he most feared: threatening, ever ready to burst out, to assert its right to speak (why shouldn t I have the right to be stupid?); in short THE THING.“ Attempting to exorcise it, Barthes, in his Lacanian phase of dreading the thing, plays the fool: „He puts himself inside it. … In a sense this whole little book, in a devious and naive way, plays with stupidity – not the stupidity of the others (that would be too easy), but that of the subject who is about to write. What first comes to mind, ist stupid.“ If Barthes puts himself in the third person, then stupidity is the first person, what happens first, what has happened agelessly, at the time, which is all the time, when the subject is about to write, endeavouring symbolically to repair the lesion induced by the THING. … “

Avital Ronell: Stupidity

2 Gedanken zu „… stupidity…“

  1. „… Der Philosoph muss über hinreichend bösen Willen verfügen, um nicht das Spiel von Wahrheit und Irrtum mitzuspielen: dieses böse Wollen, das sich im Paradox verwirklicht, befreit ihn von den Kategorien. Aber er muss auch genügend ’schlechte Laune‘ haben, um Aug in Aug bei der Dummheit zu verweilen, um sie bewegungslos anzustarren, um sich ihr zu nähern und sie nachzuahmen, um sie langsam in sich selber aufsteigen zu lassen (das nennt man gemeinhin: in seine Gedanken versunken zu sein) und um schließlich am Ende dieses langen Übung den SCHOCK DER DIFFERENZ zu erwarten…. “

    Foucault: THEATRUM PHILOSOPHICUM

  2. TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Your education is about to take a curious and interesting turn. During the coming weeks, I expect that you’ll upgrade your street smarts and explore a whole new meaning for the term „hands-on experience.“ You’ll find out about an area of ignorance that was so deep and dark you didn’t even know about it, and you’ll take aggressive steps to get it the teaching it needs. Congratulations in advance for being brave enough to open your mind so wide, Taurus. I’m glad you’ll be hunting for a fresh set of questions.

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