Notes on Virginia

In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved.

Thomas Jefferson

1743 - 1826

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Thomas Jefferson was a scientist. That's how he described himself. When you visit his home at Monticello, Virginia, the moment you enter its portals you find ample evidence of his scientific interests - not just in his immense and varied library, but in copying machines, automatic doors, telescopes and other instruments, some at the cutting edge of early nineteenth-century technology. Some he invented, some he copied, some he purchased. He compared the plants and animals in America with Europe's, uncovered fossils, used the calculus in the design of a new plough. He mastered Newtonian physics.

Jefferson was a student of history - not just the compliant and safe history that praises our own time or country or ethnic group, but the real history of real humans, our weaknesses as well as our strengths. History taught him that the rich and powerful will steal and oppress if given half a chance. He described the governments of Europe, which he saw at first hand as the American ambassador to France. Under the pretence of government, he said, they had divided their nations into two classes: wolves and sheep. Jefferson taught that every government degenerates when it is left to the rulers alone, because rulers - by the very act of ruling misuse the public trust.

But he worried that the people - and the argument goes back to Thucydides and Aristotle - are easily misled. He also stressed, passionately and repeatedly, that it was essential for the people to understand the risks and benefits of government, to educate themselves, and to involve themselves in the political process. Without that, he said, the wolves will take over.

He believed that the habit of scepticism is an essential prerequisite for responsible citizenship. He argued that the cost of education is trivial compared to the cost of ignorance, of leaving the government to the wolves.

Carl Sagan 

1934 - 1996

The American Presidency

Science and its philosophical corollaries were perhaps the most important intellectual force shaping the destiny of eighteenth-century America... Franklin was only one of a number of forward-looking colonists who recognized the kinship of scientific method and democratic procedure. Free inquiry, free exchange of information, optimism, self-criticism, pragmatism, objectivity - all these ingredients of the coming republic were already active in the republic of science that flourished in the eighteenth century.

Clinton Rossiter

1917 - 1990

Marxism

 

Greed is not the cause of capitalists’ behavior; it is a quality they acquire in accommodating to and internalizing the requirements of competitive survival within the capitalist system.

The system is a contradiction: the very logic imposed on the capitalist undermines the overall success of the capitalist. For Marxists, no law, rule, regulation, or behavior pattern provides an escape from this contradiction; none ever has.

To achieve a society that exhibits liberty, equality, fraternity and democracy, the object to change first and foremost is production.

Marx effectively argues that a genuine political democracy requires an economic democracy as its ground and partner.

Capitalism is superseded when the workplace relationship designated by the term exploitation ends. That happens when productive laborers no longer deliver the surpluses they produce into the hands of others who appropriate and distribute them and make all the key decisions about those distributions.

Dialectic

Capitalism, Marx said, never went beyond those economic models where a few dominate a majority. Capitalism just replaced the dichotomies of master/slave and lord/serf with a new one. A dominating and exploiting minority was still there, but it had a new name: employers. 

A dominated and exploited majority was still there but with its new name: employees. As had happened with slavery and feudalism, capitalism’s dominant minority played and plays the dominant social role. Employers control the politicians and the direction of social development; they make all key decisions in the workplace; they run the show. The masses of people are subordinated.

Marx showed that one key foundation for capitalism’s failure to realize liberty, equality, fraternity and democracy was the internal organization of the capitalist enterprise. There, a tiny group of people at the top (major owners and top executives) make all the key decisions regarding what, how, and where to produce and what to do with the fruits of their employees’ surplus labor. The employees are systematically excluded from making those decisions, but they must live with the results of those decisions.

Por que não me ufano

É bem desonesto dizer o "Brasil não curte traidores", porque o que o Brasil faz é justamente o contrário, transforma-os em governadores, senadores e presidentes.

The hand that signed the paper

The hand that signed the paper felled a city; 

Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath, 

Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country; 

These five kings did a king to death.

The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder, 

The finger joints are cramped with chalk; 

A goose's quill has put an end to murder 

That put an end to talk.

The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever, 

And famine grew, and locusts came; 

Great is the hand that holds dominion over 

Man by a scribbled name.

The five kings count the dead but do not soften 

The crusted wound nor pat the brow; 

A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven; 

Hands have no tears to flow.

Dylan Thomas

1914 - 1953

Connect the dot

Donald Trump said:

I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?

Bad people make bad decisions but why are those bad people in a position to do that?

Critical revolutionaire

 

O marxismo conseguiu, no conjunto, desvendar a relação entre história social e conteúdos ideológicos.

A dialética é uma exigência infinitamente mais severa que a utopia.

A cultura burguesa volta na História, mas como farsa (você se lembra do esquema de Marx); essa farsa é chamada de cultura de massa.

A História só resolve as antigas questões propondo novas questões.

Introduzir a explicação do mito é o único modo eficaz de luta para o intelectual.

Porque não me ufano

O brasileiro depara constantemente com um adversário bem mais visível e temido que o conformismo, a falta de estrutura mesmo nos lugares onde a economia diz pudicamente desculpe o transtorno, estamos trabalhando, mas a cultura e o estilo de vida dizem francamente pobreza.

Dialética da escola-prisão

A educação moderna, laica e científica não será prioridade de nenhum estado brasileiro. Os políticos populistas necessitam do seu eleitorado com o pensamento bem limitado.

The New Division

Poverty was to be suppressed by removing and maintaining by charity a poor population. Actually, it was poverty that was being artificially masked; and a part of the population was being really suppressed, wealth being always constant. Was the intention to help the poor escape their provisional indigence? They were kept from doing so: the labor market was limited, which was all the more dangerous in that this was precisely a period of crisis. On the contrary, the high cost of products should have been palliated by a cheap labor force, their scarcity being compensated by a new industrial and agricultural effort. The only reasonable remedy: to restore this entire population to the circuit of production, in order to distribute it to the points where the labor force was rarest. To utilize the poor, vagabonds, exiles, and emigres of all kinds, was one of the secrets of wealth, in the competition among nations.

Indigence becomes an indispensable element in the State. In it is concealed the secret but also the real life of a society. The poor constitute the basis and the glory of nations. And their poverty, which cannot be suppressed, must be exalted and revered

The Poor are the necessary agents of these great powers which establish the true strength of a People. Here is an entire moral rehabilitation of the Pauper, which designates, at a deeper level, a social and economic reintegration of his role and character. In the mercantilist economy, the Pauper, being neither producer nor consumer, had no place: idle, vagabond, unemployed, he belonged only to confinement, a measure by which he was exiled and as it were abstracted from society. With the nascent industry which needs manpower, he once again plays a part in the body of the nation

Michel Foucault

1926 - 1984

Análise do discurso

A gramática da extrema-direita quer prevalecer contra a realidade da disparidade social.

Porque não me ufano

O "bom cristão pode mentir a vontade. O populacho carente de instrução e perverso o transforma em político e a estrutura pública (viciada em gente podre) remunera. Esse parasitismo é exclusivamente nacional. O Brasil jamais será uma sociedade não alienada.

Teocracia

Já embarcaram todo o Estado de São Paulo no navio podre do obscurantismo religioso?

Dialética da escola prisão

A questão da desqualificação docente através de um controle administrativo ao estilo macarthista e de currículos empacotados é relevante para a prática de um ensino conformista e o avanço da teocracia. A exclusão realizada pelas escolas não se dá apenas naquilo que os professores fazem, é um empreendimento político e religioso. Sem contar que os professores progressistas estão ausentes de boa parte do debate a respeito das políticas públicas centradas na questão escolar.

Periferia da superstição

Os firewalls da fé podem gritar e tremer o dia inteiro, mas o marxismo continuará a ser fonte de inspiração do mundo. O materialismo histórico está longe do esgotamento. Qualquer leitor profissional sabe que as propostas marxistas constituem pontos ativos de discussão para o mundo moderno. Karl Marx não estava discutindo o "sexo dos anjos", mas o pão dos homens e das mulheres.

The writer as fantasy

Surely there is no longer a single adolescent who has this fantasy: to be a writer! Imagine wanting to copy not the works but the practices of any contemporary — his way of strolling through the world, a notebook in his pocket and a phrase in his head (the way I imagined Gide traveling from Russia to the Congo, reading his classics and writing his notebooks in the dining car, waiting for the meals to be served; the way I actually saw him, one day in 1939, in the gloom of the Brasserie Lutétia, eating a pear and reading a book)!

Roland Barthes

1915 - 1980

Bezbojnik

Na periferia do capitalismo, a situação do intelectual só pode ser incômoda e desconfortável em razão da própria carência de estrutura. O que existe no Brasil é uma prática anti-intelectual. A balela mitológica do "coração contra a cabeça" se sustenta no discurso preconceituoso dos religiosos iletrados. A apologética de Deus contra a história e outras lorotas deixa transparecer com muita clareza o caráter reacionário do subdesenvolvido. É a expressão de uma atitude política retrógrada. Por isso o intelectual é mais necessário do que nunca para dissolver a consciência alienada e as mentiras teológicas. O intelectual pode ser desprovido de poder mas não está desprovido das armas da crítica.

Le mystère en pleine lumière

As condições escolares do Brasil são muito problemáticas. Existem escolas frequentadas por crianças pobres e escolas frequentadas por crianças com mais recursos. As escolas em desvantagens são maioria. Esse padrão divide os alunos entre uma minoria academicamente bem preparada e uma maioria desacreditada academicamente. Os desempenhos são profundamente desiguais. E as severas consequências recaem sobre o grupo com menores recursos. Nesse sentido, a escola tem significado de classe e ratifica as vantagens dos privilegiados e confirma a exclusão dos pobres. A igualdade efetiva está longe do ideal estatal. A reprodução da pobreza está sendo transmitida de uma geração para outra. A classe dominante está privando os pobres de uma verdadeira cultura de letras.

Le mystère en pleine lumière

Na periferia do capitalismo, a escola nunca foi portadora de "esperanças" para um futuro melhor, especialmente para o socialismo. Os alunos e muitos professores nunca ouviram falar em William Morris. O Estado sabe muito bem como regular e perpetuar a miséria. É catastrófico como a estrutura pública é gerida.

Agora é a vez do povo?

Na periferia do capitalismo, as pessoas pobres são definidas como objetos das políticas, não como autoras da transformação social.

Sequer um forte desejo de educação em termos de conhecimento científico filosófico é possível notar no periférico do mundo.

Igualdade efetiva jamais será uma realidade. A desigualdade de classe é um problema que atravessa todo o sistema nacional. Estamos diante dos efeitos mais perversos de um padrão muito amplo.

Culture of poverty

Why is being poor in Brazil unrelated to many other countries?

How many brazilians are poor today?

How is being poor defined today? 

Will there always be poor?

Cultura da pobreza

As pobrezas não são todas iguais. Existem “subculturas da pobreza”. E a qualidade de ensino que chega até os mais pobres é, no mínimo, duvidosa.

Porque não me ufano

Está faltando para o terceiro mundista uma compreensão sócio científica mais sofisticada da educação e da produção de desigualdades.

Social network:

dumbing down brazilians.

Curriculum

Pobreza e alineação,
savage inequalities.

Emburrecimento programado.

Nova retórica conservadora no campo educacional

Políticos, empresários, intelectuais e sindicalistas conservadores não hesitam em transformar qualquer debate sobre educação em um problema de "custos". A esta altura dos acontecimentos, ninguém duvida que temos de educar "para a cultura do trabalho"; o que, em bom português, quer dizer "educar para a cultura do mercado". Os termos "eficiência", "produtividade", "produto educativo", "rentabilidade", "custo da educação", "competição efetiva", "excelência", "soberania do consumidor", "cliente-aluno", etc. não são um produto alucinado de nossa exagerada crítica ao mundo dos negócios. Trata-se simplesmente do vocabulário que compartilham aqueles que professam sua fé nesta nova retórica.

Porque não me ufano

Os governadores fascistas estão utilizando de seus cargos para tirar todo tipo de proveito, facilitando os amigos militares aposentados e destruindo a educação para entregar à iniciativa privada. É catastrófico como a estrutura pública é gerida. Não existe controle democrático do Estado na periferia do capitalismo.

Nós temos milhões de brasileiros que sabem ler e escrever mas não leem e não escrevem. O Brasil diploma analfabeto. Os próprios secretários da educação seriam reprovados no sistema de avaliação da educação básica. A educação mercantil não está formando "sujeitos históricos". E não se discute a educação.

Você acredita na cobra falante?

O indivíduo cheio de "experiência de vida" mas dependente de mentiras nunca refletiu sobre as superstições que compartilhou durante décadas. A alienação faz com que a pessoa seja incapaz de formular uma simples pergunta: é verdade isto que me fizeram acreditar?

Porque não me ufano

As vezes a escrita serve para esconder o que lhe é confiado, as razões são múltiplas, religiosas para perpetuar a miséria, políticas e sociais quando se trata de assegurar a certas castas a proteção de segredos, de certas informações e de certas propriedades. Há uma verdade obscura na escrita: marca da propriedade, da distinção, fenômeno de domínio e de segregação. Na periferia do capitalismo, a escrita está longe de ser um bem absoluto, uma conquista progressista.

Análise do discurso

A escrita hoje, que tende a desaparecer, não passa de índice da realidade de classe. São os níveis de cultura, de distinções sociais, de imposturas e de alienações que se leem na escrita do grupo de cada um.

Você acredita na "vida eterna"?

Há muito pouca difusão do saber nos meios de comunicação de massa nacional. O subdesenvolvido ouve muita falação de merda. E não tem fim. O terceiro mundista deixa-se impregnar de falsidades, mistificações e não busca verificar nada. As palavras tornam-se mitos, passam ao serviço desse poder frouxo dos telecomunicadores: falam cada vez mais, mas o telespectador fala cada vez menos bem.

O anticristo

O delírio é uma relação profundamente pervertida com a realidade.

Porque não me ufano

A sociedade brasileira está poluída por imagens televisivas de péssima qualidade e piorou com o advento das redes sociais e da massificação dos aparelhos celulares. O saber educacional continua conservador e religioso favorecendo o ideal neoliberal e o domínio dos fundamentalistas. Está triunfando o imperialismo da falação de merda e desaparecendo a escrita. Um futuro bárbaro aguarda as próximas gerações.

Kino Glaz

Filho de pai anarquista, Jean Vigo produziu, em 1933, o média-metragem libertário Zéro de conduite, inspirado em suas experiências pessoais. Crítica social contundente do sistema de ensino repressivo, cujos adultos são seres pervertidos e, ao mesmo tempo, de uma visibilidade poética indizível: a guerra de travesseiros é uma das cenas mais emblemáticas da sétima arte. Vigo morreu ao 29 anos de tuberculose, mas sua imaginação influenciou outros diretores, como Truffaut, Godard e Lindsay Anderson. 

Interview

Eu acho mais importante ler Shakespeare do que ler a bíblia. Na bíblia você não aprende porra nenhuma, com Shakespeare você vai seguramente entender certas coisas do mundo que a gente está vivendo.

Por que o filme de mercado tem de ser burro, por que o filme de mercado não pode ser sensível, por que o filme de mercado não pode ser inteligente, criativo, ousado? A ideia de cinema de mercado não é só ganhar dinheiro é burrificar o espectador, dar ao espectador a medida de que ele nunca vai ser nada, ele só vai ser um pagante, ele vai pagar para ver a bunda da Glória Pires, é muito pequeno, muito pobre, muito mesquinho. Isso não dignifica nada, isso empobrece.

Luiz Rosemberg Filho

1943 - 2019

History and class consciousness

As the capitalist system continuously produces and reproduces itself economically on higher levels, the structure of reification progressively sinks more deeply, more fatefully and more definitively into the consciousness of man.

György. Lukács

1885 - 1971

Capital

In capital-profit, or still better capital-interest, land-ground rent, labour-wages, in this economic trinity represented as the connection between the component parts of value and wealth in general and its sources, we have the complete mystification of the capitalist mode of production, the reification [Verdinglichung] of social relations and immediate coalescence of the material production relations with their historical and social determination. It is an enchanted, perverted, topsy-turvy world, in which Monsieur le Capital and Madame la Terre do their ghost-walking as social characters and at the same time directly as things.

Karl Marx

1818 - 1883

The Antichrist

Since sickness is inherent in christianity, it follows that the typically christian state of “faith” must be a form of sickness too, and that all straight, straightforward and scientific paths to knowledge must be banned by the church as forbidden ways. Doubt is thus a sin from the start... The complete lack of psychological cleanliness in the priest — revealed by a glance at him phenomenon resulting from decadence, delight in lying for the mere sake of lying, and incapacity for looking straight and walking straight are symptoms of decadence. “Faith” means the will to avoid knowing what is true.

Friedrich Nietzsche 

1844 - 1900

Why I am not a christian

The family is a piece of ideology, many of forms of depravity have specifically associated with christianity.

Porque não me ufano

A escrita na rede digital indica a realidade do subdesenvolvido. A eucaristia digital revela os níveis de cultura, suas distinções sociais e, sobretudo, sua carência instrutiva.

Numa semana foi o "Satanás" a dominar o imaginário discursivo da rede social e na outra o "Anticristo". Nível de saber, mistificação e carência de análise discursiva: a alienação é praticamente total. O negócio é atiçar a malta, cutucar a ralé, excitar a xucrada, induzir o lumpencomentariado para granjear likes.

Variações sobre a escrita

 

Teoria não quer dizer necessariamente "dissertação filosófica" ou "sistema abstrato", Teoria quer dizer: descrição, produção pluricientífica, discurso responsável com os olhos voltados para o perfil infinito de um problema e aceitando questionar-se como discurso da cientificidade.

A escrita foi durante muito tempo um instrumento de segredo; possuir a escrita designava uma situação de segregação, de dominação e de transmissão controlada, enfim, o caminho de uma iniciação; a escrita esteve historicamente ligada à divisão de classes, a suas lutas e (em nosso país) às conquistas da democracia.

Hey, kid, Philip K. Dick lef a message for you:

 

This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed - run over, maimed, destroyed - but they continued to play anyhow. We really all were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and playing, but it was for such a terrible brief time, and then the punishment was beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could not believe it. For example, while I was writing this I learned that the person on whom the character Jerry Fabin is based killed himself. My friend on whom I based the character Ernie Luckman died before I began the novel. For a while I myself was one of these children playing in the street; I was, like the rest of them, trying to play instead of being grown up, and I was punished. I am on the list below, which is a list of those to whom this novel is dedicated, and what became of each.

Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is "Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying," but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your life-style, it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years. "Take the cash and let the credit go," as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit a whole lifetime.

There is no moral in this novel; it is not bourgeois; it does not say they were wrong to play when they should have toiled; it just tells what the consequences were. In Greek drama they were beginning, as a society, to discover science, which means causal law. Here in this novel there is Nemesis: not fate, because any one of us could have chosen to stop playing in the street, but, as I narrate from the deepest part of my life and heart, a dreadful Nemesis for those who kept on playing. I myself, I am not a character in this novel; I am the novel. So, though, was our entire nation at this time. This novel is about more people than I knew personally. Some we all read about in the newspapers. It was, this sitting around with our buddies and bullshitting while making tape recordings, the bad decision of the decade, the sixties, both in and out of the establishment. And nature cracked down on us. We were forced to stop by things dreadful.

If there was any "sin", it was that these people wanted to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far too great, and I prefer to think of it only in a Greek or morally neutral way, as mere science, as deterministic impartial cause-and-effect. I loved them all.

Space is not scary for the brave!

Vladimir Menshikov | 1982 

Coke #1

The guy sitting next to you on the train uses cocaine, he took it to get himself going this morning; or the driver of the bus you're taking home, he wants to put in some overtime without feeling the cramps in his neck. The people closest to you use coke. If it’s not your mother or father, if it’s not your brother, then it’s your son. And if your son doesn't use it, your boss does. Or your boss's secretary, but only on Saturdays, just for fun. And if your boss doesn't, his wife does, to let herself go. And if not his wife, then his lover—he gives her cocaine instead of earrings, in place of diamonds. And if they don’t, the truck driver delivering tons of coffee to cafés around town does; he wouldn't be able to hack those long hours on the road without it. And if he doesn’t, the nurse who's changing your grandfather's catheter does. Coke makes everything seem so much easier, even the night shift. And if she doesn't, the painter redoing your girlfriend’s room does; he was just curious at first but wound up deep in debt. The people who use cocaine are right here, right next to you. The police officer who's about to pull you over has been snorting for years, and everyone knows it, and they write anonymous letters to his chief hoping he'll be suspended before he screws up big time. Or the surgeon who's just waking up and will soon operate on your aunt. Cocaine helps him cut open six people a day. Or your divorce lawyer. Or the judge presiding over your lawsuit; he doesn't consider it a vice, though, just a little boost, a way to get more out of life. The cashier who hands you the lottery ticket you hope is going to change your life. The carpenter who's installing the cabinets that cost you a month's salary. Or the workman who came to put together the IKEA closet you couldn't figure out how to assemble on vourotat If not him, then the manager of your condo building who is just about to buzz you. Or your electrician, the one who's in your bedroom right now, moving the outlets. The singer you are listening to to unwind, the parish priest you're going to talk to about finally getting confirmed because your grandson's getting baptized, and he’s amazed you've put it off for so long. The waiters who will work the wedding you're going to next Saturday; they wouldn't be able to last on their feet all that time if they didn't. If not them, then the town councillor who just approved the new pedestrian zones, and who gets his coke free in exchange for favors. The parking lot attendant who's happy now only when he’s high. The architect who renovated your vacation home, the mailman who just delivered your new ATM card. If not them, then the woman at the call center who asks “How may | help you?” in that shrill, happy voice, the same for every caller, thanks to the white powder. If not her, your professor’s research assistant—coke makes him nervous. Or the physiotherapist who's trying to get your knee working right. Coke makes him more sociable. The forward who just scored, spoiling the bet you were winning right up until the final minutes of the game. The prostitute you go to on your way home, when you just can't take it anymore and need to vent. She does it so she won't have to see whoever is on top or under or behind her anymore. The gigolo you treated yourself to for your fiftieth birthday. You did it together. Coke makes him feel really macho. The sparring partner you train with in the ring, to lose weight. And if he doesn't, your daughter's riding instructor does, and so does your wife’s psychologist. Your husband's best friend uses it, the one who's been hitting on you for years but whom you've never liked. And if he doesn't, then your school principal does. Along with the janitor. And the real estate agent, who's late, just when you finally managed to find time to see the apartment. The security guard uses it, the one who still combs his hair over his bald spot, even though guys all shave their heads these days. And if he doesn't, the notary you hope you never have to go back to, he does it to avoid thinking about the alimony he has to pay his ex-wives. And if he doesn't, the taxi driver does; he curses the traffic but then goes all happy again. If not him, the engineer you have to invite over for dinner because he might help you get a leg up in your career. The policeman who's giving you a ticket, sweating profusely even though it’s winter. The squeegee man with hollow eyes, who borrows money to buy it, or that kid stuffing flyers under windshield wipers, five at a time. The politician who promised you a commercial license, the one you and your family voted into office, and who is always nervous. The professor who failed you on your exam. Or the oncologist you're going to see; everybody says he’s the best, so you're hoping he can save you. He feels omnipotent when he sniffs cocaine. Or the gynecologist who nearly forgets to throw away his cigarette before going in to examine your wife, who has just gone into labor. Your brotherin-law, who's never in a good mood, or your daughter's boyfriend, who always is. If not them, then the fishmonger, who proudly displays a swordfish, or the gás station attendant who spills gas on your car. He sniffs to feel young again but can't even put the pump away correctly anymore. Or the family doctor you've known for years and who lets you cut the line because you always know just the right thing to give him at Christmas. The doorman of your building uses it, and if he doesn't, then your kids’ tutor does, your nephew's piano teacher, the costume designer for the play you're going to see tonight, the vet who takes care of your cat. The mayor who invited you over for dinner recently. The contractor who built your house, the author whose book you've been reading before falling asleep, the anchorwoman on the evening news. But if, after you think about it, you're still convinced none of these people could possibly snort cocaine, you're either blind or you're lying. Or the one who uses it is you.

My teaching

The equation great civilization =

pipes and sewers, there are no exceptions.

A great civilization is first and foremost a civilization that has a waste-disposal system. So long as we do not take that as our starting point, we will not be able to say anything serious.

There were sewers in Babylon, and Rome was all sewers. That's how the City began, with the Cloaca maxima. It was destined to rule the world. So we should be proud of it. The reason why we are not is that, if we gave this phenomenon what we might call its fundamental import, we would find the prodigious analogy that exists between sewage and culture.

Culture clots on you. Because we are cooped up in the great shell of waste that comes from the same place, we make vague efforts to give it a form. What does that come down to? To great ideas, as they say. History, for example.

Jacques Lacan

1901 - 1981

Porque não me ufano

Na periferia do capitalismo nunca se tratou de perguntar ao "cidadão" "quem é você?" mas "quanto você vale?"

Basic Income

The justification for a having a basic income is ethical not instrumental. It's not a policy just for dearling with poverty for example. It is a philosophically grounded policy.

Guy Standing

Epistemologia marxista

Jacques Lacan, Cécile Éluard, Pierre Reverdy, Louise Leiris, Pablo Picasso, Zanie de Campan, Valentine Hugo, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Michel Leiris, Brassaï e Jean Aubier.

Plutocracia

As fortunas acumuladas sempre têm uma mancha de ilegalidade.

Indústria cultural

Há toda uma "literatura" que não entra no campo da crítica, romances para mocinhas, textos de autoajuda e livros de teologia e assim por diante, alguns assustadoramente mal escritos e totalmente desonestos. É todo um embrulho que sustenta mitos e a propaganda antimarxista. Trata-se de fato de um verdadeiro senso comum institucionalizado, com conteúdo acrítico e sua moral maniqueísta. O grosso desse público tem origem pequeno-burguesa pobre e mais ou menos rica, atinge os quadros do funcionalismo público, são os analfabetos secundários com diploma, o proletariado de colarinho branco associado a uma fração de ricos ociosos que nunca trabalharam. O objetivo essencial desse artifício é evidentemente a desinformação e a mistificação.

Algo novo na crítica

 

O realismo socialista nasceu da transformação especificamente marxista da moral em política (no sentido mais lato do termo). Para compreender o realismo socialista, sempre é bom lembrar o importante elogio a Balzac feito por Marx e Engels (ver sobretudo: Engels, carta a Miss Harkness, abril de 1888). Balzac é realista porque captou as relações humanas como relações em última instância política. Existe nele uma ideia nova, que não existia em Zola, por exemplo, e que é decisiva: a ideia de estrutura - realismo é a arte que capta a estrutura profunda de uma sociedade. Captar a estrutura quer dizer discernir o importante (o típico) e rejeitar o insignificante: o real é o que é significante. Realismo é a arte das significações justas.

Roland Barthes 

1915 - 1980

Porque não me ufano

É preciso trazer à luz, “doa a quem doer”, as razões do subdesenvolvimento. O olhar filosófico tem o poder particular de "por a nu" todo o atraso nacional.

O Brasil nunca foi uma sociedade da escrita e nunca será. A invasão dos audiovisuais e da música comercial é dominante. A educação de qualidade tarda a se estabelecer e a distribuição de livros significativos não faz parte da estrutura da grande maioria das cidades. A oposição entre cultura de massas e cultura superior e o paradigma minoria/maioria jamais desaparecerão. A divisão entre razão e insanidade é latente.

A própria comunicação estatal e os "discursos" dos gestores fazem discriminações regulares, neste contexto, que futuro haverá para o subdesenvolvido se as instituições estatais já não cumprem a tarefa de proteger e ampliar a cultura clássica? Não há mais responsabilidade histórica e muito menos vínculo com o trabalho verbal. A sociedade brasileira adotou de uma vez por todas a cultura de massas em detrimento da cultura superior. Outro regime político se tornou inimaginável, assim como outra maneira de sentir e outra maneira de pensar.

Porque não me ufano

No Brasil, o exercício da pedagogia clássica não é uma tradição. A explicação do texto está desaparecendo do cotidiano da escola e nunca esteve presente no cotidiano doméstico. A análise sobre a linguagem e concomitantemente a sua crítica, bem como seu comentário filológico não são práticas sociais do terceiro mundista, basta tomar como exemplo as letras das músicas dominantes e os posts das redes sociais com mais curtidas.

Postcard Hood. V. Orlova | 1944

Now you and I together will kill all the fascists!

História ou psykhé

 

Pode-se dizer, como Taine e Plekhanov, que a obra é produto de uma história, de uma sociedade, de um momento e de um meio, ou pode-se dizer que, ao contrário, ela é a expressão de uma interioridade, de uma psicologia.

O que é uma obra artística senão ao mesmo tempo produto de uma História e resistência a essa História? Aí está sua natureza dialética, e a própria grandeza da literatura é sua ambiguidade: ela vem do tempo e a ele se opõe; a obra é ao mesmo tempo uma estrutura e um movimento, é uma estrutura em movimento, e por isso sua análise é tantas vezes difícil.

Roland Barthes

1915 - 1980

Tendenzroman

Balzac, whom I consider a far greater master of realism than all the Zolas passés, présents et a venir, in “La Comédie humaine” gives us a most wonderfully realistic history of French Society, especially of le monde parisien, describing, chronicle-fashion, almost year by year from 1816 to 1848 the progressive inroads of the rising bourgeoisie upon the society of nobles, that reconstituted itself after 1815 and that set up again, as far as it could, the standard of la viellie politesse française. He describes how the last remnants of this, to him, model society gradually succumbed before the intrusion of the vulgar monied upstart, or were corrupted by him; how the grand dame whose conjugal infidelities were but a mode of asserting herself in perfect accordance with the way she had been disposed of in marriage, gave way to the bourgeoisie, who horned her husband for cash or cashmere; and around this central picture he groups a complete history of French Society from which, even in economic details (for instance the rearrangement of real and personal property after the Revolution). I have learned more than from all the professed historians, economists, and statisticians of the period together. Well, Balzac was politically a Legitimist; his great work is a constant elegy on the inevitable decay of good society, his sympathies are all with the class doomed to extinction. But for all that his satire is never keener, his irony never bitterer, than when he sets in motion the very men and women with whom he sympathizes most deeply - the nobles. And the only men of whom he always speaks with undisguised admiration, are his bitterest political antagonists, the republican heroes of the Cloître Saint-Méry, the men, who at that time (1830 - 1836) were indeed the representatives of the popular masses. That Balzac thus was compelled to go against his own class sympathies and political prejudices, that he saw the necessity of the downfall of his favourite nobles, and described them as people deserving no better fate; and that he saw the real men of the future where, for the time being, they alone were to be found - that I consider one of the greatest triumphs of Realism, and one of the grandest features in old Balzac.

Friedrich Engels

1820 - 1895

Periphery

Who's controlling all the misery?

Who's ever gonna change the world?

Porque não me ufano

Não há possibilidade da noção de cultura de massa se mostrar positiva, pois ela se opõe à cultura letrada e significa vulgarização, muito pouco franca e está desprovida de ética; a intenção de escamotear os conflitos reais da sociedade capitalista, como por exemplo a alienação e a reificação, é seu maior objetivo. Ela não é um meio de integração das pessoas à sociedade moderna (no sentido de lugar protegido do imprevisto e da desigualdade socioeconômica) e muito menos destinada a constituir uma nova linguagem humana, uma nova cultura.