The perversity in power

In Brazil, famine, poverty, illiteracy and misery will never be erradicated.

Nana

However, in the midst of all this luxury, and surrounded by her courtiers, Nana was bored to tears. She had men for every minute of the night, and money all over the house, even among the brushes and combs in the drawers of her dressing-table. But all this had ceased to satisfy her; and she was conscious of a void in her existence, a gap which made her yawn. Her life dragged on without occupation, each day bringing back the same monotonous hours. The next day did not exist: she lived like a bird, sure of having enough to eat, and ready to perch on the first branch she came to. This certainty of being fed caused her to stretch out in languid ease all day, lulled to sleep in conventional idleness and submission as if she were the prisoner of her own profession. Never going out except in her carriage, she began to lose the use of her legs. She reverted to her childish habits, kissing Bijou from morning to night and killing time with stupid pleasures, as she waited for some man or other.

Émile Zola

1840 - 1902

The second sex

Very often the kept woman interiorizes her dependence; subjected to public opinion, she accepts its values; she admires the “fashionable world” and adopts its customs; she wants to be regarded according to bourgeois standards. She is a parasite of the rich bourgeoisie, and she adheres to its ideas; she is “right thinking”; in former times she would readily send her daughters to a convent school, and as she got older, she even went to Mass and openly converted. She is on the conservatives’ side. She is too proud to have made her place in this world to want to change. The struggle she wages to “arrive” does not dispose her to feelings of brotherhood and human solidarity; she paid for her success with too much slavish compliance to sincerely wish for universal freedom. Zola highlights this trait in Nana:

As for books and plays, Nana had very definite opinions: she wanted tender and noble works, things to make her dream and elevate her soul … she was riled up against the republicans. What on earth did those dirty people who never washed want? Weren’t people happy, didn’t the emperor do everything he could for the people? A pretty bit of filth, the people! She knew them, she could talk about them: No, you see, their republic would be a great misfortune for everyone. Oh, may god preserve the emperor as long as possible!

In times of war, no one displays a more aggressive patriotism than high-level prostitutes; they hope to rise to the level of duchess through the noble sentiments they affect. Commonplaces, clichés, prejudices, and conventional feelings form the basis of their public conversations, and they have often lost all sincerity deep in their hearts. Between lies and hyperbole, language is destroyed. The hetaera’s whole life is a show: her words, her gestures, are intended not to express her thoughts but to produce an effect. She plays a comedy of love for her protector: at times she plays it for herself. She plays comedies of respectability and prestige for the public: she ends up believing herself to be a paragon of virtue and a sacred idol. Stubborn bad faith governs her inner life and permits her studied lies to seem true.

The second sex

There has always been a vague connection between prostitution and art, because beauty and sexuality are ambiguously associated with each other. In fact, it is not Beauty that arouses desire: but the Platonic theory of love suggests hypocritical justifications for lust.

The prostitute who wishes to acquire a singular distinction does not limit herself to showing her flesh passively; she tries to have her own talents. 

A woman who “goes onstage” to earn a living is often tempted to use her charms for more intimate commercial ends.

It is this need to please another or a crowd that connects the movie star to the hetaera. They play a similar role in society: I will use the word “hetaera” to designate women who use not only their bodies but also their entire person as exploitable capital. 

The hetaera does not uncover the world, she opens no road to human transcendence: on the contrary, she seeks to take possession of it for her profit; offering herself for the approval of her admirers, she does not disavow this passive femininity that dooms her to man: she endows it with a magic power that allows her to take males into the trap of her presence, and to feed herself on them; she engulfs them with herself in immanence.

In this way, woman succeeds in acquiring a certain independence. Giving herself to many men, she belongs to none definitively; the money she accumulates, the name she “launches” as one launches a product, ensure her economic autonomy.

The “favorite royal mistresses” participated in the government of the world through their powerful lovers.

Woman might find compensation for the feminine inferiority complex in the money and services she extorts from man; money has a purifying role; it abolishes the war of the sexes. If many nonprofessional women insist on extracting checks and gifts from their lovers — making the man pay — and paying him, as we will see further on, it is not out of cupidity alone: it is to change him into an instrument.

The courtesan has the reputation of being frigid. It is useful for her to know how to govern her heart and her sexual appetite: sentimental or sensual, she risks being under the influence of a man who will exploit or dominate her or make her suffer. Among the sexual acts she accepts, there are many—especially early in her career—that humiliate her; her revolt against male arrogance is expressed by her frigidity. Hetaeras, like matrons, freely confide “tricks” to each other that enable them to “fake” their work. This contempt, this disgust for men clearly shows they are not at all sure they have won the game of exploiter-exploited.

By paying for his steady’s high heels and satin skirts, the pimp makes an investment that will bring a return; by offering his girlfriend pearls and furs, the industrialist or the producer displays his wealth and power through her: whether the woman is a means for earning money or a pretext for spending it, it is the same servitude. The gifts showered on her are chains. And are these clothes and jewels she wears really hers? Beautiful and famous, she can choose another if the master of the moment becomes odious. But beauty is a worry, a fragile treasure; the hetaera is totally dependent on her body, which time pitilessly degrades; the fight against aging is most dramatic for her. Beautiful and famous, she can choose another if the master of the moment becomes odious. But beauty is a worry, a fragile treasure; the hetaera is totally dependent on her body, which time pitilessly degrades; the fight against aging is most dramatic for her.

Letter

Dear John,

You asked me what I consider essential personal qualities in a future psychoanalyst.

The answer is comparatively simple. If you want to be a real psychoanalyst you have to have a great love of the truth, scientific truth as well as personal truth, and you have to place this appreciation of truth higher than any discomfort at meeting unpleasant facts, whether they belong to the world outside or to your own inner person.

Further, I think that a psychoanalyst should have interests beyond the limits of the medical field in facts that belong to sociology, literature and history, otherwise his outlook on his patient will remain too narrow. This point contains the necessary preparations beyond the requirements made on candidates of psychoanalysis in the institutes. You ought to be a great reader and become acquainted with the literature of many countries and cultures. In the great literary figures you will find people who know at least as much of human nature as the psychiatrists and psychologists try to do.

Does that answer your question?

Yours sincerely

Anna Freud

The second sex

It is not their moral and psychological situation that makes prostitutes’ existence miserable. It is their material condition that is deplorable for the most part. Exploited by their pimps and hotel keepers, they have no security, and three-quarters of them are penniless. After five years in the trade, around 75 percent of them have syphilis, says Dr. Bizard, who has treated thousands; among others, inexperienced minors are frighteningly susceptible to contamination; close to 25 percent must be operated on for complications resulting from gonorrhea. One in twenty has tuberculosis; 60 percent become alcoholics or drug addicts; 40 percent die before forty. It must be added that in spite of precautions, they do become pregnant from time to time, and they are generally operated on in bad conditions. Common prostitution is a hard job where the sexually and economically oppressed woman — subjected to the arbitrariness of the police, humiliating medical checkups, the whims of her clients, and the prospect of germs, sickness, and misery — is really reduced to the level of a thing.

There are many degrees between the common prostitute and the grand hetaera. The main difference is that the former trades in her pure generality, so that competition keeps her at a miserable level of living, while the latter tries to be recognized in her singularity: if she succeeds, she can aspire to a lofty future. Beauty, charm, and sex appeal are necessary for this, but they are not sufficient: the woman must be considered distinguished. Her value will often be revealed through a man’s desire: but she will be “launched” only when the man declares her price to the eyes of the world. In the last century, it was the town house, carriage and pair, and pearls that proved the influence of the cocotte on her protector and that raised her to the rank of demimondaine; her worth was confirmed as long as men continued to ruin themselves for her. Social and economic changes abolished the Blanche d’Antigny types. There is no longer a demimonde in which a reputation can be established. An ambitious woman has to try to attain fame in other ways. The most recent incarnation of the hetaera is the movie star. Flanked by her husband or serious male friend —  rigorously required by Hollywood — she is no less related to Phryne, Imperia, or Casque d’Or. She delivers Woman to the dreams of men who give her fortune and glory in exchange.

The second sex

Viewed from the standpoint of economics, the position of the prostitute corresponds with that of the married woman. In La Puberté Marro says: "The only difference between women who sell themselves in prostitution and those who sell themselves in marriage is in the price and the length of time the contract runs".

The prostitute is denied the rights of a person, she sums up all the forms of feminine slavery at once.

It is noteworthy, for one thing, that a large proportion of harlots are former domestic servants. A glance at any maid's room is enough to explain that fact. Exploited, enslaved, treated as a thing rather than a person, the maid-of-all-work, the chambermaid, can look forward to no improvement in her lot; sometimes she has to accept the attentions of the head of the family. From such domestic slavery and sexual subjection she slips into a slavery that could not be more degrading and that she dreams will be happier.

There are many girls who are prostituted by their parents; in certain families - like the famous American Jukes' - almost all the women are destined for this business.

Deschooling society

No one is fully exempt from the exploitation of others in the schooling process.

A radical program of deschooling could train youth in the new style of revolution needed to challenge a unjust social system.

Deschooling society

If we do not challenge the assumption that valuable knowledge is a commodity which under certain circumstances may be forced into the consumer, society will be increasingly dominated by sinister pseudo schools and totalitarian managers of information. Pedagogical therapists will drug their pupils more in order to teach them better, and students will drug themselves more to gain relief from the pressures of teachers and the race for certificates. Increasingly larger numbers of bureaucrats will presume to pose as teachers. The language of the schoolman has already been coopted by the adman. Now the general and the policeman try to dignify their professions by masquerading as educators. In a schooled society, warmaking and civil repression find an educational rationale. Pedagogical warfare in the style of Vietnam will be increasingly justified as the only way of teaching people the superior value of unending progress.

Repression will be seen as a missionary effort to hasten the coming of the mechanical Messiah. More and more countries will resort to the pedagogical torture already implemented in Brazil and Greece. This pedagogical torture is not used to extract information or to satisfy the psychic needs of sadists. It relies on random terror to break the integrity of an entire population and make it plastic material for the teachings invented by technocrats. The totally destructive and constantly progressive nature of obligatory instruction will fulfill its ultimate logic unless we begin to liberate ourselves right now from our pedagogical hubris, our belief that man can do what God cannot, namely, manipulate others for their own salvation.

The New Alienation

School is the institution which has a primary purpose the shapping of man's vision of reality.

Each of us is personally responsible for his or her own deschooling, and only we have the power to do it. No one can be excused if he fails to liberate himself from schooling. People could not free themselves from the Crown until at least some of them had freed themselves from the established Church. They cannot free themselves from progressive consumption until they free themselves from obligatory school.

The New Alienation

School makes alienation preparatory to life, thus depriving education of reality and work of creativity. School prepares for the alienating institutionalization of life by teaching the need to be taught. Once this lesson is learned, people lose their incentive to grow in independence; they no longer find relatedness attractive, and close themselves off to the surprises which life offers when it is not predetermined by institutional definition. And school directly or indirectly employs a major portion of the population. School either keeps people for life or makes sure that they will fit into some institution.

The New Alienation

Schools gives unlimited opportunity for legitimated waste.

Young people are prealienated by schools that isolate.

Deschooling society

School combines the expectations of the consumer expressed in its claims with the beliefs of the producer expressed in its ritual. It is a liturgical expression of a world-wide "cargo cult," reminiscent of the cults which swept Melanesia in the forties, which injected cultists with the belief that if they but put on a black tie over their naked torsos, Jesus would arrive in a steamer bearing an icebox, a pair of trousers, and a sewing machine for each believer.

The New Alienation

School is not only the New World Religion. It is also the world's fastest-growing labor market. The engineering of shit consumers has become the economy's principal growth sector. There is an increasing concentration of both capital and labor in the vast enterprise of equipping man for disciplined consumption of crap.

O século dos imbecis

A destruição de uma grande cultura vem geralmente acompanhada do surgimento de uma nova igreja que embrutecerá ainda mais à manada de acéfalos.

The myth of progress

Growth conceived as openended consumption - eternal progress - can never lead to maturity. Commitment to unlimited quantitative increase vitiates the possibility of organic development.

Just business is business, the never ending accumulation of money.

Mini galeria de perguntas meramente retóricas

Em que a "produção cultural" feita no Brasil pode contribuir para a teoria crítica? O que pode edificar o caráter periférico da malandragem? O que a condição subalterna, sua violência e sua famigerada vulgaridade podem contribuir para o cosmopolitismo e a vida da mente?

The Catcher in the Rye

One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies. That's all. They were coming in the goddam window. For instance, they had this headmaster, Mr. Haas, that was the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life. Ten times worse than old Thurmer. On Sundays, for instance, old Haas went around shaking hands with everybody's parents when they drove up to school. He'd be charming as hell and all. Except if some boy had little old funny-looking parents. You should've seen the way he did with my roommate's parents. I mean if a boy's mother was sort of fat or corny-looking or something, and if somebody's father was one of those guys that wear those suits with very big shoulders and corny black-and-white shoes, then old Hans would just shake hands with them and give them a phony smile and then he'd go talk, for maybe a half an hour, with somebody else's parents. I can't stand that stuff. It drives me crazy. It makes me so depressed I go crazy. I hated that goddam Elkton Hills.

Um país de analfabetos

Em uma época de pragmatismo neoliberal hegemônico (onde os corpos de reservas de mão-de-obra pouco ou nada qualificados e analfabetos só precisam consumir) a cultura letrada foi descartada. Nos espaços de educação poucos são os que estudam. Isso é um fato. O que importa são o exercícios de futilidade como a conversa fiada no banho de sol da escola-prisão.

A barbaric country

The more poor a city is, 

the more crooks it has.

Dialética da escola-prisão

A instituição pública de educação não encarrega de conferir à criança em séries iniciais um modelo de formação letrada. É justamente por esse viés que a escola deve ser objeto de crítica e de uma mudança revolucionária a começar pela troca do corpo docente.

A educação pública se tornou uma instituição descartável e são inúmeros setores da vida social que questionam a sua existência. A sua razão de ser (a formação da cultura letrada) não faz parte dos objetivos gerais do "corpo pedagógico". 

Não haveria nenhum problema enviar as crianças para a escola, desde que ela não fosse uma prisão e a prioridade fosse o ensino em termos de conhecimento científico, o que não é a realidade do Brasil, em estado algum. A escola que o munícipio e o estado fornecem não tem qualidade. 

A escola pública é dirigida por vândalos. Não há nenhuma forma de socialização. É um espaço de violência e de embrutecimento. Se a escola for excluída das ações sociais a juventude nada irá perder. A escola não tem competência para construir um ambiente de camaradagem.

Nenhum estado poderia obrigar os pais a matricularem seus filhos em fábricas de salsichas. A prática de educar em casa pode ser interessante se o aspecto for a formação letrada de excelência. Pais com uma boa bagagem de literatura sabem do que estou tratando.

Homeschooling é praticado por muitos países do primeiro mundo que tem um excelente nível de qualidade de vida. A experiência da desescolarização pode ser boa se a atenção for o letramento do pensamento crítico. Qual o sentido de ir para a escola e não praticar a leitura?

O ensino doméstico é a única maneira de afastar as crianças da vulgaridade, da violência, das drogas, do embrutecimento e dos abusos psicológicos. Não há experiência de vida e socialização onde corpos jovens e sadios são danificados.

Dialectic of the school-prison

Neither in North America nor in Latin America do the poor get equality from obligatory schools.

Porque não me ufano

O pobre do Brasil não tem meios de produzir conhecimentos verdadeiros, mesmo tendo no polegar um aparelho que poderia auxiliar no desenvolvimento do conhecimento. A legitimação da produção cultural dos subdesenvolvidos (tudo o que pode ser vulgar) gerou fundamentalistas. O carente isolado não quer aprender a compor algo que seja belo aos olhos e agradável aos ouvidos. Não anseia construir sequer um discurso. É tudo absolutamente indigente: sua linguagem, seu imaginário, seu emprego, sua educação, seu bairro e sua cidade. Seu relacionamento com a terra está plenamente empobrecido. Não pertence ao mundo como um sujeito histórico.

Porque não me ufano

A análise do discurso, disciplina que nunca existiu nas escolas-prisões, consegue examinar a linguagem usada pelo presidente da periferia do capitalismo e como ele recorre intencionalmente a uma estratégia de manipulação ideológica que consiste na apropriação da fala cotidiana do "cidadão comum" para produzir nele a sensação de proximidade com o líder e passar, de modo geral, a imagem de que o povo está no poder.

Confusion

I

In that burning light I suffocate - 

Under those eyes like the sun's rays 

I shudder: this one 

Will tame me.

He leans close to tell me something . . . 

And all the blood leaves my face. 

May love like a tombstone close over my life.

II

You don't love me? 

You don't want to look at me? 

O wretch! 

How handsome you are! 

And I can no longer fly, 

I, who had wings even as a child.

Fog covers my eyes, 

Blurs faces and lights. 

E see only the red tulip, 

The red tulip in your buttonhole.

Anna Akhmatova 

1889 - 1966

Green growth

The myth of sustainable development

Dr. Death

Laws banning assisted suicide are unjust, for the folowing reason: if my life belongs to me, I should be free to give it up. And if I enter into a voluntary agreement with someone to help me die, the state has no right to interfere.

Dr. Death

A single grain of potassium cyanide on the tongue will instantly kill a human being. No more pain. No more exploration. No more poverty. No more pollution. No more noise. No more inequality. No more violence. No more corruption. No more greed. No more ignorance. No more idiocy. No more stupidity. No more foolish behavior. No more alienation.

A barbaric country

Brazilian citizens are the carcasses of animals run over by neoliberalism.

Porque não me ufano

É notável em todos os meios de comunicação do populacho brasileiro a ausência de narrativas que constituem temporalidade, que se abrem para utopias e perspectivas para imaginar um outro mundo.

Na cultura do instantâneo, o subdesenvolvido opera sob as políticas de gestão do capital - somente um lado prospera - e as políticas industrias que tornam imprestáveis os aparelhos do mundo do consumo. O subdesenvolvimento está bem planejado.

O grito do desesperado empobrecido tem baixa eficácia política, bem como suas expressões artísticas e certas performances de protestos. No máximo que os desorganizados conseguem é interromper momentaneamente a ordem neoliberal. Pouca causa, pouca motivação e pouca organização. Tanto com a esquerda quanto com a direita nas administrações públicas a ordem capitalista segue o seu destino: gentrificando, desalojando, desempregando, explorando, precarizando, arruinando, apagando memórias e sujeitos, destruindo o meio ambiente, potencializando as relações desiguais de poder entre gêneros, marcando, retaliando, etc.

A cumplicidade acritica com a opressão econômica encontra-se em todos os espaços. A pós-doutora escreve como uma freira, a massa se identifica com o machismo, a reprodução de estereótipos e os preconceitos religiosos. Esses são os denominadores comuns dos incultos e perversos. O fundamentalismo define o "nós" sem cultura, sem luta de classes, sua visão maniqueísta estigmatiza ainda mais os excluídos e perpetua a miséria. Não há nenhuma chave de leitura possível, oposição alguma, proposta para mudar a ordem dominante, renovação de perspectivas. O reino do senso-comum tem suas muralhas reforçadas e impenetráveis.

Planeta favela

A "cultura" do subdesenvolvido é uma "cultura de cassino e azar", na qual tudo é aposta e risco; na qual tudo está calculado para gerar um impacto máximo e uma obsolescência instantânea.

Para centenas de milhares de jovens pobres do Brasil, o modelo de triunfo social é ser um ex-big brother ou um inculto jogador de futebol. Para o jovem periférico, não há tempo para a memória e muito menos para a utopia.

Planeta favela

É possível interpretar que, diante das dificuldades de saber, as "culturas" periféricas consagram o imediato, a falação de merda na internet, videoclipes e músicas do gueto a todo volume na solidão sem qualidade de vida.

Nos estudos sobre consumo e recepção, descobre-se que o subdesenvolvido (jovem, adulto, idoso) prefere os filmes de ação e entedia-se com os que tratam dos amplos planos da subjetividade ou dos processos íntimos. Nenhuma referência culta no universo de milhões de brasileiros. No radar, sempre o vulgar, o kitsch. E não será diferente no ano 3026.

Porque não me ufano

Na periferia do capitalismo, a mercantilização da vida social é a sua maior prática, a tendência neoliberal é encerrar de uma vez os intercâmbios entre as pessoas à sua renda econômica.

A decadência econômica e social continuará a se agravar pela incapacidade de recuperação por parte de sua classe dominante: perda de empregos, queda na qualidade de vida (o subdesenvolvido usufruiu alguma vez?) e muitas dificuldades de sobreviver.

Porque não me ufano

Os dispositivos seletivos e segregadores do reordenamento neoliberal aumentarão a condição excluída de setores como sem-teto, desempregados, deslocados, desclassificados, migrantes, indígenas e jovens.

As formas de proteção irão desaparecer cada vez mais nas sociedades capitalistas. Os guetos e favelas irão aumentar e com eles a concentração de índices cada vez maiores de desemprego, pobreza, fracasso escolar, analfabetismo, violência, delito e criminalidade.

As condições de exclusão em sua grande expansão revelam a tendência sistêmica de um Estado e uma sociedade que esqueceram as responsabilidades coletivas. Fragmentado, desamparado e desintegrado, o brasileiro está experimentando a mais profunda marginalização do planeta.

The soul of man under Socialism

The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease. 

They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor. 

But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it.The people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good.

Oscar Wilde

1854 - 1900

Sem futuro

As utopias evaporaram e quase ninguém faz questão de imaginá-las, os jovens não se interessam pela história nem por ter história. Muitos poucos são socialmente responsáveis e politizados. Todos querem se dar bem individualmente, jovens, adultos e idosos.

Idiocracia

Os conteúdos gerados pelas redes sociais estão coibindo a evolução do subdesenvolvido. A tecnologia poderia ser usada para evoluir o nível psíquico, em vez disso os desclassificados do mundo moderno e iluminista estão disseminando a mediocridade sob a bandeira tecnológica.

Tubo de ensaio

A infância dos subdesenvolvidos está vinculada à pobreza material e, sobretudo, intelectual, mais o enfraquecimento extremo do laço social, o abandono do lar costuma ser explicado por patologias familiares e trajetórias psicológicas deficitárias.

A perversidade no poder

A exclusão e a segmentação desigual são as duas principais consequências da reestruturação global. A proposta neoliberal: a submissão da população às elites empresariais. Amplos setores perderão seus empregos e sua segurança social básica.

Porque não me ufano

Os riscos de exclusão no mercado de trabalho e de marginalização nas franjas massivas do consumo aumentarão nos países periféricos. Ser trabalhador no terceiro mundo tornou-se sinônimo de vulnerável. Os próximos anos serão um desastre, muito em breve a escravidão irá voltar a ser a prática social e jurídica dos desclassificados do mundo moderno.

Perspectivas

A história não pode ser reduzida a uma interação cega entre a plebe e o culto às personalidades, personalidades essas que se beneficiam com a miséria e a ignorância. É preciso uma teoria dos sujeitos que permite identificar os focos de resistência que estão contribuindo para a construção de uma boa sociedade.

Perspectivas

Alcançar a consciência requer destruir a fetichização mercantil. O fetichismo é ao mesmo tempo imaginário e material. No capitalismo, os homens se relacionam efetivamente por meio de mercadorias (nesse contexto, o corpo feminino é um item, um artigo, um produto). Não há atores, sujeitos da história, indivíduos inteligentes mas relações sociais entre coisas. A consciência se produz na construção de uma nova vida social, o que não irá acontecer na periferia do capitalismo.

A consciência somente irá existir como processo de construção. Para a psicanálise, atingir a consciência inclui a passagem do princípio do prazer ao princípio da realidade. Para sair da infância e converter-se em adulto é preciso de uma rigorosa e robusta formação letrada, de teoria (não existe vida sem teoria).

The correspondence of Charles Darwin

Our ancestor was an animal which breathed water, had a swim-bladder, a great swimming tail, an imperfect skull & undoubtedly was an hermaphrodite! Here is a pleasant genealogy for mankind.

History of science

In 1858, Charles Darwin was forty-nine years old, a gentleman scientist living quietly at Down House in the Kent countryside. He was not yet a focus of debate; his "big book on species" still lay on his desk as a manuscript. It is at this point that the second and concluding volume of Janet Browne's magisterial biography opens. Beginning with the extraordinary events that finally forced the Origin of Species into print, we come to the years of fame and controversy. Here, Browne does dramatic justice to all aspects of the Darwinian revolution, from  fascinating examination of the Victorin publishing scene to a survey of the debates between scientists and churchmen over evolutionary theory. At the same time, she presents a wonderfully sympathetic picture of Darwin himself.

Endgame

What can be done with the ruins?

Nothing to be done!

Las Vegas

Xenophobia, bullshit, shouting, noise, vulgar music, prostitution. Everything is ugly, idiot and fool. No one educates anyone. Brazil is finished.

The trial

Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested.

Amrum

Nanning is a member of the Hitler youth (Hitlerjugend). The unfortunate product of toxic brainwashing.

Perversity in everywhere

Xenophobia, bullshit, 

shouting, noise, 

vulgar music, 

prostitution. 

Brazil is finished.

Franz

Did you notice Odradek?

The true function of art is social criticism

A specifically Marxist view of the role of art in society that remains widely held and his powerfully operative in the world of today. It is that the true function of art is social criticism. According to this view, art should get people to understand in a deeper way than they do what is wrong with the society they live in; and it should make them want to change society. Thus Marxists view art as a revolutionary instrument. Bad art is art which upholds the values of existing society, and tries to full or deceive people into accepting those values. This view of the role fo art, which was not at all widely held before Marx, comes close to being the prevailing orthodoxy in today's world.

A barbaric country

In Brazil, public action aimed at reducing inequality and poverty they are very ineffective and inefficient. Missing practical policy making.

Brazil have not developed the cultural and moral resources or the democratic forms of social organization that make possible the humane and rational use of material wealth and power.

The intellectual deprivation of girls is more deeper.

Porque não me ufano

Como os brasileiros irão elevar o nível do discurso político, se envolver em grandes questões como justiça e boa vida, lidar com a corrupção e reduzir a desigualdade se tudo o que fazem se limita a gritar, ouvir musica ruim e falar merda o dia inteiro de segunda a segunda? 

Periphery of capitalism

In an unequal society, courts payin exorbitant salaries:
Brasil, a country without an ideal.

Periphery of capitalism

The Southerner hates literature. There no jobs for Literature graduates in Porto Alegre. The Southerner created an imaginary enemy: the literature professor. Sad and poor city where prostitution is growing.

Periphery of capitalism

In the last year, Norway has one of the lowest homicide rates in the world, with only 19 homicides. On the other hand, Brazil recorded 34.086 homicides. Nordic countries lead in global quality of life rankings. No more.

The fascisization of Brazil has the support of both the poor and the rich. It is a deliberate project. Look to the south.

Apresentando dois Homo troglodytes

Um macaco é um macaco, não importa o que vista. O nosso brasileiro, por exemplo, não é um homem, nem tampouco macaco, mas uma espécie de animal entre os dois com uma mentalidade de uma criança de dez anos. Nada mais que um primata e um simples bruto imaturo. Os macacos e os brasileiros não diferem apenas na anatomia mas particularmente na fala e no funcionamento mental. O brasileiro é uma forma intermediária de símio. Se ele pertence ao gênero simiesco ou humano, depende da qualidade de vida de suas cidades.

The perversity in the cities

In Brazil, a writer cannot write about beauty. Can't.

Look around and feel the cold truth with your face. 

Everything is ugly.

No future

Unfortunately, there no jobs for Literature graduates in Porto Alegre. Sad and poor city.

New American Ghetto Archive

Camilo Vergara, like a good ecologist, deliberately focused on “disturbance” sites, including drug houses, homeless encampments, and areas of noxious landuse dumping as well as assorted margins and interstices "often lacking political representation or even a name". As the crack cocaine epidemic made street-level photography more risky, he began to use rooftops to generate panoramic bird’s-eye views, which, in turn, revealed unsuspected landscape facets.

A good example of Vergara’s tenacious methodology is his case study of a once magnificent apartment complex at the corner of 178th Street and Vise Avenue, near the Bronx Zoo. When he first started visiting the “Castle” in the winter of 1980, the heating had failed and tenants were beginning to leave. Seemingly no resources were available to rehabilitate the building’s faded glory. The next fall was fire season. Although one might assume that buildings burn and become derelict from the ground up, Vergara discovered that the opposite was true. The first of twelve apartment fires began in occupied units on the top floor. Subsequently scavengers looted pipes and radiators from the fire-damaged apartments, leading to flooding and water damage on floors below. Tenant flight accelerated.By January 1983 the complex was completely abandoned and efforts had been made to seal all the windows and entrances with cinder blocks. Scavengers, nonetheless, continued to find their way inside to “mine” the building of saleable materials. As the building continued to deteriorate over the next two years, it blighted the rest of the neighborhood: attracting crime, depressing property values, and encouraging more abandonment. Finally in 1985 it was bulldozed into oblivion.