- June 18, 2026
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(no subject)
“Among the most striking features in Derrida’s approach to politics is the violence—and I dare say, the simplism—of his opposition between the idea of the rule and the idea of justice. Very often, and mostly in the same terms, we meet in his political writings with the statement that, whenever there is a simple rule, there can be no justice. . . . There is an extraordinary overtone of contempt in the evocation of the ‘good’ rule that requires only application, subsumption, and calculation. Whenever it comes to the rule and its enactment, the same image shows up in Derrida’s argumentation: the image of the machine. If there is a rule, a knowledge which gives its ground to our decision, it is no decision, we don’t decide.” Jacques Rancière, “Should Democracy Come? Ethics and Politics in Derrida,” in Derrida and the Time of the Political, ed. Pheng Cheah and Suzanne Guerlac (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), 282–83.
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(no subject)
Following the law is the way in which ordinary people in ordinary times maintain contact with the sacred, once they can no longer speak directly to God. Is this not what the Old Testament prophets said? This is the tradition that was carried forward to the new world by the Puritans, that informed the first political-religious communities here, and that continues to inform our political imagination through faith in popular sovereignty and reverence for law.
- May 27, 2026
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the more in the middle of (Burrows and Ritsema, WDSQ)
I interviewed a monk once, a very old man, called Brother Harold.
And it was quite a long time ago so I can tell this story without
embarrassment. No, this is a lie, I am still embarrassed, but I will tell it
anyway. And so of course at the end of the interview I said, well Let me
ask you the really obvious question: what does God mean to you, and
he said, straight away without any hesitation,he said: ‘The more in the
middle of’. He said it straight like that, without any hesitation and
looking into my eyes. There was no need to pause for thought, there
was a lifetime of thought behind his answer, and what I understood
was that the more was now, here, the present, the isness which is sur-
rounded by what came before, what I wanted to do, what I thought
I should do, and the future, what I want to do next. When I told the
story he thought I said ‘the move in the middle of’, and somehow that
remains useful to him.
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Aras wrote,
Rumi says: I will drink blood, like the heart, so I travel without legs and hands, like the heart..."
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(no subject)
« La confusion entre établissement et institution tient à l’usage que font les anglo-saxons du terme d’‘institution’ et par imitation les Italiens […] Cette confusion terminologique serait facilement levée si l’on voulait bien, en tentant d’échapper à cette anglicisation de notre langue, à l’image de ce qui différencie la denture de la dentition, admettre la même opposition distinctive entre structure et institution. […] » (Ayme, 1987).Ayme, J. (1987). Table ronde “Psychothérapie institutionnelle et pratique de secteur.” Annales Médico-Psychologiques, 145(8), 714–716
- December 17, 2025
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Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen §172
Denken wir an das Erlebnis des Geführtwerdens! Fragen wir uns: Worin besteht dieses Erlebnis, wenn wir z.B. einen Weg geführt würden? - Stelle dir diese Fälle vor: Du bist auf einem Spielplatz, etwa mit verbundenen Augen, und wirst von jemandem an der Hand geleitet, bald links, bald rechts; du mußt immer des Zuges seiner Hand gewärtig sein, auch achtgeben, daß du bei einem unerwarteten Zug nicht stolperst. Oder aber: du wirst von jemandem an der Hand mit Gewalt geführt, wohin du nicht willst. Oder: du wirst im Tanz von einem Partner geführt; du machst dich so rezeptiv wie möglich, um seine Absicht zu erraten und dem leisesten Drucke zu folgen. Oder: jemand führt dich einen Spazierweg; ihr geht im Gespräch; wo immer er geht, gehst du auch. Oder: du gehst einen Feldweg entlang, läßt dich von ihm führen. Alle diese Situationen sind einander ähnlich; aber was ist allen den Erlebnissen gemeinsam?
♡♡ | -
Acts of Paul and Thecla
While Paul was preaching this sermon ... a certain virgin, named Thecla ... sat at a certain window in her house. From whence, by the advantage of a window in the house where Paul was, she both night and day heard Paul's sermons... ...
My daughter Thecla, like a spider's web fastened to the window, is captivated by the discourses of Paul, and attends upon them with prodigious eagerness, and vast delight; and thus, by attending on what he says, the young woman is seduced. Now then do you go, and speak to her, for she is betrothed to you.
Accordingly Thamyris went, and having saluted her, and taking care not to surprise her, he said, Thecla, my spouse, why sittest thou in this melancholy posture? What strange impressions are made upon thee? Turn to Thamyris, and blush.
Her mother also spake to her after the same manner, and said, Child, why dost thou sit so melancholy, and, like one astonished, makest no reply?
Then they wept exceedingly, Thamyris, that he had lost his spouse; Theoclia, that she had lost her daughter; and the maids, that they had lost their mistress; and there was an universal mourning in the family.
- December 11, 2025
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"World history, as the bourgeois revolutionary Börne already said, is a house which has more staircases than rooms; ..."
cited by bloch, heritage of our times p. 114
- December 10, 2025
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when, where, how, with whom, and how often
Sin could take an infinite variety of forms, though a commonly employed (alliterative in the Latin) formula of interrogation to be used by priests in the ritual of confession -- 'when, where, how, with whom, and how often' -- inescapably brings to mind sexual transgression.
Peter Heather's Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion
- December 9, 2025
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on a certain confederation of huns
"no one could number the vastness of the cavalry contingents [so] every man was ordered to carry a stone so as to throw it down ... so as to form a mound ... a fearful sign [left] for the morrow to understand past events. And wherever they passed, they left such markers at every crossroad along their way." - the epic histories attributed to p'awtos buzand, quoted in Peter Brown's the rise of western christendom