foam on the sea

i think we can agree that civilizational thought is one of the more insidious and dangerous aspects of cultural apperception. we are familiar with inside/outside divisions, with exclusionary mechanisms, and can probably go further to say that undoing civilizational identification, as performed by huntington and lewis, is one of the more radical oppositions that should [...]

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anniversaire 2

ira cohen, apr17th, 2003, “some lines written on a cold day on 113th & broadway to the iraqi people”:
i am ashamed to be an american
when i think of the blood
spilled in the nights of depleted
uranium bombs which still
pollute your reticent eyes
drowning in disbelief of destiny’s mocking laughter
your culture from the very cradle
of time lies shipwrecked [...]

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03.17.08

to read (no ifs or buts):
- noah feldman, “why shariah?”
- abdal hakim murad, “islam, irigaray, and the retrieval of gender” (though perhaps a misreading of irigaray, it is good because it overviews variously gendered conceptions of the divine, is well attuned to intermuslim politics, and provides certain openings from traditionalist standpoints)
- saba mahmood, “secularism, hermeneutics, [...]

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03.16.08

the way class schedules and other commitments have worked out, recently, i often get home after dark. i have taken to turning off the radio when halfway home, after i cross the highway that marks the passage from the city. the only light then the muted glow from dashboard dials in front of me and [...]

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indexical

this space gains a self-legitimating character, after a while. existence wills itself to be justified. this a public sphere organized according to a very particular power-configuration, modulated by strands of various discursive traditions and mutually exclusive politics, leading to and itself producing the control society.
habermas, then, is obermeister of the panopticon maintenance staff.
and yet resistance [...]

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loving the beloved

(yes, i took the title from the sunnipath event.)
great was the sorrow in the city of light, as medina was now called. the companions rebuked each other for weeping, but wept themselves. “nor for him do i weep,” said umm ayman, when questioned about her tears. “know i not that he hath gone to that [...]

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