Category: Reading

• Fragmentary, No. 27

  Looks like what drives me crazyDon’t have no effect on you—But I’m gonna keep on at itTill it drives you crazy, too. ✧ Langston Hughes, “Evil”

  • R L • powell

  December 4, 2018

  Fragments, Reading, Words

  crazy, evil, hughes, langston hughes, madness, mantra, mantras, Poems, poetry

• Fragmentary, No. 26

  Lecturing in JapanStephen Hawking was askednot to mention that the universe had a beginning(and so likely an end)because it would affect the stockmarket.Speculation aside,we all need a prehistory. According to Freud,we do nothing but repeat it.Beginnings are special because most of them are fake.The new person you becomewith that first sip of wine was already…

  • R L • powell

  November 23, 2018

  Fragments, Reading

  Anne Carson, fresh starts, Freud, history repeating, Japan, poem, poem fragment, poetry, prehistory, Stephen Hawking

• Fragmentary, No. 25

  The moderns confused products with processes. They believed that the production of bureaucratic rationalization presupposed rational bureaucrats; that the production of universal science depended on universalist scientists; that the production of effective technologies led to the effectiveness of engineers; that the production of abstraction was itself abstract; that the production of formalism was itself formal.…

  • R L • powell

  November 21, 2018

  Books, Fragments, Reading

  abstraction, Bruno Latour, essentailism, formalism, history of science, meaning, Modernity, philosophy, philosophy of science, rationality, science, tautology, theory, We Have Never Been Modern

• Fragmentary, No. 24

  “The strongest guard is placed at the gateway to nothing. . . . Maybe because the condition of emptiness is too shameful to be divulged.” ✧ F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night

  • R L • powell

  November 20, 2018

  Books, Fragments, Reading

  consequence, emptiness, F. Scott Fitzgerald, gatekeepers, gateway, guard, guarding, meaning, nothing, shame, Tender is the Night

• Fragmentary, No. 23

  poets are useless, . . . are not only ‘non-utilitarian’,we are ‘pathetic’: this is the new heresy;but if you do not even understand what words say, how can you expect to pass judgementon what words conceal? ✧ H.D., The Walls Do Not Fall

  • R L • powell

  November 12, 2018

  Fragments, Reading

  H. D., Hilda Doolittle, ignorance, literacy, long poem, poem fragments, poetry, Reading, writing

• Fragmentary, No. 22

  When anyone was witty about a contemporary event, she would look perplexed and a little dismayed, as if someone had done something that really should not have been done; therefore her attention had been narrowed down to listening for faux pas. She frequently talked about something being the ‘death of her,’ and certainly anything could have…

  • R L • powell

  November 5, 2018

  Books, Fragments, Reading

  books, character, Djuna Barnes, Jenny Petherbridge, Nightwood, profiles, Reading

• Fragmentary, No. 20

  I do not present this view of history as one that is stable and must prevail. Whatever validity it may claim, it is certain, on its own premises, to be supplanted . . . However accurately we may determine the ‘facts’ of history, the facts themselves and our interpretations of them, and our interpretation of…

  • R L • powell

  September 24, 2018

  Fragments, Reading

  confirmability, contingency, reason, relativism, truth, understanding

• Fragmentary, No. 19

  We must be aware of the dangers that lie in our most generous wishes. Some paradox of our nature leads us, when once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, to go on to make them the objects of our pity, then of our wisdom, ultimately of our coercion. ♦ Lionel Trilling,…

  • R L • powell

  May 17, 2018

  Fragments, Impensive, Reading

  civilization, good intentions, intervention, life, Lionel Trilling, morality, pride, quotes

• Fragmentary, No. 18

  And the triumph of empiricism is jeopardized by the surprising truth that our sense data are primarily symbols. ♦ Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key

  • R L • powell

  May 10, 2018

  Fragments, Reading

  context, empiricism, quotes, science, Susanne K. Langer

• Fragmentary, No. 12

  What is new is not that the world lacks meaning, or has little meaning, or less than it used to have; it is that we seem to feel an explicit and intense daily need to give it meaning: to give meaning to the world, not just some village or lineage. This need to give meaning…

  • R L • powell

  November 16, 2016

  Fragments, Impensive, Reading

  Agué, contemporary life, information, information overload, meaning, supermodernity, the modern