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#todd-mcgowan — Public Fediverse posts

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  1. In this episode of the Why Theory podcast, Todd McGowan points out that when a French radio broadcast talks about ICE, they add an article in front of the word, making it

    L'ICE.

    This is perfection.

    tunein.com/podcasts/Arts--Cult

    #ICEisLICE
    #ICE
    #French
    #WhyTheory
    #WhyThworyPodcast
    #ToddMcGowan
    #ILoveLanguage

  2. This is it, y'all.

    We have arrived at my favorite line in the whole book.

    Are you ready for it?

    Here we go.

    "The great virtue of failure is that everyone can do it...."

    -- #ToddMcGowan,
    #EmbracingAlienation

    He's serious. And so am I. That's my favorite. Boom.

    17/

  3. ...while forcing the subject to pay for the security with strict obedience. No community offers identity for free."

    #ToddMcGowan
    in #EmbracingAlienation: Why We Shouldn't Try to Find Ourselves

    What do we have and/or want: #community, #commons, or #communion?
    (In which I define "communion" a lá #PeterRollins: gathering around shared Lack/alienation. Ftr, that's what I want.)

    #fedizens
    #Americans
    #Democrat
    #Republican
    #liberal
    #conservative
    #progressive
    #totalitarian
    #socialist
    #anarchist

    16/

  4. "...To receive the support that the community offers, I must submit to the implicit demands that hold it together. Members of any community, without exception, must obey its implicit demands.... Sometimes the implicit demands tell members how to relate to the explicit rules--which ones to obey completely, which ones to disregard.... The community's implicit demands create a bond through a shared secret that divides those in on it from those on the outside."

    -- #ToddMcGowan

    14/

  5. "(T)he community provides protection from the unanswerable questions that subjectivity poses for itself. Subjectivity's nagging question receives a comforting answer in the form of a symbolic identity undergirded by the community. But one must look closely and see how every community ultimately fails to deliver the goods. The more I invest myself in a community the more I sense that I don't belong. This alienation is what we must pay attention to."

    #ToddMcGowan
    in #EmbracingAlienation

    12/

  6. From #EmbracingAlienation by #ToddMcGowan:

    "The struggle against racism requires the translation of symbolic identities back into the acts of alienated subjects. Where race appears, we must see the racist act that creates this racial difference. Racism offers subjects a way of avoiding the confrontation with alienation. To challenge racism is to thrust oneself directly into the position of the alienated subject.

    "...Racism only works so long as at least one group of people...

    6/

  7. From Todd Mcgowan’s Embracing Alienation, loc 1998:

    The lure of overcoming alienation entraps subjects in the pursuit of a false possibility that deforms their perspective on existence. Existence becomes the struggle to transcend the obstacles standing in the way of achieving happiness. Unhappiness becomes a state to flee rather than the normal state of existence. Burdened by the image of an unalienated future, one finds oneself fleeing from existence itself. In such a position, there is no possibility for finding satisfaction in the everyday variegations of one’s life.

    Which I think is pretty much as simple as Oliver Burkeman makes out here in loc 483 of his new book. The images of an unalienated future inevitably obscures what it is we can do meaningfully in the present: today rather than tomorrow, this morning rather than this afternoon, now rather than in an hour:

    Almost nobody wants to hear the real answer to the question of how to spend more of your finite time doing things that matter to you, which involves no system. The answer is: you just do them. You pick something you genuinely care about, and then, for at least a few minutes – a quarter of an hour, say – you do some of it. Today. It really is that simple. Unfortunately, for many of us, it also turns out to be one of the hardest things in the world.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M88SE8yiWPM

    And Maria came from Nashville with a suitcase in her hand
    Always kinda sorta wished I looked like Elvis
    And in my head there's all these classic cars and outlaw cowboy bands
    I always kinda sorta wished I was somebody else

    https://markcarrigan.net/2024/10/07/burdened-by-the-image-of-an-unalienated-future-one-finds-oneself-fleeing-from-existence-itself/

    #alienation #ToddMcGowan

  8. For that matter, stop telling *people* who they are. Let them *show* you who they are, as they discover that, over time and with all the growth and transformation that goes along with living as a human in this universe.

    #Identity is not static. And no matter what we call ourselves or identify with, it's all just symbolic anyway. None of us ever know who we truly are,because we are alienated from the things we identify with...and from ourselves.

    Read EMBRACING ALIENATION by #ToddMcGowan.

    2/2

  9. After a long hiatus due to #Covid #brainfog, I am back to #EmbracingAlienation by #ToddMcGowan.

    I'll share more thoughts as I go along. But for now, I'm all about this in the back of the book:

    " #RepeaterBooks is dedicated to the creation of a new reality. The landscape of twenty-first-century arts and letters is faded and inert, riven by fashionable cynicism, egotistical self-reference and a nostalgia for the recent past. Repeater intends to add its voice to those movements that...

    1/