Phatic Workshop

The most highly anticipated comics series of the year ends in the biggest way possible—the whole world burns away according to Tyler’s plan, and a new one he never anticipated is conceived. The meek inherit the Earth, and a final showdown proves that, finally, Roland Barthes is right! --  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club_2   Hm... I wonder what Barthes is right about, precisely.  I'll guess that maybe his book S/Z or more broadly his codes might be what is being referred to, but this doesn't resolve the mystery just yet. Maybe (after looking around a bit more) what Barthes is supposed to be right about is that "there is no one possible meaning but instead 'a plurality of meaning or meaning as plurality'" -- from Searching for Meaning: An Introduction to Interpreting the New Testament , p. 100 -- quoting something from Barthes, but the exact reference is cut off in Google Books.  Perhaps the reference is to "L'analyse structurale...

A long quote from "The philosophy of Simondon: between technology and individuation" by Pascal Chabot, page 18. The inventor  The inventor has a sense of the future and is therefore a historical being. Mircea Eliade, cited by Simondon, described the recent advent of historical self-awareness in modern societies, explaining why 'moderns' prefer invention to adaptation.  Invention was forbidden in archaic societies: it upset the cosmic order.  Traditional peoples had cosmogonies that told of the birth of the world and the life of the gods.  They imitated these mythical narratives.  Their acts took on meaning, 'reality', only insofar as they repeated the acts long ago performed by the gods or the ancestors.  The warrior is brave because the sacred warrior proved his bravery in illo tempore : in the mythical time of origins.  Objects and actions derive their value from the fact that they participate in a reality that transcends them.  Nutrition...

Gianni Vattimo : [O]ne cannot talk with impunity of interpretation; interpretation is like a virus or even a pharmakon that affects everything it comes into contact with. On the one hand, it reduces all reality to message -- erasing the distinction between Natur and Geisteswissenschaften, since even the so-called "hard" sciences verify and falsify their statements only within paradigms or pre-understandings. If "facts" thus appear to be nothing but interpretations, interpretation, on the other hand, presents itself as (the) fact: hermeneutics is not a philosophy but the enunciation of historical existence itself in the age of the end of metaphysics[.] Martin Heidegger : Hermeneutically -- that is to say, with respect to bringing tidings, with respect to preserving a message... it is on purpose that the first page of Being and Time speaks of "Raising again" a question. What is meant is not the monotonous trotting out something that is alwasy the same: bu...

"...when there is little external warfare and competition, the successful groups find it difficult to curtail infighting amongst sub-groups within their society, and their lack of internal cooperation begins to make them vulnerable to attack from outsiders." - From review of Ultrasociety This reminded me of the fact that fighting alternated with Kula exchange in the Trobriands before contact with Westerners.