Log24

“The dialectic is the play that the last instance opens up
between itself and other ‘instances’, but this dialectic is
materialist: it is not played out up in the air, it is played out
in the play opened up by the last instance, which is material.”

— Louis Althusser, as quoted by Christopher Bray at
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/february-2020/inveterate-ignoramus/

See also Althusser in this  journal.

This morning's previous post, on sacred space,
linked to "Positively White Cube Revisited,"
an article by one Simon Sheikh.

Sheikh writes well, but he seems to be a disciple
of the damned Marxist lunatic Louis Althusser.

As Pynchon put it in Gravity's Rainbow ,
"For every kind of vampire, there is a kind of cross."

In this case, a video starring Sheikh on the exhibition "All That Fits"
suggests, by its filming date (May 27, 2011),  a Maltese  cross.

"The stuff that dreams are made of." — Bogart

(See also Oct. 25, 2012.)

Suggested by a recent review of a
book by Richard Kearney:

The World,  the Flesh, and the Devil.

Talk amongst yourselves.

The New York Times  version of the philosophers' stone:

In the Times 's latest sermon from THE STONE, Gary Gutting, a professor of philosophy at Notre Dame, discusses

"…the specific and robust claims of Judaism, Christianity and Islam about how God is concretely and continually involved in our existence."

A search shows that Gutting's phrase "specific and robust" has many echoes in biotechnology, and a few in software development. The latter is of more interest to me than the former. (The poetically inclined might say that Professor Gutting's line of work is  a sort of software development.)

"As a developer, you need a specific and robust set of development tools in the smallest and simplest package possible."

— EasyEclipse web page

Here are two notes on related material:

Specific— The Pit:

See a search for "harrowing of Hell" in this journal.

("…right through hell there is a path…." –Malcolm Lowry)

Robust— The Pendulum:

See a search for "Foucault's Pendulum" in this journal.

(“Others say it is a stone that posseses mysterious powers…. often depicted as a dazzling light.  It’s a symbol representing power, a source of immense energy.  It nourishes, heals, wounds, blinds, strikes down…. Some have thought of it as the philosopher’s stone of the alchemists….”

— Foucault’s Pendulum )

Those puzzled by why the NY Times  would seek the opinions of a professor at a Catholic university may consult Gutting's home page.

He is an expert on the gay Communist Michel Foucault, a student of Althusser.