Anthropological Sleep

"To all those who still wish to talk about man, about his reign or his liberation, to all those who still ask themselves questions about what man is in his essence, to all those who wish to take him as their starting-point in their attempts to reach the truth, to all those who, on the other hand, refer all knowledge back to the truths of man himself, to all those who refuse to formalize without anthropologizing, who refuse to mythologize without demystifying, who refuse to think without immediately thinking that it is man who is thinking, to all these warped and twisted forms of reflection we can answer only with a philosophical laugh - which means, to a certain extent, a silent one."

Michel Foucalt, The Order of Things

Uninflection

"As time and passion dwindle to a pinpoint, the audience has come to understand that it no longer need subject itself to the actual experience of art but can subsume and synthesize faster and more efficiently art that is already processed by critical interpretation. Even better or more efficient when, as the second critic responds to the first, the art is twice removed; even better as the third critic responds to the second, three times removed. When it became clear to me that that reviewers, commentators and professional observers of all stripe were the true wise men of the new epoch, I could also see that with each new exponential twist of the ongoing cultural logarithm, the artist was approaching that ideal utopian moment when he or she would vanish altogether."

Amnesiascope, Steve Erickson

"Meanwhile, the most wonderful moment of the day is that when creation in its innocence asks permission to 'be' once again, as it did on that first morning that ever was. All wisdom seeks to collect and manifest itself at that blind sweet point."

Thomas Merton, quoted by Roger Connah in 10x10