TRUMP’S EAR, MAGIC TRICKS AND THE MYTH OF INFALLIBILITY All the powers, all the institutions speak of themselves through denial, in order to attempt, by simulating death, to escape their real death throes. Power can stage its own murder to rediscover a glimmer of existence and legitimacy. Such was the case with some American presidents: […]
Photograph by Sam Sherratt ’Everything is metamorphosed into its opposite to perpetuate itself in its expurgated form.’ — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (1981) ∆ The word ‘kitsch’ entered the English language from German (kitsch, meaning gaudy trash, from the dialect word kitschen, to smear or coat). It was much used by art critics in the […]
These words are from a brief but memorable conversation the journalist Ron Suskind had with Karl Rove, the chief political adviser and Machiavellian ‘teacher of tricks’ to the Bush dynasty. Rove was senior adviser and Deputy Chief of Staff during the George W Bush administration, as well as heading the Offices of Political Affairs, Public […]
THE CONSPIRACY MYTH by Charles Eisenstein — A Response ‘The first hints of a philosophy of the ultimate revolution — the revolution which lies beyond politics and economics, and which aims at total subversion of the individual’s psychology and physiology — are to be found in the Marquis de Sade, who regarded himself as the […]
OF CATS AND CONSPIRACIES The Orpheus Pavement (detail) “The idea of leopards still living in Europe is very powerful. Every year a new and ferocious creature turns up in England, one that exists only in newspaper columns, vividly imprecise eyewitness reports, blurry photographs of black pussy cats and our eternal appetite for monsters: the Beast […]
‘Quite simply, the lethal text is a text that, when read, renders the reader incapable of reading. It destroys the reader’s mind, inducing a crippling insanity. Only those who have read a lethal text know what it says… but they are in no position to share their knowledge.’