Farewell, 2009

2009 (嚴格來講是從08年底開始)，可以說是我目前為止的人生中變化最大的一年吧！

Knowing / Ethics

Knowing is a direct material engagement, a practice of intra-acting with the world as part of the world in its dynamic material configuring, its ongoing articulation... Ethics is about mattering, about taking account of the entangled materializations of which we are a part, including new configurations, new subjectivities, new possibilities - even the smallest cuts matter.

-- Karen Barad, Meet the Universe Halfway

otaku culture

Today's subculture (otaku culture in Japan) chooses videogame wars over street-riot opposition, deviance over activism, solipsistic erotic fantasy over sexual freedom, and hollow identity over existential angst. This subculture has long abandoned the ideals of modern humanism, embracing instead what Yumiko Iida calls a postmodern "nihilistic nationalism" linked to a "highly media-permeated and technologically driven socio-cultural environment," which is "devoid of meaning, historical depth, and empirically grounded subjectivity." (Takashi Murakami 村上隆, Little Boy: p256-7)

Reason

"Reason is always a region carved out of the irrational—not sheltered from the irrational at all, but traversed by it and only defined by a particular kind of relationship among irrational factors. Underneath all reason lies delirium, and drift." 
    -- Gilles Deleuze, Desert Islands, p. 262.