After following this thread on Beckett at infinite thought, I just happened to read this germane passage in Deleuze's Nomadic Thought:
'Whoever reads Nietzsche without laughing, and laughing heartily and often and sometimes hysterically, is almost not reading Nietzsche at all. This is true not only for Nietzsche, but for all the authors who comprise the same horizon of our counter-culture. What shows us our own decadence and degeneracy is the way we feel the need to read in them anguish, solitude, guilt, the drama of communication, the whole tragedy of interiority...And Beckett, I mean, it is difficult not to laugh when you read him, moving from one joyful moment to the next. Laughter, not the signifier. What springs from great books is schizo-laughter or revolutionary joy, not the anguish of our pathetic narcissism, not the terror of our guilt...There is always an indescribable joy that springs from great books, even when they speak of ugly, desperate or terrifying things'
Posted by robin at May 10, 2004 11:18 AMThanks for linking the thread...if only some fucker would buy the damn Badiou/Beckett book! It's gonna get a fairly bad review in the forthcoming issue of 'Radical Philosophy'. But that's cos they're all a bunch of miserable Marxist bastards (unlike funny, good Marxists like Badiou...erm).
I think Beckett would have hated blogs, but that thought sort of cheers me up.
Posted by: infinite thought at May 16, 2004 11:31 PMI'm increasingly getting the feeling that I'll have to read Badiou. Can't say the thought of a return to ontology of any sort fills me with excitement though.
Posted by: undercurrent at May 17, 2004 01:06 AMDon't do it. Really. Don't.
Posted by: Rob at May 29, 2004 09:43 PM
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