Eva as Stone

'I can't recall the date Eva turned into stone. As a marble statue of associate tyranny frozen in a tireless and unchanging pose, or to read the epitah on her tomb, for her body underneath or our relation's demise. The body not the person who has left the world to reside inside my head. The bullet hole, the 'eighth orifice' meant for my head was staged. And the rumour that we fled to Argentina together, History wants to pardon us, for us to live until a ripe old age, for our German tragic drama to sound like an American fairy tale, of this Teutonic history to Walt Disney myth, like how I turned the world into a theatre of war. On the date of her departure, I, the living dead, could only be mute and inert, sadly for one who was once feared and respected for his voice and gesture.' - Ernst Auer
'Ich kann mich nicht erinnern, das Datum Eva in Stein verwandelt. Wie eine Marmorstatue der Tyrannei in ein unermüdlicher und unveränderlich darstellen, oder die epitah auf ihr Grab zu lesen, denn ihr Körper unter oder unsere Beziehung Ableben eingefroren. Der Körper nicht derjenige, der die Welt verlassen hat, um in meinem Kopf befinden. Das Einschussloch war der achte Öffnung "für meinen Kopf gemeint inszeniert. Und das Gerücht, dass wir nach Argentinien floh zusammen, will Geschichte uns entschuldigen, für uns bis ins hohe Alter zu leben, für unsere deutschen Trauerspiels wie ein amerikanischer Märchen Sound, dieser teutonischen Geschichte von Walt Disney Mythos, wie, wie ich drehte mich um die Welt in ein Theater. Am Tag ihrer Abreise, konnte ich die lebenden Toten, nur stumm und träge, traurig für jemanden, der einmal gefürchtet und respektiert für seine Stimme und Gestik.'- Ernst Auer

Petty issue about names - Chien Swee-Teng

Art historian Michael Sullivan said in a conference in Singapore he still insists in using Peking (the old name) instead of Beijing because that how they termed it in English, like how London is Lun Dun in Mandarin. [some in the hall laughed, perhaps to show they know how to appreciate the wit and humour of a British academic.]
If the director Lee Ang is Ang Lee in the West because that is how names are ordered there, then this old historian of Chinese art should be Sullivan Michael or Chaelmic Vanlisul or Leahcim Navillus or Navillus Leahcim.

Didactic Chinese Poem - Chien Swee-Teng

1.1
'I love the culture but the party deforms it.'
Kong Lan Jiao Wei
1.1.2
The Culture of Defeat it must be
The Tradition of Servility we are proud to keep
If I have to be colonised to 'retain' my culture
I would rather be a barbarian.
1.2
Cultured but '... it is so sick to see
a Chinese painting teacher spilling
black ink intentionally on the thighs of a young female student and offer to clean it'
Or 'calling her late at night, after ten, saying he needs help at the studio.'
Fatherly figure, brotherly gestures.
2.1
The border,
the places, provinces,
and lines that demarcate.
2.2
Not Chinese but Hong Kongers
Not Chinese but Peranakans
Not Chinese but Taiwanese.
The many Not Chinese but...
2.1.2
Yang says, Low Gek Nam said,
'Lines do not exist in reality,
it is the curve, the turn.'
So lines exist,
due to the limitation of our perception.
2.3
The question of nationality,
the question of race
are false questions.
This should not be a question
if one prefers not to change the surname into last name.
2.3.1
But the language,
to think
about it, as another question,
is not to understand
why it is hard
for this to be written or read in Chinese

'for a nobody starting with nothing and from nowhere in particular'

Machiavelli was a later discovery, and in my view he went a lot further than
Marx on a number of issues, for example in trying to conceive the conditions and
kinds of political action in its pure form, that is to say at the conceptual level. What
struck me again was the radical manner in which he took into account the
aleatory nature of every conjuncture. In addition, he revealed that what was
needed, if Italian national unity was to be achieved, was for a nobody starting
with nothing and from nowhere in particular, but outside the framework of
an established State, to bring together the fragmented elements of a divided
country, without any preconceived notion of unity which might have been
formulated in terms of existing political concepts (all of which were bad).We
have not yet, I believe, explored all the implications of this piece of political
thinking, the first of its kind and sadly without sequel. - Louis Althusser

Academic philosophy cannot tolerate Lenin

Academic philosophy cannot tolerate Lenin (or Marx for the matter) for
two reasons, which are really one and the same. On the one hand, it cannot
bear the idea that it might have something to learn from politics and from
a politician. And on the other hand, it cannot bear the idea that philosophy
might be the object of a theory, i.e. of an objective knowledge. - Louis Althusser

Clint Eastwood and Aleatory Materialism

In a two-page note he wrote in 1986 titled ‘Portrait du philosophe matérialiste’,
Althusser refers to the unknown, perhaps even outlaw, hero of
American Westerns typical of the popular culture of his own era, someone who
jumps on to a moving train without knowing whence it comes or where it is
going, then gets off at a small station and heads for the saloon to quench his
thirst:

Saloon, beer, whiskey. ‘Where d’ya hail from, bud?’ ‘From a long way off.’
‘Where ya headed?’ ‘Dunno!’ ‘Might have some work for ya.’ ‘Okay’.

The hero in the Westerns is the figure of an aleatory materialist, who does not
know the beginning or goal of his long journey. He is, nevertheless, a positive hero,
not a villain, even if the hero is an outlaw. In the town he gains the trust
of the people, reluctantly fastens the sheriff’s badge on his chest, presents his
own unique interpretation of the law, curbs the villains and schemers who
have terrorised the town, returns order for the time being and then disappears
into the sunset of the desert without knowing how long his good fortune
will continue or whether he will soon be killed by a bullet or arrow in some
skirmish.

Nobody or nothing forces the hero to jump on to that particular train nor to
get off at that particular station, nor to take on the job of the sheriff. The hero is
not a cavalry officer who merely obeys the orders of his superiors, nor is he a
city dweller or someone representing the federal state, as perhaps the previous
sheriff was, but who was unable to fulfill his legal duties.
- Mikko Lahtinen, Politics and Philosophy 'Althusser’s Aleatory Machiavelli', p.178

The ‘Germany’ where Fascisms are born is not a territory or a population - Andre Glucksmann, The Master Thinkers, pp.37-47

The ‘Germany’ where Fascisms are born is not a territory or a
population but a text and an attitude to texts which became
established long before Hitler.
[…]
Equivalence of a text with a territory—true, for the last five
hundred years, and with some exceptions. But it is in the
armed institution of the text that we have to see the active
side of this equivalence: the text lays down the law for the
territory.
[…]:
Texts do not simply serve the exercise of power, they are that
very exercise, they subject people. Even more than the chains
of slavery, they are part of that slavery. Policemen inside the
heads of those who subjected them, the great texts of power
in Europe are not in the service of the strategies of domination,
they are these strategies themselves.