Archives for June 2017

The Frail Athletes

"Mental health concerns not only health but also the socialization of the modern individual. It challenges the essential elements of individualist societies, like self-value, the opposition between responsibility and illness, the ability to succeed in life, the ability to educate one’s children, and so on. " Alain Ehrenberg "I shall light up the eyes of your enraptured wife, And give back to your son his strength and his color; I shall be for that frail athlete of life The oil that hardens a wrestler's muscles." Baudelaire (William Aggeler tr., The Spirit of Wine) "Some have had to do with the art of theatre, but finding it too arduous, chose to join the theatre. These are … [Read more...]

The Only Possible One

"‘The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness’, wrote Orwell in ‘Politics and the English Language’, and his words are as true today as they were in 1946. The Bank stresses the importance of what it’s saying—key, global, innovative, enlightened—but its words are hopelessly opaque. What is it really trying to say—or to hide?" Franco Moretti & Dominique Pestre "Bankspeak: The Language of World Bank Reports "Two souls dwell in the breast of every complete bourgeois: the soul of the entrepreneur and the soul of the respectable middle-class man . . . the spirit of enterprise is a synthesis of the greed of gold, the desire for adventure, the love of exploration . . . the … [Read more...]