John Steppling

"The patterns of displacement through prison, thus, sever social ties at the same time that they connect distinct places. Society’s margin set in stone, prisons render invisible the mix of poverty, crime, and racial inequality that mark actual punishment and put in its place a compelling mythology of law and order." Volker Janssen ( Sunbelt Lock-Up: Where theSuburbs Met the Super-Max ) "That which had a political face and imagined itself political will unmask itself one day and reveal itself to be a religious movement." Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling) "Who is the Dalai Lama? And why does so much of the Italian left tend to accept his “sanctification” and not see his reactionary … [Read more...]

"Moore:I don’t think that superheroes or superhero comics of today are aimed at children anymore. Q. Who are they aimed at? Teenagers? Moore: I would say it’s considerably older. I think that the average comics reader these days is probably in their 30s, their 40s, their 50s." Alan Moore (Interview with David Marchese, Vulture, 2016) "It is difficult now to put yourself in the shoes of people who were making decisions at that time [in 1938]. Obviously the government of that time, out of fear that German power might lead to complete victory, preferred to ally itself with Hitler’s Germany rather than opposing it. As part of this alliance, there were impositions, including combating and … [Read more...]

"[There] is often, to a smaller or greater extent, a savior or Messiah complex, with the secret thought that one day one will be able to save the world; that the last word in philosophy, or religion, or politics, or art, or something else will be found. This can progress to be a typical pathological megalomania, or there may be minor traces of it in the idea that one’s time “has not yet come.” The one situation dreaded throughout by such a type of man is to be bound to anything whatsoever. There is a terrific fear of being pinned down, or entering space and time completely, and of being the one human being that one is." Marie Louise von Franz (Interviews with Susan Wagner ) "But the … [Read more...]

"He thought of men as fallen, and likely to fall further if they did not defend the walls of civility against the armies of Dulness. He believed (and this is a doctrine valuable to satire) that moral was reflected in linguistic decay; hence his fanatical interest in the inanities of polite conversation and in slang..." Frank Kermode on Jonathan Swift (New Statesman 2012) "...I also had noted that psychopaths have difficulty understanding the emotional content of words that add color and interest to communication. " Robert D. Hare (Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, 1999) "The death drive and the repetition that it installs in the subject follow a … [Read more...]

"The culture in which we live is perhaps the most claustrophobic that has ever existed; in the culture of globalisation, as in Bosch’s hell, there is no glimpse of an elsewhere or an otherwise.” John Berger (Portraits) "Painting's memory nests two supports within each other, since if perspective is the support of imaging, the chessboard, as Hubert Damisch has shown us, is the support of imaging." Rosalind Krauss (Under Blue Cup) "The destruction of the past, or rather of the social mechanisms that link one’s contemporary experience to that of earlier generations, is one of the most characteristic and eerie phe- nomena of the late twentieth century. Most young men and women at the … [Read more...]

"So (Max) Raphael’s answer to Marx’s problem — why is art enduringly moving even though it merely reflects its social context? — is to say that art doesn’t merely reflect its social context. It does reflect it, because the artist’s material, style, the things they want to represent, even the way they see, are historically conditioned; but it doesn’t merely reflect it, because the transformed material speaks of something deeper and more voluntary. It speaks of humanity’s ability to make its own world, to become the subject and not merely the victim of history." Robert Minto (Culture Matters, January 2017 A smuggling operation: John Berger's theory of art) “A man’s features, the bone … [Read more...]

"The word ‘freedom’ resonates so widely within the common-sense understanding of Americans that it becomes ‘a button that elites can press to open the door to the masses’ to justify almost anything. Thus could Bush retrospectively justify the Iraq war. Gramsci therefore concluded that political questions become ‘insoluble’ when ‘disguised as cultural ones’." David Harvey (A Brief History of Neoliberalism) "The centralization of power, even more marked than the concentration of capital, reinforces the interpenetration of economic and political power. The “traditional” ideology of capitalism placed the emphasis on the virtues of property in general, particularly small property—in reality … [Read more...]

"The rose is without why; she blossoms because she blossoms. She pays no attention to herself, does not ask if anyone sees her." Angelus Silesius "I never had a memory for myself, but always for others." Masha Ivashintsova "What you didn't see, don't say...having seen keep quiet." Solon (Apophthegmata) "The capitalistic order produces modes of human relations even in their unconscious representations..." Felix Guattari (in conversation) There is a collective regression to contemporary thinking. Or maybe it is the loss of thinking itself. But overlaying this can be seen a collection of resentments and fears, of desires and identifications with power and aggression. And … [Read more...]