Sartre, straight off the bat, mentions the dogshit that is Hellenistic thought, so I think we are going to be friends here. Let's see how this goes.

I had a little bit of a meltdown yesterday about how fucked up the world is, and I realized I couldn't read that book by David Denby anymore. He is too despicable. I can only read so much dumb shit, and I've committed to the canonical dumb shit. I'm just going to list out the titles I will read here in order, and I'll write my thoughts on them. One of my self-imposed 'rules' for this was that I wouldn't spend a lot of time reading 'about the text. I was going to read the text and make my conclusions. I think this David Denby book is ending up being more of a hindrance than help right now because it's driving me absolutely to hate this whole world.

The characteristic feature of specific political structures is that they proclaim abstract principles but refrain from issuing definite commands.

Reading is hard. It's a severe pain sometimes. I am especially reading something complex and non-obvious. It's not like fucking lesson in a novel. I'm always happy to have read because my brain feels complete and I feel powerful, but

I've been thinking about two things the past couple of days. 1st I've been thinking about just as important as this reading is. The quality of my synthesis of this content is so important. So far, I have not dedicated a lot of time to each text, but I just wanted to get through them, think through what I read on my own before I returned to read in more detail about the texts. At this stage, what is important is that I take the time to synthesize on my own what I am reading and what I'm learning from this.

Fanon uses Aristotelian logic to illustrate his points, even borrowing sentences from Aristotle. I am going to have to read more about Aristotle. He is someone I will want to know in and out.

This relates to the 2nd thing I have been thinking about. It is how authors incorporate, quote, take ideas from these older authors and how that builds over time. I am not reading in order right now, but I think it will be healthy for me to continue reading so I can let the ideas build naturally off of each other. Maybe I will return in time to the Wretched of the Earth and better understand the devices he used.

On a personal note, I feel like I had grown from this experiment, which I didn't even expect to take seriously when I started this notion page. It was almost supposed to be a joke. I just wanted to do a little more reading based on an interesting article I read. I do feel like I have radically changed as a person since I started this. Or. I feel like I have been radicalized in the past two years, and this was the icing for me to start thinking about myself and my place in all of this. And to challenge some, now I'm seeing wrong assumptions I made about academia, the purpose of these old writers and historians, the kind of work that brings value to our societies. I hope to every day grow more thoughtful and considerate every. & not to blame me for the journey I am on.

I want to try to be a little more thoughtful than I have previously been with this list. It would be nice to use this as a little more of a synthesis of what I am thinking.

Also, I find it disturbing that I have so much to say about this Denby guy, but then I write one line on Fanon. I wish I could come at what I was reading with the same energy, but I think that all the texts I am reading are complicated, and I am scared to pick an opinion and be wrong about it. Maybe I need to go for it a little more and trust that I will edit out bad ideas before I publish this to 

What do I think about Fanon so far? I think I'd been exposed to a lot of his opinions already from reading things from Bao. Bao is a super radical Vietnamese communist that I found from Dani on Twitter, and now I follow her everywhere. She was the one that recommended this book to me via Instagram, and I downloaded it from her bio. I wouldn't know who Fanon was if it wasn't for her, and I'm reading it because it felt like an appropriate palate cleanser right now to save me from falling down a rabbit hole of the classics. It feels odd to read a book out of order. It feels like I am missing things from the text that I might have had at my disposal if I had first read all of my assigned reading. He is a psychologist (which I don't trust at all) but writes philosophically. I've thought that the way a philosopher writes is so odd, and I don't even know how I would go about adopting that style: Aristotle and Plato kind of meander from thing to thing. I haven't thought about Fanon's structure. It feels like he meanders, but what he is writing would probably more closely resemble an essay if I took a deeper look. This is why people go to college. To have practice writing in these styles and getting feedback on both composition and content.

I wish there were some way to enroll in an excellent program, somewhere cold, like Trinity or St. Andrews something. I wish I had better grades. I've thought that I wonder if I could somehow sneak my way into a program. I feel like I am capable of making myself look extremely impressive. It would take quite a bit of work, though. I wish I could spend five or ten years doing this and not doing other things I don't want to do.

I would recommend that Fanon take a little bit of his advice and decolonize his brain. He talks about how the colonists dehumanize the natives, but I feel like he does the same thing when he psychologizes them in a way that I don't find to be accurate or tasteful.

When I started this, I assumed I would agree with every one I read mostly or that it would be primarily informative, like a textbook. It's so strange to find none of that to be true. I'm afraid I fundamentally have to disagree with almost everything I have read. Then reading Fanon, I expected to agree too, just because he seemed to me to be less of a**hole than the others, but I think I need to drop that expectation from my brain. It's strange how fully this book was recommended to me by someone I feel has exciting politics. How much does she believe that the text is terrific or that there are issues with it?

I think the themes of violence are going to be very interesting in this book. I don't think I was ready for Homer in a lot of ways. I never think about violence in literature or literature being violent. And now I feel like the necessity of violence surrounds me.

I was talking this morning about how we could easily substitute out the talk about colonialism in this book for things that I am seeing occur right now in America

 toward our people. I am hoping she can tell me more about why that is. I feel like when I read this. I knew absolutely nothing.

"What is the reaction of the nationalist parties to this eruption of the peasant masses into the national struggle? We have seen that the majority of nationalist parties have not written into their propaganda the necessity for armed intervention. They do not oppose the continuing of the rebellion, but they content themselves with leaving it to the spontaneous action of the country people. As a whole they treat this new element as a sort of manna fallen from heaven, and pray to goodness that it'll go on falling. They make the most of the manna, but do not attempt to organize the rebellion. They don't send leaders into the countryside to educate the people politically, or to increase their awareness or put the struggle onto a higher level. All they do is to hope that, carried onward by its own momentum, the action of the people will not come to a standstill. There is no contamination of the rural movement by the urban movement; each develops according to its own dialectic."

The nationalist parties do not attempt to give the country's people definite orders, although the latter are perfectly ready to listen to them. They offer them no objective; they hope that this new movement will go on indefinitely and that the bombardments will not put an end to it. Thus we see that even when such an occasion offers, the nationalist parties make no use at all of the opportunity provided to them to integrate the people of the countryside, educate them politically, and raise the level of their struggle. The old attitude of mistrust toward the country is criminally evident.

Shun Presentism — Accept history on its terms.

I say again that no speech-making and proclamation concerning culture will turn us from our fundamental tasks: the liberation of the national territory, a continual struggle against colonialism in its new forms, and an obstinate refusal to enter the charmed circle of mutual admiration at the summit.

boring books

Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
1961

boring books

Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth1961

Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
1961