From: Laurie Colson <lauriecolson-AT-yahoo.com>
Date: 10 Feb 2010 09:27:29 UTC   (02:27:29 AM in author's locale)
To: Situationist <situationist-AT-lists.nothingness.org>

Sarte took mescaline and hallucinated for a year or so before writing Nausea. I have enough trouble seeing nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. You say after the war, things being so kaleidoscopic,"hardly anyone knew what reality was." In your previous post "Decades of spectacle, and no one knows what's real anymore"  What is this reality you speak of? You want to flee via airplane to heaven (in the Meaning of Life- Cars) hallucinagens, say you got your passport ready- but there is no New World. Maybe the urge to flee will become confrontational. The Revolution of Everyday Life is a big hit here, thanks. And Genet, the Theater of the Absurd. Reading Robert Fillliou (1926-87) whose singular practice was rooted in his faith in the clumsy playfulness of games, misunderstandings, jokes, and time spent with friends. He had a space with George Brecht and their wives, lots of friends and collaborators, all activities focused on humor and play.
Contributions were solicited of any artwork,toy,game idea or object that could exist as a gift. The idea ws the Cedille would be a place for things that a traditional gallery would have trouble selling and should follow one general guideline: Whatever you do, do something else.

--- On Tue, 2/9/10, JEAN PARR <jeanparr-AT-btinternet.com> wrote:

From: JEAN PARR <jeanparr-AT-btinternet.com>
Subject: Re: Orientalism- Nuff Said...Freedom/Sarte
To: "Situationist" <situationist-AT-lists.nothingness.org>
Date: Tuesday, February 9, 2010, 3:52 AM

Well you know you dont need a guru to be splendidly desperately romantic.
Debord had always an eye on his image for posterity just like Blair.
I think his films are self indulgent crap. You get the idea better in Fritz Lang Metropolis and Alphaville. Nobody ever talks about the Revolution of Everyday Life. That is splendidly desperately romantic, just like me in fact.
I have to write this essay on what LSD does to you. Its a few decades since I dropped any. To be honest I could do with a tab right now.
You go to heaven in an aeroplane thats for sure. I knew that when I was five and I dreamt about it last night.
Paris musta been a heady place just after the war. Like a champagne cork popping with the Occupation ending. We used to occupy Polytechnics. So out of all this ferment comes Sartre and whathaveyou. The thing is stuff must have looked so kaleidoscopic, what with the merchants of death no longer being around, that hardly anyone knew what reality was.
You get a better idea I think from Jean Anouilh "Huis Clos" which is all about dead people walking around. I think it translates as "In Camera"
Then of course there is Jean Genet. Thats was almost unmentionable in some circles. If you want a heart in your Situationism then go to Vaneigem.
Sartre gave us the existential Western. That was the best thing he ever did

Jean

--- On Mon, 8/2/10, Laurie Colson <lauriecolson-AT-yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: Laurie Colson <lauriecolson-AT-yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: Orientalism- Nuff Said...Freedom/Sarte
> To: "Situationist" <situationist-AT-lists.nothingness.org>
> Date: Monday, 8 February, 2010, 0:16
> I did a double take on the Sarte
> being quoted as advising arabs to murder frenchman to be
> free. I thought he was cool before the radical conversion.
> In Being and Nothingness, the moral standpoint most severly
> criticised was the spirit of seriousness, or idealism,
> leading people to think that there were inherent values
> in things and discoverable by men. In the end maybe he is a
> literary and not philosophical giant. His 
> writing is highly personal and individual in flavour. You
> can see the world thru his eyes by end of Being and
> Nothingness, the struggle felt as worthwhile, if only to
> learn how it feels to  be so splendidly desparately
> romantic. Disappointing that after this vision he seems
> to present us with a not very attractive way out, to become
> Marxists. An essentially literary metaphysics. Eccentric
> Marxist, Sarte.  At least it could be said of Debord, he
> knew how to party... if I knew it was going  to be this
> kind of party,       I would have stuck my dick in the
> mashed potatoes.
> 2/5/10, JEAN PARR <jeanparr-AT-btinternet.com>
> wroFrom: JEAN PARR <jeanparr-AT-btinternet.com>
> Subject: Re: Orientalism- Nuff Said...
> To: "Situationist" <situationist-AT-lists.nothingness.org>
> Date: Friday, February 5, 2010, 1:05 AM
>
>
>
> Well yes some good did come out of Europes guilt trip look
> at how Chirac was reluctant to get into bed with Blair and
> Bush over the Iraq invasion, not willing to preside amongst
> other things over the looting of Mesopotamian artefacts and
> the trashing of Iraqi history.
> I cant believe this country, the UK can go about its car
> wash culture knowing that its fucked some other country up
> big time. Im so angry about it that in my head I no longer
> count myself as a British subject. In my head my passport is
> not to protect me abroad but to allow me to flee at the
> earliest opportunity. 
> We have an inquiry into the way the run up to war was
> handled running here and the press is treating it like a
> shooting gallery
> What we need here is an earthquake to wake everyone up out
> of the deep sleep. Decades of Spectacle and no one can tell
> what is real anymore
>
> Jean
>
>
> --- On Thu, 4/2/10, Laurie Colson <lauriecolson-AT-yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> > From: Laurie Colson <lauriecolson-AT-yahoo.com>
> > Subject: Orientalism- Nuff Said...
> > To: "To:" <situationist-AT-lists.nothingness.org>
> > Date: Thursday, 4 February, 2010, 20:05
> >
> > I know this is a long review to post, I got to
> thinking I
> > was being an 'orientalist', and then found this, and
> thought
> > it looked like an interesting insight into Edward
> Said.
> > There is situationist content, I believe.
> >  
> > The New Criterion
> > Books
> > January 2008
> > Enough Said
> > by David Pryce-Jones
> > On Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's
> > Orientalism by Ibn Warraq.
> > In the aftermath of World War II, a tide of
> nationalism
> > swept over Asia and Africa. It was
> > understandable. Europeans had just devastated their
> own
> > continent. Bystanders if not participants in
> > the Holocaust, they could no longer claim any moral
> > authority to be ruling over others. Furthermore
> > their political classes had almost invariably
> maintained
> > that they were preparing their empires for
> > ultimate independence. For the likes of Nasser,
> Nkrumah,
> > Sukarno, Ben Bella and Boumedienne in
> > Algeria, Nehru and Gandhi, and Ho Chi Minh, the time
> for
> > self-rule had arrived. The Third World
> > duly took shape on the international stage. One
> central
> > element was systematic resentment against
> > the West, a resentment ably attacked by Ibn Warraq in
> his
> > Defending the West.[1]
> > Third World leaders were mostly military men ready
> and
> > willing to resort to violence. To mobilize
> > the masses in support, they denigrated the previous
> > European administrations as so many
> > embodiments of the white man and his manifest faults.
> > “Imperialist,” “colonialist,” “racist”
> served
> > as
> > so many collective curse-words. It is doubtful that
> they
> > really believed the sloganeering and
> > stereotyping so useful to them. As soon as they
> themselves
> > were securely in power, they hurried to
> > westernize their countries as best they could,
> evidently
> > wanting similar universities and hospitals and
> > armies, sports, and even pop music. So far-reaching
> has
> > imitation been that some of the new
> > nationalist rulers incorporated second-hand the
> fascism,
> > Communism, and anti-Semitism that had
> > wrecked Europe.
> > The British responded to Third World nationalism in a
> > welcoming phrase about “the winds of
> > change,” as though those mobilizing enmity towards
> them
> > had simply blown in with the weather.
> > Only the French made determined efforts to resist, and
> then
> > in vain. Defenders of empire had always
> > been few and far between. Treasurers resented the
> > expense—research shows that the imperial
> > powers all had to pay out immense and unaffordable
> sums on
> > maintaining possessions abroad, and
> > the money would have been better spent at home. The
> > calculations are uncertain, but it appears that
> > Britain alone may possibly have enjoyed some small
> > financial benefit from empire. Military staffs
> > resented the posting abroad of troops needed in the
> > European theater. Empire-builders such as Lord
> > Cromer, Lord Curzon, and Alfred Milner, or Jules Ferry
> and
> > Marshal Lyautey in France, could only
> > advance arguments about responsibility for others and
> a
> > mission civilisatrice. Hard-headed
> > colleagues listened to these abstractions with
> skepticism.
> > Intellectuals in Europe went much further, pleading
> guilty
> > to all the accusations levelled against
> > them by Third World nationalists. They and their
> > predecessors had always been constant and
> > enthusiastic critics of empire, and now were thrilled
> to
> > have their diatribes against their own
> > countries thrown back at them, as it were by clever
> > students and disciples. Violence committed by
> > the ruled against the rulers won their applause. This
> > attitude of opposition starts with the delight so
> > the ruled against the rulers won their applause. This
> > attitude of opposition starts with the delight so
> > widely expressed in Britain over the loss of the
> American
> > colonies—even the conservative-minded
> > Edmund Burke supported the colonists. Innumerable
> > nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers
> > treated whatever reflected badly on the imperial power
> as a
> > ru
>
>
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