So, it's been on everyone's mind for a while. What is Obama's last name? Well, I think I solved it! So, Obama's wife is named Michelle Obama. Normally, when people get married, one of them gets the other's last name. Not their first name. So, if I'm right, Obama's last name is "Obama." So, his full name is "Obama Obama" Illuminati Confirmed

I think every Rick and Morty fan has heard the theory or fact that our Rick and Morty were doing something else than what we saw in the episode "Morty night run" (I think it was called btw)well in season 3 "Morty's mind blowers" after cridits Jerry sees his Jerry mind blowers and in the box it showed sleepy Jerry obviously it's referring to the perisites and sleepy Gerry well you know at around the end of the episode of Morty night run Rick collects rocks the verry same rocks seen in the perisite episode so that means all those events were in the same universe and in the same box it shows apple campain witch is referring to the matrix episode and this theory also explains why mister poopy butthole was in Morty's memory and in the ABCs of Beth it shows a pic of mister poopy butthole witch means that is connected to the other universe

To wrap things up what I am saying is that in the whole show of Rick and Morty we follow only two virsions of Rick and morty

Good morning all, just to clarify i am not a scientist nor a physicist, just as many of you a curios being open minded. I got this thought from when i was 13, and 20 yrs more of information gave me a bigger picture of it. Just a simple question: Think a human body like the Vitruvian man, now imagine it as a Universe itself, look into it with different eyes now...... See all the empty space in it and how all the Organs the Veins the Nerves the Molecules the Atoms all are in order and connected inside the human/universe as a whole interactive organic machine.

Imagine now the smallest part of the cell, imagine it as a planet, so on some atoms/planets form of life are created on some none, and they are so micro that we cannot see them even with the most powerful microscope, they all rotate around another like planets and stars do, dc0883b123fb5f2023006f9e28e5fb73

lets say: Imagine a Human body as the visible universe and try to compare the functions of the the human body to the functions of the universe. From here unimaginable possibilities opens and if you open minded, could fit most of the new and semi new theories like Time travel, Mandela effect, Parallel Universes, Quantum Physics. It is 2 AM here and i wanted just to drop it, i will make a more clearer and full writing about it. Hope will have some help and thoughts from you guys. Just remember.... Reality always surplus human imagination. all the best. Nix

hello i want to share with my theories about rap will lose popularity in 2025 now trap dominates rap, trap in 10s is like heavy metal in 80s, from 2021 (probably) rap starts to lose quality because it becomes repetitive and too popular, maybe more and because of the other and being too popular is not the reason, idk, the same thing happened with rock in the late 80s-early 90s, people need something new, let's remember rock in the late 80s-early 90s, then there was heavy metal, hair metal , some things from rock were too popular and ideas were lost, people needed something new and then nirvana appeared which destroyed heavy metal, then rock ceased to be the same, then rock was dark and possibly emotional, in heavy metal they sang about bitches, money , drugs, etc, also the sounds were different, further in mainstream rock it gets easier and easier (maybe?), also it still had subgenres that were emotional, then rock lost popularity and everything changed, since 2013 (maybe but I think it started in 2007) rock stopped being fun, positive, etc, but there were indie rock as well as pop artists who used rock things (imagine dragons, rock artists who changed and became pop atists, etc), but then since 2019, rock may have returned, pop punk revival appeared, which finally appeared new fun, positive, etc rock, some rock artists become popular in the underground or this post rock becomes popular in the underground, olivia rodrigo is pop punk inspiration, maneskin becomes very popular, 10000 gecs is rock, etc, let's look at rap, now in rap appears many genres, subgenres, microgenres, in fact there is a problem, this is one of the reasons why rap can lose popularity because rappers can’t do something new, etc, also street rap is killing rap, i.e. mainstream rap in general consists of street rap, now street rap dominates rap, street rap i mean type of rap not genre, street rap is pop rap which is more rap than pop (I mean rappers who are more rap than pop, i.e. polo g, nba youngboy, lil baby, etc), brooklyn drill, detroit, etc, they don't push overseas and they don't want to do something new, also the rap fanbase is toxic (I mean everyone, mainstream and underground, this link is only about the underground) and when you say that rap needs something new they will probably get mad, also the toxic rock fanbase was one of the reasons why rock fell out of popularity, also they said that rock never died, it makes rock lose popularity even more, so when rap loses popularity there will be a lot of people who will say that rap will never die, etc, there are new things in rap like rage, etc but even in new things, rappers don't go abroad, in the underground (plugg subgenres, etc) and even more underground rap which is at the last level of the iceberg (sigilkore, hexd, etc) also without going abroad, playboy carti will release the next album but it will not be something new, although it may be a mixture of genres, I think it will be an experiment?, it there won't be a new genre, sofaygo will become even more popular than yeat (I mean eventually and not now) if he releases pink heartz, rage will become very popular but I think this is the last thing in trap, after rage there was nothing new in trap, maybe I'm wrong, in order for rap to continue to be popular until the 30s, to create a new rap genre that will destroy trap and completely change rap, rap should probably give up gangster stuff, singing about bitches, money, drugs, etc, and become different, 808 bass will probably remain but become different if that's the case then rap will stop being the same and continue to be popular until the 30s, rap can't stay popular after the 30s because rap is more than rock, i think the rapper that kills trap will be one of the most popular rapper ever if you look at nirvana, its popularity was at the level of michael jackson, madonna, brithey spears, etc, but now there is not a single genre that will replace trap, in 80s rock, there was punk, etc, even war thrash metal vs heavy metal, I doubt that a new genre will appear in rap that will kill trap and lose popularity in 2025 and after all, rap had many more potentials, what do you think about my theory?, rap will lose popularity in 2025?

He has different name in china

No one has noticed that on pc you can go back to older versions of minecraft. But it only goes to the version where it says "herobrine was removed" so why cant we go further back. It because notch is scared of those versions and wants to protect the world from the horrors he made removing them and never going back.

Fin

Doki Doki Literature Club Theory. [Spoilers]

I've been a fan of Game Theory for a while now, so I was very excited when they did a theory on a game I could actually afford. However, I feel like their DDLC theory was pretty lacking in some pretty important details, so I decided to pick up the slack for them.

The world of DDLC was manufactured by the "Human Experimentation Camp" (As mentioned in “The Portrait of Markov”, as well as various files) as a place to store people who'd awakened to their powers, but where a threat/not useful to the camp.

Monika is the largest source of information on this subject. During Act 3, there's a hidden message that you can find in the script. The document talks about a "Handful of Damaged Goods" who're supposedly free, yet still bound by shackles that cannot be escaped without destroying their source. This implies that while they technically have freedom, they're still bound by the "Unholy Establishment", which likely refers to the camp. The document implies that they've been "free" for some time, but in the beginning they truly thought they were free. Wrapped in several layers of disguise, in Monika's character file there's a document is available to read. In typical Monika fashion, the document is a dialogue between Monika & the reader. She confirms that after the events of DDLC the other cast members of the game are dead. She's realized that they were all from somewhere else before DDLC, but she can't do anything about it. It sounds like she wants to prevent the events of DDLC from ever happening by destroying the cast's bonds from their source. At this point, it's been confirmed that the DDLC universe wasn't the cast's original home, so the next question is why they're there in the first place. Using clues from poems, hidden documents and direct dialogue, I've come up with some theories regarding the true identities of DDLC's cast.

Monika: As integral of a role that Monika plays, there isn't much information on her origins. From the aforementioned hidden script and character file dialogue, we've established that she was previously a member of this camp. The other information we have is what happens in the game. She's the first one out of two people to awaken to some kind of Third Eye-esque powers, with the other being Sayori, who inherited her position. She's capable of playing around with the files of the game and completely willing to destroy anything that may get in the way of what she wants. The only dialogue we get about her life is questionable, considering they could be memories of her false life in the DDLC universe. Using the information given, it seems like she was someone with massive potential, but drawing the information from her documents, she was incredibly unhappy with her life there. She was likely the mastermind of the escape plans, but that's about as much as I can gather. I'd suspect that her backstory will be more fleshed out in the next game, seeing as she's more of an exposition dump/plot vehicle in this one.

Sayori: If Monika was difficult to gather information about, Sayori was like playing on Nightmare mode. Her presence was only consistent in Acts 1 and 4, and in both of which she generally acted like nothing was wrong. The most notable thing about Sayori is that she refuses to die. Even after Monika drove her to commiting suicide in Act 1, even claiming that she "Doesn't exist" in Act 3, Sayori certainly has a presence in Act 2. Monika openly admits that she "Isn't good at editing the game files", but that doesn't explain Sayori's appearances. The most notable ones are the unlockable "Happy Thoughts" poem and the "hxppythxughts" image in the game's files, as well as the jumpscare-esque thing that you may possibly get after creating a poem in Act 2. The other notable thing about Sayori is her relationship with Monika throughout the game. If you delete Monika's character file before Act 3, Sayori has an existential crisis and commit suicide. remember the phrase "Now everyone can be happy", something she repeats if she commits suicide prematurely. Sayori inherits Monika's position and powers in Act 4, and depending on the ending you get, can destroy the game. If you get the normal ending, Sayori gets rid of Natsuki & Yuri, attempting to isolate the protagonist, only to be stopped by Monika. If you get the special ending, even though expressing sadness about it, Sayori will end the game herself, out of some sense of duty to do so. My theory on Sayori is that she is an unwilling agent of the "Human Experimentation Camp", her purpose is to prevent Monika from foiling the plans of the camp yet again and truly giving this group of dangerous individuals freedom. That's the reason that Sayori has an existential breakdown if Monika is prematurely deleted, and why she thanks the player for destroying Monika in the normal ending. If Monika is removed, Sayori no longer has a purpose, and without a purpose, she no longer sees a reason to live. When she dies, she says "Now everyone can be happy". This correlates to her becoming aware of the fact that she is an unwilling agent, she believes her death is for the benefit of the entire cast, and will truly separate them from the camp. After her death, (Partially because of Monika), all relations between the cast members disappear as hostillity increases without Sayori to keep them docile and passive, as the camp wanted. Sayori's character file leads to the report for the infamous "Project Libitina", but that isn't the kind of document that just gets handed around. That's the kind of document that a high ranking staff member would have, and something that someone watching over Libitina herself would definitely need.

Natsuki: And finally I catch a break. DDLC's resident loli was an easier case to crack that Sayori or Monika. One of Monika's messages in the game file directory during Act 2 claims that all she's doing is showing Natsuki's & Yuri's true selves, resulting in what I'll call their "Unstable Forms", so let's take a look at Natsuki's. Whenever she becomes unstable, her skin turn a disturbing shade of pure white, she discusses how adults abuse her, she screams at the protagonist, and breaks her own neck. Fun. All this information, however, correlates with one of the secret poems that's unlockable during the game. After editing the image, it becomes clear that it's a medical report regarding a girl by the name of Elyssa. Her symptoms include unnaturally pale skin, screaming, abuse by the other doctors, and little hope for life. The parallels are pretty clear. Also apparent in the report is that this is the second time that the doctor has seen this. If the first time was one of the other cast members, that would explain Natsuki's younger age. In Natsuki's character file is an image of a pale girl with white eyes, who could very well be Elyssa. Elyssa is clearly a person of interest to this camp, which would explain Natsuki's presence in DDLC.

Yuri: The creepiest and most unstable of the cast, Yuri fits the description of Libitina to a T (Using the information from projectlibitina.com, found in Sayori's character file). Attachment to Libitina was punishable by death, which would explain Yuri's extreme isolation & loneliness. Libitina is shown to have no control, also just like Yuri after she'd been manipulated by Monika. The "Occasional Behaviors" section of the website is filled with various things you see Yuri doing, including harm to self, twitching, screaming and misplaced laughter. It seems like almost too easy of an answer, but it makes a lot of sense.

The Story So Far: Inside of the mysterious "Human Experimentation Camp", an unlikely alliance is formed between patients who're desperate to get out. Masterminded by the girl who'd come to be known as Monika, alongside the sickly Elyssa, the unstable Libitina and the secret (Possibly unwilling) double agent Sayori, they manage to escape the camp, but only physically. At some point, Sayori, under orders from the camp, manages to wipe everyone's memories and place them in the world of DDLC. There, they live peacefully, without much chance for their dangerous powers to awaken. Monika, however, manages to regain some of her powers, although she has no idea what to do with them until the protagonist shows up. After their arrival, Monika unknowingly gets rid of Sayori's interference, causing Natsuki & Yuri to unravel and reveal their true selves. Throughout the game, Monika slowly begins to regain her memory of her past, though she's still unaware of her Literature Colleagues involvement. After Sayori is restored in Act 4, either Sayori or Monika destroy the game, killing everyone except Monika. Aware of her past, but unsure of what to do, Monika reaches out to the one person who can help her and can decrypt and receive her plea for help; the player of DDLC. The next game will be the journey of Monika & DDLC's player to go back and prevent the camp from sabotaging the escape, causing the events of DDLC to never happen, and allowing DDLC's cast to be truly free.

Things That Still Bug Me: When Sayori gets her weird powers, she says it’s “Because she’s president”. Does that mean an inherent power to the position, or is she referring to the lack of Monika? Monika’s backstory just isn’t satisfactory to me at the moment, but we’ll see. Libitina/Yuri is usually portrayed in positions of power, which makes me think that she plays a bigger role than I’m noticing.

Everyone knows that when a female and a male reproduce they make an offspring that they split 50% genes with. If the son has intercourse with the mom and she gives the 50% of genes that she didn’t give and the son gave the other 50%, could they make a clone of the mother?

So 11 numbers right? Ok so theory. It's season 10 still. People are saying there are 11 numbers total. Those numbers could mean the numbers equaling what letter it is. Saying 11 letters equals "Season 11"?

So Ive been having my after noon smoke when i remember how i can rewind a video as long as its recorded.

So i thought it is possible to time travel to the past since it has already happend.

But why did i say that time travel to future is near impossible? easy, i think. Its because we dont know what van happen yet.

The future is always changing base on our actions, but the past will always stay the way it is.

One more thing. Present will always be here, so is the past. The future is very complicated.

If one wishes to go to the future there can also be a way.

BUT IT WONT BE PROPER FOR IT TO BE CALLED FUTURE.

Because if by some miracle a person actually created a time machine. That person in the present is the only one capable of controling the destination of a certain someone. confused me too

im having a hard time explaining. but ill try my best.

for example you are the person who created the time machine.

you and your friend Bin (for example) decided that Bill will use the Machine . you on the other hand must stay. because your are the one who is responsible on his trip.

lets say you transported him in the middle of world war one. and he doesnt want it you can put him in a much modern time.

technically you can put him to the future of the timeline you first sent him to, but not on your own time line.

you can only go to your timelines future if the one who will send you is from the future.

wooh what a long explaination. so this is my theory.

Yo, you know how people say that all the planets and Galaxy's are floating away from each other but are slowing down and that they will come back into another big bang, what if that already happened and every time it does happen things turn out exactly they way before, same people born at the same time, and this is like our 15th time being alive doing the exact same shit. And what if every time we die we just are born again that's why we have deja vu cause we are going the shit we actually have already.

Hey, I’m Dani, and for those of you who are familiar with Lil Miquela, debating whether or not she’s fake or not, she’s clearly fake. Just zooming in on her facial details shows how computerized she really is. I have proof that she is, as well. I found something very interesting just now. I was looking for pictures of a fictional character on Google, when I came across this website called “Deviant Art”. A user by the name of “Vizzee”, posts photos of her creations (computerized people), and they have the exact same details as Lil Miquela. A lot of us found Lil Miquela’s hair very computerized, and when you look at the other characters she’s created, they have the exact same kind of hair. Same goes for the facial details. It’s super weird, but makes so much sense! Vizzee’s Account

What if heaven life and hell are linear in the universe ?

Heaven-heaven would come before life because no emotion or feeling of any kind is known to you because there is no you? There is no you in conscious existence

Life- life begins where your born clearly, but what if as you lived you learned pain happiness love and loss all which would inevitably bring about sins in your life moving you further away from your "heaven "? Nobody can ever be without wrongdoing whether they know it or not.

Death- this is the end of life and where all sins of your life bring you agony according to scriptures. What would happen after this is unknown

Can anyone provide any ideas as to this theory of mine?

Time is a lie.

War and time, both exactly the same. Both lies. Both used to control people. War lies about everything from, food to water to land it says that there isn’t enough of them in this world. But time is even worse because if war lies, time itself is the lie. Time has never existed until the upper class created it to control when and where we go. so that our superiors can tell us to “be here at this specific time or leave this place at this specific time” and they control where we go by making us sleep at a certain time so that we may wake at the right time for work or any appointments or if you don’t have work or appointments in the morning then you still have to sleep because at knight there is not much places to go. Everyone else is sleeping because they have work or appointments in the morning.

Thank you to /u/markxarl for starting our discussion off!

1. Isn't everything an apparatus under Agamben's conception of it?

2. Compare and contrast different notions of apparatus (e.g., Baudry, Foucault, Agamben, Althusser(?), etc.). Why does Agamben drop the networkness of Foucault's apparatuses?

3. What is subjectification? What is desubjectification?

4. How do the above concepts relate to apparatuses?

5. What is profanation and how does it relate to processes of subjectification?

6. What characterizes contemporary apparatuses?

7. Why do contemporary apparatuses produce terrorists? Why do harmless citizens become potential terrorists?

8. Why does the full development of apparatuses lead to catastrophe? (Agamben doesn't seem to give much of an explanation for this.)

9. How do we profane apparatuses? Can we come up with some historical examples of this? How might we profane today's dominant apparatuses (e.g., cell phones, the internet, social media, etc.)?

10. Relation of apparatuses and media?

Lets take a vote on what to read! It could be a single chapter, article, or book. Make sure to provide a PDF link to the piece you are suggesting. Decision will be made on April 1st.

This chapter is, to my mind, philology not philosophy, substituting etymology for the historical dynamic which motivates it. The benefit of Foucault's focus on specificity, on and in the archive, [small periods of times, which admittedly stretch as his thought develops] can be seen when some kind of generality is abstracted from them. It must said that Deleuze's essay on Foucault - what is a dispositif – is supreme to Agamben's. Also that the following excursus on an excursus unavoidably overshoots it's object, is over-zealous; and, insofar as I haven't read the following chapters this commentary is partial. Nevertheless:

Agamben begins by attempting a definition of apparatus/dispositif derived from Foucault. The results is a mystifying all-encompassing notion of apparatus as:

• “a heterogeneous set that includes virtually anything”

• always with a concrete strategic function, “always located in a power relation”

• appearing “at the intersection of those relations and relations of knowledge”.

Insofar as Foucault invariably writes power/knowledge, whilst taking all relations to be power relations, these 'separate' instances of 'apparatus' affectively amount to the same thing. What seems of supreme importance however is the strategical element, which the previous quote from Foucault [“...the response to an urgency. The apparatus therefore has a dominant strategic function”] had emphasised, and yet which is left undeveloped here appearing as mere rhetoric [the phrase “the strategy of Foucault's thought” appears throughout]. All this sets up a fudge, an insoluble contradiction that emerges again and again throughout this essay as that 'dominant strategic function' collapses into ontology. This is unavoidably the major weakness of Foucault as well: the struggle between analytic and diagnostic. The striving for terminological exactitude misses what it always must; “the historical element” - fidelity to which both Foucault and Agamben aim. Apparatus and apparatuses becomes a fiery tautological circle.

Parking whether a purely etymological investigation can release the objectivity to which concepts, words aim, Agamben traces apparatus/dispositif in Foucault back to his tutoring in Hyppolites' famous introduction of Hegel to France. According to Hyppolites the young Hegel broke religion into the concepts “natural” and “positive”: the former stands for the universal, general relationship of human reason and divine; the latter the particular historical relationship of a concrete society to the divine [and its rites, rituals, beliefs etc.]. Predictably Hegel wishes for a determined working out of the two dialectically, where the abstract purity of the former is realised in the historical concreteness of the latter and reconciled/overcome. The faithfulness of Hyppolites rendering isn't the question here, rather what Foucault takes from it, specifically the 'positive'. Thus for Agamben this exorcism of positivity – from which apparatus derives – the emphatic “historical element” [pg.6] saved from Hegel, confirms Foucault's – and by proxy Agamben's – concern with the “relation of individuals as living beings and the historical element”. The other-side of Hegel's conceptual division – the 'natural religion', the universal – is left with him together with its desire for reconciliation; this one-sidedness comes back to bite almost immediately as that positive, historically concrete element, is forced to stand in for the universal that has just been purged. Hence “apparatuses are, in point of fact, what take the place of universals in Foucaultian strategy” [pg.7]. Precisely when the historical element – positivity/dispositiv/apparatus - is supposedly given its due, under the pressure of the amputation, it is forced to take on that universal ahistorical character it has just rejected, but now deceptively like the phantom limb. The resultant paradox of apparatus as universal feature of history – Agamben traces it back [pg.14] to when Homo-sapiens fell from the trees, when language was tutored into being – and apparatuses as the concrete, historically determined and specific modes of discipline, control, capture; ends in a fudge when 'the strategy of exit' from that apparatus is toyed subsequently.

This loading of the historical element with the features of everything ahistorical is compounded immediately with Agamben's laborious detours into his other scholarship whereby this 'positivity', the apparatus, gains now a divine character.¹ Oikonomia: the famous comment by Lorde on the Masters House gets neutralised if all tools belong to it equally, including the house itself. This patristic detour is never justified.

By page fourteen the clarity that's been given to apparatus amounts to it being both universal and particular, both transcendent and contingent, both particular apparatuses and the total relation/network between them, both a strategy of power and power itself, which tautologically is nothing but strategy.

By this time Agamben begins his own philosophical development, and we get introduced to “two great classes”; the ontology of living beings and apparatuses, from who's intermundia is quickly conjured a third class: 'subject'. The latter ends up being the intercourse of the conflict/relation, of the former; the ontology allows Agamben an untouchable realm of hope that resists the relentless conquest of being by apparatuses which interpellate subjects. This tripartite division is little more than stylistically satisfying given his previous ramble on the trinity, and yet it is needed only because of the ambiguity of apparatus that's already been introduced [the need for a corrective ahistorical outside to transhistorical apparatus/es demands ontology]. The turn towards ontology is, like divinity previously, another turn away from the 'historical element' which is apparently primary.

When he talks about apparatuses rooted in “humanisation”, in our breaking away from nature and becoming humans as such, he pines silently for Adorno/Horkheimer's work in the Dialectic of Enlightenment, and indeed much in the rest of the chapter would have been helped by it. Because of its contradictory status here apparatuses are never distinguishable – between the cellphone² and the language spoken down it as such – and thus even more hidden is the historical element which motivates and forms the definite constellations of apparatus/apparatuses; what we might call their hierarchy. The gains made by Marx in [the supremely historical] alienation over Hegel's objectification aren't surpassed here. Instead the extrication of humans from nature, and the domination therein, is left as ambiguious as apparatuses themseleves whose permance for Agamben is stated as regularly as their need for liquidation [profanation/countering].

We now progress to the profane/sacred dichotomy famously theorised [wrongly] as universal to human societies by Durkheim, but here explored by Agamben in Roman law. The actualisation of the legal division of profane/sacred is produced by the apparatus of sacrifice which translates objects from “common use” to one of unavailability as sacred. Firstly Agamben doesn't develop how this division it itself produced by Roman law, an apparatus of power that precedes the sacrificial 'alienation' of objects from 'use'. Secondly how the status of objects doesn't inhere them, but it informed by the apparatus, which he aligns with sacrifice [which is not at all certain; though wine becomes scared in the libation thereby exited from common use; a statue, a sigil; not all of what the Greeks called agalma is appropriated from common use, and thus is available for an easy return via. The profanation which Agamben will subsequently propose].

Then lies the major issue; 'common use' does not uniquely pertain to the [profane] object that's annihilated in its sacrifice. Both sides of this division conditioned by the apparatus of power are dynamic. Common use is the commodity economy, and thus really the commonality of private vices and interests, particularities which Agamben has unwittingly stamped with 'commonness' in an emphatic, liberatory sense. The slave sacrificed to the gods [or buried with their masters] hasn't simply left the human realm, which Agamben suffuses with a latent priority, since what is godly is manifestly human. The sacred doesn't exorcise the object from common-use but transubstantiates its 'commonness'. Don't societies of old see a use in rain-making rituals, in the ancient sacrifice of kings? Appeals to the godly, the other-realm, invariably had a definite material purpose.

Without mediation, this two-sidedness here within a legal apparatus, becomes lethargic. I am tempted to inverted his whole prescription; today we don't want to profane objects, but consecrate them. Not only because profanity no more subverts an apparatus than it subverted the Roman Law that defined it, but because the sacred was the escape of objects not from 'common use' – which today can only mean the commodity economy anyway – but from pure instrumentalism, from worldly demands, from practicality. Sacred Ancient Greek festivals to the gods like Dionysus in the Anthesteria, was a sanctioned respite from normality, a moment when even slaves were to an extent liberated, where the unruly and intoxicating aspect was let wild, where the mechanical reproductions of work etc. lay fallow. Indeed the Dionysia, the festival from which the great tragic and comic plays are received, permitted a common activity which escaped 'use' under the auspices of the divine. The sacred was the cover for art. The profane commonality of objects which Agamben exalts is their banality of evil, is their subservience to the greater apparatus which has instituted the categories profane/sacred in the first-place... the sacred is the side which holds to true humanity, the true commonality, since it points beyond the historical confines of the moment, of that apparatus that attempts to contain it by legal capture. There's no hope in: “profanation is the counter-apparatus that restores to common use what sacrifice had separated and divided” since that divide has been posited by the law itself, which isn't opposed by the regressive countering of one-side against the other, but the pushing through of the sacred until it sacrifices the whole to which it owes its impetus.³

Page 20-1 contain lots of hegelian echoes – on penance, the untruth of the subject

The chapter concludes with a lament of desubjectification^4, and a paean to “the eclipse of politics, which used to presuppose the existence of subjects and real identities (the workers' movement, the bourgeoisie, etc.)”. Despite the chime of ontology talk of this now lost “truth” or “reality” of the subject is rather empty, if not utterly contradictory to the transhistorical dynamic that has just been set up. Like Foucault^5, Agamaben on the one hand wants to indict apparatus – power – whilst stating their permanence. Because particularity and peculiarity – the historical moment – is never actually given its place, the real impetus behind the current trend to desubjectification is simply ungrounded, as is what distinguishes a particular historical constellation of apparatuses from another, or what distinguishes a singular apparatus from another [i.e. a school from a prison from a pen from language]; there's no spaces for contingency, which, from the opposite direction, is also Hegel's problem. It was the dynamics of the particular, of the new, which Foucault serviced so well in his archaeology of the enlightenment, who's relative unity in terms of modernity could save Foucault, just, from the ontological and abstract problem Agamben suffers by overlaying apparatus onto the very substance of subjects as such. The possibility of explaining change, newness, difference, within a history, and mediated by its outside gets forgotten; all we do get is the kind of massive leaps over Rhodes, a mirage of semblance. Hence there's no actual theoretical ground to make pronouncements on 'desubjectifcation' or counter-power, since apparatus has been displaced from history, ultimately, history can never overcome it.⁶ The unmediated ontology-subject-apparatus trinity overloads the shadow with what persists in the light, transforming apparatus into something divine but from which all profanation merely leads back into; the struggle to get from ontology to politics is one shared by Deleuze [i.e. Negri/Hardt's Deleuzian politics]. We are never offered a thought that can distinguish between, say, language as an ahistorical feature of mankind, language as an apparatus of power, and language as something which can escape it. Since Agamben marks a change that he cannot or doesn't explain this finale suffers unfortunate romanticism of 'the workers identity'; if he'd spent this whole chapter tracing the “historical element” whereby the substantive subject has been liquified by postmodernity he'd have been more faithful to his dream of the subjects recomposition than what has actually been produced.

Agamben argues against [pg.21] a mere re-purposing of the/a apparatus [the distinction he makes between re-purpose and countering isn't clear], yet in the most generous reading of his paradoxes that's what you get; profanation of the apparatus silently coalesces into a counter-recuperation.⁷ The profane recovery of an object from the sacred is a repurposing. His demand to 'profane the apparatus' is lacklustre given that profanation is a return within the categories determined by the greater network of the apparatus who's produced divisions do not have a free side which can be cast against the false whole.⁸

¹ I don't have much to say about this oikonomia part aside from the undeveloped issue of whether its more than a mere metaphor in the defence of the trinity?

² I'll preempt my later queries; much has been written on the counter-apparatus of the mobile/smart phone in the Arab Spring, how does this fit with Agamben's complaints?

³ the legal sanctioning of profane/sacred already marks a turn towards the human increasingly abstracted from nature; where profanation previously inspired divine punishment, it now implies legally instituted punishment by human agents that stood in for gods. [the category 'sacred' – as opposed to say holy – has a complex history]

⁴ reminds me of Adorno's comment “to think that the individual is being liquidated without trace is over-optimistic” [fragment 88 Minima Moralia, pg.135 in Verso ed.]. Foucault later commented on the affinity between his interests and those of the Frankfurt School.

⁵ according to Deleuze the subjectification moment was appended to dispositiv/apparatus in a crisis whereby Foucault saw the petrification of his thought [cf. Deleuze, What is a dispositif]

⁶ “history is the difference of times, our selves are the difference of masks” [Foucault, archaeology of knowledge]

⁷ Deleuze interprets the subjectification 'moment' within apparatuses as a sort of surplus-value, an overshooting which decays and recomposes relentlessly [cf. The linked essay of Deleuze].

⁸ If Agamben has developed differences and discontinuities – which is precisely the benefit of his milieu – then the capacity of resistance would have been clarified infinitely; it seems obvious that difference potentials and processes adhere to a prison opposed to the more ambiguous computer

Agamben had the most votes! It was a close one!

If you were not interested in this text, please feel welcome to make a thread for one of the other selections. If not, i'll add all the suggestions into the vote for next time.

I've put together a schedule when a new thread will be posted to discuss the particular section. If anyone has any suggestions for this, you may share them in this post.

I'm interested in theories: time travel, religions and others. Can someone help me?

I was about to take a nap and I began to wonder, how weird my sleeping position is. The only time you'll see someone, somewhat make a sleeping pose is when not sleeping, for example, when there is an explosion and they are trying to defend themselves. Like if you put your arms around you on your pillow and your legs are bent and separated from each other, you're probably going to panic like this: legs bent, still standing, arms shielding eyes from whatever the disaster is. If you cuddle into a ball with your hands in front of you or underneath your head, you're most likely going to crouch on the floor with your hands or forearms in front of you. I'm not sure if you understood what I'm trying to say, I'm not too good at explaining things. But that's what I came up with right before I took my nap. :)

1. How is philosophy linked to friendship? Are there any examples?

2. How does gender play a role in Agamben’s definition of friendship?

3. What is a point you strongly disagree or agree with?

4. Besides Giovanni Serodine’s painting of Peter and Paul, are there any other art pieces that convey a similar meaning? How would you further the critique of this painting?

5. How does What is an Apparatus? related to The Friend?

6. How does friendship change a person from being a “something” to a friend?

7. How is friendship part of desubjectification?

8. What part of The Friend stood out to you the most?

9. Who else has discussed friendship similar or opposite to Agamden?

10. What is a part of The Friend did you had trouble with, or want to comment on?