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Rating: 
Summary: Sciamachy during a total eclipse
Review: Anyone familiar with Ronell's name would probably not be reading this review. You either hate her or ...
But if you do not already know her work, no review is really going to help you because a true review would have to be almost as complex as Ronell's own writing to say something meaningful, and this is not the place for such an attempt. So I'll pass, but say only what can be said in everyday language and include the content of the book below.Ronell is to scholarship what Bruce Lee was to (traditional) kung-fu: 2 good-lookin' people exceeding the limits of standard practice after undergoing the rigorous training of the prerequisite discipline. Bruce did not disdain hitting below the belt, biting and scratching even: the point is to win the fight if you're in one. Avital is the same when it comes to fighting the enemy: stupidity marinating in the warm formaldehyde of ignorance. The essays collected here are from the early 80's to late 90's, previously published in various journals. Her references are, well, everything - from canonic texts (Kant, Freud, Goethe, Heidegger, etc) to Headline news. The richness of her "multi-media" work using words (sentence-collages) alone is quite something: proof that only smart people can really art (used as a verb). And to enjoy her work, you really do need to read her stuff as a "thinking artist" yourself. Her writing is ferocious, fast, feline, fanged; and...friendly--not. She fences with a pen. Her language moves with the jaguaresque prowess of the English language at full throttle. She confesses she is writing, out of necessity, for those who fly more-or-less at her altitude of discourse. She also explains why she (or any writer) thinks/writes the way she does: she is, as a writer, not so much a manipulator of language so much as a medium by and through which language dictates what it wishes to say (think). She says, "A text's gotta do what a text's gotta do." Like Derrida, Ronell is interested in acts of questioning that do not necessarily take recourse to discursivity. If this makes no sense, then you might want to pass on Ronell. Freud, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, Hegel, Lyotard, etc ...you'll need to have at least a cursory familiarity with their work to know what Ronell is saying. In other words, the book is inhospitable to the average undergraduate.
But she is not out to show-off or intimidate. It's just her way of thinking that requires this kind of language and speed. She rarely loses clarity in order to achieve some pointless cleverness the way 2nd rate academic obscurantists so often do. (Okay, so lost me on a couple of essays.) Hers is the thought of one who has experienced the fire of her material, and understands the impossibility of "mastering" it. Some say she represents the best of the new scholarship. Yes and no. She is neither a product of a given system nor a representative of future education. She is just a rare bird, a brilliant comet, an exceptionally intelligent and insightful scholar who also has the uncommon ability (and balls) to use her OWN language which is a mellifluous mélang(e)uage of all styles of speech. She is, as always, all style. And that offends a lot of people, apparently. But in her case, there is no division between style and substance - and there is a lot of it. Such is the sweet fruit of years of intensive knuckle-bruising cultivation and practice of literary kung-fu. By 'finitude,' Ronell means the sense of humanity as shaped and delimited by our mortality, which is to say the ethical struggles to define our fragile humanity. She speculates whether "we have gone too far this time, as terrestrials" in the process of pushing the Western logos to its potential (but logical) extreme. The one general concern that ties all these disparate essays together is the immanent problem of the ubiquity of the police: even without their physical presence, they are everywhere with their surveillance from afar. She has some very interesting things to say about technology as the field of infinite Tests and Testing, whereby the real is by necessity deferred, waiting for "confirmation." And when the entire world has become a testing ground, what becomes of our ability to experience that which makes us human? Content:
1.Finitude's Score
2.2. Queens of the Night
3.Hitting the Streets: Ecce Fama
4.Street-Talk
5.The Sujet-Suppositaire: Freus, And/Or, the Obsessional Neurotic Style (Maybe)
6.Taking it Philosophically: Torquato Tasso's Women as Theorists
7.Namely, Eckermann
8.Doing Kafka in _The Castle_: A Poetics of Desire
9.Starting from Scratch: Mastermix
10. The Worst Neighborhoods of the Real: Philosophy - Telephone -Contamination
11.The Walking Switchboard
12.The Differends of Man
13.Support Our Tropes: Reading Desert Storm
14.Activist Supplement: Papers on the Gulf War
15.Trauma TV: Twelve Steps Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Rating:
Summary: Sciamachy during a total eclipse
Review: Anyone familiar with Ronell?s name would probably not be reading this review. You either hate her or ?
But if you do not already know her work, no review is really going to help you because a true review would have to be almost as complex as Ronell?s own writing to say something meaningful, and this is not the place for such an attempt. So I?ll pass, but say only what can be said in everyday language and include the content of the book below. Ronell is to scholarship what Bruce Lee was to (traditional) kung-fu: 2 good-lookin? people exceeding the limits of standard practice after undergoing the rigorous training of the prerequisite discipline. Bruce did not disdain hitting below the belt, biting and scratching even: the point is to win the fight if you?re in one. Avital is the same when it comes to fighting the enemy: stupidity marinating in the warm formaldehyde of ignorance. The essays collected here are from the early 80?s to late 90?s, previously published in various journals. Her references are, well, everything ? from canonic texts (Kant, Freud, Goethe, Heidegger, etc) to Headline news. The richness of her ?multi-media? work using words (sentence?collages) alone is quite something: proof that only smart people can really art (used as a verb). And to enjoy her work, you really do need to read her stuff as a ?thinking artist? yourself. Her writing is ferocious, fast, feline, fanged; and?friendly--not. She fences with a pen. Her language moves with the jaguaresque prowess of the English language at full throttle. She confesses she is writing, out of necessity, for those who fly more-or-less at her altitude of discourse. She also explains why she (or any writer) thinks/writes the way she does: she is, as a writer, not so much a manipulator of language so much as a medium by and through which language dictates what it wishes to say (think). She says, ?A text?s gotta do what a text?s gotta do.? Like Derrida, Ronell is interested in acts of questioning that do not necessarily take recourse to discursivity. If this makes no sense, then you might want to pass on Ronell. Freud, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, Hegel, Lyotard, etc ?you?ll need to have at least a cursory familiarity with their work to know what Ronell is saying. In other words, the book is inhospitable to the average undergraduate.
But she is not out to show-off or intimidate. It?s just her way of thinking that requires this kind of language and speed. She rarely loses clarity in order to achieve some pointless cleverness the way 2nd rate academic obscurantists so often do. (Okay, so lost me on a couple of essays.) Hers is the thought of one who has experienced the fire of her material, and understands the impossibility of ?mastering? it. Some say she represents the best of the new scholarship. Yes and no. She is neither a product of a given system nor a representative of future education. She is just a rare bird, a brilliant comet, an exceptionally intelligent and insightful scholar who also has the uncommon ability (and balls) to use her OWN language which is a mellifluous m?lang(e)uage of all styles of speech. She is, as always, all style. And that offends a lot of people, apparently. But in her case, there is no division between style and substance ? and there is a lot of it. Such is the sweet fruit of years of intensive knuckle-bruising cultivation and practice of literary kung-fu. By ?finitude,? Ronell means the sense of humanity as shaped and delimited by our mortality, which is to say the ethical struggles to define our fragile humanity. She speculates whether ?we have gone too far this time, as terrestrials? in the process of pushing the Western logos to its potential (but logical) extreme. The one general concern that ties all these disparate essays together is the immanent problem of the ubiquity of the police: even without their physical presence, they are everywhere with their surveillance from afar. She has some very interesting things to say about technology as the field of infinite Tests and Testing, whereby the real is by necessity deferred, waiting for ?confirmation.? And when the entire world has become a testing ground, what becomes of our ability to experience that which makes us human? Content:
1. Finitude?s Score
2. 2. Queens of the Night
3. Hitting the Streets: Ecce Fama
4. Street-Talk
5. The Sujet-Suppositaire: Freus, And/Or, the Obsessional Neurotic Style (Maybe)
6. Taking it Philosophically: Torquato Tasso?s Women as Theorists
7. Namely, Eckermann
8. Doing Kafka in _The Castle_: A Poetics of Desire
9. Starting from Scratch: Mastermix
10. The Worst Neighborhoods of the Real: Philosophy ? Telephone ?Contamination
11. The Walking Switchboard
12. The Differends of Man
13. Support Our Tropes: Reading Desert Storm
14. Activist Supplement: Papers on the Gulf War
15. Trauma TV: Twelve Steps Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Rating:
Summary: UBER HIP
Review: Avital Ronell strikes again!! With this marvellous book of essays she forays where so few critical thinkers venture: the precise confluence between low&high-brow thinking. Smoothly switching gears from literary to street-wise to philosophical to pop-cultural registers without losing depth, force or velocity, this author encourages the kind of radical thinking that virally invests itself into consciousness, producing more of the same. The Experience of reading Ronell is not always encouraging, or "safe". There is a real-time risk taking in terms of what tracks your train of thought will switch on (the text taking nothing from you, still, being so rich you can only follow various threads of its labyrinthine deconstructions @1time). An absolute thrill.
Rating:
Summary: UBER HIP
Review: Avital Ronell strikes again!! With this marvellous book of essays she forays where so few critical thinkers venture: the precise confluence between low&high-brow thinking. Smoothly switching gears from literary to street-wise to philosophical to pop-cultural registers without losing depth, force or velocity, this author encourages the kind of radical thinking that virally invests itself into consciousness, producing more of the same. The Experience of reading Ronell is not always encouraging, or "safe". There is a real-time risk taking in terms of what tracks your train of thought will switch on (the text taking nothing from you, still, being so rich you can only follow various threads of its labyrinthine deconstructions @1time). An absolute thrill.
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