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And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain, But who can get another life again? Archilochus

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Obscene Praxis

An obscenity is any statement or act which strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. It is derived from the Latin obscaena (offstage) a cognate of the Ancient Greek root skene, because some potentially offensive content, such as murder or sex, was depicted offstage in classical drama.

8 comments:

FreeThinke said...

I'm not sure this fits properly with your post, but it reminded me of a recent conversation I had with a friend who describes himself as "a proud liberal." Poor guy! ;-)

At any rate, I said something about my penchant for trying to reach leftists with sensible argument.

He flew into a towering rage at that, and said "See! There you go. You're just like all the rest. You resort to name calling when you have no substantive point to make."

"Name calling? I asked. "What name calling? And you never let me make my point, you just roared at me, and wouldn't let me finish what I had to say."

"Calling anyone a LEFTIST is a very offensive term. It's just as bad as calling our president a nigger," he replied still irate as hell.

"'Leftist' is a perfectly legitimate term," I replied. "Go look it up."

"Any time someone decides a particular word is offensive -- for whatever reason," he vehemently asserted, "it's OFFENSIVE."

Now what could you possibly say to a person who's convinced himself that anything so patently absurd could be true?

Never mind why we are friends -- we are -- but we CANNOT talk politics at any level, or he'll go off like rocket, and forget we know each other.

"Liberalism [really] IS a mental disorder."

There ain't no doubt about it.

FreeThinke said...

If I decide pink roses are obscene, they ARE obscene, so there!

At this point words fail me.

Thersites said...

Liberals have convinced themselves that we live in a post-ideological era, and that "their perspective" has become a universal "scientific" truth. So to infer that "their perspective" is in any way-shape-form "biased" IS insulting AND obscene.

So there! ;P

Thersites said...

ps - Even in this piece, Zizek admits to his desire for "universalizing" the other.

He, of all people, should know better.

FreeThinke said...

Finally got to listen to the entire video.

I don't care if Zizek labels himself a "communist" or not, I just fuggin' LOVE the guy. Truly a breath of fresh air in the miasma of foetid gas and toxic intellectual putrefaction that has taken over government, academia, the News and Information business.

Besides, I always have had a taste for the Rabelaisian. I'm in good company, I now, for Mozart did too, and even Johann Sebastian, who fathered twenty children with two wives reportedly was reprimanded for "diddling" a serving maid down in the crypt at one of his churches.

One could never experience the heights of exaltation if one has never descended to the depths of degradation.

One of Shakespeare's witches said, "SECURITY is mortals' chiefest enemy."

I'm not so sure he wouldn't have done better to say "PROPRIETY," although the two do tend to go hand in hand, don't they?

Thersites said...

Both sound like they're related to a "commodity fetish" to me. ;)

FreeThinke said...

WHO is related to a "commodity fetish?"

BACH and MOZART?

I don't think so!

But, perhaps I misunderstand the term? Always a possibility in these abstruse discussions of recondite lore and rarely heard observations

Thersites said...

The words "security" and "propriety"...

sorry.