AT THE STOA

Harcourt’s article [1] describes Occupy Wall Street as a new and deconstructive movement in the form of political, rather than civil, disobedience.  Drawing his conceptual framework from Foucault’s analyses of critique, Harcourt states that by refusing to identify anything ordinarily associated with resistance (i.e., unified reform agenda or demand; political position or party; ideology [34], an enemy [47], and even a leader [39]), Occupy becomes an embodiment of a new paradigm (in terms of worldview and grammar) that purely resists, in Giddens’s framework, the entire structure (in terms of rules and resources, i.e., the “rationality, discourse and strategies” [34]) of the political itself.  This rejection “not only [of] our civil structure of laws and political institutions but [of] politics writ large” (34) is achieved in multiple ways and levels.  One, it achieved a leaderless stance that allows for the unified plurality of political persuasions (41) against the domina...

Before the Valentine's Day celebrations we went up to Antipolo, sending harmonics of good will and trust to the car so it can forget its engine problems and just pootle like a bad ass through the mountainous drive. When we finally settled in at one of the higher restaurants the sun was happily giving everyone Vitamin D, lending more yellow to already yellow things. Like any view deserving of the name, it made us imagine alien invasions and last minute, glorious resignations before the mothership atomizes all of everything to oblivion. Before we left we noticed a tremendously long hanging bridge anchored to a view deck on a building atop the next hill, approximately twenty feet higher than its other end. It steadily  tilts along the way, and you have to steadily climb up along it to get to the presumably more breathtaking view from the other side. That bridge is a demanding bastard: not only do you have to cross it, you have to climb it. The restaurant personnel uses this...

“Against one perfect moment, the ages beat in vain.”  - Terry Pratchett To truly feel as though your entirety is nowhere big enough to contain the conflagration reducing doors within you to cinders, as though every bit of life inside and around you cannot but fly off to different directions at the speed of light, traversing the cosmic spans within milliseconds, as though the labyrinth you so lovingly, so carefully cultivated inside you for years and years offered the resistance of a cobweb in the face of a supernova – tears will never do that moment justice, and it will never come again. You put your fists up like wall to resist, to convince yourself of having a semblance of a self cohering together amidst the sublime chaos your heart the size of a goddamned planet suddenly found itself struggling to contain – to no avail, sweet alas, good grief, to no avail. These will never be justice enough to the expanse you find inside your being, expanding to where sadness and ecstasy b...