throw yourself down: a journal for radical theory and action

HEY POLITICAL SPUTNICKERS!
after a long and hard battle against the forces of nature
and attempting to weed out our many typos and misspellings issue 2 is
here!

***pinkie in the corner sitting before the television***

featuring:

a polemic:
***War 2000:a polemic against the rhetorics of peace keeping and
humanitarian intervention by Samuel Johnson***

A reading of the mainstream :

"In using a newspaper clipping out of the "Süddeutsche Zeitung's" weekly
magazine as a cultural artifact reflecting mainstream sentiments regarding
the
escalation of war, we might begin to define some kind of oppositional
stance."

http://homepages.uni-tuebingen.de/student/jeremiah.luna/throwyourselfdown/war.html



a narrative:
***George and his Shriveled up Penis by Eric Blair***

"They were all men like George, they all had one thing on
their mind- how to avoid their penis from being cut off.
There was not a moment's rest when they did not think about it."

http://homepages.uni-tuebingen.de/student/jeremiah.luna/throwyourselfdown/george.html


a letter
***Dear West Africa by Salvador Luna***

http://homepages.uni-tuebingen.de/student/jeremiah.luna/throwyourselfdown/westafrica.html



an interpretive essay:
***Must We Not Become Gods: 'appearance' in Friederick Nietzsche's The
Gay Science by William Hazlitt***

"´appearance' is bound up in two post-modern positions. The first position
could be titled the
to a universal objectivity, or an essential nature. The second position
could be termed, performative
identity, it holds that we are surface, artifice, and constant improvisers
of identity as opposed to the
traditional notion of an authentic self beyond what appears. "

http://homepages.uni-tuebingen.de/student/jeremiah.luna/throwyourselfdown/appearance.html


Introduction:
throw yourself down issue 2 pinkie in the corner sitting before the
television features four
separate discourses. Eric Blair's George narrative is for all of us who
hate work and society for
making them participate in its labor market. It is intended to be
humorous as well a serious
insult and blasphemy. The George narrative seeks to provoke disbelief in
the work place value
system and at the same time recontextualize the everyday phallus rituals
we often take for
granted. Hezlitt's interpretation of the Gay Science explores an issue
which Anna Ekstatic
alludes to in her article the Myths of Identity and the Metaphors of
Politics when she states:

"The critical ontology of ourselves has to be considered not, certainly,
as a theory, a doctrine,
nor even as a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating; it has to
be conceived as an
attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique of what we
are is at one and the
same time the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us
and an experiment with
the possibilities of going beyond them."

Hezlitt's interpretation of the Gay Science is apriori to politics, it is
a politics which goes away
form politics in order to open a space that might allow appearance to
appear. If appearance is to
manifest itself as a political agenda it has to be in some from the
critique of science and status
quo metaphysics. Just as Hazlitt agues for a radical approach to ontology
Samuel Johnson's
polemic War 2000 is already in the polis representative of rhetoric's
which desires to persuade
and convince its readers of a certain "politics," a politics abiding in
the realm of opinion. It
expresses sentiments very similar to those put forward in Luna's
Letter/Poem 'Dear West
Africa'. 'Dear West Africa' remains nearest to memory merely alluding the
appearance of a
world happening, and as such remains a conviction, true for the speaking
narrative voice.
Johnson's War 2000 is a further reification of the impulse in Luna's Dear
West Africa tell us
something of how narrative form effects content. And as such the
constellation of discourse in
this our second issue attends to both ontological theory and the
"practical" debate in the world
of human affairs.

note: feel free to write to us authors and editors with your comments and
suggestions. You also invited send and receive e-mail from other theorist
activist sputnickers
at eGroups throwyourselfdown.

with best regards
James Cook




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