freud, “mourning and melancholia”   (via karaj)

Re: the post I was just going to write about shamelessly/shamefully taking phone pictures of myself in a crowded room.

Vanity comes from the latin vanus: “empty.” It seems like a kind of tiresomely Cartesian (Aristotelian, even) thing, the term for “emptiness” becoming so synonymous with the material [body]. To be empty is to be a surface and to have a surface (to have a presence) is to be empty because, you know, fucking Plato or whatever. It’s no secret that this is a very gendered thing. But “vanity” didn’t always mean positively self-obsessed. There used to be a word for that: “vainglory,” the vaunting of the empty exterior because you love it. When did those words become compounded? When did we begin to assume that “obsessed with our bodies” would always mean “in love with our bodies”? I’d like to reclaim vanity for the ambivalent.

Vainglory was once the eighth sin, but it has been collapsed into pride. A positive obsession with our earthly bodies is a subset of that “love of one’s own excellence,” but now that “glory” is implied. Vanity is a sin, a type of pride.

What, then, are our words to describe an obsession with our material bodies? Words that are maybe a little dualistic but certainly aren’t about loving ourselves so goddamn much?

“Narcissistic” is an easy etymology. It would be nice to appropriate Narcissus’s gaze as a physical obsession (compulsion, even), but he was renowned for his self-love. Even though there’s something to be said for narke, narkissos, sleep; no, “narcissistic” isn’t useful at all.

What are our words for “obsessed with our skin and flesh” that do not mean we are also in love with that skin and flesh?

debutanteinbondage:

Perfect human being

 #when has kanye ever been wrong? never

Boss.

File under: a lot of things racists often categorize as “narcissism” in Kanye because, you know a black man talking about racism/how black women are awesome/himself is always a black man being an asshole, right?

(Source: nothincomparedtoyou, via palehorsegreeneyes)

i wish someone would love me as much as kanye west loves kanye west

(Source: ifyoucarryonthisway, via fromthemitten)

gpoy constantly

(via derpycats)

karaj:

rgr-pop:

I want to include Kanye in my discussions of #feminist narcissism. Partially because I’m interested in queering Kanye conversations (which, I should note, is more than speculating about his gayness). It’s more, though, about how his narcissism is the most #radical narcissism in America. It’s about how inasmuch as women’s narcissism is pathologized, black men’s narcissism is even more vilified. And man, if Kanye hasn’t been vilified for a whole lot of self-obsession, a whole lot of vanity, a whole lot of oversharing that is so much an integral part of contemporary feminist politics. He is part of a narrative that is important to me.

Duh.

okay. yes. totally. and i want to talk about something that i think is (really really) related and if it’s not you can #feminist narcissism it. so: i would like to think about the way in which some white men indulge in an imaginary identification with (perhaps we just call it “appreciation of,” but) kanye or other narcissistic black rap stars as a way of maintaining a whole host of privileges—ie. unradical white male narcissism which includes spectacularizing themselves; emoting, emoting, emoting; and rampant capitalism—all while construing themselves as progressive, and even feminist. in case i am speaking in code: i mean that there are lots of privileged white men who identify with kanye, and embrace his narcissism, because it gives them license to indulge in ideologies and behaviors that progressive, feminist men are supposed to have given up in 1969. in fact, appreciating kanye can make them appear even more radical than if they liked indie rock. 

see: dudes we’ve all probably slept with

(Source: thekidsnotmyson)

I want to include Kanye in my discussions of #feminist narcissism. Partially because I’m interested in queering Kanye conversations (which, I should note, is more than speculating about his gayness). It’s more, though, about how his narcissism is the most #radical narcissism in America. It’s about how inasmuch as women’s narcissism is pathologized, black men’s narcissism is even more vilified. And man, if Kanye hasn’t been vilified for a whole lot of self-obsession, a whole lot of vanity, a whole lot of oversharing that is so much an integral part of contemporary feminist politics. He is part of a narrative that is important to me.

Duh.

(Source: thekidsnotmyson, via desliz)

Not a thematic narrative, but a conceptual mapping. Not really a mix, more like a syllabus. A reader. Take each entry more or less literally and certainly metacritically. Cascaded within each section by relevance—most to least—or else into a mini-narrative.

I’m not uploading this into a mix because it’s a dangerous political climate for internet content, and because it doesn’t really matter except to the extent that it’s so exciting when “Everytime I Look For You” ends things. Maybe you should listen to them on your own time if it helps you read more carefully.

Consider particularly that “What’s My Age Again?” was so important to last semester. Consider irony, apostasy, blasphemy, misandry, separatism, the serpent, setting and place and space, the classroom vs. the internet as domestic/public public/domestic interior/exterior self/other, immaturity as anachronism, immaturity as refusal, poles, binaries, ritual and repetition, I never let what happen stay in the past, canon, theft from canon, fucking of canon, cosmetics, things I didn’t want to include for political reasons but did anyway if you know what I mean, resentment, this gun’s for hire, heterotexts as biblical allegories, or else selfish feminist hijacking of the bible, internet archives, #feminist whatever, the love song of x.x. whatever, my temporal reversal of the “josie” mythology, jokes about anarchists, my hesitance to choose an anne sexton poem that’s about feelings, my refusal to talk about feelings without either pathologizing or framing in terms of archive, pick the worms off me like sticky pearls, or anyway my inability to experience anything else, “What A Dump,” and I’m not even sorry. I mean it really. Consider all of those things.

Pt I: unteaching & regrounding the subject

1. Soophie Nun Squad - “Unspeaking”
2. blink-182 - “What’s My Age Again?”
3. Bad Banana - “Green & Red”
4. Los Gatos Negros - “Beans & Franks”
5. Sum 41 - “Fat Lip”

Pt II: mixed episodes & coping mechanisms

1. blink-182 - “Online Songs”
2. blink-182 - “Josie”
3. Everclear - “Strawberry”
4. The Taxpayers - “It Gets Worse Every Minute”
5. Good Charlotte - “Waldorf Worldwide”

Pt III: the manic compulsion to name the enemy:
itching/meanness/unapology/terror/terrorizing

1. Bruce Springsteen - “Dancing In The Dark”
2. The Bananas - “Amy’s Birthday”
3. The Kelley Deal 6000 - “Dammit”
4. The Max Levine Ensemble - “Nihilism”
5. The Bananas - “Sugar Bear”
6. blink-182 - “Pathetic”
7. Delay - “Gray Like the Whale”

Pt IV: i recognize the garden of eden,
i am made of mud & i dream of returning to dust:
theory/memory/theology/archive

1. blink-182 - “Roller Coaster”
2. Nicki Minaj - “Did It On ‘Em”
3. Good Charlotte - “Screamer (demo)”
4. blink-182 - “Everytime I Look For You”

Pt V: tearing old Mary’s garments off, knot by knot:
gesture/body/affect/performance/perpetuity

1. Swearin’ - “What A Dump”
2. Team Dresch - “Freewheel”
3. Lava Lava - “Last Night”
4. Nicki Minaj - “Superbass”
5. Spoonboy - “Always Leaving”
6. Waxahatchee - “American Weekend”

“Sedimented space” (alternately, “mapped perblogs”) “is an emblem for history as excavation rather than projection, simultaneity rather than sequential time, and collective geography rather than individual biography” - Lisa Lowe, although I think this kind of work falls somewhere between the two latter projects. “Geography” makes more sense than “narrative” but: fuck a Public; overshare selfishly, publicly, self-reflexively and with a radical narcissism.