Why I study philosophy and write about the art of cinema

Science (which is not technology), like art (which is not entertainment) and politics (which is not governmentality or management), is creative. The new is not a department of what is but of what is not. It is what not yet exists as such, as virtual or potential. As potentiality, it has contingency, not necessity. It is what is ‘true’ not because it merely exists and must be recognized, but because we can see that it vitally matters; it answers not to duty but desire.

It is the opposite of normality, the secret of which is that its proponents are bored, and their insistence on recognizing what everyone knows is in fact a kind of death drive.

Our media culture, like that of the Internet (in the way both these things are presently used and organized), presents us with the dull obviousness and necessity of knowledge of what are always quite likely meaningless facts. We are awash in a sea of information, organized only in terms of the supposed attractiveness of stuff commodity and service merchants of every sort want to sell to us. These are the terms of a present slavery. But as a t-shirt slogan aptly puts it, this is capitalism as death cult. It is because capitalism is death-oriented, and the culture of therapy and management only a sad way of managing a sad life, for all those fated to live lives of quiet desperation, that the art that is increasingly so plentiful is, indeed, so vitally necessary. In a world where humanity itself is presented as and through its negation, the sole banner worth the effort of displaying is that of the improbable inhuman beauty of art. Something appears, and something is said, in a world where, normally, we are condemned to 'function' normally as best we can, and the permanent crisis this involves and reveals serves normally as the mere alibi for its enforcement.

This is my reason for studying philosophy and writing about the art of cinema. While my doctors, like the police, are merely concerned that I function normally. Most things do, except when they break down and must be repaired or given some direction for correctional purposes; so tiring and so sad.