...from the surface of a divine mirror

"The trope of double-identity becomes a brilliant meditation on choices and alternative lives, on the presence of death which forces these choices on us, and on the terrible demands which art can make - if we choose to let it. Véronique's identity, her very existence, become vivid and deeply felt because the fable or mirage of its duality has allowed it to be questioned and examined. A single life should be sufficiently phenomenal; perhaps we would all fully appreciate the central astonishing fact of our own existence only if a cosmic twin were to be revealed before us, as if projected from the surface of a divine mirror. But Kieslowski suggests that the appearance of an uncanny double would be the occasion not of shock or horror, but ineffable sadness, a proof that we are not unique and not immortal." - Peter Bradshaw.

Kommunismen och metafysikens upplösande

I boken "The Idea of Communism" lägger Gianni Vattimo ut sina teorier kring en "svag kommunism" (som han kallar det) i punktform. Jag fastnade framförallt för diskussionen kring hur dagens ekonomiska/kapitalistiska kris relaterar till Berlinmurens fall, som ett fortsatt led i metafysikens upplösande. Så här skriver Vattimo:

"5. Soviet communism was a ’metaphysical’ communism because it was a war communism (pitted against counter-revolution, against Hitler, against imperial capitalism). It also had to adopt many models of capitalism, beginning with the ideal of development at all costs, which under Stalin led to the imposition of many restrictions on freedom. (I should make it clear that when I talk about metaphysics, I am referring principally to the term in the Heideggerian sense, that is, as a violent imposition which claims objective evidence: with respect tot truth, the human ideal, the ‘natural’ laws of society, the economy, and so forth.)

6. The present crisis of capitalism perhaps represents a second moment which completes the fall of the Berlin wall. Real capitalism is becoming discredited in the same way that real communism was in 1989. These are two aspects of the same dissolution of metaphysics – that is, of a world centred on capitalist industrialization (parallel and speculative) and on its communist variant. To see these events as aspects of the dissolution of metaphysics – aperspective which may seem overly abstract – is a way to grasp them in their radicalism. Interpreting the fall of the Berlin wall only in terms of a demand for freedom in Eastern Europe, or the recent bail-out of banks and corporations only as a crisis of capital, leads to needless attempts to ‘repair’ the ‘metaphysical’ system in its two main aspects: traditional humanism and technological-industrial capitalism."

(Från artikeln: "Weak Communism?", 2010, s. 205 f.)

Religionen är folkets opium?

"Det religiösa eländet är samtidigt uttrycket för det verkliga eländet som det är protesten mot detta verkliga elände. Religionen är de betryckta kreaturens sista suck, hjärtat hos en hjärtlös värld, anden i andefattigdomens tillstånd. Den är folkets opium."

I den mån man har försökt tillämpa Marx sociologi har citatet ovan oftast förfalkats genom att sista meningen har omvandlats till: "Religionen är ett opium för folket". Det tar helt bort den dialektiska relationen som Marx menade finns mellan "det verkliga eländet" och religionen som en protest mot det.(- Reza Chitsaz, "Är Gud Socialist", Röda rummet #3-4 2011.)

Han sa himmel, och det blev himmel...

"Jag ville att språket skulle vara det som det utger sig för att vara. Som det var i början. När Gud talade. Han sa himmel och det blev himmel, han sa jord och det blev jord, men Han sa aldrig luft, ändå är den."

- Meira Ahmemulic (Tidskriften Glänta 3-4, 2011, s. 93.)