nevermind the bricolage

Negation

Last February, Alain Badiou gave a lecture at Art Center on the poetry of Piero Pasolini. The lecture was titled, Destruction-Negation-Subtraction. He focused on a poem written by Pasolini called, Vittoria., well, a portion of the poem anyway. Badiou used the poem as a way to get into what I think is an interesting discussion ultimately about how change comes about. As I have thought about what he said over the past few months, I think there is something good here. He spoke about the link between destruction and negation--he said that destruction viewed as the essence of negation  was a fundamental idea of the 20th century, and argued that a fundamental idea at the beginning of the 21st century was to link negation with subtraction. Now a word about negation--a formal definition declares it

Precariat

Precariat is a word that emerged from Japan I think, it combines two English words--precarious and proletariat--and refers to those workers(the proletariat) whose lives are precarious because of part-time or contract jobs which offer no long term security. It is a word I relate to well--most of my adult life I have been a precariat--but that is about to change a little. As of Monday I have two real jobs! Well, I couldn't do just one, my interests are a bit broad and neither is completely full-time at present,