Resnais, Giacometti and Seductive Maniera
According to Badiou being able to seduce women is also a reason for using conversational French for your philosophy. Again he cites Descartes: ‘ Such a varied and complete knowledge of all is to be found not in some aged pedant who has spent many years in contemplation but in a young princess whose beauty and youth call to mind one of the Graces rather than grey-eyed Minerva or any of the Muses.’ Badiou suggests that the French have been turning philosophy into a pick-up line ever since. ‘This intention will be repeated by all the notable French philosophers, who comprise a significant anthology: Rousseau, and also in his own way Auguste Compte, and then Sartre, as well as Lacan. All of them wished to be heard and admired by women and knew that they mustn’t be courted in Latin nor in the language of pedants.’
Richard Marshall on the attractions of Seductive Maniera.
The Register of Candied Decay
These three books have much in common. Each can be read through the lens of the parapornographic, and, each is voiced in Glenum’s ‘register of candied decay’. This register, which infects Pop Corpse, is also at the heart of Fatty XL’s desire to eat only ‘one nutrilett bar a day’ so she can lose weight. Bad, diet food is the ultimate horror here — predicated on an industry which sells addictive chemical junk in the place of real food. The excess and decadence in The Parapornographic Manifesto also takes place in this candied decay–the ultimacy of luxury is discovered equally in recreational murder and the pistils of a flower.
Laura Joyce reviews works by Carl-Michael Edenborg, Tytti Heikkinen and Lara Glenum.