Basel conference off to good start

It feels great to get my lecture out of the way in the first hour. Now I can sit back and relax and enjoy the other papers.

After my keynote was a very interesting panel, with numerous thoughts on speculative realism and the arts.

And by the way, that was a beautiful book display, completely unexpected… Probably the best set of speculative realism books ever assembled in one place. There were a handful of omissions, but on the whole it was a fantastic collection.

I was finally able to buy a copy of Weird Realism for myself, since several were on sale there.

Afterwards, I heard a number of great thoughts from Michael Austin about several areas of philosophy. He has a lot of very fresh ideas.

new book commissioned on Latour’s political philosophy

I’ve been asked to write a book on Latour’s political philosophy, and have agreed to do so, at approximately 80,000-90,000 words.

It’s too interesting a project to pass up. While there are obviously some political ramifications to Latour’s philosophy, it is not always entirely clear what they are. At the same time, many of the public statements about Latour’s politics amount to nothing but sub-philosophically inane slogans: “bourgeois neo-liberal,” etc.

You’ll never fail to score points by calling someone “bourgeois” or “neo-liberal,” but from now on we need to do more than score points. In order to help raise the level of actual political debate in continental philosophy, we need to end the posturing of continual rhetorical left-flank moves, we need a wider range of positions with a less monotonous range of complaints, and we also need a clearer focus on what is really at stake in political philosophy, both Leftist and otherwise. Latour is a very interesting test case for this exercise, though his lack of an explicit platform makes a bit of assembly work necessary. I’m delighted to take up the challenge.

This book will probably hit the market sometime in 2014. I can’t start working on it quite yet due to other commitments.

no sympathy for the protests this time

Absolutely not– the United States should not “apologize” for the film. The filmmakers are asinine jerks, but in the United States there is a guaranteed right to be an asinine jerk, with only a few minimal restrictions (libel, incitement, etc.)

Having lived in Egypt for 12 years I’m well aware that incendiary religious discourse is viewed there as lying beyond the pale of free speech. But I don’t really care in this case, just as I didn’t care in the case of van Gogh’s film in the Netherlands or in the case of the Danish cartoons. The Arab street should not intimidate Western countries out of an absolute defense of free speech rights. Nor is it the role of the U.S. government to apologize for a film it neither made nor endorsed.

As someone who must use the U.S. Embassy in Cairo on a fairly regular basis for various paperwork, I’m also both disgusted and worried. And furthermore, Morsi’s response to the situation has been lamentable. Not that my opinion of Morsi was especially high before now.

And I just read this: “Morsi departs Cairo on Rome-Brussels tour.” No, you don’t do that. You cancel your tour and restore peace to the streets at a time like this.

a hidden Picasso at the Evansville, Indiana art museum

HERE.

They’d put it in a crate and forgotten about it until the head of an auction house told them they had it.

Now they’re likely to get $30-$40 million for it, and the museum’s current endowment is only $6 million and even its entire collection is only worth $10 million. (They can’t afford the insurance and security costs of keeping the work, apparently.)

This sort of thing does happen once in awhile. In the past few years a blue-collar worker bought a Jackson Pollock at a garage sale and sold it for millions of dollars.

hilarious tweet

Mai E ‏@MaiE_89 Just read a hilariously ridiculous chant from #USEmbassyCairo: ‘Oh Allah, bring an end to all Americans except Morsi’s sons.’ #WTF

absolutely and utterly ridiculous

When the Brotherhood talks like this, it almost makes me regret my gun-to-the-head scenario that I would have voted for them over Shafik:

“The Egyptian government is requesting prosecution under international conventions that criminalise actions that could cause sectarian strife, whether on ethnic, racial or religious grounds. It described the film in a statement as being morally ‘base’ and deviating from values and humane traditions that stipulate respect for the religions and beliefs of others.”

In the second round, it was a choice between two fascisms. That’s all. The right to insult is a very important right, as is the right to be morally “base” without prosecution.

Quite apart from the current case, I was also reminded that this is the fourth embassy assault in Cairo in recent years. There was the absurd Algerian Embassy attack (over football), which woke me up in the middle of the night and which I saw, disgustedly, with my own eyes. But that was still under Mubarak, so let’s not hold that one against the new regime.

Post-Revolution, there was the fairly violent Israeli Embassy invasion. The next one, I believe, was against the Saudi Arabian Embassy in connection with the mistreatment of an Egyptian there. But those were both under SCAF.

In any case, Egypt has not done a very good job of protecting embassies from mob attacks, no matter who has been in charge of the country at any given time.