Let me begin by offering the theoretical imperatives that led me to create this blog. They are nebulous and scattered so if you are looking for a syllogism, or external validity, please look elsewhere. What I post will not provide the neat, naïve, clarity the former and the later clamour for.  Instead it will provide fragments that I hope will illuminate.

I originally hoped to call this blog Constellations. I couldn’t because the name was taken, but I still think the word constellations, provides an apt metaphor for what I am interested in doing here.

Following Benjamin and Adorno’s use of the concept of the constellation, where “By taking such concepts out of their established patterns and rearranging them in “constellations” around a specific subject matter, philosophy can unlock some of the historical dynamic hidden within objects whose identity exceeds the classifications imposed upon them (ND 52-53, 162-66). I want to use this blog to constitute an immanent constellation of my own ideas and interests, while revoking the idea that I am an individual subject immune to the influences of my context. Following Adorno’s statement that;

even the biographical individual is a social category. It can only be defined in a living context together with others; it is this context that shapes its social character and only in this context does an individual life acquire meaning within given social conditions.”

In other words, I hope to provide a blog that catalogs and reflects upon my various interests while relating them to the historical social world that constructs both me and them. Doing this will paradoxically use my interests to define who I am while revealing what acts to form me and what i act to form, relating me to the barbaric past while working toward a more utopian future.

The motivation to catalogue these interests is influenced by my current status as a graduate student in political theory, and as a person with an interest in music, film, literature, politics, culture, philosophy etc. Inhabiting this status, with these interests, I came to the realization that I was constantly accumulating different forms of knowledge but that I was not reflecting on them or communicating to anyone.  This blog hopes to avoid the many days I forgot to write down.

This blog also aims to act as a bulletin board for the numerous interesting articles I find trawling the world wide web.

Lastly, I want you to contribute.