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As of 1946, Lacan places the causality of madness in opposition to psychic causality. Madness is misrecognition, it is the politics of the beautiful soul described by Hegel, which consists of reproaching others for the troubles of the world of which one is the center, even the instigator.

-Comments on the Sokal Affair, J.M Vappereau

Listen once more. I have been 
trying to get it into your head that you are a member of 
what is called in Europe the intellectual proletariat. If I 
can get you to understand what that means, you can work 
out the implications of it for yourself. Perhaps I am 
mistaken. Perhaps you are just a romantic proletarian, 
and will go on working in a factory and writing bad verses; 
perhaps you are not a real proletarian at all, but the off- 
spring of a broken-down middle-class family, in which 
case you will go back where you belong. That is more 
likely. But I have hopes of you.

[Floyd Dell; Moon-Calf]

sovietjewry: Shifs karta (Ship Pass), illustration from Shest’ poviestei o legkikh kontsakh (Six Stories with Easy Endings) by Ilya Ehrenburg. El Lissitzky, 1922. Collage. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem El Lissitzky illustrated Ehrenburg’s volume Shest’ poviestei o legkikh kontsakh (Six Stories with Easy Endings; 1922). Notable is Shifs karta (Ship [Immigration] Pass) with its modernist photocollage, shaped like a Star of David and consisting of a selection from the Mishnah, a temple diagram, an American flag, a black hand pressing down, and on the palm the Hebrew letters pe and nun, the traditional po nikbar (here rests) found on Jewish tombstones. The collage suggests the end of Jewish wandering as well as the persistence of traditional Jewish beliefs. (via YIVO)

sovietjewry:

Shifs karta (Ship Pass), illustration from Shest’ poviestei o legkikh kontsakh (Six Stories with Easy Endings) by Ilya Ehrenburg. El Lissitzky, 1922. Collage. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

El Lissitzky illustrated Ehrenburg’s volume Shest’ poviestei o legkikh kontsakh (Six Stories with Easy Endings; 1922). Notable is Shifs karta (Ship [Immigration] Pass) with its modernist photocollage, shaped like a Star of David and consisting of a selection from the Mishnah, a temple diagram, an American flag, a black hand pressing down, and on the palm the Hebrew letters pe and nun, the traditional po nikbar (here rests) found on Jewish tombstones. The collage suggests the end of Jewish wandering as well as the persistence of traditional Jewish beliefs.

(via YIVO)

Design by Lyubov Popova Vosstanie mizantropov [Uprising of the misanthropes] by Sergei Bobrov 1922 Print, Illustrated book, photolithography Edition: edition of 2000 Publisher: Tsentrifuga 16.4 h x 11.8 w cm

Design by Lyubov Popova

Vosstanie mizantropov
[Uprising of the misanthropes] by Sergei Bobrov 1922
Print, Illustrated book, photolithography
Edition: edition of 2000
Publisher: Tsentrifuga
16.4 h x 11.8 w cm

History brands them as the most incapable and aimless class that ever held the helm of society. And it will write upon the grave of the bourgeoisie the flaming epitaph: ‘Here lies the capitalist class - a traitor to its ideals, an incompetent in government, and an enemy of mankind.’

Chronological table of translations of the Grundrisse:

1939–41 First German edition
1953 Second German edition
1958–65 Japanese translation
1962–78 Chinese translation
1967–8 French translation
1968–9 Russian translation
1968–70 Italian translation
1970–1 Spanish translation
1971–7 Czech translation
1972 Hungarian translation
1972–4 Romanian translation
1973 English translation
1974–5 Slovak translation
1974–8 Danish translation
1979 Serbian/Serbo-Croatian translation
1985 Slovenian translation
1985–7 Farsi translation
1986 Polish translation
1986 Finnish translation
1989–92 Greek translation
1999–2003 Turkish translation
2000 Korean translation
2008 Portuguese translation

A castrato (Italian, plural: castrati) is a man with a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto voice produced either by castration of the singer before puberty or one who, because of an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.

Castration before puberty (or in its early stages) prevents a boy’s larynx from being transformed by the normal physiological events of puberty. As a result, the vocal range of prepubescence (shared by both sexes) is largely retained, and the voice develops into adulthood in a unique way. Prepubescent castration for this purpose diminished greatly in the late 18th century and was made illegal in Italy in 1870.

As the castrato’s body grew, his lack of testosterone meant that his epiphyses (bone-joints) did not harden in the normal manner. Thus the limbs of the castrati often grew unusually long, as did the bones of their ribs. This, combined with intensive training, gave them unrivalled lung-power and breath capacity. Operating through small, child-sized vocal cords, their voices were also extraordinarily flexible, and quite different from the equivalent adult female voice, as well as higher vocal ranges of the uncastrated adult male (see soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, sopranist, countertenor and contralto). Listening to the only surviving recordings of a castrato (see above), one can hear that the lower part of the voice sounds like a “super-high” tenor, with a more falsetto-like upper register above that.

Castrati were rarely referred to as such: in the 18th century, the euphemism musico (pl musici) was much more generally used, although it usually carried derogatory implications; another synonym was evirato (literally meaning “emasculated”). Eunuch is a more general term, since historically many eunuchs were castrated after puberty, castration thus having no effect on their voices.