#Maurice Fanon

[jgthirlwell]

playlist 09.25.24

Greco Bastien Wahlf More F (Bandcamp) Papangu Lampiao Rai (Repose) Jesus Lizard Rack (Ipecac) Vennart Forgiveness and the Grain (Bandcamp) Gong Unending Ascending (KScope) Messaien Des Canyons Aux Etoiles (CBS) Ni Fol Naïs / Pantophobie / Les insurgés de Romilly (Dur Et Doux) Pink Lady Monster Psychic Antennae and a Tinsel Heart (Witch Cat) Jack White No Name (Third Man) Jed Kurzel Samaritan OST (Lakeshore) Maurice Fanon Master Serie (Podus) Ross Feller X/Winds (Innova) King Dunn Eat The Spray EP (Am Rep) U96 and Wolfgang Flur Transhuman (UNLTD) Flux Information Sciences Last Mixes (Bandcamp) Colin Stetson The Love it took to leave you (Envision)

[lumiereandcogsworth]

i was just thinking about like. maurice spending so long wondering Why. he was on his own for 20 something years, struggling, trying to pursue his passion, meeting passers by, making acquaintances, even having passing love interests, but wholeheartedly just existing. and finally he meets maria. and he thinks he understands now. “this is what i was waiting for.” he finds true love, he finds true happiness. all that loneliness was worth it because he’s found what he was waiting for in life with maria. and everything is going accordingly, everything is going wonderfully.

and then he loses her after 18 months. it’s shocking and devastating and nothing makes any sense. he takes their baby (the baby that they had, that was surely more proof that all was as it should be???) and he goes to a foreign town outside of the city that he had fully planned to spend his entire life in. he raises their daughter on his own and he’s depressed and scared and lost and so utterly confused. why. WHY. why did he spend all that time waiting for maria, only to lose her so soon after?? why. and it would take him far longer than it should have to realize the reason.

all that time, he was never really waiting for maria. he was never waiting for some grand romance, some life-long love story. all along, he was waiting for belle. he was waiting for his daughter. he was waiting to teach her to be strong and courageous and brilliant. he was waiting to show her how to be kind, how to be understanding, how to love. all along he was waiting for his fearless girl. and oh, what a beautiful future did she bring :”)

[slayercain]

[...] phenomenology cannot furnish the conceptual tools for apprehending, apropos [Frantz] Fanon, the “lived experience of the black,” because black people have never had (which is to say, never had the capacity to lay claim to) bodies in the sense presumed by phenomenology. As [Hortense] Spillers imparts, the “diasporic plight” given in the (unfinished) passages of transatlantic slavery “marked a theft of the body,” a horrific “severing of the captive body from its motive will.” The entwined corporeal schema and original intentionality that Merleau-Ponty would take as the subject’s entrance into the world of things, is confronted by the black as a knot of privation, dereliction, and ruination, its proprietary claim arrested, as Fanon asserts, “by a racial epidermal schema.” Whereas Merleau-Ponty encounters a corporeal schema as dynamic and relational, as the boundless “opening upon a world,” Fanon encounters a racial epidermal schema that is overdetermined, anti-relational, and suffocating, as a schematization reserved for mere things, for objects among objects. Racial epidermalization becomes the mechanism for the phenomenological subject to avoid being ontologically subsumed within the world of objects and things, to disavow the “terrifying formlessness” such a radical entanglement would seem to imply. Whereas Merleau-Ponty can declare himself “in undivided possession” of his body, for its outline “is a frontier which ordinary spatial relations do not cross,” the poet Lillian-Yvonne Bertram reminds us that “for the negro it is a frontier always crossed.” Blackness becomes the epidermalized locus of a set of ontological displacements, secured through boundless and brutal violations, so that the phenomenological body-subject can cohere.

Rizvana Bradley, On Black Aesthesis

[umbramemeblog]

reminders for new black butler fans

I am terrified that new fans are gonna come in (especially from twitter...shudders) and start screaming the same thing's we've been hearing since forever, so let me reiterate some things for you guys

we love sebaciel

most of the anime is CANON.

be weird about every character

say that you "want maurice cole to die" or "wish he had alois' trauma"

the public school arc is a glorified version of harry potter. knock it off.

for the love of GOD do give gregory the virgil sanders treatment i am begging on my hands and knees he is just shy and artistic and your little storm cloud

black butler is a very dark and triggering story. there are a lot of triggering themes within the manga (moreso the anime I have to be honest). if these themes upset you, then it may be for you.

okay now for some general reminders

if someone ships something you don't like. who cares. if you don't like it, then don't interact with it. simple as that!

this goes for people who ship minors and adults you guys are fucking awesome.

you don't have to like someone else's au. again, don't like, don't interact. it's easy

what sexuality / gender / race someone headcanons another character as is none of your business

uhh i dont remember who is sascha

you don't have to accept the fanon (or canon really lol, that's why au's exist), there is no obligation

if someone says that bb is their special interest or hyperfixation your first instinct should not be to shit on them for it

DO NOT HARASS THE ENGLISH VOICE ACTORS, PLEASE PLEASE

don't harass the play actors either now that I'm here

like and reblog art, leave comments and kudos on fanfics

be a freak for the love of god. don't harass people.

okay that's it! byeeeee

[bonearenaofmyskull]

Hello, Twyla here. ♡ ̆̈

I've been chatting with @crimsondinnerparty about the Hannibal series. My blog mainly focuses on love, the Hannibal series isn't a genre I typically cover. However after hearing about the pair, I'm interested in featuring them on my blog for my audience. She suggested your account for any questions, so I hope you don't mind me asking you.

For me to feature any pair in my blog I only have 3 questions -

1. Are the actors fine with the shipping?

2. If the ship is canon , do the actors acknowledge it?(it would be great if you can tell me if they interpret the relationship as romantic or just a bromance , just for clarity to my followers,I get a lot of suggestions from people who sometimes want me to feature a fanon pair )

3. Are the actors and crew respectful to the LGBTQIA community ?

⤷ I hope you don’t mind me asking these questions. I eagerly await your response, and I hope your community gains more followers from my fandoms.

Hi, I sent you an ask a few hours ago. If you could reply to me privately, it would be great.* So, I was talking with some of my friends, who are my mutuals, and they really don't want me to reblog Hannibal-related content at all because they think it would give my blog a negative impression. For context, I am an active ally who fights for LGBTQ+ representation in movies and series. My focus is on normalizing queer relationships in my media and not stereotyping the community. My blog is important because people come there to get recommendations and send me theirs. In the discussion, one of my friends said there's a homophobic lesbian scene and also mentioned that the storyteller is problematic because he said his story is "queerbaiting." I really don't want to post any queerbaiting content as my followers mostly come from the Sherlock fandom, and if I put the same thing in front of them again, it's going to be very messy. For example, my followers are used to canon pairings like Ofmd, Maurice, Fellow Travelers, etc. I personally do my homework to see if any actors are LGBT+ who played the characters. After the discussion, I am hesitant about the Hannigram ship. Also, there's a debate about one of the actors' hesitation towards the fandom and relationship. This will be the same as the Supernatural fandom, and again, it was a mess, and I don't want to deal with that either.

Well...I'm going to give you an answer of sorts--I'm going to tell you where you can find your answer, at least--but I'm not actually going to answer your specific questions in any meaningful way.

Because here's the thing: you've got a question here that is the thread running through all your other questions and the context of your friends and others trying to influence your blog content. And that's because that question isn't really about Hannibal at all.

It's about what kind of blogger you want to be. And what kind of person you want to be, and where you want that person to exist in the spectrum of history and experience that is the queer experience.

In more cynical terms, it's a branding question: what kind of blog are you running with what kind of content, and what kind of experience do you want people to have if they follow or visit, and who do you think your audience is?

In that context the most important thing I saw in your asks was: "I am an active ally who fights for LGBTQ+ representation in movies and series. My focus is on normalizing queer relationships in my media and not stereotyping the community. My blog is important because people come there to get recommendations and send me theirs."

So it seems to me that if you apply Hannibal to your vision statement here, you get a pretty easy set of answers for some of it:

Is Hannibal a queer product with queer representation? Yes. Did people recommend Hannibal? Apparently. Might some of your audience be interested in the series and want to see it? Based on the three other products you mentioned blogging...maybe? At least some will. And some, like your friend, won't.

The trickier question is the middle question: will recommending Hannibal help normalize queer relationships and resist stereotyping?

Well, nothing about Hannibal, textually, is normal. Whether it's queer or not. It's about extraordinary people doing extraordinary things in a world that only looks normal. But subtextually--and even metatextually--the struggle at the center of Will Graham's character journey is entirely queer, and intertextually, that struggle is the same struggle between feared monstrosity and self-acceptance that is at the heart of why so many queer people are attracted to monster horror. Here is a good article that summarizes some of the issues that you're wondering about, and about the level of queerness that exists on a show that is entirely consumed by the love between two men while never actually allowing them even to kiss.

So as far as normalizing as in making gay stuff seem totes ordinary and all, without being stereotypical, the answer is sure, kind of--especially given there's also a lesbian relationship. Anecdotally I can tell you that my students perceive and accept the gayness of it more readily now than ever, and whether that's because media in general is more accepting or because people are or because the show itself creates that doesn't really matter--it's all a cycle of reinforcement, and the show does contribute to that reinforcement, so I'd say it's a net positive. But it's not going to meet the bar of the shows that you've cited here as the other pieces that you are interested in blogging about. Those seem to be explicitly gay, and/or often specifically about being gay, where the queerness is consummated and a main driver of the plot and center of the story. TBH, I wouldn't even know whether to recommend Black Sails to you based on the list you gave. And that show is gay af.

Hannibal doesn't belong in that group.

But that does not mean it's not queer. it's definitely more in the closet, but the queerness is threaded through the narrative thematically and symbolically in ways that the other shows you blog about might not do (I haven't seen them, so IDK--I am aware of them).

Hannibal is a product that is derivative from original works that definitely used queerness or queer-coding as horror itself. The author of the original books, Thomas Harris, had some real homophobia. To give credit where he put in the effort, he listened to criticisms about his work on that level and seemed to really work on trying to change that in himself and do better for representation and in his work over the course of time (with some hits and misses which is typical of this kind of personal growth), but regardless, Hannibal Lecter will always be an inheritor of the mid-twentieth century notion of Stereotypical Evil Gays, and anyone who wants to object based on that heritage will always be able to do so as long as Hannibal himself remains at all queer in any subsequent iterations. I think that's a bit of a bad faith reading, personally, in this day and age, but someone will always complain about it.

And that's the thing about Hannibal: it's problematic--not in the ridiculous way the word "problematic" has come to be used, meaning just "offensive," or some such nonsense (because the show really is not to anyone who is thinking critically) but truly in the sense of literally presenting problems and posing questions that are not easy to answer in a way that you can tie a pretty little bow on and put it on a controversy-free shelf, never to be taken down again to be re-examined.

Which is why Hannibal will be a part of literature--and queer literature, history, and heritage specifically--longer than shows that are easier to approach. Much like being queer itself is often problematic: it's not an easy road to travel, but there's a depth of human experience and history in it that means that most of us would not choose to travel a different, easier road, even if we could.

And it got canceled before it got to finish telling the story that it wanted to tell about these two men. It's forever been robbed of the chance to state definitively and finally what story it was ultimately trying to tell.

So the question you have to answer for yourself about whether or not Hannibal belongs on your blog has a lot to do with the queer zeitgeist that we exist in at this moment. Western queer communities are now passing through a phase of media consumption that is both a vast improvement on what the Sherlock fans you mentioned had to deal with, while also not quite releasing the trauma from the Sherlock-type experiences at the same time. It's fostered a kind of judgmental "queer fragility," wherein audiences, having come from a heritage that first entirely ignored the existence of queer people to the point of necessitating queer-coding, then depicted as mostly stereotypes, then started to have some real representation, but often what you got was sidelined or "bromanced," while creatives were often actively hostile to queer fans, and finally, now we have some pretty regular and relatively common and nuanced representation. With all that baggage for audiences to lug around, a lot of people are--understandably!--not at all interested in any media that reminds them of any of those other painful phases of the past. This fragility is something I tend to believe is a vocal minority, but they are VERY vocal, to the point of easily making themselves look like a majority in spaces like social media, where one only sees the people who are talking, not the rest of the people standing in the room. I believe as time goes on, if representation continues, people will eventually move out of this phase of fragility and be able to look back at the cultural media heritage of queerness without it eliciting such a visceral response. But I don't think we're there yet.

So who is your audience, then? Whom do you want to be your audience, and how will your content cater to them? Do you want your audience to be primarily the most traumatized and to cater to them in a fully safe way, where all your reblogs are considered endorsed as "safe," and they don't have to approach anything that has as much nuance going on with it as Hannibal? This kind of safe space is fully warranted and needed for these people, and if this is what you want your blog to be, I'd probably forego highlighting Hannibal.

But if you want to have a broader audience than that, or if you consider part of your mission to avoid stereotyping and to advance representation to mean that you need to include more queer representation, across a broader spectrum of queer history, heritage, and time, and if you see your reblogs as representative of offering that whole and varied spectrum of queer experience for your audience, then Hannibal 100% should be included.

Neither of these are without pitfalls: if you do the first, you'll have to vet everything down to the last detail. It'll be a lot of work. And woe betide you if you ever include something someone doesn't want.

If you do the second, you might let yourself off of some work, but your content will be diluted unless you assume a rather comprehensive tagging system and at least watch everything you recommend. And woe betide you if you don't include everything everyone wants all the time.

So in the end, the answer just lies with you, what you personally think of Hannibal, and whether or not you want to include it. Ultimately you're always going to be the judge of that, so what I say about the specific issues your friend mentioned versus what they said doesn't really matter either way. Your blog needs to be yours, even if it's based on recommendations. You're going to lose people either way you choose to do it. So just remember that your first audience--and last--is always just you.

I couldn't possibly go into significant detail about all the things you've mentioned in the course of a single post and do a fair job representing the nuance behind all those controversies, but I can tell you what I think about all the things, briefly.

And my brief opinion is that your friend has shit for takes. Sorry. But the list you gave of the things your friend objected to is all the absolute worst takes on every last one of those topics. If you want to do more research about any of this, I have already spoken to nearly all of it in my Hannibal meta tag, which you could probably pretty easily skim through (with some time, lol) to find most of your answers since there's no way I've the energy to rehash it all. Or ask @crimsondinnerparty, who has a preternatural ability to find things in my blog that even I can't find. Or you could just take your friend's word for all of it, to keep the peace and just assume that whatever they think is what you think and that they're educated enough to know what they're talking about. (It sounds to me like they've just heard gossip.)

You ARE going to have messes. That is one reality of running a fandom blog on Tumblr, if you have designed a blog for audience input, which you have. Specifically, if you reblog Hannibal, you'll disappoint your friend. If you don't, you'll disappoint the person who recommended it.

I think in the end you just need to decide to blog what you like.

Show us who you are.

_____

*I doublechecked that answering this publicly would be fine. It is. I wanted to publish this because I think there's an inherent greater discussion going on here about the nature of queerness and the nature of fandom.

[sissa-arrows]

Note here so people see it: If you send me an ask and I don’t reply it means tumblr deleted it before I got to answer. It keeps happening I’m sorry I’m not ignoring you. Unless it’s a racist ask then I’m totally ignoring you.

Pinned post with a presentation and the meaning of some words and expression I might use.

Starting with posts I suggest you.

List of some of the victims of police violence in France (not updated since I posted it)

Ressources about Western Sahara

Ressources about French colonialism in Algeria

Algerian movies and movies about Algeria or Algerians (the original post and the first reblog has Algerian movies only, the third one has French movies too as well as documentaries and I cannot vouch for all of them some are… well they are what they are)

Things for which the French blame Muslims

An ask about settlers and my answer about what it means and those who can and cannot be redeemed

Me:

Siham/Sissa, 29, Algerian and very proud of it (born and raised in France also have the French citizenship but France keep telling me I’m not French and Algeria keep telling me I’m a daughter of our land so the choice was made for me).

Firm believer of the right to self determination and the right to resist colonialism in any way. So if you don’t stand with Palestine and Western Sahara you’re not my ally.

I don’t want you to pretend to support us under my posts if you’re not willing to give that same support to Palestinians and Sahrawi people. Your fake support meant to make yourself look and feel good is not needed and certainly not wanted.

There’s no such thing as a neutral or innocent colonizer/settler. If you believe they exist you’re not my ally.

You can ask questions I will try to answer the best I can that being said I’m not here to coddle you if I feel like insulting you because you’re being a racist piece of shit I will insult you. I don’t believe in “being mean with racists only prove them right” bitches already refuse to see us as humans my fuck you won’t change anything.

I’m also a feminist (screw white feminism).

Homophobes and transphobes can go choke on their own hatred their “ally ship” is not wanted either under my posts.

Some definitions:

Shahid (plural shouhada): it’s supposed to mean martyr in a religious sense BUT in Algeria we use it for freedom fighters who were killed as well as those who fought and died during the war because they were sick or wounded regardless of their religion. Frantz Fanon for example is considered to be a Shahid and as such is buried in the Shouhada square of the cemetery.

Moudjahid (plural moudjahidine): again it’s supposed to be a religious term to designate people who fight to protect Islam but in Algeria we use it for all freedom fighters who fought for the independence. Maurice Audin was not Muslim but he is considered to be a Moudjahid.

Allah yarham *…*: It means “May God have mercy on *…*. It’s the proper thing to say when talking about a Muslim who died. I will use it mostly when talking about the Shouhada here but that’s something you’re supposed to say for all Muslims who died.

Tahiya Al djazair (horra): Long live to (a free) Algeria. The horra is optional.

Pied noir: A European settler in Algeria and ONLY in Algeria

[therealv1]

Some ultrakill headcanons

Gabriel has a lichtenberg scar from a fight with a fellow angel or heavenly entity that he was not on good terms with. - - Also generally a lot of scars. A fuckton. Metric ton, even. Eleven donuts worth, if we're going American.

Mad levels of anxiety. He struggles with GAD + panic attacks on a regular basis but has been able to maintain it after a while especially with the help of his husbands / start of living with them and working out the past issues.

I really like the idea of Gabriel being deeply into gardening, knowing the meanings of SO many flowers and sketching various things, don't get me wrong (+ he DEF has impostor syndrome) but. But hear me out.

TEA ENTHUSIAST! (I love tea, so I'm def projecting some.) And I love the idea that he just has a stash of tea + books he has found lying around about herbalism, medicinal properties of herbs, etc. Definitely has a mortar and pestle, makes his own spice mixes, has various tea strainers (maybe he'd find or make some cute ones, IDK) and so on

I go back and forth on his appearance, if it is even visible at all, so on. I like the idea that he is half oriented around the whole "biblically accurate angel'' portrayals but also has the head of an animal, specifically slightly lamb-leaning. I have more reasoning that it just being for religious symbolism, but I also won't deny that plays a part in it.

I also based his appearance somewhat off of the black and white art of the gate guardian from the SCP universe / Dr. Clef's Proposal for SCP-001 <3

Gabriel is intersex in my au

(This totally has nothing to do with my love of lichtenberg scars + lightning and storms or anything... /s)

V1 (humanoid ish/prime soul adjacent, I ought to get into detail about the AU but... bla bla, brevity bla bla, I digress) has a deeply uncanny face / appearance on the reg. It can't fully control it but even in the few moments where it has more power over its body it just typically chooses not to. It does get hurt though when people immediately get startled by its appearance but it "got used to it after a while"

Because I'm evil and a massive faggot V1 is in a harem w/ like. 99% of the ULTRAKILL cast. (Ignoring filth, sentry's, maurice', drones, virtues, et cetera/anything similar) - - Like dude kisses Gabriel, Minos, V2, Sisyphus, Ferryman, MDK, etc. ALL GOODNIGHT! And not even with the lights off, either... what a homo!

Learned pottery / how to mess with clay and ceramic type making things from the Ferryman. Violently enthusiastic over the concept of using its hands, very into craftsmanship. Would likely be a carpenter and/or "tinkerer" in life.

Used to reconstruct and deconstruct its body regularly (both for healthy and unhealthy reasons) but had to stop at Minos behest after getting caught one too many times.

Dissociates heavily. Sue me, I love and know the lore, I reread the wiki a disgusting amount but damn it! I love my own fanon.

Very curious about weather patterns

I'll try to think of more HC's for the others, but this is it for now haha + omg I just saw 1:11 on my clock. (I am tired)

one random and final headcanon: I'm really clinical over the idea of transfem minos. I feel like we deserve some transfem rep in ultrakill ngl Like obviously I love my transmasc homies, (I'm.. somewhere in an entirely different area of transgenderism at this point, transmasc no longer fits me, but again, I digress), and maybe I'm not looking in the right places, but I really feel like I do not see a lot of transfem or slightly unspecific fem variations of ULTRAKILL characters. I am ALLL for various depictions and I crave MORE MORE MORE! Perhaps I just need to scour the internet more

[omegaphilosophia]

The Philosophy of the Skin

The philosophy of the skin examines the role of the skin as a boundary, both physically and metaphorically, and its significance in human experience, identity, and interpersonal relationships. Skin, as the body’s largest organ, plays a fundamental role in how we perceive the world through touch, how we differentiate between self and other, and how we present ourselves socially. In philosophical discourse, the skin represents the interface between the individual and the external world, highlighting themes of vulnerability, intimacy, identity, and embodiment.

Key Themes in the Philosophy of the Skin:

Skin as a Boundary:

The skin acts as a physical boundary between the internal and external worlds, defining the limits of the body. It marks the division between self and other, playing a significant role in questions of identity and individuality.

Philosophers of embodiment like Maurice Merleau-Ponty explore how the skin is more than just a barrier; it is also a point of contact through which we experience the world. The skin mediates our sensory experiences, particularly through touch, grounding us in the physical environment and facilitating connection with others.

Touch and Sensory Perception:

Skin is the primary organ for touch, one of the most intimate senses. Philosophically, touch is often seen as a more immediate and embodied form of perception than sight or hearing, engaging us directly with objects and people.

Haptic perception—the way we understand the world through touch—raises philosophical questions about how we experience physical objects and other human beings. For instance, while vision can create a distance between the observer and the observed, touch collapses that distance, offering a more direct form of interaction.

The Skin and Vulnerability:

The skin's role in protecting the body highlights its vulnerability. The skin can be wounded, scarred, or marked, making it a symbol of human fragility. Philosophers like Emmanuel Levinas have explored the ethical significance of this vulnerability, particularly in relation to our interactions with others.

Levinas argued that vulnerability, especially as it is revealed through the skin, creates an ethical demand for care and responsibility toward others. The skin’s exposure symbolizes the openness of human beings to harm but also to intimacy and ethical connection.

The Skin and Identity:

Skin is central to how individuals are identified and categorized socially. Skin color has been a focal point of philosophical discussions about race, racism, and identity. Frantz Fanon, in works like Black Skin, White Masks, explored how skin color shapes experiences of alienation, power, and oppression in colonial and postcolonial contexts.

Skin also functions as a canvas for self-expression, through tattoos, piercings, scars, and other modifications, making it an important site for exploring questions of personal identity and social belonging.

The Skin and Embodiment:

The skin is central to philosophical discussions on embodiment, which considers the body as lived experience rather than as an object. Phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty argue that our sense of self is inseparable from our embodied experience, of which skin is a crucial element.

Our skin is constantly in contact with the environment, making it essential for experiencing the world in a bodily way. This lived experience of the body—feeling warmth, cold, pleasure, pain—demonstrates how we are constantly engaged with the world through our skin, which both protects us and connects us to the environment.

Skin and Aesthetics:

The skin has long been associated with beauty and aesthetics. In many cultures, the smoothness, color, and texture of skin are central to standards of beauty, prompting reflection on how aesthetic judgments are influenced by bodily appearances.

The artificial modification of skin—such as cosmetics, plastic surgery, and body art—raises philosophical questions about the authenticity of appearance and the extent to which the skin serves as a medium for aesthetic expression.

Skin as a Metaphor:

In addition to its physical properties, skin serves as a powerful metaphor in philosophy and literature. To "be thick-skinned" or "thin-skinned" refers to one's emotional resilience or sensitivity, linking the physical properties of skin to psychological traits.

The metaphor of "wearing a mask" or "shedding skin" is often used to describe changes in identity or emotional states, suggesting that the skin is not just a boundary but a dynamic interface that can reflect and shape one’s psychological and social self.

Skin and Intimacy:

The skin is crucial for human intimacy. The act of touching—whether a handshake, an embrace, or a caress—is a deeply symbolic gesture that expresses trust, affection, or solidarity. Touch is one of the most immediate ways of creating a connection with others.

The philosophy of touch emphasizes how the skin facilitates communication without words, enabling a form of non-verbal interaction that is powerful in both personal relationships and ethical encounters.

Ethics of Care and Skin:

Skin care, both in a literal and metaphorical sense, is related to the ethics of care. Taking care of one’s skin, or the skin of others, embodies broader principles of responsibility, nurturing, and maintaining well-being. In health care, for example, caring for someone’s skin can symbolize larger commitments to their dignity and comfort.

The Skin and Technology:

The development of technologies that interact with the skin—such as wearable devices, prosthetics, or virtual reality haptics—raises philosophical questions about the boundary between the organic and the artificial. How do these technologies reshape our understanding of skin as a human organ?

As the skin becomes more integrated with technology, its role as an interface between the self and the world becomes more complex, inviting discussions about cyborg philosophy and the future of human embodiment.

The philosophy of the skin touches on fundamental questions about identity, vulnerability, sensory perception, and human relationships. Skin, as a sensory organ and boundary, plays a pivotal role in how we experience and interpret the world. Through its capacity to feel, protect, and express, the skin is a rich site for philosophical inquiry, connecting the physical body to broader existential, ethical, and social concerns.

[mayordeas-clone]

Smash Tier List, Ordered By Which Characters Have Canon Last Names

i decided one fateful friday evening to make this tier list cuz i was bored. shoutout to the smash prose server for helping me iron out any kinks and retrieve some obscure information to help make this tier list reach its fullest potential (discord link for the server on my blog if youre on desktop or in my pinned post on my art account always b pluggin)

below the cut is some extra details on the tiers and character placements.

THIS IS ROUGH AS HELL!!!!! and the research and sources aren't very cut and dry throughout ;w; a tier list i wanted to make for the sillies that ended up going deeper than expected but not all the way, so it's sorta in a weird gray area of reliability. apologies for not-so-clear info in advanced 😔

Official Surname

what it says on the tin. i'd put detailed explanations of where all of them were "confirmed" but i don't know the nitty gritty of a lot of the characters and just know em from official bios. will provide detail if i see fit cuz its my post.

Byleth: "Eisner"

Joker: Civilian name is "Ren Amamiya", from the anime. Akira Kurusu is another civilian name he goes by, coming from the manga, however Amamiya is more common in official media (and kind of canonized in the PC release of Persona 5 Royal, where changing the language to English from something else will default his name to Ren Amamiya)

Kazuya: "Mishima"

Samus (And Zero Suit Samus): "Aran"

Fox: "McCloud"

Falco: "Lombardi"

Wolf: "O'Donnell"

Terry: "Bogard"

Cloud: "Strife"

SImon and Richter: "Belmont"

Donkey and Diddy Kong: So we all pretty much agreed that "Kong" is a family name :P it could be moved to the yellow canon-ish tier but idk

Peach: "Toadstool", which she signs off as in Mario 64 (So that's pretty canon right)

Generally accepted fanon surname (or exists in obscure non-canon media)

these are kinda? surnames. theyre not official like the ones above or acknowledged in the main source material, but they draw from some sort of source that fans run with. usually, it's common for multiple fanworks to use them as last names when dishing them out :P there could be multiple of these for each character. this is where a lot of handy guidance from the prose server came in, thank you very much once again!!

Mario, Dr. Mario, and Luigi: "Mario", from the live action Super Mario Bros. movie (also, "Mario Mario" is the funniest shit ever to me). Also the joke of "hey if theyre the 'mario bros', then is their last name mario?!"

Yoshi: Alright apparently in the 1993 manual for Super Mario World, Yoshi's full name is "T. Yoshisaur Munchakoopas". Alright then?? I was going to put Yoshi in the "species" category, but this bit surprised me :P not sure if it's like, a scientific name or something, but I guess this Yoshi is a special case.

Ganondorf: I think in a manual or something like that (Forgive my vague language, this was just something I recalled that the people I worked with agreed with), he is given the last name "Dragmire".

Marth, Chrom, and Lucina: "Lowell" was a last name given to Marth in the Fire Emblem anime. With Chrom and Lucina being direct descendants of him, they also inherit this last name.

Zelda: "Hyrule" is generally assumed to be her last name. I'm pretty sure Zelda's father in BotW is given the official last name, though I know there's some different reincarnation shenanigans going on. Still, no one stopped me 😎 it's a common theme for a lot of "royalty" characters to be assigned a fanon last name named after their respective kingdom (though I may have overlooked some, we'll get to those later).

Ike: "Greil", named after his father. I thought it was kinda dumb for his last name to be ripped from his dad's first name but idk maybe everyone is on a last-name basis for him (I haven't progressed far in Path of Radiance to know).

Sonic: This one surprised me. Apparently in the Archie comics, his full name "Ogolvie Maurice Hedgehog". So his last name is "Hedgehog"? I suppose this means Sonic's full name could also be Sonic The Hedgehog, with "The" being a middle name :P

Captain Falcon: I was going to include this in "canon", but given that it's technically from a manual and other surnames in this tier come from a similar source, so might as well be consistent. In one of the F-Zero manuals, he's given the name "Douglas J. Falcon" (baller ass name tbh). In the anime, he's also given the civilian name "Bart Lemming".

Sephiroth: According to the Prose pals, it could be "Hojo" or "Crescent" depending on who you ask (idk I'll take their word for it. Yeah sorry this isn't a very thorough list in terms of research and sources).

Ryu: Another Prose pal said that one of the movies gave him the last name "Hoshi".

Bowser and Bowser Jr.: Heard "Koopa" tossed around, given Bowser is the king of Koopas and Jr. is his son.

Mega Man: "Light", after his creator Dr. Light.

Roy: "Pherae", after him being the son of Marquess Pherae.

King K. Rool: I think I assumed "Rool" could be his last name, and the K. is an initialized first name. Heavily based on my own guess tho.

No Canon Surname

Yeah. Though some are Weird and probably misassigned.

Snake I could have sworn had some kind of fanon surname, but I drew up a blank when consulting with the Prose server :P any hardcore Metal Gear fans can swoop in and correct me though.

Corrin and Daisy are kinda... weird to me cuz I assumed they would operate on similar logic to Zelda, being named after their respective kingdoms ("Valla" and "Sarasaland"). But I've never seen those used in practice so it's probably negligible. They bounced between tiers a lot while I made this.

I suppose Dragon Quest 11 Hero could fall in the "kingdom last name" category but idk I'm still internally debating with Corrin and Daisy. Didn't do any research on the other Heroes and no one seemed to stop me. So sorry!! 😭

The only other thing I have to say about this tier is that I'm surprised Bayonetta, Shulk, Olimar, Alph, and Sora didn't have any note-worthy last names to speak of. Unless something slipped through the cracks!

Idk if Sheik would adopt Zelda's assumed last name which is why they are in this tier.

Title, no canon name

Pretty much a title given to the character, be it related to their occupation or status.

This was originally a "no canon first name lmao" tier, but I changed it to be more broad at the request of the Discord buddies to include weird edge cases like Dark Samus (who isn't really a species, but not really a person?) and Duck Hunt (who accounts for three separate entities in one lol so that kind of confused me, but a tier like this worked for him).

Species????

Pretty much a character that comes from a species of many, meaning they don't really have an actual name to begin with (Inklings technically count, since it's not like "Inkling" refers to status or occupation). Yes, I included R.O.B. there due to Subspace Emissary's lore :) one could argue that's not canon, but be fr does R.O.B. have any existing lore to work with? Brawl essentially made him its own OC for the story campaign and that's amazing. Anyway, unnecessary rant aside, R.O.B. is a species in my book, and he's the last of his kind (another detail originating from Smash).

Last two tiers are kind of joke tiers I came up with as the idea for this list cooked up in my brain. One could argue "Mr. Game and Watch" is a title, but I thought his own dedicated tier was funnier so I kept it intact :P

~~~

Thus concludes this dumbass tier list. Feel free to roast me in the notes for inaccuracies cuz there's probably a lot (Or don't I'm sensitive as hell)

[rating-bears]

our NEXT bear from my head is a slightly familiar face from the rating bears blog, My djungelskog Stevie!

now i hear you all saying, rating-bears tungle bog, wasn't the bear from yesterday named Stevie? and you would be correct! the skog stevie IS named after the dnd stevie, but the skog stevie is Far more evil and fucked up than dnd stevie.

dnd stevie is very dumb, but skog stevie? evil mastermind. he sits there and Plots all day long. the only thing containing him is Maurice, the bear hat, because skog stevie feels a sense of brotherhood to him. sometimes tho, I need to wear Maurice (cuz he's cute and I love him) and on those days Stevie goes WILD (I have various skog stevie related bits that I subject my friends and loved ones to)

i do this bit sometimes where skog Stevie steals my phone and talks to people, and I think its really funny. i like to think of skog stevies interactions with the world like what happens when characters get really interpreted in fanon

anyway

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5!!! for my beautiful, evil boy.

[hannahmanderr]

aCTUALLY lemme get the whole foley fam in, ANGELA.

whoops you get these in reverse order

One aspect I love - this is mostly based off of fanon but I honestly love that she (and Maurice too tbh) is the most NormalTM of the trio's parents. These children need some NormalTM adult figures in their lives and Angela is that NormalTM

One aspect I wish more people understood - AGAIN I'M PRETTY SURE THIS IS FANON BUT Angela is a nurse, AND CANONICALLY she's a homemaker so really between nursing and being an awesome cook she's out there girlbossing it up and I lover her for it

One (or more) headcanon(s) I have - After learning Danny's secret and what her son's been up to, she is incredibly proud of all three of them for being noble enough to do such a thing, but she also develops panic disorder because she gets so worried about them. She tries to cope by offering to help Danny patch up at the hospital whenever he needs, under the radar, but she wonders if it just makes it worse

One character I love seeing them interact with - hey here's a crime, why don't we have more canon Angela content ANYWAY I will always be a sucker for Angela being basically like a Second Mom to Danny, and I love when I get to read fics where they interact. Tucker and Danny truly are brothers, and she loves him just like she loves Tucker.

One character I wish they would interact with more - I would loooove to see Angela and Maurice interacting more, I feel like they would be so Stereotypical that it would seem fake but like they genuinely don't notice and it just works so well for them

One (or more) headcanon(s) I have that involve them and one other character - Angela plays DND with Tucker. That's it that's the headcanon.

~ Send me a character and I'll share these thoughts about them!

[ludmilachaibemachado]

Le 12 mars 1963 Françoise Hardy reçoit le "Grand Prix du disque" de l'Académie Charles Cros dans la catégorie "Chanson - Succès 1963" pour son premier 30cm qui a explosé les ventes depuis sa sortie lors des fêtes de Noël 1962. Dans cette même catégorie "Chanson", le prix de la "Révélation 1963" est attribué à Béatrice Arnac et celui du "Premier disque" à Maurice Fanon🍁🍁🍁

Via @_hardy_collection on Instagram

[lumiereandcogsworth]

something incredibly personal to me about adam’s primary nickname for belle being “darling,” and that’s also what belle’s mother used to call belle’s father. something about belle and maurice just being seen as so very darling. such darling people. good and sweet and kind. belle is her mother’s daughter in many ways but she is also her father’s daughter. she is maurice’s kindness, maurice’s silly humor, maurice’s loving nature. maurice was maria’s darling for as long as life allowed. and now belle is adam’s darling. they’re just both such darling people and their beloveds know it!!!!

[anawkwardlady]

Do you… have more Alois Weston content? Esp with Maurice

Also wouldn’t they be in the same house? Even though Alois is more of an artsy kid, he is trying to convince people that he’s noble born. Although the bubbly blonde in a house of goths is really funny to me abahhajj

Hey ! Sooo I personally hc Alois as being a Violet Wolf, I think putting him in the Red House would quickly block his development ? Like him trying to fit with the noble people is already something we're seeing and the value of this house doesn't allow for much exploration in my opinion. I just like the idea of him being able to understand he has potential, hanging out with weird kids who likes to draw him and act all emo and support him. Also I think they would all encourage him to try something new. I just want him to stand out I guess ! I think he would get along pretty well with Violet even if he creeps him out lol. Also I think the prefects would probably prefer him not getting in the Red House to avoid favoritism or accusation of favoritism (Since he is related to Redmond)

So I apologize for what you are about to witness. Because I'm not properly tagging my shit I had to search for all my Weston!Alois posts and sorry but it's going to be a chaotic tiny masterpost I guess lol. Because my Weston fanon became so DUMB, i think its hard to understand without being in the JUICE of the whole thing so I put anything "relevant". Also i'm poking @reine-du-sourire who was participating in the Maurice and Alois dynamic too !

I have some of posts relating to Alois in Weston I think :

Rambling about Alois getting in Weston + The Violet House + his general school trope/reputation

Why are Alois and Maurice friends (or Frenemies) in the first place and how the dynamic works ?

Do I ship them ?

Maurice is more conservative and pretty judgmental (he looks like the homophobic dog meme) (sry i didnt find that one but trust me lol)

Alois and Maurice just being toxic blond bois with similar interests : here, here, here, here

Alois and Maurice are extremely toxic with each other but still have sweet bonding moments

Alois is the big brother of all the younger students : Here, here

Maurice sees Alois as his Charity Case friend and doesn't really envy his beauty like he does with Ciel because, well, Alois has the reputation of being insane so it balances it out : here, here

Alois life being surrounded like little goths : here, here, here, here, here, here

Alois is very clingy with Professor Faustus : here, here, here

Violet being weird but trying to warn Alois

Redmond is the senpai

[mythicaldemigoddess-of-deltarune]

Sage Prime AU: Rusty Rose Found A Small & Cute Anomaly

--------------

Credit for Sonic The Hedgehog goes to Sega

Credit for Sonic Prime Series goes to Sega & Netflix

-----------------

not sure if anyone else had this type of Crossover AU idea, but if there was a Crossover AU that has to do with Sonic Frontiers & Sonic Prime, it would be called Sage Prime.

like picture Sonic still ending up in the same situation, along with Shadow being in the same situation, but instead of Sonic ending up in New Yoke along, he ends up there with Sage.

January 19th will be the Crossover AU known as Sage Prime’s Birthday.

I think Sage’s first thoughts would be when she sees The Chaos Council,

would be “Father, why are you wearing a wig....? and appears you have cloned yourself as well.....”

but like instead of keeping the thoughts inside her head, she says them out loud for everyone in the room to hear.

this would also be my first fan art of Rusty Rose, I hope I did okay drawing her.

I can’t help but think that Shadow Figure that was talking to Rusty, might not be Mister Doctor Eggman (I’m still calling him by the nickname Megan.)

because the voice sounds different and the hair style seems different as well, my Fan Headcanon and theory is that could be The Egg-Emperor that is the boss of The Chaos Council.

well either that, or The Real Egg-Emperor’s right-hand man, and it could turn out that Doctor Eggman, the original did survive and didn’t have himself shatter into multiple counterparts, and had ended up cloning himself, and creating The Chaos Council and The Mysterious Shadow Figure Eggman (who I don’t think is “Megan” and might be a different version of Eggman.)

plus Eggman surviving what happen to Sonic’s original world, would explain why we don’t see any versions of Eggman in the Pirate and Jungle Worlds.  

plus both him and Sonic were the closes to The Paradox Prism, so in theory if The Original versions of Tails, Amy, Knuckles and Rouge were a little bit closer to the paradox prism like Sonic and Eggman were, they wouldn’t of shattered into multiple counterpart versions of themselves.

I do have a theory about Sonic from the Sonic Prime series, being The True Sonic Prime, while the Archie version wasn’t and was like a Subprime, like even if Sonic (from Sonic Prime) had his original world shattered, new reality and worlds are still being born and brought into existence.

like the Zone Cops, like Zonic, mistakenly thought that Sonic from the Mobius Subprime, was from Mobius Prime but it turns out after every zone and person who was erased from the original timeline and had regenerated in the Fanon Timeline-stream, and this would end up having all the Zone Cops being regenerated as well, they would then find out that the Sonic that they thought was the Prime-Sonic, turning out to be NOT the real Prime-Sonic at all.

and he was Subprime-Sonic, I am fan headcanoning that, because it makes sense that Sonic from the new Sonic Prime show, is the True Prime-Sonic and the one from the Archie Comic series, turning out not to be the true Prime-Sonic at all.

I did write the theory about it, but I don’t think I have posted it yet...

plus if Evil-Sonic and Scourge were made into separate characters, and rewriting Scourge’s history where he was born with green fur and blue eyes, and is biologically related to Uncle Chuck.

and you know, I like the idea that Sonic’s middle name would still be Maurice.

Tom, Maddie and Sonic being like a Family, is like “I Fam It”

and picture if Tom or Maddie use Sonic’s full name, which would be like

“Sonic Maurice Wachowski The Hedgehog!”

and if Queen Aleena was Mainstream canon and not semi-canon, then she could co-parent Sonic (as well as Sonia and Manic), and be friends with Tom and Maddie.

which such a idea might only happen in Fanon.

when the Sonic Movie 3 comes, I hope they use the words “Sonic Maurice Wachowski The Hedgehog” in it, well even if they don’t, it can always be used in the Fanon.

if Sage had a middle name given to her by Eggman, I like the idea that the middle name he gives her, would be to honor someone who is not with them anymore.

and that someone being Maria Robotnik, so Sage’s full name would be

Sage Maria Robotnik, that be interesting if that was used in the Crossover AU that is called Sage Prime.

Sage does appear to be the same age as Bowser Jr., and it be cute if they became best friends, if those two ever became like “boyfriend & girlfriend”

I still think they would just hold hands, and just play together, like Bowser Jr. pushing Sage on a swing, and even playing video games together.

 in a parody of “All-American Girl” by Carrie Underwood, it would have the words be “since the day, Eggman tried to create his Eggman Empire, he been hoping to make the perfect son to be his successor.”

“they would take him conquering the Green Hill, throw the Blue Hedgehog into the lake, and be his greatest creation ever.”

“but the moment when Sage came into being, all those big dreams changed.”

“now Eggman’s wrapped around Sage’s little finger.”

of course the part in the song that says 16 years later, the football star would be Bowser Jr in the parody version.

if Frisk x Monster Kid can be cutely ship together, then so can Bowser Jr. x Sage.

anyway, I hope some like this crossover drawing that has to do with Sage from Sonic Frontiers and Rusy Rose from Sonic Prime.

 a Crossover AU between the Sonic Frontiers Game & Sonic Prime Show,

just seem like a interesting idea, and if Sage did end up in the same situation as Sonic, she might end up meeting Rusty Rose first in New Yoke before meeting up with Sonic.

we know that Doctor Babble is a baby and seems to have a bit of a temper, like if he was going through the terrible two’s a bit too early.

Sage could be the only one to calm him down, like her acting as a “big sister” to him and soothing him into taking a nap.

Sonic might call her the “Baby Whisperer”, that would be funny and cute. XD

picture Doctor Deep wanting to throw Mister Doctor Eggman a baby shower after Sage calls him “Father”, because she mistakes him being The Original Mainstream Eggman who is her Father/Creator.                        

and Doctor Done-it being, well, the funny Grandpa he is, he might say something like “About Time You Gave Me A Grandchild!”

which would then end up having Mister Doctor Eggman yelling “like I told that blue hedgehog, we are NOT a family!”

but even if he says their not, he could of fooled the fans, who some of the fans of the new show, already view The Chaos Council as a Family.

Doctor Don’t aka “Donny” and Doctor Babble would be like the sons of the family, and Doctor Done-It would be like the Grandpa.

I still think it might be possible that the Original Eggman did survive and didn’t break into multiple counterparts when the Paradox Prism shattered.

and in theory, when he did survive, he might of found himself in the Green Hill that would later be made into New Yoke, and without Sonic around, he could make his dream come true, and even cloned himself to help run New Yoke.

it be surprising if that theory turns out to be true, like how that one guy had accidentally predicted that Kris would eat all the pie in the Deltarune game.

which once again, I don’t think Kris did that until after they had sneak out of the house and broke into the library and made a dark fountain and then they went back home and used the knife to use on the pie, well either that or it turning out that when Kris had sneak out to breaking to the library, they left the door open and Susie was passing by and she smelled the pie and was the one who ate all the pie instead of Kris, who didn’t get the chance to eat all of, and there could of been only one slice left.

it be funny if Mom-bot from Sonic Boom, viewed not just Sage as her Grandchild, but also viewed Doctor Don’t and Doctor Babble as her Grandchildren as well.

and like how she views Morpho as her other son and him being Eggman’s brother, she might view Doctor Deep and Mister Doctor Eggman as her sons as well. it be funny if Mom-bot got on to Mister Doctor Eggman if he started to “pick on” his “Baby Brother” Doctor Deep, like this being at the dinner table.

and if Sonic had the same problem with his shoes after what happen to the Paradox Prism, The Original Eggman could of had the same problem and had to make a device to stable his energy, and if Orbot and Cubot were close enough to the Paradox Prism as he was, then they could of survived as well and Eggman might of had to make devices to help stable their energies as well.

if Sage had started to show any signs of being unstable, I guess she could be given a type of stabling device as well, that looks like a hair-clip.

anyway, maybe I will draw more of this “Sage Prime AU” idea again sometime.

I did my best to make Sage have a cute confused look on her face, but I guess it might be hard to tell if that is a confused look she has on her face.                  

I do think I may have drew Rusty’s emotionless face perfectly though.

 also if Sonic did end up having a crush on Rusty Rose, even if it is just in Fanon, would that make him a Simp...?

I wonder if Eggman would simp for Lady Dimitrescu...?

like even if it would just be in fanon, and it be funny if Eggman’s daughter called him out on it.

like Eggman could be holding Sage in his arms, and she sees the way he is looking at Lady Dimitrescu and says “Father, you are simping.”

if there was a question I could ask any of the Sonic Characters from Sonic Twitter Takeover on Twitter and even shows on Youtube, which I don’t really have a Twitter Account, and I know I was thinking about it before, but because of certain reasons, I don’t want to make one right now....even if there are good people over at Twitter, but I have my reasons.

anyway if I had to ask Eggman a question, it would be this...

“Doctor Eggman, are you a Simp for Lady Alcina Dimitrescu...?” 

 but then that type of question might not be possible to be answered.

 I wonder if the reason why so many fans have started to simp for her, might have to do with her being really tall and those who do simp for her in a hardcore way, might have a Goddess Complex, I know that the whole Goddess Complex might not really be a real complex, but like instead it meaning a literal Goddess, it would mean that those who simp would view the object of their simping as a “Goddess figure” even if she isn’t really one.

that could be one of the ways to explain the “Goddess Complex”...

I think that Lady Alcina Dimitrescu from The Biohazard/Resident Evil series, is a interesting character, but I don’t simp for her.

I may have simp a little for Karl Heisenburg, and might still have a small crush on him, but I guess I could have some form of simp-flux moments.

I still have no interest in forming romantic relationships with real humans, and not just because I am Aroaceflux, it has to do with a few reasons that make them unattractive...which I might talk a little bit more about in another post.

my being Aroaceflux and the things that I find unattractive in other humans (well the Toxic-Humans, really...) are separate.

 anyway, when I can, I might draw more Sage Prime.

 if be funny if in a Crossover between Sonic and Deltarune, Queen exclaims that Sage is her daughter now, and she takes off running and Eggman goes after her to try to get his daughter back from Queen.

Sage is just so adorable, and we know that Eggman is wrapped around her little finger and she could be the future Empress of the Eggman Empire when Eggman retires for all we know. XD                                                            

[nicklloydnow]

“But intellectual life is flourishing in the cafés, institutes and academies, as refugees forge community in exile. And at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, one of France’s most prestigious research universities, Alexandre Kojève has taken over Alexandre Koyré’s seminar on The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) by G W F Hegel. Between 1933 and 1939, Raymond Aron, Georges Bataille, André Breton, Gaston Fessard, Jacques Lacan, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Éric Weil, Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, Raymond Queneau, Emmanuel Levinas all come to hear his lectures. A collection of the most renowned thinkers of the day, who would come to lay the intellectual foundations for 20th-century philosophy, political thought, literature, criticism, psychology and history. It is said that Kojève’s lectures were so intricate, so deft, that Arendt accused him of plagiarising. Bataille fell asleep. Sartre couldn’t even remember being there.

(…)

The short answer is that Kojève made Hegel accessible by bringing to the surface one of the essential elements of his work: desire. Kojève did not deny he was providing a reading of Hegel that transformed the text. His interpretation has been described as ‘creative’, ‘outrageous’ and ‘violent’. The question Kojève placed at the centre of his lectures was: ‘What is the Hegelian person?’ And he answered this question through a discussion of human desire by centring a brief section in the Phenomenology titled ‘Independence and Dependence of Self-consciousness: Lordship and Bondage’, which is popularly rendered as ‘the master/slave dialectic’. And by centring this nine-page section of a 640-page work, Kojève offered readers a way to grasp an otherwise elusive text.

Poetic in its opacity, perplexing in its terminology, Hegel’s work offers an understanding of the evolution of human consciousness where the finite mind can become a vehicle for the Absolute. But what does that mean? Kojève took the lofty prose of Hegel down from the heavens and placed it in human hands, offering a translation: this is a book about human desire and self-consciousness. Or, as the philosopher Robert Pippin writes:

Kojève, who basically inflates this chapter to a free-standing, full-blown philosophical anthropology, made this point by claiming that for Hegel the distinctness of human desire is that it can take as its object something no other animal desire does: another’s desire.

What was Kojève’s reading of the master/slave dialectic?

In Kojève’s reading, human beings are defined by their desire for recognition, and it is a desire that can be satisfied only by another person who is one’s equal. On this reading, Kojève unfolds a multi-step process: two people meet, there is a death-match, a contest of the wills between them, and whoever is willing to risk their life triumphs over the other, they become the master, the other becomes a slave, but the master is unable to satisfy his desire, because they’re recognised only by a slave, someone who is not their equal. And through the slave’s work to satisfy the master’s needs, coupled with the recognition of the master, ultimately the slave gains power.

What is essential for Kojève is that one risk their life for something that is not essential. The one who shrinks before the other in fear of death becomes the slave. The one willing to die – to face the inevitability of their own non-existence – becomes the master. In other words, desire is an exertion of the will over an other’s desire. Or, as the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan would come to say: ‘Desire is the desire of the Other’s desire.’ It is not an attempt to possess the other person physically, but to force the other person in that moment of contest to make the other give, to bend their will, in order to achieve superiority. And in this moment, Kojève writes: ‘Man will risk his biological life to satisfy his nonbiological Desire.’ In order to gain recognition in this sense, one must be willing to risk everything – including their life. It is a struggle for mastery of the self.

Instead of Hegel’s roundabout of self-consciousness that exists in itself and for itself but always and only in relation to another, Kojève gives us: self-consciousness is the I that desires, and desire implies and presupposes a self-consciousness. Thinking about the relation between the finite mind and Absolute knowledge is opaque, but desire is human. People know what it feels like to desire, to want, to crave to be seen, to feel understood. Desire is the hunger one feels to fill the absence inside themselves. Or, as Kojève put it: ‘Desire is the presence of absence.’

(…)

Perhaps most importantly, what Kojève understood was the extent to which we humans desire to exercise some control over how other people see us differently from the ways in which we see ourselves. However tenuous or certain our sense of self-identity may seem, it is our very sense of self that we must risk when we appear in the world before others – our identity, desire, fear and shame. There is no guarantee that we will be seen in the way we want to be seen, and feeling misrecognised hurts when it happens, because it wounds our sense of self. But this risk is vital – it is part of what makes us human, it is part of our humanity. And whereas Kojève’s reading drives toward an ideal of social equality that affirms one’s preexisting sense of self when confronted by an other, for Hegel, one must take the other’s perception of the self – whatever it may be – back into their own self-consciousness. In other words, whereas for Hegel freedom rested upon the ability to preserve difference, for Kojève it rested upon the ability to preserve one’s own identity at the expense of difference.

In bringing the lofty language of Hegel down from the heavens, Kojève offered readers a secular understanding of human action, which requires each and every individual to reckon with the inevitability of their own death, their own undoing. And in doing so he shifted the focus toward the individual as the locus of social change, where history unfolds toward an aristocratic society of equals, where all difference is destroyed. Influenced by Karl Marx’s account of class struggle as the engine of history, and Martin Heidegger’s understanding of being-toward-death, Kojève’s reading of the master/slave dialectic presents another form of contest between oppressor and oppressed, where mastery over another in order to master oneself becomes the means to equality, and ultimately justice within society. Kojève adopted the master/slave dialectic in order to develop what Michael Roth called ‘a schema for organising change over time’, to think about the movement of history. And the master/slave dialectic unfolds at the level of the individual and the level of society, where the self gains recognition as a desiring subject through the endless battle for recognition that is appearing in the world with others, and the level of society where all past historical movements will be judged within a framework of right, which is the end of history.

This has been in part the legacy of Kojève. Influenced by Kojève’s reading of the master/slave dialectic, Sartre argued in Being and Nothingness (1943) that man’s freedom is found in negation. In The Second Sex (1949), Beauvoir turned to Kojève to think about women’s oppression in relation to man and the need for intersubjective recognition. Lacan’s ‘mirror-stage’ follows Kojève’s reading of Hegel to understand the role of desire as a lack in the formation of human subjectivity. Bataille turned to Kojève to argue that one could experience full self-sovereignty only in a moment of pure negation. For Foucault, it led to the belief that there is no desire free from power-relations – his central theme. And for Fukuyama, this historical contest of wills evolving along a linear temporal plane toward an equal and just society has become the much-mocked ‘end of history’ thesis – the idea that Western liberal democracy has evolved as the final form of human government in the postwar world. The postwar world Kojève himself helped to shape, before his untimely death in 1968. Ultimately, Fukuyama’s thesis captures the difference between Hegel and Kojève’s Hegel: for Kojève, the ideal of universal equality won through an endless battle for recognition was always an individualist notion that required domination when confronted by otherness. But for Hegel, human freedom could be won only through collectivity by embracing the opacity of otherness that we are constantly confronted with in ourselves, and in the world with others. It is an acceptance of that fact that self-mastery will always remain an illusion.”