#regis debray

[nunc2020]

Mediengrammatik-ein Wörterbuch der Bilder ?

Bilder funktionieren nur, wenn ihre Betrachter an die Echtheit dessen glauben, was da dargestellt wird.

„Heute gilt nur dasjenige als unsichtbar, was in der Welt noch nicht ausreichend sichtbar gemacht worden ist ..., während das absolut Unsichtbare, welches die Religionen im spirituellen Raum versprechen, im wörtlichen Sinn aus unserem Blick geraten ist.“

[herederosdelkaos]

Arte y literatura : "El indeseable", un artículo del escritor venezolano Edinson Martínez

En países como el nuestro, donde el verano está separado del invierno por un aguacero, y no por un otoño, como inspiradamente escribiera Regis Debray en su novela El indeseable, la exótica comparecencia de sucesos y contextos queda singularmente expresada, casi con asombro, por el autor, cuando actúa en ejercicio omnisciente, como también para varios de los personajes de la trama. Por eso, en algún instante fugaz, a medida que avanzaba en la lectura de la apenas conocida obra del filósofo francés, se me ocurrió pensar –ubicándome un poco en la labor narrativa del escritor al momento de plasmar sus ideas– en la confrontación a la que hubo de avenirse para, con una realidad tan extraña a él, absolutamente bizarre, poder entregarnos el texto que nos presentó hace más de cuarenta años.

El libro ha estado rodando en mi biblioteca por mucho tiempo, resistiendo incluso varias mudanzas y cambios en mi vida, desde mis tiempos de estudiante universitario, fecha en la cual creo haberlo comprado a un librero de la facultad, hasta el presente... Leer texto completo»

[soreheadinamblemood]

Holy shit, someone uploaded See You at Regis Debray! Never thought I'd get to see it.

[driftwork]

names, mostly surnames (1)

let me apologise for this partial list of names in the library,  titles available on request...

, Adorno, horkheimer, anderson, aristotle, greta adorno, marcuse, agamben, acampora and acampora, althussar, lajac kovacic, eric alliez, marc auge,  attali, francis bacon (16th c), aries, aries and bejin, alain badiou, beckett, hallward, barnes, bachelard, bahktin, volshinov, baudrillard, barthes, john beattie, medvedev, henri bergson, Jacques Bidet, berkman, zybmunt bauman, burgin, baugh, sam  butler, ulrich beck, andrew benjamin and peter osbourne, walter benjamin, ernest bloch, blanchot,  bruzins,  bonnet,  karin bojs,  bourdieu,  j.d. bernal, goldsmith,  benveniste, braidotti,  brecht,  burch, victor serge, andre breton, judith butler, malcolm bull, stanley cohen, john berger, etienne balibar, david bohm, gans blumenberg, martin buber, christopher caudwell, micel callon, albert camus, agnes callard,  castoridis, claudio celis bueno, carchedi and roberts, Marisol de la cadena,  mario blaser, nancy cartwright, manual castells, mark  currie, collingwood, canguilhem, mario corti, stuart hall, andrew lowe, paul willis, coyne, stefan collini, varbara cassin, helene cixous, coward and ellis, clastres, carr, cioren,  irving copi, cassirer, carter and willians, margeret cohen,  Francoise dastur, guy debord, agnes martin,  michele bernstein, alice, lorraine dastun, debaise, Gilles Deleuze, deleuze and gattari, guattari, parnet, iain mackenzie, bignall, stivale, holland, smith, james williams, zourabichvili, paul patton, kerslake,  schuster, bogue, bryant,  anne sauvagnargues, hanjo berresen, frida beckman, johnson, gulliarme and hughes, valentine moulard-leonard, desai,  dosse, duttman, d’amico,  benoit peters, derrida, hinca zarifopol-johnston, sean gaston,  discourse, mark poster, foucault,  steve fuller, markus gabrial, rosenbergm  milchamn, colin jones,  van fraasen,  fekete,  vilem flusser, flahault, heri focillon, rudi visker, ernst fischer,  fink, faye, fuller, fiho, marco bollo, hans magnus enxensberger, leen de bolle, canetti, ilya enrenberg,  thuan, sebastion peake, mervyn peake, robert henderson, reimann, roth,  bae suah,  yabouza, marco bellatin, cartarescu, nick harkaway, chris norris, deLanda, regis debray, pattern and doniger,  soame jynens, bernard williams, descartes, anne dufourmanteille, michelle le doeuff, de certaeu , deligny, Georges Dumezil, dumenil and levy,  bernard edelman, victorverlich, berio, arendt, amy allen, de beauvior,hiroka azumi,  bedau and humphreys,  beuad,  georges bataille, caspar  henderson,  chris innes,  yevgeny zamyatin,  louis aragon, italo calvino, pierre guirard,  trustan garcia, rene girard, paul gilroy, michal gardner,  andre gorz, jurgan gabermas, martin gagglund, beatrice hannssen, jean hyppolyte, axel honneth, zizek and crickett, stephen heath,  calentin groebner, j.b.s. haldane,  ian hacking,  david hakken,  hallward and oekken,  haug, harman, latour, arnold hauser, hegel, pippin, pinksrd, michel henry, louis hjelmslev,  gilbert hardin, alice jardine, karl jaspers, suzzane kirkbright, david hume,  thomas hobbes, barry hindus, paul hirst, hindess and hirst, wrrner hamacher,  bertrand gille,  julien huxley, halavais, irigaray, ted honderich, julia kristeva, leibnitz, d lecourt,  lazzaroto, kluge and negt, alexander kluge, sarah kofman, alexandre kojeve,  kolozoya, keynes,  richard kangston, ben lehman, kant,  francous jullien, fred hameson, sntonio rabucchi, jaeggi, steve lanierjones, tim jackson,  jakobson,   joeseph needham, arne de boever,  marx and engels, karl marx, frederick engels, heinrich,  McLellen , maturana and varuna,  lem, lordon, jean jacques-lecercle,  malabou,  marazzi,  heiner muller,  mary midgley, armand matterlart, ariel dorfman, matakovsky, nacneice, lucid,  victor margolis, narco lippi,  glen mazis, nair,  william morris,  nabis,  jean luc nancy,  geoffrey nash,  antonio negri,  negri and hardt, hardt, keith ansell pearson, pettman, william ruddiman, rheinberger, andre orlean, v.i. vernadsky,  rodchenko,  john willet, tarkovsky, william empson,  michel serres,  virillio, semiotexte, helmut heiseenbuttel,  plessner, pechaux, raunig, retort,  saito,  serres, dolphin, maria assad, spinoza,  bernard sharratt, isabelle stengers,  viktor shklovsky,  t. todorov,  enzo traverso, mario tronti,  todes, ivan pavlov,  whitehead, frank trentmann, trubetzkoy, rodowink, widderman, karl wittfogel, peter handke, olivier rolin, pavese,  robert walser, petr kral, von arnim,  sir john mennis,  ladies cabinet,  samuel johnson, edmund spenser,  efy poppy, yoko ogawa, machado,  kaurence durrell,  brigid brophy,  a. betram chandler, maria gabriella llansol, fowler,  ransmayr,  novick, llewellyn,  brennan, sean carroll,  julien rios, pintor, wraxall,  jaccottet, tabucchi,  iain banks, glasstone,  clarice lispector,  murakami, ludmilla petrushevskaya,  motoya, bachmann, lindqvist,  uwe johnson, einear macbride,  szentkuthy,  vladislavic, nanguel,  mathias enard,  chris tomas, jonathan meades,  armo schmidt, charles yu, micheal sorkin, vilas- matas, varesi, peter weiss,  stephenson, paul legrande,  virginie despentes, pessoa,  brin,  furst, gunter trass, umberto eco, reid, paul,klee, mario levero, hearn, judith schalansky, moorhead,  margert walters, rodchenko and popova, david king, alisdair gray, burroughs, ben fine, paul hirst, hindess,  kapuscinski, tchaikovsky,  brooke-rose, david hoon kim, helms,  mahfouz, ardret,  felipe fernandez-armesto,  young and tagomon,  aronson,  bonneuil and  fressoz, h.s. bennett, amy allen, bruckner brown, honegger, bernhard,  warren miller, albert thelen,  margoy bennett, rose macauley,  nenjamin peret, sax rohmer, angeliki, bostrom, phillip ball, the invisible commitee, bataille and leiris,  gregory bateson, michelle barrett and mary mcintosh, bardini, bugin, mcdonald, kaplan, buck-moores,  chesterman and lipman,  berman,  cicero, chanan,  chatelet,  helene cixous, iain cha,bers,  smirgel, norman clark, caird, camus,  clayre, chomsky, critchley,  curry,  swingewood,  luigi luca cavelli-sforza,  clark, esposito, doerner,  de duve, alexander dovzhenko, donzelot,  dennet, doyle, burkheim, de camp,  darwin,  dawkins,  didi-huberman, dundar, george dyson, berard deleuze, evo, barbara ehrenrich,  edwards,  e isenstein, ebeking, economy and society, esposito,  frederick gross,  david edgeerton,  douglas,  paul,feyerband,  jerry fodor,  gorrdiener,  tom forester, korsgaard,  fink,  floridi, elizabeth groscz, pierre francastel,  jane jacobs,  francois laplantinee,  gould,  galloway, goux,  godel, grouys, genette,  gil, kahloo, giddens,  martin gardner,  gilbert and dubar, hobbes,  herve, golinski, grotowski, glieck,  hayles, heidegger, huxley, eric hobsbawn, jean-louis hippolyte,  phillip hoare, tim jordan,  david harvey, hawking, hoggart,  rosemary jackson,  myerson,  mary jacobus, fox keller, illich,  sarah fofman, sylvia harvey, john holloway, han,  jaspers, yuk hui,  pierre hadot, carl gardner,  william james, bell hooks,  edmond jabes,  kierkegaard, alexander keen, kropotkin, tracy kidder,  mithen, kothari and mehta, lind,  c. joad,  bart kosko, kathy myers,  kaplan,  luce irigaraay, patrick ke iller, kittler,  catherine belsey,  kmar,  klossowski, holmes, kant, stanton,  ernesto laclau, jenkins, la mouffe,  walter john williams, adam greenfield, susan greenfield, paul auster, viet nguyen, jeremy nicholson,  andy weir, fred jameson,  lacoue-labarthe,  bede,  jane gallop, lacan,  wilden,  willy ley,  henri lefebvre, rob sheilds,  sandra laugier, micheal lowy, barry levinson, sylvain lazurus, lousardo, leopardo, jean-francois lyotard, jones,  lewontin,  steve levy,  alice in genderland,  laing, lanier, lakatos, laurelle, luxemburg,  lukacs, jarsh,  james lovelock, ideologu and consciousness, economy and society, screen, deleuze studies, deleuze and guattari studies,  bruno latour, david lapoujade,  stephen law, primo levi,  levi-strauss,  emmanuel levinas,  viktor schonberger, pierre levy, gustav landaur,  robin le poidevin,  les levidow, lautman, david cooper,  serge leclaire, catherine malabou, karl kautsky, alice meynall,  j.s. mill, montainge,  elaine miller, rosa levine-meyer, jean luc marion, henri lefebrve,  lipovetsky, terry lovell,  niklas luhmann,  richard may, machiavelli, richard mabey, john mullzrkey,  meyerhold, edward braun,  magri,  murray, nathanial lichfield, noelle mcafee,  hans meyer,  ouspensky, lucretius, asa briggs, william morris, christian metz, laura mulvey, len masterman,  karl mannheim, louis marin, alaister reynolds,  antonio  munoz molina,  FRAZER,  arno schmidt,  dinae waldman,  mark rothko, cornwall, micheal snow, sophie henaff, scarlett thomas,  matuszewski, lillya brik,  rosamond lehman , morris and o’conner,  nina bawden, cora sandel, delafield, storm jameson,  lovi , rachel ferguson,  stevie smith, pat barker, miles franklin, fay weldon,  crista wolff, grace paley, v. woolf, naomi mitchinson, sheila rowbotham,  e, somerville and v ross, sander marai,  jose  saramago,  strugatsky, jean echenoz, mark robso,  vladimir Vernadsky,  chris marker, Kim Stanley Robinson,  mario leverdo,  r.a. lafferty, martin bax, mcaulay, tatyana tolstaya,  colinn kapp,  jonathan meades,  franco fortini,  sam delany, philip e high, h.g. adler, feng menglong,  adam thorpe,  peeter nadas,  sam butler, narnold silver,  deren,  joanna moorhead, leonara carrington,  de waal,  hartt, botticelli,  charbonneau, casco pratolini,  murakami, aldiss,  guidomorselli, ludmilla petrushevskaya, ,schulz,  de andrade, yasushi. inoue, renoir,  amelie  nothomb,  ken liu,  prynne,  ANTIONE VOLODINE, luc brasso,  angela greene,  dorothea tanning,  eric chevillard,  margot bennett w.e. johns, conan doyle,  samuel johnson,  herge,  coutine-denamy, sterling, roubaud,  sloan, meiville,  delarivier manley, andre norton, perec, edward upward, tom mcCarthy,  magrinya,  stross,  eco, godden,  malcolm lowry,  derekmiller,  ismail kadare,  scott lynch, chris fowler, perter newman,  suzzana clarke,  paretky, juliscz balicki,  stanislaw maykowski, rajaniemi, william morris, c.k. crow,  ueys,  oldenburg,  mssrc chwmot,  will pryce,  munroe,  brnabas and kindersley, tromans,   lem, zelazny,  mitchinson, harry Harrison,  konstantin tsiolkovsky,  flammerion,  harrison, arthur c clarke, carpenter, john brunner,  anhony powell,  ted white, sheckley,  kristof, kempowski, shingo,  angelica groodischer,  rolin,  galeanom  dobin,  richard holloway,  pohl and kornbulth,  e.r. eddison,  ken macleodm  aldiss,  dave hutchinson,  alfred bester, budrys,  pynchon,  kurkov,  wisniewski_snerg, , kenji miyazawa,  dante,  laidlaw,  paek nam_nyong, maspero, colohouquon, hernandez,      christina hesselholdt, claude simon, bulgaakov,  simak,  verissimo,  sorokin,  sarraute,  prevert,  celan, bachmann,  mervin peake,  olaf stapledon,  sa rohmer,  robert musil,  le clezio,  jeremy cooper,  zambra,  giorgio de chirico,  mjax frisch,  gawron,  daumal,  tomzza,  canetti,  framcois maspero,  de quincy, defoe, green,, greene, marani,  bellatin,  khury, tapinar,, richmal crompton,  durrenmat,  fritz,  quintane,  volponi,  nanni balestrini,  herrera,  robert walser,  duras,  peter stamm,  m foster,  lan wright,  their theotokism  agustn de rojas, paul eluard,  sturgeon,  hiromi kawakomi,  sayaka murata,  wolfgang hilbig,  hmilton,  z  zivkovic,  gersson,  mallo,  bird,  chaudrey, Toussaint, Can Xue, Lewis Mumford, neitzsche, popper, zizek, scott westerfield, rousseau, lewis munford, tod may,  penelope maddy, elaine marks,  isabelle courtivron, leroi, massumi,  david sterritt, godard, millican and clark, macabe, negri,  mauss, maiimon, patrica maccormack, moretti, courtney humphries,  monad, moyn, malina, picasso, goldman, dambisa moyo,  merleau-ponty, Nicholson, knobe and nichols, poinciore, morris, ovid, ming, nail, thomas more, richard mabey,  macfarlane,  piscator,  louis-stempal,  negrastini, moore,  jacquline rose,  rose and rose, ryle, roszick, rosenburg, ravisson, paul ricoer,  rossler,  chantl mouffe,  david reiff, plato, slater, rowlands, rosa, john roberts,  rhan, dubios and rousseau, ronell,  jacques ranciere, mallarme,  quinodoz, peterpelbert, mary poovey, mackenzie, andrew price, opopper,  roger penrose, lu cino parisi,  gavin rae, parker and pollack,  mirowoski, perniola, postman, panofsky, propp, paschke and rodel, andre pickering, massabuau, lars svenddsen,  rosenberg and whyte, t.l.s. sprigger,  nancy armstrong,  sallis,  dale spender,  stanislavski,  vanessa schwartz,  shapin and shaeffer, sally sedgewick,  signs,  gabriel tarde,  charles singer, adam smith,  simondon,  pascal chablt,  combes, jon roffee, edward said,  sen,  nik farrell fox, sartre,  fred emery,  scholes, herbert spencer, ruth saw, spinoza,  raphael sassower, henry sidgewick, peter singer,  katarznya de lazari-radek,  piaget,  podach,  van der post, on fire, one press,  melossi and  pavarini,  pearl and mackenzie,  theirry paquot, tanizaki, RHS,  stone,  richard sennett,  graham priest,  osborn and pagnell, substance, pedrag cicovacki, schilthuizen,  susan sontag, gillian rose,  nikolas rose,  g rattery taylor, rose,  rajan,  stuart sim,  max raphael,  media culture and society,  heller- roazen,  rid, root, rossi, gramsci, showstack sasson, david roden,  adrew ross, rosenvallion, pauliina remes, pkato, peter sloterdijk, tamsin shaw, george simmel, bullock and trombley, mark francis,  alain supiot, suvin, mullen and suvin, stroma,  maimonides,  van vogt,  the clouds on unknowing, enclotic, thesis 11,  spivack,  kate raworth,  h.w. richardson,  hillial schwartz, stern, rebecca solnit, rowland parker,  pickering,  lukacs,  epicriud, epicetus, lucrtious,  aurelies,  w.j.oates,  thor Hanson,  thompson, mabey,  sheldrake,  eatherley,  plato, jeffries,  dorothy richardson,  arno schmidt,   earl derr biggersm  mary borden, birrel, arno schmidt,  o.a. henty,  berhard steigler,  victor serge,  smith,  joyce salisbury, pauer-studer,  timpanaro,  s helling, schlor, norman and welchman,  searle, emanuele severarimo,  tomasello, sklar, judith singer, walmisley,  thomas malthus,  quentin meilassoux,  alberto meelucchi,  mingione, rurnbull,  said, spufford and  uglow,  zone,  j.j.c. smartt, sandel, skater, songe-moller,  strawson,  strawson, strawson, raymond tallis,  toscano,  turkle,  tiqquin, diggins,  j.s. ogilivy, w.w. hutchings,  rackgam,  deiter roth,  dowell,  red notes,  campbell and pryce,osip brik, lilya brik, mayakovsky, zone, alvin toffker, st exupery, freya stark, warson, walsh, wooley, tiles and oberdick, timofeeva, richardson, marcuse,  marder,  wright,  ushenko, tolson, albebers and moholy- nagy, alyce mahon, gablik, burnett, barry, hill, fontaine, sanuel johnson,justin, block, taylor, peter handke, jacques rivette,  william sansom, bunuel and dali, tom bullough, aldius huxley, philip robinson, spendor, tzara,  wajcman, peter wohlleben,  prigogini,  paolo virno,  jeremy tunstall, theweliet,  taussig,  tricker,  vince,  thomss, williams,  vogl, new german critique,  e.p. thompson,  jean wahl, paul virilio, lotringer, christy wampole, verhaeghe, janet wolff, anna kavan, vergara,  uexkull,  couze venn, barry smart, vico,  vatimo, vernant, raoul vaneigem,  ibn warraq, vertov,  williams,  meiksins wood, norbert weiner, peter wollen,  h.g. wells,  michelle walker, , jeanne waelit  walters,  shaw and darlen, whorf,  ward and dubois,  john wright,  weinart, wolff, willis, wark, cosima wagner, j. weeks,  judith williamson,  welzbacher, erik olin wright, wittgenstein, kenny,  zeldin, wenders,  henry miller, wenkler, arrighi,  banks, innes, ushereood, kristeva, john cage, quignard,  t.f. powys, siri hustveldt, lem,  zelazny, mitchonson,  tsilolkovsky, toussaint, heppenstall, garrigasait, de kerangal, haine fenn, jean bloch,  geoff ryman, reve, corey, asemkulov, ernaux,  gareth powell, cory,  deleuze and guattari studies, cse, allain and souvestre, apolinaire, jane austen, john arden, aitmatov,  elizabth von arnim, paul auster, abish,  ackroyd, tom gunn, lorca, akhmatov, artuad,  simon armatige, albahari, felipe alfau, audem auden and soendor, varicco, barrico, bainbridge, asturias, ronan bennett, beckett, paul bowles, jane bowles, celine, bukowski,  wu ming, blissert,  kay boyle,  andrei  bely,  hugo barnacle,  BOLL,  isak dineson, karen blikson,  brodsky,  richmel crompton,  berry, barthleme,  mary butts, leonora carrington, cage,  chevhillard,  canetti,  cendres,  butor,  cortazar, danielewski,  bertha damon,  dyer, havier cercas, micheal dibden, marguerite duras, john donne, duras, durrell,  dorrie,  Fredric durrenmatt,  heppenstahl, eco, enzensberger, evanovich, fruentes,  farrell,  alison fell,  alisdair gray,  hollinhurst,  andre gide,  jean giono, gadda, henry green,  grass,  andre gorz,  william gibson,  joyce,  gombrowitz,  alex laishley, murakami,  herve guibert,  franz kafka,  juenger, junker, kapuscinski, laurie king,  kundera,  mcewan, ken macleod,  ian macdonald,  moers,  meades,  vonda macintyre,  nalmstom, maillert,  havier marias,  jeff noon,  anaus nin,  david nobbs,  peter nadas,  nabokov,  iakley, oates,  raymond queneau,  cesare pavese, paterson, ponge,  perte, perec, chinery, ovid,  genette,  kandinsky, robert pinget, richard piwers,  rouvaud, sloan, surrralist poetry, ilya troyanov, paul,raabe,  julien rios, arne dahl, pierre sollers, rodrigruez,  chris ross, renate rasp, ruiz, rulfo, tove jannsson, cabre,  vladislavic, tokarczuk, pessoa, jane bowles, calvino, lispector, lydia davis, can xue,  sebald, peter tripp,  hertzberg,  virginia woolf,  zozola, sorrentino, higgins,  v.w. straka, cogman, freud, jung, klein, winnecot, lacan,  fordham, samuels,  jung, freud, appignesai,  bjp, pullman, magnam, sybil marshall, mccarten,  galbraith, jewell,  lehmann,  levy,  levin, jung,  spinoza,  fairburn,  jung, sandler,  lacan,  laplanche,  pontalis, can, xue,  klein, cavelli, hawkins, stevens,  hanna segal, bollas,  welldon,  williams,  sutherland, buon,  symington,  morrison,  brittain,  sidoli, sidoli,  holmes, bowlby, winnecott,   bollas,  kalschiid,  malan, patrick casement,  anna frued, wittenburg,  liz wright,  fordham, fairburn, symington, sandler,  jung, balint,  coltart,  west, steiner,  van der post,  stern,  green,  roustang,  adrew samuels,  d.l. sayers,  salom, krassner,  swain,  rame and fo,  storr,  cogman,  hessen,  penelope fitzgerald,  cummings, richard holloway,  juhea kim,  glenville, heyer, cartland,  kim, cho,  atkinson,  james,  king, audten,  hartley,  du maurier,  bronte,  thomas, plath, leon,  camillairi, kaussar, fred fargas, boyd,  sjowall and wahloo,  pheby,  morenno-garcia, perrsson,  herron, nicola barker, arronovitch,  karen lord, stephen frosh, ernest jones, flamm o’brien, shin, mishra, chin jin-young and so on to the warm horizon

[ardl]

"We are never completely contemporaneous with our present. History advances in disguise; it appears on stage wearing the mask of the preceding scene, and we tend to lose the meaning of the play. Each time the curtain rises, continuity has to be re-established. The blame, of course, is not history’s, but lies in our vision, encumbered with memory and images learned in the past. We see the past superimposed on the present, even when the present is a revolution."

Revolution in the Revolution? Regis Debray

[polymnia-herzberg]

CALLIGRAMMES

A calligram is a set of words arranged in such a way that it forms a thematically related image. It can be a poem, a phrase, a portion of scripture, or a single word; the visual arrangement can rely on certain use of the typeface, calligraphy or handwriting, for instance along non-parallel and curved text lines, or in shaped paragraphs. The image created by the words illustrates the text by expressing visually what it says, or something closely associated; it can also, on purpose, show something contradictory with the text or otherwise be misleading, or can contribute additional thoughts and meanings to the text.

Calligrammes is noted for how the typeface and spatial arrangement of the words on a page plays just as much of a role in the meaning of each poem as the words themselves.

From Sezgin Boynik's "Publishing as Scaffolding":

As Regis Debray, in one of his more recent texts on the "typographic soul of socialism", claimed: "The professional typographer occupies a special niche within the ecosystem of socialism, the key link between proletarian theory and the working-class condition; herein lay the best technical means of intellectualizing the proletariat and proletarianizing the intellectual, the double movement that constituted the workers' parties."

[readingsrantsrambles]

Malick on Badlands

By Beverly Walker

This article originally appeared in Sight and Sound 44:2:82-83, Spring 1975. Copyright Sight and Sound.

Interviewing Terry Malick, producer-writer-director of Badlands, turned out, like his film, to be full of idiosyncratic surprises. My prepared list of questions went by the wayside as Malick talked with passion, conviction and sometimes anger about his film. Acknowledging that he "couldn't have asked for more" in terms of critical acceptance, he also indicated that the actual filming was painful.

Working in the dead heat of the 1972 summer, with a non-union crew and little money ($300,000, excluding some deferments to labs and actors), Malick encountered all sorts of problems, from difficulties over finance to the destruction of all the cameras during a fire sequence. Eventually, upon completion, Warners bought Badlands for just under a million dollars. It might turn in a decent profit for them. 

The son of an oil company executive, Malick grew up in Texas and Oklahoma. He went to Harvard and later to Magdalen College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar. Philosophy was his course of study, but he never completed his thesis--in fact, his topic wasn't even acceptable to his Senior Tutor, Gilbert Ryle. Summer jobs took him from the wheat harvests in America and Canada, to work in oilfields and driving a cement mixer in a rail yard, to journalistic endeavours for Life, Newsweek and the New Yorker. He was sent to Bolivia to observe the trial of Regis Debray; Che Guevara was killed the day after his arrival. In 1968, he was appointed a lecturer in philosophy for one year at MIT. 

“I was not a good teacher; I didn't have the sort of edge one should have on the students, so I decided to do something else. I'd always liked movies in a kind of naive way. They seemed no less improbable a career than anything else. I came to Los Angeles in the fall of 1969 to study at the AFI; I made a short called Lanton Mills. I found the AFI very helpful; it's a marvellous place. My wife was going to law school and I was working for a time as a rewrite man-two days on Drive, He Said, five weeks on the predecessor to Dirty Harry at a time when Brando was going to do it with Irving Kershner directing. Then we all got fired by Warners; the project went to Clint Eastwood. I rewrote 'Pocket Money' and 'Deadhead Miles'. I got this work because of a phenomenal agent, Mike Medavoy.

"At the end of my second year here, I began work on Badlands. I wrote and, at the same time, developed a kind of sales kit with slides and video tape of actors, all with a view to presenting investors with something that would look ready to shoot. To my surprise, they didn't pay too much attention to it; they invested on faith. I raised about half the money and Edward Pressman (the executive producer) the other half. We started in July of 1972.”

"The critics talked about influences on the picture and in most cases referred to films I had never seen. My influences were books like The Hardy Boys, Swiss Family Robinson, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn--all involving an innocent in a drama over his or her head. I didn't actually think about those books before I did the script, but it's obvious to me now. Nancy Drew, the children's story child detective--I did think about her.

There is some humor in the picture, I believe. Not jokes. It lies in Holly's mis-estimation of her audience, of what they will be interested in or ready to believe. (She seems at time to think of her narration as like what you get in audio-visual courses in high school.) When they're crossing the badlands, instead of telling us what's going on between Kit and herself, or anything of what we'd like and have to know, she describes what they ate and what it tasted like, as though we might be planning a similar trip and appreciate her experience, this way.

"She's a typical Southern girl in her desire to help, to give hard fact; not to dwell upon herself, which to her would be unseemly, but always to keep in mind the needs of others. She wants to come off in the best possible light, but she's scrupulous enough to take responsibility where in any way she might have contributed." 

I suggest to Malick that the film has been criticised for patronising Holly and her milieu. "That's foolishness. I grew up around people like Kit and Holly. I see no gulf between them and myself. One of the things the actors and I used to talk about was never stepping outside the characters and winking at the audience, never getting off the hook. If you keep your hands off the characters you open yourself to charges like that; at least you have no defence against them. What I find patronising is people not leaving the characters alone, stacking the deck for them, not respecting their integrity, their difference."

"Holly's Southernness is essential to taking her right. She isn't indifferent about her father's death. 

(line missing) tears, but she wouldn't think of telling you about it. It would not be proper. You should always feel there are large parts of her experience she's not including because she has a strong, if misplaced, sense of propriety. You might well wonder how anyone going through what she does could be at all concerned with proprieties. But she is. And her kind of cliché didn't begin with pulp magazines, as some critics have suggested. It exists in Nancy Drew and Tom Sawyer. It's not the mark of a diminished, pulp-fed mind, I'm trying to say, but of the 'innocent abroad.' When people express what is most important to them, it often comes out in cliches. That doesn't make them laughable; it's something tender about them. As though in struggling to reach what's most personal about them they could only come up with what's most public. 

"Holly is in a way the more important character; at least you get a glimpse of what she's like. And I liked women characters better than men; they're more open to things around them, more demonstrative. Kit, on the other hand, is a closed book, not a rare trait in people who have tasted more than their share of bitterness in life. The movies have kept up a myth that suffering makes you deep. It inclines you to say deep things. It builds character and is generally healthful. It teaches you lessons you never forget. People who've suffered go around in movies with long, thoughtful faces, as though everything had caved in just yesterday. It's not that way in real life, though, not always. Suffering can make you shallow and just the opposite of vulnerable, dense. It's had this kind of effect on Kit. 

"Kit doesn't see himself as anything sad or pitiable, but as a subject of incredible interest, to himself and to future generations. Like Holly, like a child, he can only really believe in what's going on inside him. Death, other people's feelings, the consequences of his actions-they're all sort of abstract for him. He thinks of himself as a successor to James Dean-a Rebel without a Cause-when in reality he's more like an Eisenhower conservative. 'Consider the minority opinion,' he says into the rich man's tape recorder, 'but try to get along with the majority opinion once it's accepted.' He doesn't really believe any of this, but he envies the people who do, who can. He wants to be like them, like the rich man he locks in the closet, the only man he doesn't kill, the only man he sympathises with, and the one least in need of sympathy. It's not infrequently the people at the bottom who most vigorously defend the very rules that put and keep them there."

And there's something about growing up in the Midwest. There's no check on you. People imagine it's the kind of place where your behaviour is under constant observation, where you really have to toe the line. They got that idea from Sinclair Lewis. But people can really get ignored there and fall into bad soil. Kit did, and he grew up like a big poisonous weed. 

"I don't think he's a character peculiar to his time. I tried to keep the 1950s to a bare minimum. Nostalgia is a powerful feeling; it can drown out anything. I wanted the picture to set up like a fairy tale, outside time, like Treasure Island. I hoped this owuld, among other htings, take a little of the sharpness out of the violence but still keep its dreamy quality. Children's books are full of violence. Long John Silver slits the throats of the faithful crew. Kit and Holly even think of themselves as living in a fairy tale. Holly says, "Sometimes I wished I could fall asleep and be taken off to some magical land, but this never happened." But she enough believes there is such a place that she must confess to you she never got there." 

Back to the Articles on Terrence Malick

https://www.eskimo.com/~toates/malick/tmarticles.html

[howieabel]

“Truly, more than removing the partition between vectors and values, we would have needed to talk about strengthening crisscrossed lacings: an intertwined kind of understanding that would de-ideologize 'ideologies,' desanctify sanctities, but also mentalize the material bases of systems of inscription, and psychoanalyze not souls but tools. That is, in one and the same gesture, make our mnemo-technic equipment intelligible as mentality and our mental equipment intelligible as technology.” ― Regis Debray, Media Manifestos: On the Technological Transmission of Cultural Forms

[schizografia]

Il symbolon, da symballein, riunire, mettere insieme, avvicinare, designava all’origine una tessera di ospitalità, un frammento di una coppa o di una ciotola che due ospiti spezzavano trasmettendone poi i pezzi ai loro figli perché essi potessero un giorno ritrovare le stesse relazioni di fiducia ricomponendo i bordi dei due frammenti. Era un segno di riconoscimento, destinato a riparare una separazione o superare una distanza. Il simbolo è un oggetto di convenzione che ha come ragion d’essere l’accordo degli spiriti e la riunione dei soggetti. Più che una cosa, è un’operazione e una cerimonia: non quella degli addii, ma quella delle ricongiunzioni. Simbolico e fraterno sono sinonimi: non si fraternizza senza qualcosa da condividere, non si simbolizza senza unire quel che era estraneo. L’antonimo esatto del simbolo, in greco, è il diavolo: colui che separa. Dia-bolico è tutto ciò che divide, Sim-bolico tutto ciò che avvicina.

R. Debray, Vita e morte dell’immagine. Storia di uno sguardo in occidente.

[soreheadinamblemood]

[les-portes-du-sud]

" Reste l'amitié, autre raison d'éspérer. Car une correspondance suivie, ce face-à-face à distance, nous retrace une fois sur dix une trajectoire amicale. Et une amitié vraie sait devoir rester confidentielle : le secret de la correspondance lui va comme un gant...

Régis Debray

[ardl]

Considerable energy is thrown into the establishment of a phantom front, composed essentially of members of the party that have formed it. Since one party does not make a front, organizations are fabricated out of the whole cloth, at the expense of the party itself, and famous progressive ‘independent personalities’ are sought out whose names can be whispered, adding to their mystery. So much energy and effort withheld from the armed struggle in order to supply a showy façade for it, even before it has been consolidated or extended!

Revolution in the Revolution? - Regis Debray

[msostiz]

Balzar, Hallier y otros

Balzar, Hallier y otros

[nisiquiera]

Compañero presidente - 1971 - Miguel Littin