I'm new to livejournal, so I'm not sure I'm posting this comment correctly. Nevertheless . . . stumbled across your journal through a series of clicks that commenced with a comment I think you posted elsewhere in which you mentioned Foucualt. Then, read your interesting profile/bio and saw the strange yoking of books and fire, and had to ask, do you know Gaston Bachelard's, The Psychoanalysis of Fire? Among my favorites. From the first page: "Among all phenomena, it [fire] is really the only one to which there can be so definitely attributed the opposing values of good and evil. It shines in Paradise. It burns in Hell. It is gentleness and torture. It is cookery and it is apocalypse. It is a pleasure for the good child sitting prudently by the hearth; yet it punishes any disobedience when the child wishes to play too close to its flames. It is well-being and it is respect. It is a tutelary and a terrible divinity, both good and bad. It can contradict itself; thus it is one of the principles of universal explanation." Do you know Bachelard?
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branchandroot
Foucault; Fire and Books
Date: 2002-10-18 06:37 am (UTC)I'm new to livejournal, so I'm not sure I'm posting this comment correctly. Nevertheless . . . stumbled across your journal through a series of clicks that commenced with a comment I think you posted elsewhere in which you mentioned Foucualt. Then, read your interesting profile/bio and saw the strange yoking of books and fire, and had to ask, do you know Gaston Bachelard's, The Psychoanalysis of Fire? Among my favorites. From the first page: "Among all phenomena, it [fire] is really the only one to which there can be so definitely attributed the opposing values of good and evil. It shines in Paradise. It burns in Hell. It is gentleness and torture. It is cookery and it is apocalypse. It is a pleasure for the good child sitting prudently by the hearth; yet it punishes any disobedience when the child wishes to play too close to its flames. It is well-being and it is respect. It is a tutelary and a terrible divinity, both good and bad. It can contradict itself; thus it is one of the principles of universal explanation." Do you know Bachelard?
Mark