Rand through a Nietzsche filter


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Somewhat off topic: the thought of 77 year old former Student of Objectivism writing these interesting--albeit somewhat obtuse--comments about the connections between Rand and Neitzche, and from the lovely hamlet--nay backwater-- of Springfield, Missouri at that, gives me hope for mankind. Seriously. Pretty cool stuff, and I mean no condescension in saying so.

I hope when I am 77 I am in the arena slinging ideas around like my new friend Seymourblogger, although I confess to an aspiration that I will have a shorter signature line while doing so.

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Seymour, if you drastically shortened your signature line it would be easier to read you post to post. I'm not sure if it would be lost in the post that started this thread. Probably. You could try changing or adding one line as a test and see if the change appears there. Personally, I'd create another account and then use the new account for this thread. Then you could use the original account for any new thread you start or make a first post on to establish your context, then use the new account for subsequent posts on the threads. Just come with a similar name like SeymourTheGreat! This assumes you have a large valuation for your signature line(s).

--Brant

lets make it complicated!

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If you know Nietzsche it makes it easier to read Rand following Nietzsche. I think she decided during the 2nd WWar to eliminate him from her public utterances and also to friends and acquaintances that might get the wrong idea, linking him to Hitler. I surmise she just quit taking about him openly and when Fountainhead came out she was involved in selling the screenrights, writing the screenplay and being on the set. She achieved fame and money at this time. When it was finished she went on to Atlas.

It appears that in the mid 40's - after over 20 years mind - Nietzsche went underground. Baudrilard says the same thing with him about Nietzsche. He just "forgot" about him but later acknowledges that Nietzsche always existed in him unknowing consciously but always there.

And these two are the only ones i know about for whom this was true. Foucault came to Nietzsche late through Heidegger and that was when the lightbulb of genealogy went on for him.

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Brant: Sorry but I'm going to keep seymourblogger for googling reasons.

The "gift" and the "counter-gift" are from the Order of Seduction (Symbolic Exchange and Death) and the court of law is from the Order of Production. Whenever I forget about these two orders and slide back into the dialectic I start drowning in psychological interpretations as I just did.

My present love Zizek has discussed Rand tan "the affair" saying that she was correct in the way she revenged herself and that Branden acted without integrity by lying to her. Yes he did. From his point of view, he knew if he told the truth from the beginning she would destroy him. I guess he waited to enjoy the accolades a little longer.

Me, I have deep gratitude for Branden and Barbara for putting together NBL and bringing it to philadelphia. My entire life even u to this minute as I sit typing, would be completely different and enmeshed in ....well, ...I don't even want to go there.

I am appalled at the Puritan recriminations against him. Rand herself disavowed Nietzsche when she owed everything to him, but he was dead, wasn't he? Foucault kept silent about Nietzsche. Lou Andreas-Salome got his letters out of Germany so Hitler wouldn't get them. The Gestapo broke into her house the day after she died and went through her things looking for them.

And Nietzsche's family hesitated long over publishing his work after he died. I guess they wanted the money though. Thank god.

I spent many years in the psychoanalytic profession, so some things are second nature for me even as I am trying to forget all that stuff after reading Foucault on it. Endless interpretation going nowhere. Just high level intellectual gossip.

It is fun though.

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Yes ThatGuy Thanks very much

Third one: But from time to time do you grant me-one glimpse, grant me but one glimpse only, of something perfect, fully realized, happy, mighty, triumphant, of something that still gives cause for fear! A glimpse of man that justifies the existence of man, a glimpse of an incarnate human happiness that realizes and redeems, for the sake of which one may hold fast to the belief in man!"

Ah yes, that one from Nietzsche. John Galt, eh.

And the present Robert Pattinson.

Stendhal: Beauty is a promise of happiness (quote taken from Nietzsche's genealogy versus Kant's which I forget thankfully)<p class="ipsLikeBar right clearfix" id="rep_post_153525" style="margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; float: right; font-size: 11px; ">

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Seymour,

My Father told me at the time of the break he had seen it before, that it was a rather common pattern. Ayn Rand never had the power to destroy Nathaniel Branden. If she couldn't destroy him in 1968 she couldn't have in 1962 either. What gets destroyed is one's context, replaced by another. He did do horrible damage to himself during those years of deception. Then the damage transferred to Rand to some extent while he went into repair dock. I wonder how long Rand would have kept accepting the lies except he ran out of what to do about it all and Barbara Branden had had enough. The only thing left to do was tell Rand the truth Barbara had been told two years before. He didn't tell Rand, Barbara did.

--Brant

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The DeLillo Society is holding a symposium on DeLillo in April in NYC. There will be a panel on Cosmopolis which I intend to be on. They would like me to do Rand on it for a 15 minute paper. I think I should open a new topic here on that. I am guessing all of you will be my severest critics and force me to do it really well.

You're not gonna like my take on her about this topic.

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FYI:

COSMOPOLIS is an adaptation of Don DeLillo’s story about a 28 year-old billionaire who crosses Manhattan for a haircut.

24-01-2012

Cosmopolis is a day in the life of Eric Packer, a 28-year-old New York stock market multi-millionaire, as he crosses Manhattan in his customized limousine to go for a haircut. His cross-town journey becomes an almost vertical voyage, with bizarre occurrences and an authentic parade of crazy characters along the way, in a landscape that depicts the modern soul of the West at the end of the millennium.

The production of Cosmopolis is a union of two of the world’s greatest modern storytellers: the award-winning author Don DeLillo, and the acclaimed film director David Cronenberg; a project that is truly an international production. Indisputably one of the major forces of American Literature, DeLillo’s work is both frenetic and extremely visual, with the action all taking place in New York within a 24-hour period of time.

Cronenberg, one of the world’s most respected filmmakers, adapted the novel for the big screen and will direct the film as well. The producer is none other than Paulo Branco, the experienced Portuguese producer (Alfama Films) in a co-production with David Cronenberg’s company Cosmopolis Inc. Shooting will take place from May 25th to July 21st in Toronto.

Born in the United States in 1936, Don DeLillo is one of the most influential contemporary authors, whose works offer a carefully detailed portrait of life in America in the last century. His innate talent is reflected in the way that his writings first surfaced, and in his educational background: he graduated in Communication Arts, and then worked as a copywriter; he never thought that literature could become his life. In 1971, he wrote his first novel, Americana; after which time he lived in Greece for several years. Then, in 1985, he published White Noise, a novel that definitively thrust him into the limelight, as one of the most prominent figures of post-modern literature.

http://www.cosmopolisthefilm.com/

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Your link is to the official site in Toronto. The ad people for Cronenberg. So you are in Jersey. Close to NYC, eh. My blog is quite different from the one above.

http://cosmopolisfilm2.blogspot.com You will have to make an additional click for adult content.

Ahem.

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Brant: On destroying

By destroying what I meant was that she took a huge portion of his life's work and demolished it. He hated to lose NBI and he knew he would if he told her the truth. Even if he had not lied, she would have puled the rug out from under him. His lying gave her a public rationalization and he never called her on it nor suggested she did what she did because of his waning out of existence sexual infatuation for her. One can only say he was a gentleman publicly on this issue. I don't think he wanted to hurt he any more than he already had.

I saw Barbara in NYC in the Fall of 1962 as I was planning to attend further lectures in philosophy from Peikoff. I was in grad school in psychology studying for my life as I had burned bridges behind me in public school teaching, as you might imagine. I went to the table to register and Barbara was assisting in that. She had bleached her honey blond hair platinum white, and she had kohled her eyes with black eyeliner all around so she looked like a witch. Gone was my classy model for imitating. Because I had.

I don't remember a thing from that lecture. All I could think was "What has happened to her that she would make herself look like that!" She was grotesque. Well, now we know from reading her book which embarrassed me then and still does. Agoraphobia is a particular kind of hysteria and not incurable with treatment. Clearly neither Rand nor Branden knew anything about it. I find his expertise in psychology woefully deficient, but no matter.

Just my observation but at the time I knew nothing about any of it. And I didn't until I read her book in the 80's. I don't want to go there.

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And migraines and epilepsy have a very interesting pathology to them. Evidently Branden likes broken women. At least in these two instances. I don't know about the others. I find it embarrassing when people recount their sexualexperiences in detail when they are not sex writers and even when they are.

Karen Owens and her power point se fug list.

Two sex writers for Atlantic Monthly Jan/Feb 2011, both of whom said what they never would have wanted anyone to really know. They accused Owens of doing that and then did the same about their own hookups. Rand could certainly save some women in this department. And a lot of guys.

Oh well, another day.

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You're not gonna like my take on her about this topic.

Seymourblogger,

Just curious.

Can you get into something like that without being so angry at Rand? And without preemptively taunting strangers?

I only ask because, from what little I have read of your stuff, you have some interesting things to look at and think about. God knows I have my own disagreements with Rand. But I am sick to death of the defend Rand versus attack Rand game.

Every time I try to talk to people of that mindset and present some stuff that takes a butt-load of mental effort and time to come up with, it always boils down to Rand bash versus Rand worship. And that always leaves me feeling cheated. All that grandiose talk, plumbing the philisophical depths, intellectual duelling. earth-shattering rhetoric and when you finally get to the denouement, there's nothing more than petty bias as the intellectual driver. What a waste of time.

So if that's your game, go ahead and do your thing. But I ain't gonna play.

All that does is spin you on a hamster wheel to nowhere.

(Look at some pro-Rand fundy blogs or a place like Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature to see what I mean. You can't do anything with that stuff other than join the game and piss your life away on sound and fury signifying nothing. Actually, let me state that in a more precise form: the illusion of sound and fury signifying nothing. Those places are dogma loops and vanity traps with an occasional intelligent comment.)

Michael

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Seymour, you have been making a number of dubious and inaccurate statements about the Brandens and Rand. They are on a par with your dubious views on Objectivism and even Rand's fiction. You will continue to make these and I see no reason to discuss them other than to note what is going on. I have other interests.

--Brant

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Michael, first of all I do not intend to get into an anti-Rand or Rand bashing. Ever. Never. To do that one must enter the Hegelian dialectic, and since that is finished, there really isn't any point to go pro and con.

I am reading Rand as a post modern philosopher. That means that I am elevating her far above where anybody else has laced her, including Peikoff. It comes with problems. Which I will get into. But I have made the mistake of getting into personal stuff and that is my bad.

As long as I stay with her fiction everything is cool and is going to be cool. But there are going to be some big surprises as I consider her Nietzsche's daughter, NIetzsche's heir. She forgot a lot she should have remembered. But I did too to my dismay when I stopped being really careful about altruism. It cost me everything material in my life. Not that there's anything wrong with that. If I still had all those buildings to take care of I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now. And I much prefer this to stuff. I do get twinges when I think of my painting collection and all my books. I now have 100 times as many books even though they are different.

There is no doubt in my mind that DeLillo has great respect for Rand. Read the first 3 ages of Cosmopolis and I dare you to tell me different. His main character Eric Packer is his challenge to Rand. You are not a writer of the caliber of DeLillo who challenges someone they have no respect for.

Not to worry. As I have said I mainly ignore her non-fiction. I believe she was rebelling against her master, Nietzsche, by opposing him. It's natural isn't it? She basicaly thought she could do philosophy in non-fiction when he told her not to, that that kind of writing was for newspaper readers. He was correct and of course, she would never have admitted it and said sorry. Never mind as it doesn't matter. Her fiction says it all, often aphoristically in Fountainhead, and there she is following her teacher.

Hitler just got in the way of Nietsche, that's all. Slowed him up but didn't stop him. And the English translations were pretty bad until after the war.

She is far greater than even she knew. Just as Foucault was made far more radical by Baudrilard than he ever dreamed he would be.

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Michael, your complaint is really about the Dominating Discourse of interpretation within the Hegelian Dialectic. Zizek's new book on Hegel is going to address that. He says he is going to be more Hegel than Hegel, which is exactly what Baudrillard says is necessary if you are to challenge someone. Foucault dispensed with Hegel not by confronting him, but by disposing of linear time, continuous time, progressive time, historical time, replacing all of it with genealogy, a method of observing human behavior that is not chronological. So Fucault does away with psychology, history, anthroplogy, language, economics, legal institutions, substituting a genalogical method of observing all of them. And when you do, such understanding jumps out at you, that you know Baudrilard is correct when he says he thinks there really is no other way to think.

Pro and con gets dumped into the gutter as you are right, it never goes anywhere as it searches for origins and horizons. It never offers any resolutions.

It is the difference between observing Dominique as a neurotic psychological clinical problem of masochism and observing Dominique as a Nietzschean strategist choosing the worse she can find to hook up with or marry. Wynand is worse than Keating, she thinks. She does it in a very surprising and singular way. Not for her the bottle and whoring down on skid row. Too ordinary. No, she is going to do it as an art form. She does.

Even Rand wrote her up for Patricia Neal as a psychological study. But how was she to do otherwise? And how interesting Patricia Neal was having trouble with Dominique's character. As well she should have. Nice call. Rand wrote a perfectly accurate psychological interpretation of Dominique because she was not aware that she was creating a Nietzschean strategist heroine. It was unconscious.

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Ms. Abbey:

Slavoj made an interesting observation in a New Statesman interview, when, answering a question about Hannah Arendt's position that political participation was an intrinsic good, he opined that:

If there is a lesson from so-called postmodern, post-68 capitalism, it's that the regulatory role of the state is getting stronger.
So much for this stupid story, the state disappearing etc. Not true! More and more if you want to have a company today, you have to
be so deeply entwined with the state apparatus.

This view of "crony capitalism" is central to much of the current financial crisis in the US.

Later in the interview, he explains that the main casualty of the financial crisis will be the "left" which will create:

A kind of shattering of the system which, in the long run, will help make capitalism leaner and meaner.

He wisely connects this "shattering" to the renewed interest in Ayn's works, explaining:

Let's not be seduced by the simple idea that this is a crisis and we can use this opportunity to impose our agenda.
When the economy is in crisis, the first reaction of the people is to cling to their fundamental principles. So you
get this renewed social-demoractic welfarism in the US - Krugman, Stiglitz etc. But at the same time, there was an
explosion of interest in Ayn Rand.

Interesting analysis.

Adam

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selene - I have stopped reading him for the moment as I am writing more. Zizek feeds me but also stimulates me in different directions. He is correct in saying that the two extremes are getting stronger and more extreme. Foucault felt that our greatest danger now was the coming of confinement and surveillance.

I haven't read David Foster Wallace's last book, just part of it that was in Rolling Stone. God, it was the Panopticon in the IRS office. Deadly. I think he just couldn't stand knowing. I miss him everytime I think of him. Feels really good to have someone here who reads the same stuff I do.

I think Rand imploded capitalism. Carrying deregulation to such excess and extremes that it morphed in speculation. What Eric Packer does in Cosmopolis is what George Soros does and he says he shouldn't be allowed to do what he does. I think Rand would have denounced global circulating "capitalism" because I don't think it is capitalism.

There is no product. No purpose. Laissez-faire people will say currency futures determine the price of commodities. Well, futures used to. Futures used to have a function. But not now. Baudrillard says, "Capitalism stripped bare by her bachelors even." Nice line.

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Seymourblogger,

I didn't mean to spook you. I'll take your word on not playing the Rand love/hate game.

But since my silence might make you feel like I do think that, here's a comment.

Question: How do you eat an elephant?

Answer: One bite at a time.

You are constantly mentioning a whole bunch of stuff that is going to take me a long time to look at in order to comment with any kind of intelligence. Yet you mention it as if the reader is already familiar with it.

Well, I ain't.

Here is just a small list of things I need to bone up on to understand you.

1. I know what the Hegelian dialectic is, but I only know it second hand. And even then, my familiarity comes more from Marx stuff than Hegel stuff. So when you tell me what I "really mean," as in "... your complaint is really about the Dominating Discourse of interpretation within the Hegelian Dialectic," I have no way of talking about that without some study. I don't think I mean that because, generally, I am more into the range of degrees between poles than black and white binary thinking (dichotomies), but like I said, I need to study it correctly before I can feel comfortable saying I know what the hell I'm talking about.

2. You may find this odd, but I have not read Foucault. (Actually, when I lived in Brazil,I owned a copy of The Order of Things and I flipped through it a few times, but I don't count that as reading.)

3. I have no idea who Zizek or Baudrillard are, but I'm willing to look them up.

4. I have not read anything by William Burroughs, although I have read some beat stuff.

5. I have not read Cosmopolis, nor had I ever heard of Don DeLillo until you showed up.

I could go on, but I think you can see that I am at a terrible disadvantage at this moment in simply understanding you.

I do have an off-the-beaten-track thing on my plate from your world, though. About 25 years ago (more or less), I read a biography of Lou Andreas-Salomé called My Sister, My Spouse by one H. F. Peters. (I just looked it up to get the details right since I couldn't even remember the title correctly.) She was one hell of a woman.

Ironically, I didn't read that because of interest in Nietzsche. I was interested in Rainer Maria Rilke and she was his lover, too. Back then, I was heavy into thinking about becoming a poet for real, had just gotten a hold of a translation of the Duino Elegies as a self-study task, and, after hours of looking and reflecting and thinking, "Hmmmmm...", I just couldn't make heads or tails of them. (I remember liking the Angels, though. :smile: )

I used to like a quote (a lot) from a love poem Lou Salomé wrote: "If you have no more happiness to give: Give me your pain."

(I remember the excerpt being a little longer than this, but this is all I could find on a Google search right now.)

So if I am silent for a bit, it's not because I disapprove of you. It's because I don't understand a lot of what you are talking about.

Maybe it would be a good idea if we slow down on the elephant banquet enough to savor the taste and swallow the bites? Maybe even wash it down with sips from a chalice of vintage Rand? (Just a thought...)

Michael

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FYI:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmopolis

http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/articles/the-lesbian-session/

This "article" I found interesting from Zizek:

The Lesbian Session

Slavoj Zizek.

Lacan.com.

Can a Lacanian learn something from Ayn Rand?

Rand, who wrote the two absolute best-sellers of our century, The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), was (deservedly) ignored and ridiculed as a philosopher: her fascination with male figures displaying absolute, unswayable determination of their Will, seems to offer the best imaginable confirmation of Sylvia Plath's famous line, "…every woman adores a Fascist." However, although it is easy to dismiss the very mention of Rand in a "serious" theoretical article as an obscene extravaganza — artistically, she is of course, worthless — the properly subversive dimension of her ideological procedure is not to be underestimated: Rand fits into the line of over-conformist authors who undermine the ruling ideological edifice by their very excessive identification with it.

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So, Seymour, which of Rand's two great novels was the more Nietzsche? How much her We the Living comparatively? Did you study the changes between the 1st edition of that novel and what came out in 1959 and, if so, what do you think of those changes regarding your thesis? How does this correlate to the esthetics?

--Brant

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FYI:

http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Cosmopolis

http://www.egs.edu/f...esbian-session/

This "article" I found interesting from Zizek:

The Lesbian Session

Slavoj Zizek.

Lacan.com.

Can a Lacanian learn something from Ayn Rand?

Rand, who wrote the two absolute best-sellers of our century, The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), was (deservedly) ignored and ridiculed as a philosopher: her fascination with male figures displaying absolute, unswayable determination of their Will, seems to offer the best imaginable confirmation of Sylvia Plath's famous line, "…every woman adores a Fascist." However, although it is easy to dismiss the very mention of Rand in a "serious" theoretical article as an obscene extravaganza — artistically, she is of course, worthless — the properly subversive dimension of her ideological procedure is not to be underestimated: Rand fits into the line of over-conformist authors who undermine the ruling ideological edifice by their very excessive identification with it.

Just another example of no publicity is bad publicity unless your name is Fatty Arbuckle. These yo-woes were on to Rand from the beginning. The smarter ones ignored her as much as they could--when they found they couldn't destroy her with book reviews--or making do with snide and short deprecating remarks as from the supercilious mouth of Gore Vidal. But as time goes on they have to mention her more and more not understanding it's a rear-guard action for their retreating forces of intellectual collectivism destroyed by its own spilt blood and two novels by an American woman from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

--Brant

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Wow.

First Michael because you are at the top of the page.

"1. I know what the Hegelian dialectic is, but I only know it second hand. And even then, my familiarity comes more from Marx stuff than Hegel stuff. So when you tell me what I "really mean," as in "... your complaint is really about the Dominating Discourse of interpretation within the Hegelian Dialectic," I have no way of talking about that without some study. I don't think I mean that because, generally, I am more into the range of degrees between poles than black and white binary thinking (dichotomies), but like I said, I need to study it correctly before I can feel comfortable saying I know what the hell I'm talking about."

What I have tried to do on my blogs is to post this stuff in a way that a mass media (movies, books,pop culture,etc) person can understand. With lots of pics. Interspersed with serious culture.

For Foucaultian genealogy here's what I did with the Twilight movie (don't laugh) Eclipse: A genealogy of sexualtiy:

http://moviesandfilm.blogspot.com/2011/10/review-viewing-eclipse-through.html

I have used Moneyball for Foucault's power/knowledge grid and the Dominating Discourse that sustains it:

http://moviesandfilm.blogspot.com/2012/01/review-moneyball-foucault-and.html

And again for Baudrillard's different Orders: Seduction and Production and his take on the excessiveness of something (in this case databasing) Bill of AA uses it as hitting bottom for addicts) to destroy it, dissolve it, render it to zero.

http://moviesandfilm.blogspot.com/2012/01/moneyball-order-of-seduction-and.html

If you want to wander around that site for movies you like better I usually read them through post modern thinking.

Here's my most recent one on Cosmopolis:

http://cosmopolisfilm2.blogspot.com/2012/01/cronenbergs-cosmopolis-wins-mtv-movie.html?zx=4592ba6ce43912da

And another so you'll get an idea who DeLillo is: http://cosmopolisfilm2.blogspot.com/2012/01/cosmopolis-literary-conference-delillo.html

And underlying all of it is Nietzsche, always Nietzsche.

Yes, Lou, she is totally wonderful.

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selene on Rand's novels

Worthless?More or less worthless than the Twilight novels? Or Warhol's Campbell Soup cans?

All 3 were Foucauldian "CUTS" in the Dominating Discourse of best seller fiction, young adult fiction, and the history of art criticism. Was the Campbell soup can beautiful, a work of art, no of course not. It "cut" into the Disourse of the history of art and ushered in pop art. Twilight has changed sex so as to uncover sexual rituals that were papered over with the pill and made them OK again. If you don't believe me on that read Atlantic Mothly's jan/feb 2011 issue with the 2 articles on sex, back to back. Or should I say porno accepted behavior among college coeds at Duke (Karen Owens sex fuck list power point presentation) and porn in the daily life of coeds and suburban moms, and everywoman.

Rand is not great literature, neither is Twilight, and the soup cans are not beautiful art. But they are all significant because they "cut" into the Discourse, change it, force us to talk, think and write differently.

Zizek is constantly pointing this out. He gives a three day interview to a good magazine and what do they write up: his apartment, how it looks, what is in it. We even see that in the Rand biographies: her apartment, her manner of dressing, her makeup, her lack of it and even myself about looking like she had plastic surgery on the Peikoff book jackets of the Letters and the Journal. But hey, Rand pointed this out eons ago about the media with Wynand and in her Journal her notes on Hearst. Killer notes I thought.

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