Topos Noetos

An obsessive fidelity to non-places (not necessarily utopias) notwithstanding, Henri Lefebvre's Production of Space remains the project for my French class this term. Though still problematic, the book is proving to be more interestingly convincing after I calmed down from some stress hysterics. Postscript after chatting with KP this afternoon: so what if I would do a series of 'individual thinkers' type papers? If I don't think it's boring -- and neither does her, it seems -- then it's not. Her good will was so genuine, as always. I'll leave bigger questions of the major-field exam and dissertation to the sea, for now.

Meanwhile, this is an interesting article on Europe's old churches' various transformations. According to Lefebvre, religious-institutional places are absolute spaces that contain within themselves contradictions that in turn make way for abstract spaces (abstraction taken seriously in the sense of Hegelian and Marxist-charged 'concrete universals). Abstractions produce differential spaces.

(Social) Space is not a thing among other things, nor a product among other products: rather it subsumes things produced, and encompasses their interrelationships in their coexistence and simultaneity -- their (relative) order and/or (relative) disorder (Lefebvre 73).

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In class today, we learnt that digressional passages in Renaissance literature are referred to as topos, following classical rhetoric. I grew somewhat nostalgic about the predecessor of my whole blogging escapade, which as you'd know, has been overtaken by insane bridal apocalypse.

The name toposnoetos, was of course, taken from the "Différance" essay. It was also chosen because I had thought it can well sound like some Mexican food spin-off. It reached its thrill when lucky but most of the time, it did good being a brave survivor of snide remarks, narcissistic and others.

And now, so much so for spacing....