Today I read in the printed edition of the_guardian that some universities have introduced a new ‘good behaviour’ contract which undergraduate and postgraduate students at some colleges around the UK are asked to sign before starting their new academic year. It really made me laugh!!!If I had signed such a contract I would have successfully been kicked out…well especially during second and third year…
Today Newsnight was asking: terror pornography?
I think so, yes.
I cannot resist the temptation and will give you a reference to Meštrović’s analysis of what he defines as the “sociological concept of post-emotionalism”, that is, the “development in which synthetic, quasi-emotions become the basis for widespread manipulation by self, others, and the culture industry as a whole.”
In other words, for him the post-emotional society is not characterised by non-emotion, that is people who have become emotion-less (even un-conscious) rather by a fake, simulated emotion.
Drawing from a variety of sources -such as Ritzer’s The McDonaldization of Society, Riesman’s theory of other-directedness in The Lonely Crowd, Orwell’s Ninteen-Eighty Four, Marcuse’s concept of ‘happy consciousness’ in his One-Dimensional Man and others- Meštrović is admitting that his vision of the future is gloomier than that envisaged by Orwell and Marcuse only because they still had faith in Enlightenment.
For Meštrović however even Enlightenment is a post-emotional phenomenon in that it clings to a simulation of and not in Enlightenment proper. And this is the issue at hand: if we are simply imitating, trying to reach a ‘picture’ of the ideals inscribed in the movement of Enlightenment, rather than living it, having the picture as ours, then this means, firstly, that there is a ‘picture’ of how things should be, and secondly, that they are not.
What is stopping us from allowing the appearance (this fake image) to appear?[1]
Today a guy from the freight company came over and collected all my stuff on the way to Athens.
After a few hours, and after having printed my dissertation I decided to just go to uni and give it in.
I left the house. I walked to uni. Just 20-25 mins. It was a really nice day today; actually hot for September-London standards if I may add. Something like 30C!!!
I was looking around and everything seemed really nice; I am not going to leave London with a crazy smile on my face, but with apprehension. It’s not that I want to leave London, it is rather that I want to return to Greece.
I arrived at ULU to the print centre they have there to bind my dissertation. I patiently waited in the queue…only to realize that I had forgotten my cards and cash at the room…I left ULU and walked back home thinking that now that everything has fallen into place I should just relax because although I may say so I haven’t really… obviously ……just relax dear…..you know… reeeeeelaaaaaxxxxxxx ….. and as if in an instant…as if something suddenly went through me….and I actually did!!!! 
So…I went back home, took the cards and cash and returned, by bus this time, to ULU…as I was walking from the bus stop to ULU there was this guy…you know(for those who have lived in the UK), the big-issue-one’s …(homeless people who sell a weekly magazine called the Big Issue!)…as I was passing by he looked at me and muttered :
You’re a lesbian.
He wasn’t trying to be funny, because his face did not look funny, nor was he trying to be insulting, because his ‘way’ was not really insulting..his face was actually really serious..it was as if he was stating a fact…something he saw in me maybe….I immediately began laughing…and answered…well…maybe I am??!!!
Tomorrow I am going to Canterbury.
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[1] G. Agamben’s Means Without End: Notes on Politics, University of Minnesota Press, (2000), “The task of politics is to return appearance itself to appearance, to cause appearance itself to appear”, p. 94
