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I want people to use this thread to post particularly winning turns-of-phrase from theoretical writing because, let's face it, there aren't that many and they deserve some respect when you happen to find them. Ideally, they should be succinct, amusing, playful, non-jargony, and capture something about the theorist or theory they come from. But they can, of course, be anything that takes your fancy. Alternately, you can suggest other criteria for good theoretical turns-of-phrase. Obviously, this is a thread for bored, procrastinating grad students, but anyone is welcome to play.
This was inspired by stumbling across the following phrase in a famous letter Adorno wrote to Benjamin:
You need not fear that I shall take this opportunity to mount my hobby-horse. I shall content myself with serving it, in passing, a lump of sugar.
My second nominee is Etienne Balibar, from his essay 'The Borders of Europe'. He is discussing the difficulty of determining, with respect to transnational movements under late capitalism, whether people are moving things or whether things are moving people. He describes this difficulty as the empirico-theoretical question of luggage.
More nominations, please. |
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