KIARINA

KORDELA

CRITICAL THEORY

Associate Professor of German Studies Director of the Critical Theory Program Macalester College St. Paul, MN Ph.D., Department of German Studies Cornell University

M.A., Department of German University of Pittsburgh B.A., Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures German Philology University of Athens, Greece

#Lacan #Marx #Spinoza #$urplus #Specimen #Critical Theory

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Commodity fetishism means...

FANTASY IS OBJECTIVITY

KIARINA: Its the corporatization of

the academic institution that is happening right now. Well, lets start with that. Have you heard of this movement they call assessment? They want you to quantify the efficiency of your program, to present evidence that your students learn what you think or claim theyre learning. If you teach statistics or economics, maybe, maybe this makes sense. I shouldnt even speak about it, because I dont really know these fields.

WHICH GIVES YOU AN IDEA OF THE PROBLEM. ITS DANGEROUS. IT LIMITS YOU.
The way they justify thisthe fact that they are imposing that on the entire academic system in this country so far, and gradually, Im afraid, elsewhere toois by linking it to the accreditation system, with which in principle I agree. The accreditation system says, if a college or university is not accredited, its not good. Fine. The problem begins when good is measured according to a hard science or a positivist social science model that believes itself capable of assessing learning across all disciplines. I appreciate these sciences, mathematics, physics, sociology, etc.when their methodology is precisely not reduced to positivism. Positivism says you can measure everything. They want us to assess writing in quantifiable terms, cleanly separating form from content, mechanics from style, and assigning points to each rubric. You are Kafka. Ok. Do you pass the assessment? Thats what Im saying. So, this is what we call biopolitical control. I know, there are colleagues and certainly people in the administration who would disagree with me, in fact, they would probably hate what I am saying here. Presumably, when you are a full professor, you are not afraid to say whatever you want.

Thats sort of what were exploiting at Specimen, Kiarina: Well, I think even at this stage one takes risks by saying certain things, although these risks, hopefully, pale compared to those taken by the everincreasing number of contingent facultyanother grave symptom of the corporatization of the academic institution. I am at Macalester College. I donot always, but oftenwhat many would consider the great books, very canonical philosophy, starting usually from the 16th/17th centuryDescartes, Pascal, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Hegel, Kant, Marx, arriving to the 20th century French critical theory, including psychoanalysis. I always teach the originals. If I am supposed to write something, or if I desire to write something, I assign the texts that I need to read, which is what professors normally do in graduate courses. I teach at the college level, but the courses are known for being basically graduate courses. You come from Greece. How did you end up in the German Department at Macalester College?

IMAGINE DURING VAN GOGHS TIME, IF SOMEBODY HAD SAID, LETS QUANTIFY VAN GOGHS PERFORMANCE, AND SOME PROFESSOR CAME AND HAD SAID, WELL YOU KNOW THATS INSANE. IT DOESNT OBEY THE RULES, BLA BLA BLA. IN FACT, ITS PROBABLY MORE OR LESS WHAT WAS SAID ABOUT VAN GOGHS WORK AT THE TIME,

KIARINA: Partly stupid choices, partly

historical determinism, but not a matter of so-called free will. Ok. First, the stupid choices. When I was 10 years old, my father was an electrician, but he was speaking five languages. He said, You are going to learn French in high school, because that is what every high school would teach you in Greece those days. You are going to learn French in high school, and we are going to start English in private school, which was a big sacrifice. Specimen Magazine. Issue 3.

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My family was middle to low class, and parents really sacrificed financially to send you to learn these things. So, we also want you to learn a third language. Do you want it to be Italian, which is our family language? I am one quarter Italian. My grandmother is Italian, hence my name. This Kiarina, in truth, is with a Ch. Do you know the word chiaroscruro? The contrast between the bright and the dark? Chiaro-scuro. My name was Chiarina, and I Germanized it when I was obsessing with German. Wait. Are you the dark half?

THEN, IN TEENAGERHOOD, I REALIZED THAT I ADORED PHILOSOPHY. I DID NOT REALLY INVEST MYSELF IN IT, BECAUSE I DISCOVERED SEXUAL RELATIONS, ALWAYS SKIPPING CLASS, WHAT HAVE YOU.

So I left home at age 18, and I did several jobs, including being a stewardess and a bartender. I was bartending 15 years of my life, including when I was a student. I stopped when I came to this country because my visa did not allow me to do that. It was a big trauma for me. I was so used to that, you know. It was like Jekyll and Hyde, my lifestyle. In the morning you are studying, and at night, you are in the bars until 5 am or whatever. So I did all these jobs for five years. Then I started studying as an undergraduate when I was 23, which is even older than when most people finish their BA. In my university, in Athens, where I studied initially, I was the oldest. It was during the five years right after high school that I was working that I realized that I am not a person that can survive in a normal work environment. I knew already that I hated five-day, eight-hour office jobs. So thats partly why I became a stewardess or I was bartending. I was doing translations from German into Greek. Philosophy or art related critical articles, and I did one book of fiction by Klaus Mann, the nephew of Thomas Mann. I got the money for it, but someone else got the credit. I didnt care then about the credit. It was a nice exercise. It was a good lesson for me to understand how difficult it is to make translations. Its not just about knowing what the words mean. So, during my working years, I realized, I cannot live like that. Life is boring. My intellectual interests needed to find an outlet, so I returned to Greece, and as you know, in the European system, you have to take exams to enter a university. So I spent one year preparing, and I took the exams. I was accepted in the German Department which was part of the Philosophy School of Athens. The other interesting thing about the Greek system, particularly, is that if you

KIARINA: Im bright! Whats the matter with you? Shes insulting me!
And we just discussed not insulting anyone.

KIARINA: Its very important in your mtier. In mine too. You dont want to insult the students or youre screwed.
Right, the customers.

KORDELA

KIARINA: Exactly. So my

fathers asks, Do you want to learn Italian, which is the family language that he and my mother spoke, or do you want to learn German, which is a very difficult language? What did I say? German, which is telling of my mentality. I think thats, in part, what attracted me to Lacan. Its difficult.

Jacques Lacan 1931

You must see the one of him in the bathroom. Im not kidding. [Shuffling to the bathroom] This is Lacan at age 30. He looks like a model. The joke with my students is: now you know why Im a Lacanian. You can see every single muscle. Kafka wasnt like that. Kafka was flabby, but skinny and gorgeous, which is difficult to accomplish. So that is how I started learning German.

I HAD A WEIRD ITINERARY. FIRST OF ALL, I LEFT HOME AT AGE 18, WHICH IS UNACCEPTABLE IN GREECE, EVEN FOR A MAN, LET ALONE FOR A WOMAN.

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MY INTELLECTUAL INTERESTS NEEDED TO FIND AN OUTLET.

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go to the Philosophy Department, they train you to become a high school professor to teach classics, ancient Greek and even modern composition writing in Greek, which I didnt care to do. Thats why I didnt want to be a philosophy major. If I were in Germany or another European country, I would have become a philosophy major, but in Greece, that is not the way to do it. You go through German to do German philosophy and critical theory. Whether you study critical theory depends on what professors you have there.

So I finished German studies there in Athens. I had a disastrous relationship with a guy who was from Germany. After thatit was basically symbolic suicide. I wanted to abandon not only Greece but also every German speaking country. In 1989, German was my language. I was dreaming in German, thinking in German. I decided to commit suicide symbolically, so it had to be neither Greece, because my relationship was in Greece, nor Germany, where I could easily have gotten a job and done graduate studies there. The USA, for me, like for many Greeks although Ive heard it said in other countries tooback then was always, oh, that is a stupid country. So, I wanted the worst possible thing for myself, and the English language didnt mean anything to me. It only had the significance for me of, you know, to rock, and maybe Hollywood or whatever. It was a joke. Its a language in which you say, I love pasta. People use the verb to love for fucking pasta! Whereas the Germans, when they tell you ich liebe dich, which means I love you, it means, if it comes to it, if its necessary, I would die for you. Otherwise, you say, ich mag dich, which means I like you. There are couples that have been together for I dont know how many years, and the most they say is ich habe dich lieb.

THATS HOW I CAME TO A COUNTRY WHERE, OK, WHATEVER, I LOVE PASTA.

So I came to the United States for stupid reasons. I was accepted by 12 universities. It was a friend of mine, actually, who filled in the applications, because I was dead after this disaster. I was lying for two years in a bed doing crosswords at most. A friend of mine, an ex-boyfriend, but a friend by then who cared for me, pushed me, helped me, prepared the institutional papers, whatever. I had finished at the university with the best grades. Everybody thought that I had potential. So he sent me here, practically. I didnt know anything about the United States. We do learn geography in elementary school and high school, the names of the states and the capital cities, and the next month you forget them, because they mean nothing to you. Back then, I knew New York, LA, San Francisco, and in the middle is Chicago. That was my USA geography. So, I was accepted by 12 universities, including excellent universities, from NYU to Johns Hopkins, but all I cared about, because it was the only one I knew about, was going to Berkeley. I knew about it because of the 68 movement in Berkeley. Berkeley accepted me, but they didnt give you money for the first semester if you were a foreigner (later I discovered they do the same also with USA citizens), and you had to provide evidence that you could support yourself, which I could not. Since I couldnt go to Berkeley, everything else was the same to me. It didnt matter. I was accepted by Ivy League schools. I didnt even know the concept of Ivy League and all that. A friend of the friend who helped me come here was a professor at the Polytechnic School in Athens. Its the best school when it comes to architecture, civil engineering, these kind of things. Even Germany

I WAS EXPOSED TO LACAN BY ONE PROFESSOR, WHO, ONE BEAUTIFUL DAY, WAS TEACHING FREUD AND SAID, LACAN. 1989. I WAS 26.
Then I realized Lacan had died in 81, the very same year I finished high school. All my life I would say, God, if I had only known him before that. As one can read in Roudinescos history of psychoanalysis in France, in 1938one year before Freuds deathMarie Bonaparte had organized a gathering in Freuds honor, to which Lacan was invited and to which he decided at the last moment not to go, even as years earlier he had sent his thesis to the master and was seeking his recognition. He was afraid of extreme transference, whether positive or negative, with the person, as opposed to the text. I say that, and I get the goosebumps. Its an incredible decisionFreud was in his 80s; Lacan knew its now or neverthe will power that it takes. So after all, I say, well, better that Lacan was dead already by the time I got to know his work. Otherwise, I would have a huge dilemma. All this continues to be the answer to the question of how did I end up in St. Paul.

KORDELA

SO THESE ARE HEAVY LANGUAGES. THE SAME WITH GREEK. YOU CANNOT SAY, I LOVE PASTA, OR ANY OTHER OBJECT, UNLESS YOU REALLY MEAN YOU CANT LIVE WITHOUT IT. SO THIS LANGUAGE SEEMED TO ME...FRIVOLOUS.

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I GO READ LACAN, AND I UNDERSTAND NOTHING. OR RATHER, I UNDERSTAND NOTHING 90-95%, BUT THE REST, MAYBE IT WAS 3%, IT DOESNT MATTER, WHATEVER I UNDERSTOOD WOULD BE LIKE AN EPIPHANY.
acknowledges a degree from that school. He is a famous guy by now. He just got the presidential prize for whatever, contributing to education in Greece. He said, go to the University of Pittsburgh, because they have a great philosophy department. Maybe it had a good philosophy department but it was analytic philosophy, not continental philosophy. The University of Pittsburgh was good for philosophy of science, but that wasnt my thing. I eventually went to Cornell where I did my PhD. I had six years of financial support at Cornell, but I finished in four years. I do work like crazy when I decide to work. When I decide not to work, I dont work, because, say Im into relationships, or partying, or whatever So I finished two years before I was supposed to. There isnt much to do in Ithaca. You work. Its beautiful, if you are into hiking. So I finished in four years. I applied, I got the job at Macalester. I was dying to get out of Ithaca at that age. Maybe today it would be easier. At that age, I wanted to be in places like New York, Berlin, or Paris. For me, this (the Twin Cities) is perfect. Its urban but very livable. You dont have to deal with traffic. You can park. Sure, there is crime, but you do not necessarily have to face it every daythough this depends also on social class. Now go to Athens. Theres crime all over. Its dangerous. So I got a job at Macalester. You see, it was partly stupid choices and historical determinism. Next question. What was initially so exciting for you about Lacan?

KIARINA: The first thing I read of

Lacan, a Greek translation, was his Hamlet piece. Lacan argues there that Hamlet is a classical case of neurosis. I was an undergraduate in Athens. The professor was talking about Freud. I raised my hand, and I criticized something that Freud had presumably said. I had produced the critique that Lacan had produced, without ever having read Lacan or even heard his name, and the professor was impressed. He refers me to Lacan. I go read Lacan, and I understand nothing. Or rather, I understand nothing 9095%, but the rest, maybe it was 3%, it doesnt matter, whatever I understood would be like an epiphany. As if, my God, this is the only person that can describe my life so accurately. That was enough for me to...whew, and I would Specimen Magazine. Issue 3.

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keep reading. Ive spent 20, 25 years trying to understand Lacan. By now, I think there may be five sentences that I dont understand, at least in the seminars that I have read carefully. But still, to spend 20 to 25 years on Lacan. He is cookoo. He is brilliant, but there is no reason to put it the way he does. Though, then again, there is

On a certain level, they are somewhat psychotic. All of these people are crazy. Lacan is crazy. Spinoza is crazy. Yeah. Clearly. Now Marx seems more normal. I got into Marx Its personal, but relevant. I have one sister and no other siblings, and my sister is 12 years older than me. So I was 10 in 1973, which is a historical moment in Greece, which is equivalent to 1968 in other countries, like France or USA. It included the student revolution that overthrew the dictatorship. This was the surface, of course. It was not the student revolution that overthrew the dictatorship. I guess the CIA decided they no longer needed the dictatorship in Greece. But on the surface, it appeared that it was the student revolution that did it, and it was indeed a bloody revolution. Many people were killed. So Im 10, and my sister is 22. My sister was in the student revolution. She would come home every day bleeding and what have you, and she would bring things prohibited by the state, like books and music. I dont know where the hell she would find them. Evidently, there was an underground movement that she was involved in. Thats when I readI was ten years oldI read Sartes Situations. Dont ask me what I understood of it, but I read the whole fucking thing. When you were ten!

my age, which has to do with the historical moment in Greece, and the fact that I had an older sister, and all that. So I was exposed to Marx already then, and beyond the message that the proletariats are exploited, revolution is needed, be a Communist (which I bought wholeheartedly), beyond that, I didnt understand anything. In fact, my sister was very much into the Bolshevik line of the Communist Party in Greece. By age 12, I think, I was very critical of that. I wasnt an anarchist, but I was moving towards anarchism. My sister wanted me to become a member of KNE, which is the Greek Communist Youth Party. You could join the party at 14 or something. My sister wanted me to become a member of it even though she was never a member of the adult part of this party, officially. I was already criticizing it, whatever. I said, Marx, bullshit, forget Marx, ok, and then I went into other philosophers. Years later, Im at Cornell, towards the end, writing my dissertation. Finally, I said, ok, Im going to read Capital, Volume 1. I begin reading the thing, and its an epiphany. So, thisthis countertop, any commodity is both a material thing and an abstract symbol. Its like, what!?! Then the next step, the next step in terms of my development as a theoretician, would be commodity fetishism, which at that point, at Cornell, I didnt even dwell deeply with. It was enough just understanding the definitions that Marx was giving to things. Once you have Capitalism, this is both this piece of stone and exchange-value, an abstract symbol, that is, a signifier, not unlike languagewhew! I am capitalizing on this point in my first book: $urplus: Spinoza, Lacanlike an idiot, I did not put the name Marx between the other two, as rightly the first review of my bookpoints out. Is the countertop, as a signifier, a fantasy?

Its almost like...

KIARINA: POETRY

Exactly...
KIARINA: Its poetryand hes talking like that! Its transcriptions of his seminars that we read. Jesus. Its very difficult to unravel. Thats why I got into Lacan. Two reasons: it was difficult, and no one else could describe my life, my experience, the way he didwhen I could understand him. I have three heroes. Lacan was one. The other two come historically before him, Spinoza and Marx. The troika or the holy trinity. For Spinoza and Marx, it wasnt the same reasons. For both of them, what was mindblowing to me is: how did they understand the things they did understand back then? Have you read Spinozas Ethics? The Theologico-Political Treatise is great, but much more understandable. For me, the Ethics produces awe. How is it possible that he figured out these things?

KORDELA

KIARINA: Yeah. Nietzsche and Marx

too. I know I read the Manifesto and something else, most likely parts of Capital. I would sit there and read. Evidently, even though I was obsessing, I dont have any recollection of what I understood. Its very likely that I understood nothing or that I was imagining things. The Manifesto I understood. The Manifesto is easy to understand. The point was the proletariats are exploited, unite and revolt. The rest, I have no idea. Nietzsche I did understand, to a rudimentary point, that is, because Nietzsche is a philosopher who can also be read from a teenagers point of view, so to speak. I wasnt a teenager then, but I was fairly mature for

FOR ME, THATS WHAT A GENIUS IS. ITS SIMPLY A VICTIM. A GENIUS IS SOMEBODY WHOM THE DISCOURSE GRABS.
The genius ventriloquizes what happens in the discourse. They are the medium through which the discourse speaks.

KIARINA: A fantasy but with objectivity. Not a fantasy that you could

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I REMEMBER ONCE I WAS DETAINED THREE, FOUR HOURS IN THE AIRPORT, AND I WAS WONDERING WHY. I HAD ASSIGNED MARX, SO IM CIRCULATING AROUND THE AIRPORT WITH A COPY OF MARX, AND IT DIDNT EVEN DAWN ON ME. I WAS TEACHING PHILOSOPHY. THEN IT DAWNED ON ME. KIARINA, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

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HERE, ITS CAREER, MONEY, HOW YOU APPEAR IN THE SYMBOLIC ORDER. THATS TOTAL SACRIFICE.

overcome, through enlightenment. Thats nave enlightenment. Thats Marxs point in his commodity fetishism theory, that the fantasy is objectivity which is introduced through capitalism. No matter how much you enlighten people, on the contrary, you blind them by enlightening them. On the contrary, you should take into account the fantasy, which is what psychoanalysis also argues. Thats why the two (Marx and psychoanalysis) combine very well for me. I am not a Marxist in the classical sense. I do not even call myself a Marxist, but a Marxian. I know it sounds like Martian.

KIARINA: Thats the devil.

Yeah. You cant really do that. Do people give you a hard time for being a self-professed Marxian?

Maybe in Minnesota.

KIARINA: Everywhere, I believe. You

have Marxists of the old typeworkers of the world unite. Not that I have anything against it. It simply doesnt work anymore. Capitalism is at another stage. You cannot do the revolution old-style. I wanted to ask you about that, the relevancy of Marxism for you today. Marxism is a dirty word in this country, and if you seriously talk about shifting from Capitalism to anything else

KIARINA: Well, after 9/11, any foreigner who said anything that could be terrorist-friendly or whatever, could be deported, and who knows with the things that I write. I remember once I was detained three, four hours in the airport, and I was wondering why. I was coming back from a conference within the states and preparing for class the next day. I had assigned Marx, so Im circulating around the airport with a copy of Marx, and it didnt even dawn on me. I was teaching philosophy. Then it dawned on me. Kiarina, what are you doing?
Your contemporary, Slavoj iek, has said that people want revolution without revolution.

of the revolution. Its not easy to know whether history is ripe, so you just go out and do whatever you need to do in order to continue to live. As Cronenberg put it in a Dangerous Method, sometimes one may have to do something unforgivable in order to keep living.

KIARINA: Well, a revolution is going to fail if history itself is not ready for the change. If it doesnt fail, its because history demands it. Which is not to say that people should not revolt thinking that this is not yet the right moment to do sowhat iek rightly calls the neurotic approach to the question

THATS THE PROBLEM. ITS ONLY AFTER THE FACT, SOMETIMES EVEN LOOONG AFTER THE FACT, THAT ONE CAN KNOW WHETHER ONE DID SOMETHING UNFORGIVABLE OR THAT HISTORYTHIS IS TRUE OF COLLECTIVE AND PERSONAL HISTORY ALIKE WAS ALREADY RIPE.
Do you think the Occupy movement is a symptom of growing readiness?

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KIARINA: An excellent symptom. Last month I was in Australia, at a conference. There was a guy from Italy, and you know the Communist tradition of Italy. He said, they are talking about politics and its identity politics and sexual difference. Where is class difference? This is the European understanding of politics. Unless you are dealing with social classes, youre not talking politics. I partly agree with it, nevertheless, we have to reconfigure entirely how to talk about social classes. Anyway, for him, the Occupy movement was not real politics, precisely because they have no specific demands.
Its been highly criticized for that.

KIARINA: Yeah, and I like that. Will it

be effectual? It depends. It depends on whether history is ripe for itlike, for instance, the French bourgeois revolution. I dont know the answer. I feel very ready for a change. But this is where I disagree with iek. I dont think the solution is always to get the knives and start running on the street and killing each otherwhen he says that everyone wants the revolution without revolution, youve got to wonder if thats what he means. The time has to be ripe, and you dont make the time ripe by killing people. Coming to the USA made me understand a lot. If I hadnt come here, I wouldnt be so advanced in my understanding of Capitalism. You are really in the heart of the beast. This is really Capitalism. Look around you. How many people do you know who are willing to sacrifice their careers, whatever, in order to be in a love relationship? That would presuppose that you do not treat the other as exchange value. Thats love. When you know the other is unsubstitutional. Which is just like saying, when the other disappears, you have to disappear, whether literally or symbolically. Were going back to my symbolic suicide.

Is it that no one here is really called upon to sacrifice?

KIARINA: But they sacrifice totally all the time. They sacrifice their own enjoyment, including the possibility of love. They work like crazy to buy, buy, and be successful. They do sacrifice, but they are not conscious of it. Im not for sacrificing for the sake of sacrificing. My point is we are sacrificing! Since I came to this country, I live like a monk, compared to how I lived before that. Life in Europe is lazier. Thats the priority personal relationships.
Here, its career, money, how you appear in the symbolic order. Thats total sacrifice. Thats the worst sacrifice. The problem is that we imagine that we dont sacrifice. Oh, I have a Porsche. I dont sacrifice, Im cool. I have to starve not to be fat, to be desirable. Im not sacrificing, Im sexy. See what I mean? Sometimes they show on TV religious rituals in Muslim countries where people are mutilating themselves, people nailing a nail in their head and such, its a totally different concept of life. Theyre sacrificing looking for a redemption that does not take place here, and thats what the Christian world also did prior to the Specimen Magazine. Issue 3.

KIARINA: For me, if there is any hope

at all, its because they dont have any demands. Here, iek gets it right. Hed argue the same, and generally any Lacanian does. Any other movement that has demands, which complies with the logical mode of thinking, presumes to know where they are supposed to go, how the future should look, whereas most people in the Occupy movement say, I dont know. Just, somethings wrong, and thats it.

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advent of secular capitalist modernity, when they were whipping themselves and so on. Now we are sacrificing for the sake of an earthly redemption, whose content is of course manipulated by constructed ideals of lifestylebe healthy, be cool, be rich. This, too, is biopolitical control. In Welcome to the Desert of the Real, iek compares the representation of the destruction of the World Trade Towers to the media representation of death in the third world. When they would show the events of 9/11 on TV, they would warn the families that there are going to be gory scenes, so if you dont want your children to watch this... And then what do you see? Just some buildings falling, like youve seen innumerable times in Hollywood films or computer games, as iek and others have pointed out. The point is that when you see third world death on TV, you see blood. Its a massacre. They die! In the West, they never die. You see computer games. Is that related to the theory that the farther away you go, the farther back in time you go?

WHAT MUST LIVE AND WHAT MUST DIE IN ORDER FOR THAT WHICH MUST LIVE TO LIVE. WHAT IS HUMAN AND WHAT IS COCKROACH.
There is the superrace of the humans, who must livethey are the immortalsand there is the sub-race of those who can and must diethe mortals, which is why, when death strikes the superrace, all you get to see in media is action-movie-like spectacle. You meet people herethey are not Nazis, they are humanitarian, good liberals. They have no problem when you tell them that we kill the terrorists, we bomb Afghanistan, and so on. How is it possible?! The answer is not that they are cynical. No, these people believe in this bioracial divide. Its clear that one American life is worth

I was like, what?! Im just a girl. What?! They were holding me responsible.

KIARINA: And rightly so. I count myself responsible. I am an American citizen, even though I resisted it until last year. Whereas in the past you could renew your Greek passport via mail, soon after 9/11 they changed the regulations, and now you have to go to Chicago every time you need to renew your passport. So, now I have an American passport. I too feel complicit. Some students come up with the idea that Im a revolutionary, but I dont have illusions that I am a revolutionary. You cant just go to Grand Avenue and start a revolution.

KIARINA: Revolutions come from within the system, gradually, whether or not they assume violent forms. Im glad Im a professor at a good institution. The impact on young peoples thought is tremendous. If I were an outcast, begging for money in the corner, which could easily have been my life, what would be my effect?
*

KIARINA: I wouldnt say the

farther away geographically, but the further back in capitalist development. I experienced it myself as a stewardess. Go to India! My first training trip was to Pakistan and India. I had already been to East Berlin during communism, which, believe me, was a trip in time, at least by some decades. There are countries where you feel even farther back in time. So, what you claim in your work is that we immortalize ourselves

KORDELA

KIARINA: Millions.
Because no one here really flinches when thousands of people die somewhere else.

KIARINA: 9/11 happened, and it was presumably a shock. This country is under the illusion that these things happen elsewhere, not here. It was beyond imagination.
From my perspective it was unreal. I was one of the people asking, how can this happen here?

KIARINA: as we mortalize the others.

My argument is that today class difference should be redefined in bioracial terms. This goes back to Foucaults notion of what is racism.

KIARINA: Do you know how impossible this thought is from a European perspective? You dont know a single person in Europe that does not have a family member who has died violently. When I was in Paris, in the early years of the Iraq War, I had old men yelling at me, saying, how can you allow your government to do this?

RACISM IS THE DIVIDE BETWEEN

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I HAVE THREE HEROES. LACAN WAS ONE. THE OTHER TWO COME HISTORICALLY BEFORE HIM, SPINOZA AND MARX. THE TROIKA OR THE HOLY TRINITY.

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