ANTIGONE

“Nay, we must remember, first, that we were born women, as who should not strive with men; next, that we are ruled of the stronger, so that we must obey in these things, and in things yet sorer. I, therefore, asking the Spirits Infernal to pardon, seeing that force is put on me herein, will hearken to our rulers. for ’tis witless to be over busy. “

“I will not urge thee,-no nor, if thou yet shouldst have the mind, wouldst thou be welcome as a worker with me. Nay, be what thou wilt; but I will bury him: well for me to die in doing that. I shall rest, a loved one with him whom I have loved, sinless in my crime; for I owe a longer allegiance to the dead than to the living: in that world I shall abide for ever. But if thou wilt, be guilty of dishonouring laws which the gods have stablished in honour. “

CREON

“…our country is the ship that bears us safe, and that only while she prospers in our voyage can we make true friends.”

“-that Eteocles, who hath fallen fighting for our city, in all renown of arms, shall be entombed, and crowned with every rite that follows the noblest dead to their rest. But for his brother, Polyneices,-who came back from exile, and sought to consume utterly with fire the city of his fathers and the shrines of his fathers’ gods,-sought to taste of kindred blood, and to lead the remnant into slavery;-touching this man, it hath been proclaimed to our people that none shall grace him with sepulture or lament, but leave him unburied, a corpse for birds and dogs to eat, a ghastly sight of shame.”

“Tis by them, well I know, that these have been beguiled and bribed to do this deed. Nothing so evil as money ever grew to be current among men. This lays cities low, this drives men from their homes, this trains and warps honest souls till they set themselves to works of shame; this still teaches folk to practise villainies, and to know every godless deed.”

ANTIGONE BY SOFOCLE (442 B.C.)

A woman becomes a woman only by virtue of contrast and comparison to her male companion, whom she may perceive either as a threat or a lover. Without the Other there cannot be the Same. These principles of “complementary polarity” can equally well apply to different races: one becomes proud of his own race only when acknowledging the uniqueness of each race. The main point here is that it is only through their respective differences that men’s and women’s complementarity can be achieved. In the rejection of the recognition of Alterity lies the entire modern political drama, which only spurs standard left-wing invectives about alleged White racism, sexism, and the so-called “anti-Semitisms”—themes of exclusion usually ascribed to Whites only. A well-known sociobiologist from France, close to the “European New Right,” Yves Christen summarizes this dilemma in the following way in his book L’égalité des sexes; l’un n’est pas l’autre. (Gender equality; one is not the other);

Enjoying equal voting rights or basking in the splendor of a well-paid job does not necessary mean that the modern emancipated woman is automatically spared from mistreatment inflicted by her violent male partner. One may sometimes justly feel sorry for the burdensome past of the more domesticated, household-bound women in the Christian Southern or Eastern Europe. However, one must also bear in mind that pathological feelings of loneliness, such as experienced by many modern White emancipated American and Northwestern European women, are unheard of among  Amish women in Pennsylvania, or among peasant women in today’s Russia or Eastern Europe. What good is it to be free if freedom means facing rapidly encroaching old age and the absence of all community?

From National Anarchist Women

Sofonisba Anguissola (c. 1532 – November 16, 1625) was an Italian painter of the Renaissance.

Over four generations, the Anguissola family had a strong connection to ancient Carthaginian history and they named their offspring after the great general Hannibal, thus the first daughter was named after the tragic Carthaginian figure Sophonisba.

[Sophonisba (fl. 203 BC) was a Carthaginian noblewoman who lived during the Second Punic War. She was betrothed to Massinissa, the leader of Numidia. Following an alliance between Massinissa and Rome, Scipio Africanus didn’t agree to their union and the couple was obliged to separate. Massinissa didn’t have the courage to oppose himself to the Romans so he induced his lover to suicide handing her a cup of poison. Her story became the subject of tragedies (and later operas) from the 16th to the 18th centuries.]

Her aristocratic father made sure that Sofonisba and her sisters received a well-rounded education that included the fine arts. Anguissola was fourteen years old when her father sent her with her sister Elena to study with Bernardino Campi, a respected portrait and religious painter of the Lombard school, also from Cremona, Sofonisba’s home town. When Campi moved to another city, Sofonisba continued her studies with the painter Bernardino Gatyi (known as Il Sojaro). Sofonisba’s apprenticeship with local painters set a precedent for women to be accepted as students of art.

Sophonisba’s most important early work is Bernardino Campi Painting Sofonisba Anguissola (c 1550 Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena). The double portrait depicts her art teacher in the act of painting a portrait of her.

In 1554, at age twenty-two, Sofonisba traveled to Rome, where she spent her time sketching various scenes and people. While in Rome, she met Michelangelo through the help of another painter who knew her work well. Meeting Michelangelo was a great honor for Sofonisba and she had the benefit of being informally trained by the great master.

Although Sofonisba enjoyed much more encouragement and support than the average woman of her day, her social class did not allow her to transcend the constraints of her sex. Without the possibility of studying anatomy or drawing from life (it was considered unacceptable for a lady to view nudes), she could not undertake the complex multi-figure compositions required for large-scale religious or history paintings.

Sofonisba Anguissola was around twenty seven years old when she left Italy to join the Spanish court. In the winter of 1559-1560 she arrived at Madrid to serve as a court painter and lady-in-waiting to the new Queen, Elisabeth of Valois, Philip II’s third wife, who was an amateur portraitist herself. Sofonisba was essentially engaged to tutor the Queen.

In 1570, Anguissola was thirty-eight and still unmarried. After the death of Elisabeth of Valois, Philip II took additional interest in Sofonisba’s future. He had wished to marry her to one of the nobles in the Spanish Court, yet soon discovered she was already engaged. Nevertheless, he paid a dowry of twelve thousand pounds for her impending marriage to Don Francisco de Moncada, son of the prince of Paterno, viceroy of Sicily, whom she eventually married in 1571. Happily, Don Francisco was said to be supportive of her painting. After the wedding the couple traveled to visit her family, as well as her husband’s estates in Italy, but eventually returned to Spain. After eight years with the Spanish court, Sofonisba and her husband finally left Spain with the permission of the King sometime during 1578. They went to Palermo where Sofonisba’s husband died in 1579.

At the age of forty-seven, while traveling home to Cremona, Sofonisba met the considerably younger Orazio Lomellino, the captain of the ship she was traveling on. They were married shortly afterwards, with Sofonisba purportedly proposing, in January of 1580, in Pisa.

Orazio recognized and supported her in her artwork and they had a long and happy marriage. They settled in Genoa, where her husband’s family lived in their large home. Anguissola was given her own quarters, studio and time to paint and draw.

“To Sofonisba, my wife … who is recorded among the illustrious women of the world, outstanding in portraying the images of man …” Orazio Lomellino, in sorrow for the loss of his great love, in 1632, dedicated this little tribute to such a great woman.

Sofonisba Anguissola’s oeuvre had a lasting influence upon subsequent generations of artists. Her portrait of Queen Elisabeth of Valois with a zibellino (the pelt of a marten set with a head and feet of jewelled gold) was the most widely copied portrait in Spain. Copiers of this work include many of the finest artists of the time, such as Peter Paul Rubens.

Sofonisba is also important to feminist art historians. Although there has never been a period in Western history in which women were completely absent in the visual arts, Anguissola’s great success opened the way for larger numbers of women to pursue serious careers as artists. Some famous successors to her example include Lavinia Fontana, Barbara Longhi, Fede Galizia and Artemisia Gentileschi.

Esistono stati e ossessioni con cui è impossibile convivere. La salvezza non consiste quindi nell’ammetterli? Nel chiuso della coscienza, la terribile esperienza e la spaventosa ossessione della morte portano alla rovina. Parlando della morte si è invece salvato qualcosa di se stessi, anche se qualcosa nell’essere si è spento, giacché i contenuti, una volta oggettivati, perdono l’attualità nella coscienza. Il lirismo rappresenta un impulso a disperdere la soggettività, perché denota, nell’individuo, un’effervescenza insopprimibile che continuamente esige espressione. Essere lirici significa non riuscire a restare chiusi in se stessi. Tale bisogno di esteriorizzazione è tanto più imperioso quanto più il lirismo è interiore, profondo e concentrato. Perché l’uomo diventa lirico nella sofferenza e nell’amore? Perché entrambi questi stati, sebbene diversi per natura e orientamento, sorgono dal fondo più remoto dell’essere , dal centro sostanziale della soggettività, che è una sorta di zona di proiezione e di irraggiamento. Diventiamo lirici quando la vita dentro di noi palpita ad un ritmo essenziale, e quando ciò che stiamo vivendo è talmente forte da sintetizzare il senso stesso della nostra personalità. Ciò che abbiamo di unico, di specifico, si compie in una forma così espressiva che l’individuale si eleva al livello dell’universale. Le esperienze soggettive più profonde sono anche le più universali, perché in esse si tocca il fondo originario della vita. La vera interiorizzazione conduce a un’universalità inaccessibile a quanti restano alla superficie. L’interpretazione volgare dell’universalità vede in essa più una forma di complessità in estensione che la ricchezza di una comprensione qualitativa. Ecco perché il lirismo è considerato un fenomeno marginale e inferiore, frutto di un’inconsistenza spirituale, quando invece le risorse liriche della soggettività testimoniano una freschezza e una profondità interiori fra le più considerevoli.

Al Culmine della Disperazione – E.M Cioran

“To all those who are genuinely horrified at blood sacrifices while professing to be Christians, we would like to point out that the whole structure of their faith rests upon the dogma of atonement for sin through the shedding of innocent blood.”

“The number of animals sacrificed to man’s greed — whether in the ancient world or in modern India — grew altogether out of proportion with that of the victims once offered up to angry Gods as a primitive means of propitiation. And (what is as bad, if not worse) the creatures, instead of being slaughtered in a definite
manner, prescribed once and for all by the ritual (which, among the “Shakta” Hindus of Bengal, at least, implied a minimum of suffering for the victims, whose heads had to be cut off at one stroke) were killed anyhow, the horror and length of their agony depending solely upon the greater or lesser skill of the slaughterers, bound by no laws at all, and, sometimes, upon their inborn sadism or lack of sadism.”

Savitri Devi – Impeachment of Man

see also La Foresta che Avanza

Many American states have adopted programs and laws based on ‘affirmative action’, i.e., ‘positive discrimination’. The word itself carries ridiculous contradictions. And the same thing is currently happening on South Africa as well…Affirmative action implies an unconsciously anti-egalitarian attitude. It calls for a definition of the ‘races to be helped’ – hence it’s racism. Should we help Arabs and Koreans? A ‘racial scale’ is thus implicitly established, based on notions of superiority and inferiority, which actually derives from anti-racist ideology itself. In the United States many minority spokesman have felt humiliated at being listed among those benefiting from ‘positive discrimination’. (…) To put it briefly, women, Blacks, etc., are all being likened to the congenitally handicapped and underdeveloped, as people we should pity and help with a (considerable) push. What humiliation! ‘White males must be penalized so that others may find a place in the sun: but doesn’t this very idea entail that ‘White males are intrinsically superior? Hence, this alleged superman must be discriminated against by authority in order to make way for ‘others’. The subtext here is that women and Blacks are eternal victims who by their very nature require help: weak creatures to be constantly protected from oppression. Anti-racist, egalitarian and feminist ideology is biting its own tail. It reasserts racist or sexist ideas of inferiority while claiming to fight against them. If I were Black I would be furious at being treated like a virtual incompetent who always needs help! On the other hand, in forcefully imposing a 50% quota of women among political candidates, egalitarian ideology is going against its principles of equality and harming the sacred ‘cause of women’. If most candidates are men this is not because of any conscious decision to leave women out, but because there aren’t enough women standing for elections. By imposing an equal quota for women, they are actually imposing a number of candidates who are bound to be mediocre. (…) Positive discrimination, whose aims are anti-racism and anti-sexism, makes society increasingly sexist and racist. When egalitarianism seeks to stretch its principles to their very limits, according to an abstract logic, it ends up perverting them and making them absurd and contradictory. Are equal opportunities not yielding equal results? Then we must forcefully impose this equality into the results by destroying the very notion of equal opportunity that lies at the basis of egalitarian ideology… All this is happening because the latter dogmatically refuses to acknowledge the inequality in skills among different individuals and ethnic groups. ‘Nature’ does not share our views? Then let us change nature by decree, as is done with history! An ambitious plan that leads straight to catastrophe… Well, so much the better: to quote an Indian proverb, ‘When you your enemy dancing on a roof top, let him do so and applaud his feat.’

(pg. 134, 135 Archeofuturism by Guillaume Faye)

see also

È possibile una parola di uomini che esprima l’esperienza maschile nella sua parzialità, la sua aspirazione a differire rispetto a modelli, forme di relazione, percezioni di sé costruiti storicamente? È possibile una critica di questo ordine oppressivo pensata ed espressa da uomini che rompa con la storia del maschile?

Gli ultimi venti o trenta anni hanno visto mutare in modo radicale i rapporti fra uomini e donne. La grande trasformazione innescata dalle donne ha cambiato anche le vite di molti maschi. Si è iniziato a parlare di disagio maschile, e non soltanto fra le generazioni più mature. Secondo alcuni la certezza della propria virilità può essere intaccata dalla nuova libertà femminile, e l’incertezza su di sé produce sofferenza. Nascono inedite rivendicazioni maschili, come nel caso dei padri separati. Forse sta nascendo anche una nuova violenza maschile di tipo reattivo. Ma coglie davvero nel segno l’immagine ricorrente di uomini disorientati dall’intraprendenza femminile nel corteggiamento, o chiusi a difesa della loro posizione nel lavoro? Ciccone polemizza contro il vittimismo e il “revanscismo maschile”, ma rifiuta allo stesso tempo il volontarismo del “politicamente corretto” e propone un’altra strada. Egli vede il protagonismo delle donne non come una minaccia, ma come un’occasione per esprimere una domanda latente di libertà maschile dagli stereotipi che costringono la vita degli uomini e imprigionano la loro vita, la loro sessualità e la loro esperienza di paternità. Il libro legge la situazione come un’opportunità per gli uomini: ecco qui uno sguardo inconsueto su temi finora considerati “femminili”, come violenza sessuale, genere, relazione con i figli, lavoro di cura, prostituzione, esperienza del corpo. La visuale di Ciccone, forte delle esperienze delle generazioni di maschi più giovani, rimescola le carte e i luoghi comuni e mostra che anche gli uomini possono scoprire un’‘altra’ dimensione dell’esperienza umana.

Vandana Shiva:
The part of India that inspires me constantly for my ecological work, is an India where there is such a generosity of space. And that generosity shrinks with the eh, with the robbing of intrinsic value of other species. With defining other species as merely being of value according to how they can bring you better functions for meeting human needs, or profits, even more usually profits. Which puts only two options for our relationship with other species.
One is dispensability. If they are not useful, push them to extinction. And if you, in the short term in which “use” is being determined, don’t understand that a whole ecological chain is maintained by this one species that you thought useless; that by declaring a death sentence for it, you have basically, in a way, declared a death sentence for your own conditions for life, because that is so crucial to maintaining life’s balance.
The second thing is, even for the species that are found of value, you manipulate them, you distort them, you mutilate them, basically using a machine metaphor in your relationship with life. Which is, it is not a surprise that we get the Mad Cow Disease. It is not a surprise we get outbreaks of epidemics. Because these are consequences of us treating life as if it has no intrinsic worth and no intrinsic organization, it has no intrinsic intelligence.

The Delta is the most outstanding part of the Po, the longest Italian river that crosses Padana flatland and stretches until Adriatic sea. The richness of water landscapes (lagoons, valleys and delta streams) is wide, while water shapes and transforms continuously the Delta. Its richness – in terms of beautiful landscapes, natural heritage, architectures and urban settlements, represents an opportunity for the two Italian regions that share this territory: a permanent interregional coordination of the Delta Po is a demanding tasks for Veneto and Emilia-Romagna regions, the two Italian player of NATREG project. The educational DVD on the interregional strategy for the Delta Po parks tells the story of this extraordinary area and the challenge towards an unique management of Delta Po river park.

more

The symbolical value of money goes much deeper than what you think, it is rooted in your unconscious to determine your likes and your dislikes, your dreams and your wishes. We’re not talking only about money as pieces of paper that allows you to get things but also as ideal metaphors that we transport on our everyday life experiences and that give a sense of it for ourselves. We’re not talking only about people making greedy choices for money, we’re talking also about good people being stuck in money problems that conditions their life because of the excessive dimension they take in the hallucinated reality of capitalism. We need to save ourselves and the people around us from their own distorted imagination and to be able to do that, we need to understand the tricks that were created to divert our own natural instincts towards aims that turn against ourselves.

L’argent en possédant la qualité de tout acheter, en possédant la qualité de s’approprier tous les objets est donc l’objet comme possession éminente. L’universalité de sa qualité est la toute-puissance de son essence. Il passe donc pour tout-puissant… L’argent est l’entremetteur entre le besoin et l’objet, entre la vie et le moyen de subsistance de l’homme. Mais ce qui sert de moyen terme à ma vie, sert aussi de moyen terme à l’existence des autres hommes pour moi. C’est pour moi l’autre homme.

Goethe : Faust (Méphistophélès), 1re partie. Traduction Lichtenberger. Paris 1932, tome I, p. 58.

Que diantre! il est clair que tes mains et les pieds

Et ta tête et ton c… sont à toi ;

Mais tout ce dont je jouis allégrement

En est-ce donc moins à moi ?

Si je puis payer six étalons,

Leurs forces ne sont-elles pas miennes ?

Je mène bon grain et suis un gros monsieur,

Tout comme si j’avais vingt-quatre pattes.

Shakespeare dans Timon d’Athènes, Les Tragédies. Nouvelle traduction par Pierre Mes­siaen, Paris 1941. « La vie de Timon d’Athènes », Acte IV, Scène 3, p. 1035 sq. :

De l’or! De l’or jaune, étincelant, précieux! Non, dieux du ciel, je ne suis pas un sou­pi­rant frivole… Ce peu d’or suffirait à rendre blanc le noir, beau le laid, juste l’injuste, noble l’infâme, jeune le vieux, vaillant le lâche… Cet or écartera de vos autels vos prêtres et vos serviteurs ; il arrachera l’oreiller de dessous la tête des mourants ; cet esclave jaune garantira et rompra les serments, bénira les maudits, fera adorer la lèpre livide, donnera aux voleurs place, titre, hommage et louange sur le banc des sénateurs ; c’est lui qui pousse à se remarier la veuve éplorée. Celle qui ferait lever la gorge à un hôpital de plaies hideuses, l’or l’embaume, la parfume, en fait de nouveau un jour d’avril. Allons, métal maudit, putain commune à toute l’humanité, toi qui mets la discorde parmi la foule des nations… […]

Shakespeare décrit parfaitement l’essence de l’argent. Pour le comprendre, commençons d’abord par expliquer le passage de Gœthe : Ce qui grâce à l’argent est pour moi, ce que je peux payer, c’est-à-dire ce que l’argent peut acheter, je le suis moi-même, moi le possesseur de l’argent. Ma force est tout aussi grande qu’est la force de l’argent. Les qualités de l’argent sont mes qualités et mes forces essentielles – à moi son possesseur. Ce que je suis et ce que je peux n’est donc nullement déterminé par mon individualité. Je suis laid, mais je peux m’acheter la plus belle femme. Donc je ne suis pas laid, car l’effet de la laideur, sa force repoussante, est anéanti par l’argent. De par mon individualité, je suis perclus, mais l’argent me procure vingt-quatre pattes ; je ne suis donc pas perclus; je suis un homme mauvais, malhonnête, sans conscience, sans esprit, mais l’ar­gent est vénéré, donc aussi son possesseur, l’argent est le bien suprême, donc son posses­seur est bon, l’argent m’évite en outre la peine d’être malhonnête ; on me présume donc hon­nê­te; je suis sans esprit, mais l’argent est l’esprit réel de toutes choses, comment son possesseur pourrait-il ne pas avoir d’esprit ? De plus, il peut acheter les gens spirituels et celui qui possè­de la puissance sur les gens d’esprit n’est-il pas plus spirituel que l’homme d’esprit? Moi qui par l’argent peux tout ce à quoi aspire un cœur humain, est-ce que je ne possède pas tous les pouvoirs humains ? Donc mon argent ne transforme-t-il pas toutes mes impuissances en leur contraire ? […]

Shakespeare souligne surtout deux propriétés de l’argent :

1º Il est la divinité visible, la transformation de toutes les qualités humaines et naturelles en leur contraire, la confusion et la perversion universelle des choses ; il fait fraterniser es impossibilités.

2º Il est la courtisane universelle, l’entremetteur universel des hommes et des peuples.

La perversion et la confusion de toutes les qualités humaines et naturelles, la fraternisa­tion des impossibilités – la force divine – de l’argent sont impliquées dans son essence in tant qu’essence générique aliénée, aliénante et s’aliénant, des hommes. Il est la puissance aliénée de l’humanité. […]

L’argent, – moyen et pouvoir universels, extérieurs, qui ne vien­nent pas de l’homme en tant qu’homme et de la société humaine en tant que société, – moyen et pouvoir de convertir la représentation en réalité et la réalité en simple représen­ta­tion, transforme tout aussi bien les forces essentielles réelles et naturelles de l’homme en représentation purement abstraite et par suite en imperfections, en chimères douloureuses, que d’autre part il transforme les imperfections et chimères réelles, les forces essentielles réellement impuissantes qui n’existent que dans l’imagination de l’individu, en forces essen­tielles réelles et en pouvoir. Déjà d’après cette définition, il est donc la perversion générale des individualités, qui les change en leur contraire et leur donne des qualités qui contredisent leurs qualités propres.

Il apparaît alors aussi comme cette puissance de perversion contre l’individu et contre les liens sociaux, etc., qui prétendent être des essences pour soi. Il transforme la fidélité en infidélité, l’amour en haine, la haine en amour, la vertu en vice, le vice en vertu, le valet en maître, le maître en valet, le crétinisme en intelligence, l’intelligence en crétinisme.

Comme l’argent, qui est le concept existant et se manifestant de la valeur, confond et échan­ge toutes choses, il est la confusion a la permutation universelles de toutes choses, donc le monde à l’envers, la confusion et la permutation de toutes les qualités naturelles et humaines.

Karl Marx, « Pouvoir de l’argent dans la société bourgeoise », Manuscrits de 44.

JesusFranco

http://zentropa.info/