That's the Spirit: Inexpressible Thankfulness (Between the Canadian and the American Thanksgiving)

I just submitted my SSHRC Insight Grant proposal for my book project under contract with Brill: Plato's Twofold Dialectic of Pleasure: Critical Dialogue with Hedonists and Critical Analysis of Pleasures.

While I am resting a bit after the submission, I am thinking about how many people, colleagues and students, I am indebted to for the articulation of this project: on the one or the other side of the Channel or the Ocean. My thanks go to many people who taught me through their example that there are no "good" and "bad" quarters in which one does Plato research, nor good or bad ideologies since all ideologies are restrictive. There are, though, authentic and inauthentic ways of doing so. It would be a long discussion to get into this matter here and now...

Last but not least, I thank Nigel for offering his time despite all possible indifferents that were getting in the way and Ben for helping me see through his own fine-grained thoughts that actually I am not interested in following any polemical tone in a critique of utilitarianism as Anscombe did, and I should really not if I sincerely wish to follow Plato in his genuine dialogue with representatives of opposite views, in the case of the above project the hedonists. Dialogue as Plato conducted it has a pride of place also when it comes to his metaphysics of pleasure and it is no dressing of a salad that we might choose to add or avoid depending on our taste or lack of it. To be "dialecticians" is a title we mostly do not live up to, in and beyond Plato research. Dialogue can have an impact. This is possible if and only if we take it seriously, as seriously as Plato did, and conduct it as paradigmatically as well.

For an attempt to talk about both Plato and Marcus Aurelius projects as therapeutic, click the following link, pp. 28 ff.: The Therapeutic Power of Genuine Dialogue. GM. COSMOS 2018

Preparing for Harlem Duet (Tarragon Toronto). 

Sir Olivier, blacked up, as Othello together with Smith as Desdemona (Othello, 1965)
How can one attend an Othello performance after experiencing this one?

http://www.tarragontheatre.com/show/harlem-duet/

Harlem Duet: The story of Othello from the perspective of his first, black wife.

Archaeology of madness: A human being (aren't all black experiences human experiences?) becomes mad in a kind of ritual in which, in contrast to evolving rituals, she considers herself to be "fixed in the emotions of all her ancestors", and, therefore, not able to live, love and move (forward). She becomes her body. Her body's organs gain a voice and sometimes a cry. Her narrative turns into the passive vehicle of these voices. For his part, he does not become his body. "He is not his skin. His skin is not him." Reminded me of Ibsen's "Ghosts" with regard to the characters' being chained to their past. Ibsen did not offer any liberation but mirrored the gloomy entanglements. Harlem Duet did offer liberation. The work itself was the liberation from chains to individual and collective dark past and to some glorious past (theatre) traditions.

Archaeology of Blackness: all the layers of history are present in each and every period of time. Time lived in full awareness of its being entangled with the past above all. A special lady, like any other lady, like any other human being, is narrating and becoming interwoven with her own narrative. "She is trapped in history. History is trapped in her." In her organs.

Great respect to the author, Ms Sears, for writing such a brilliant play: for the first time I am so interested in contemporary theatre. The winner is Canada and not Greece or Germany as one would think, considering long traditions of theatre, at least not to my experience. Kudos to Tarragon Theatre for being the truly avant-garde theatre I have not found in any other places in the world so far.

An excellent stage production of a play that shows us how to make theatre history in the present by drawing material from great theatre history. Ms Sears "beside" Mr Kurosawa (think of his RAN) "beside" Sir Shakespeare. Chains of peers, chains of pearls. Bravo, Canada.