“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Saturday, June 20, 2015

Endorsements of Nothing (!)

By Avital Ronell and Alphonso Lingis. Wow, I could hardly think of more brilliant and important scholars to endorse our little Buddhism project:

“I have contemplated and endured NOTHING for so long that it did not seem right to break my practice or offer other readers something like insight, possibly a moment of sense-making and affirmation. But I break out of my trance to assert the emphatic necessity of this book, so erudite without loading us down, relentless in its ability to resignify. Sassy, brilliant, a genuine engagement with and of thought, this work tunes us to a thrilling, endorphinating way of thinking: my drug of choice.”—Avital Ronell, New York University

“The reader will delight in two important aspects of Nothing: a multitude of contemporary Buddhist responses to the great political and social changes that have affected Asian countries—imperialism, colonialism, communism, corporate capitalism—and rigorous elaboration of Lacanian psychoanalysis with Buddhist psychology. This book is exceptional.”—Alphonso Lingis, Pennsylvania State University

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations! ordering it

cgerrish said...

Being called "sassy" by Avital Ronell is an approbation to be cherished. Put that one away in a scrap book. I've got a copy of "Nothing" on order. It's so hard to come by the original.

Tom Beckett said...

Can't wait to read the book.

Anonymous said...

I will view this as a split decision as one endorsement is pure gold, while the other is perhaps a bit less so. Extremely intriguing, saving Buddhism from fascism and the world from "isms" would turn my head around more than Linda Blair's Raven in The Exorcist. I ask: Why break 'out' a trance metaphorically speaking, perhaps we (should be, as it is) are breaking 'in' to a trance with this glorious new bit of scholarship? I love books, and, having loved them must renounce them. Please publish in alternate formats more suited towards experiencing the transcendental in a teardrop.