Torn

I feel torn about what direction I want to take my writing in. Part IV.2, .3, and .4 are waiting in a word document for me. I'll have to write those at some point. But the bigger problem is that I feel the urge to take a detour, write something else.

The thing I'm contemplating writing has to do with Zizek's notion of retroactive freedom, Deleuze's work on repetition, virtuality, and the new, and how all of potentially relates to Collingwood's notion of reenactment and Clausewitz's work. I think that Zizek and Deleuze might be implicitly embracing the type of historical thinking that I'm talking about, and that I might be able to link them with the idea of synthetic experience. It is a very half baked idea, and unfortunately one that would require to take my reading in different directions. I would have to read Deleuze (which is immanent anyways because I have Difference and Repetition on order and I'm excited to get my hands on it), I'd have to revisit Collingwood (which I'm doing anyways), I'd have to think more seriously about Zizek (which I'm doing anyways).

Perhaps the most significant change, however, would be in what I am thinking about on a daily basis. I've found that I'm most able to make progress on AZI when I am thinking about the next section casually throughout the day. I ruminate and mull over the next section and suddenly I have all different kinds of ideas about what to write and how to write it.

I always find that really interesting. Since 2007, since the Clausewitz seminar, and since I read Claxton, I've been fascinated by slow and day-dreamy thought. It does quite a lot of things I think. Thinking slowly. Thinking playfully, just letting things happen.

Waiting, son. Waiting.

Pretty funny stuff.

So that is what is at stake in taking a writing detour. I will have to change the daydreams I have.

Do I daydream about the relationship between politics and culture (as AZI demands)?

Or do I daydream about history, reenactment, Zizek, and Deleuze demand?

I think I should stick with AZI. Mainly because I haven't read enough to productively daydream about these other issues. Once I read Deleuze, once I skim Zizek more thoroughly, I'll be in a better position to think casually about that stuff, work towards new ideas.

I told myself a few months ago that when I finished AZI I'd like to take my reading in a more historical direction. That I'd like to read more history proper, read more philosophy of history. My reading has been so philosophical for the last year or two. I have a history degree, god dammit. I should be reading that stuff.

My intellect knows how important history, I feel in on some level. But for some reason my emotions and my whims steer me towards philosophical reading. Oh well. I'll return to history soon hopefully. I've already begun to return to it a little bit by reading so much about politics and violence. But history proper awaits.