About Mal (Who is that masked man?/Contact)

Inspired by Plato, enraptured by Hegel, frequently censured by St. Augustine, Mal (whose name in the pedestrian world is “Bryan Cooke”) is a philosophy student, poetaster, professional pole-dancer and aspiring jack of at least one (hopefully not too demanding) trade. He enjoys wrestling, absailing, bodysurfing, nightclubbing in shiny pants, not accepting social invitations, reading (preferably some kind of words), fantasising about being the first rock star on Mars, and making snide remarks about any beautiful, vital people of his acquaintance.

Bryan is also ‘bi-curious’ on the matter of religion and in Edwardian times would have been referred to as ‘horsey’ if he were a woman who rode, owned or in any case enjoyed the company of horses and who failed to meet the standards for attractiveness among various in-bred cretins of her acquaintance.

After the release of his first novel “Confessions of a Flaky Narcissist”, and the worldwide number #1 grossing film “Let’s be a bit bourgeois about things until everything stops sucking” (subtitle: “Don’t you just love how Melbourne is, like, a really great city full of ….CULTURE”) The London Review of Blogs [sic] described his ground-breaking “Pretty Cool (for an iconodule) as “being to the blogosphere what “buymystuffsnow22987″‘s twitter account is to the prospects of a just society modelled on the end of Michel Houellebecq’s Atomised.

He has an overdue PhD thesis, an empty bank account, and a super-ego called “Alan”.

As well as writing things in various genres and not finding them particularly good, he is also a long-time, proud member of the soon-to-be-literally universe-conquering Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy, an organisation which in no way endorses his opinions, his blog and in particular his ventures into the genre of autohagiography.

After many years wandering in a self-created intellectual desert, his doctoral thesis is finally taking shape. It isn’t a recognisable shape, of course. In fact, it may even require the invention of a new form of post-Reimannian geometry, in order to determine that shape, but….that’s not the point. It’s genius.

Provisionally entitled “The Thought of the Outside: Badiou, Platonic Love and the Inexistence of Idea” the thesis has become increasingly preoccupied with the works of Alain Badiou, Plato, Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis, Marxism and theology (the latter combination owing much to an idiosyncratic combination of Adorno, Walter Benjamin and Ernst Bloch.)

His thesis currently attempts to deal with the question, of how we can have a philosophical ‘realism’ that refuses what Quentin Meillassoux calls ‘the pathos of finitude’ (endless, banal emphasis on how finite human beings cannot access reality) but that at the same time is more than simply a ‘reality principle’, that would turn philosophy into an apologist for what Mark Fisher has aptly called ‘capitalist realism’, or for what Badiou calls the dominant ideological imperative to ‘live without ideas’.

Bryan has also had the great privilege of teaching vaguely philosophical things to many bright, young people, which is the nice side of the whole ‘casual employment, academic camp-follower debacle.” Apart from his courses for the MSCP he has lectured at Deakin University on political philosophy, tutored in the philosophy department of the University of Melbourne, at Trinity college, and has taught all kinds of subjects in politics, philosophy, and literature at Newman College.

Although on the internet, he greatly prefers the name “Mal” (it’s sexier), he has decided recently that no man or woman should have to hide their blog, no matter how great its seeming penchant for solecisms, typos and poorly thought out tirades. Although some have suggested that this may raise issues with his future in the serious, just, and in all ways meritocratic world of contemporary academe, he can only reply with the immortal words of some guy, who apparently said in a film with Keanu Reeves about surfing: “it isn’t a shame to die doin’ something you lurrrrrrv.”

(thanks to my friend, J.G. for the quote).

Love & other sublimations,

-Mal

(B.C.)

Bryan (Mal) can be reached at www.drowninginvitriol@gmail.com