F.A.Q. (Every man his own Eckermann)
Q: What the hell is an iconodule exactly?
An iconodule is the opposite of an iconoclast — a word which your spell-checker is likely to find much less offensive than “iconodule” . “Doulon”, in Ancient Greek, means “slave”, hence the English “dolorous”, i.e. someone who looks sad, because they have, among other things, perpetually downcast eyes — like a slave. (One of the many charming things about the Ancient Greeks is that they didn’t hide their slave-owning behind unconvincing euphemisms.)
Oh, and it has a theological meaning to do with being pro-images as opposed to against them (iconoclastic).
Q: So, you’re a slave to icons, then? Meaning that this is a blog…about someone…who’s relatively..er…”cool” (hip, funky, down with his bad self, chilled-out) given -that- he’s….a slave to icons. Or images.
A: That’s right, yes.
Q: Can you elaborate on that?
A: Not, really. Except that I’ll say, at the risk of explaining a joke, that I really despise people who explain their jokes.
elliptically then: One of the more egregiously awful features of a lot of the academic writing that I come across is the pompous and humourless tendency to — having made one’s point — gratuitously attempt to offer the reader’s reaction for them: e.g. this is the funny bit of what I’m writing — actually it’s an allusion to Deleuze whose very intellectual, actually, — kind of like some other people we might mention (me!). I mean, it’s one thing to fish for compliments, but it’s another thing if you start actually mimicking the fish leaping into your frying pan and garnishing themselves with parsley.
Most people know about this: they know that it’s bad to over-explain things. Nonetheless, if a young academic or graduate student is writing (as they’re likely to) about how their own work is very much in favour of radical transformative solutions rather than pedestrian, dull ones that obviously don’t work, said graduate student is likely to say something like: ….which is where the inherent radicality of the proposal makes itself manifest in the form of an EXCRESENCE of the impossible into the possible. It’s the italics that kill me. And, it’s not that I blame the people who do this, either. Having to fill in endless grant applications is enough to turn anyone’s brain into a poorly reconstructed version of hurriedly shredded Stasis slush or, if you prefer, a highly problematic example of crypto-fascist ideology manifest in outmoded rhetorical tropes.
Q: So you’re saying that you’re basically motivated by hate…?
A: Well, yes. Essentially.
Q: Hang on a moment. aren’t you the same incredibly handsome person who used to write “Drowning in Vitriol?”
A: Perhaps. My middle name is “plausible deniability”, which, as you can imagine plays havoc with my relations with police, lawyers and the weight that my name carries on a petition.
Q: So… Let’s say, hypothetically, that you and the “Mal” from the “Notorious D.I.V.” (love that — by the way — very…um..gangsta of you) WERE the same person, why would the Old Mal have wanted to change the name of his blog?
A: Well, if I WERE that Mal, one of the things I might have noticed was that Americans seem to associate the word “vitriol” with a particularly crazy brand of (extreme right-wing) political ranting of a kind with which I have no desire to be associated.
the last thing I need is for Glenn Beck loving lunatics to act out their frustration after they find out that my particular brand of sophistical whimsy (thanks to “Stillthinking” for that line) doesn’t flow very well into “information” about death-panels or why the New Testament is about enriching yourself, while being prejudiced against gay people…
; Also, some (real world) acquaintances told me that even in posts that I thought (nerdily) were Dark Temples to the Gods of Wrath and Resentment, I actually come across as a terribly nice, cardigan-wearing sort of person, albeit one who is (in a mild, umbrella carrying sort of way) a little annoyed by…some…things: kind of like a nice, old lady who occasionally -but very politely – implies that jam wasn’t quite as sweet as it was before the War.
Given this, some of the aforementioned well-meaning people suggested that I should change the name of my blog to something more representative of the blog’s tone: “Mal’s family picnic and fun times…” or something of that sort. Lastly, it’s true that I…that is…the hypothetical Mal from the other blog was suffering a sea-change. He…can’t really explain this to you now, but let’s just say that somewhere along the line, ‘we’ve heard the chimes at midnight”, an expression that a character in Henry IV uses, famously, to describe the fact that he and this otehr character used to hang out together. A lot. While drinking. Helpful?
Q: Well, no. I mean: of course not. But, you seem to enjoy being like that….But okay, so it’s a brave new world’. Now, Now, after all this time, we have “Pretty Cool (for an iconodule). And there are videos. I’m literally breathless with excitement.
A: I hope by “literally breathless” you mean to say that you’re currently asphyxiating and not simply using the word ‘literally’ to mean ‘really’ and the word ‘really’ to simply exaggerate the previous word…
Otherwise. Well, there are a number of reasons for this. Towards the end of last year I spent quite a lot of time reflecting on all of the things that I’d done wrong with the last blog (unreadable fonts, insufficient promotion, lengthy posts, limiting the number of naked photographs of myself out of some misdirected puritanism).
Although my desire for change was, like most desire, wonderfully vague and inarticulate, one thing that became obvious very early in my thinking on this subject is that I couldn’t make any of the changes that I wanted to make in Blogger. Suffice it to say, that more than anything else, I wanted to be able to subdivide the blog into categories. I wanted to have some kind of magical taxonomical system where if you wanted to read Mal’s film-reviews — voila! — here you would find all the film reviews uncontaminated by the other kinds of drivel that tend to leap from my bile duct like the eponymous alien in the movie “Alien” . (I admit that I didn’t really need to say the word ‘alien’ twice there.)
Similarly, I’ve been having thoughts of putting up some more explicitly academic writing of a kind that cannot really be found on D.I.V. (and probably won’t appear here for a while yet either.) The point was, again, that I wanted the reader to be able to blissfully and efficiently ignore my opinions on “Vicki, Christina, Barcelona” in favour of perusing my ham-fisted exegesis of “Being and Event”. Lastly, I thought, I could have another category which would be reserved for short posts of a “thought of the day” sort, and a separate category again for extravagantly embellished stories about my wild, wild life (which would mainly consist, naturally, in me gratuitously passages from Henry Miller and inserting my own name into the steamy bits.
Q: A This is all very well, but I just stumbled on this bloody thing. Why would I give a rat’s arse (favourite Australian idiom) about your old blog, given that it was, after all (and I can tell this is true without checking) read by two people, one of whom was your mother (only because she was checking up on you) and the other of whom was a mad Spanish stalker. who thought that you really did look like Jeremy Irons?
A: Well, as you say, you’re NOT supposed to care. Please ignore the above comments (and stop being so nasty about Pedro — I do look like frickin’ Jeremy Irons, goddamn it. Just…scrawnier…)
Q: “I can’t help thinking that you seem a little…well….evil. Can’t put my finger on it exactly, but, there is this air of vague ideological unsoundness in the way you write/speak/use semi-colons. Explanations forthcoming?”
A: [shrugs] Meh. Go with your instincts on this one. I mean, if I started protesting my innocence now, it might convince you of my underlying loveliness and generosity, but then again, it might also convince you that I’m the kind of extra-evil person who — not content with being evil insists upon telling lies about their own underlying badness thus adding mendacity about one’s evil to the crime of generic evil. Obviously, this kind of thing isn’t going to result in my being picked for the team.
Anyway, if you’re new to this blog, all I can say is “welcome, I’m touched to have you visiting and I hope you stay a while and put your feet up.”
This blog is about many things, anything that takes my fancy in fact: philosophy, theology, politics, films, music, books, and, of course, interminable complaints about how hard it is to be as sexy as I am in a world where most sexiness is fated to go unnoticed and underappreciated.
For the moment, do come in and have a cup of virtual tea. The kettle’s on.
Love,
Mal
