Sunday, April 24, 2011

AMERICAN EXPRESS | CASTING OUT THE MONEY CHANGERS

Marchands du Temple; Cleansing the Temple. Passover coincides with Easter. Blake: "As Unity is the cloke of folly so Goodness is the cloke of Knavery Those who will have Unity exclusively in Homer come out with a Moral like a sting in the tail" ("On Homers Poetry"). When Mel Gibson invited my wife, Libya ...

[An ebay auction titled "TYRE SHEKEL 30 PIECES of SILVER Judas Christ Greek Coin" describes a Tyrian coin struck 90-89 BC: "Tyrian shekels (Tyrian tetradrachmas) were coins of Tyre, which in the Roman Empire took on an unusual role as the medium of payment for the Temple tax in Jerusalem, and subsequently gained notoriety as a likely mode of payment for Judas Iscariot. The coins bore the likeness of the Phoenician god Melqart or Baal, accepted as the Olympian Herakles by the Greeks and derided as Beelzebub by Jews in the time of the Seleucids, wearing the laurel reflecting his role in the Tyrian games and the Ancient Olympics. These coins, the size of a modern Israeli half-shekel, were minted in Israel, but were required to bear this image by the Romans to avoid accusations that the Jews were given autonomy."]


When Mel Gibson invited my wife, Rancière: "The equality of the written word is not the same thing as the equality of exchange. The democracy of the written word does not come down to the arbitrary nature of signs. When Plato criticizes the availability of the written word, he calls into question a form of unsupervised appropriation of language that leads to the corruption of legitimacy. The circulation of the written word destroys the principle of legitimacy that would have the circulation of language be such that it leaves the proper transmitter and goes to the proper receiver by the proper channel. 'Proper' language is guaranteed by a 'proper' distribution of bodies. The written word opens up a space of random appropriation, establishes a principle of untamed difference that is altogether unlike the universal exchangeability of commodities. To put it very crudely, you cannot lay your hands on capital like you can lay your hands on the written word" (The Politics of Aesthetics).



When Mel Gibson invited my wife, Blake: "Twas dark deceit to Earn my bread | Twas Covet or twas Custom or | Some trifle not worth caring for | That they may call a shame & Sin | Loves Temple that God dwelleth in | And hide in secret Shrine | The Naked Human form divine | And render that a Lawless thing | On which the Soul Expands its wing | But this O Lord this was my Sin | When first I let these Devils in" (The Everlasting Gospel).
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