Emily Balsamo
Articles by Emily Balsamo:
The Lonely World of Vladimir Propp
in Issue 15 | The Elements (Apr 2012)The Morphology of the Folktale - an end in itself - scientific analysis relating to narrative structure - « Hero leaves home » - what his favorite book was about - gigantic charts to codify literature - « Toward a Structure of Reality Shows » - procedure is king
(Pere)(pere)(pere)stroika, or a Divorce Between the Signifier and the Signified
in Issue 9 | Reconstruction (Oct 2011)you’re not supposed to be there - « we didn't put them there, why should we take them down? » - the final phase of Soviet propaganda - two confident-looking farmers with impeccable posture painted in bold colors - we have been trained - a 200-ton statue of Karl Marx - proletarian revolution is the signified - history existed - overstimulation of political symbolism
Articles illustrated by Emily Balsamo:
The Mind Factory, Its Give and Take
in Issue 27 | Drone Robot Cyborg (Apr 2013)Künstler-robot - an anthropocentric world - what makes Kantian philosophy possible - ‘hypermnesiac machine’ - an infinite set of systematic redundancies - the irresistibility of reading - Promethean project
Consummate Damnation: Lampedusa’s “The Leopard”
in Issue 25 | Conservatism and Reaction (Feb 2013)rising and falling - anything to conserve - obsessed with the idea of doing - doing nothing the ideal state - this sublime defeatedness - Sicily’s absolute sloth - « our voluptuous frozenness: all of them do » - nothing more than being - « because we are gods » - « the irreparable is that things are »
The Elder’s Touch: A Scene from The Brothers Karamazov
in Issue 12 | Home and Pain (Jan 2012)monastery to monastery - he sees his mother’s tears, and he rejoices - the loss of a son and the lack of a son - the gradual realignment of attachments - could the elder help the mother with words? - a frantic soul - there is nothing to cry about, our little boy is in heaven - « I’d hide in a corner » - you are not required to be selfish - an old joke about a lodger - « you have all already returned your debts » - people do not just go away