Lais of Marie de France, late 12th century; The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Inferno, 14th century epic poem; Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes, 1864;
Machado De Assis, The Posthumous Memoirs, 1881; Meta 1915; Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, 1927; Toni Morrison 1977; Claudia Rankine,
Citizen: An American Lyric, 2014; Social Malaise/Decay, Narratives, Sickness, Nihilism (rejects objective truth, religion, knowledge, morality, values,
or meaning), the 'Underclasses', Progress, Voice from the Underground; Privileged Male subject & Patriarchy, Nihilism, Misogyny, Satire, Voice from
beyond, Disability; how does philosophy get weaponized? Auguste Comte- positivism in the 1820s, society as having progressed through three distinct
phases: the theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific (or “positive”). knowledge should be understood as a historical process. Positivism
harnessed as a force of liberal reform and modernization criticizes the institutions of slavery, monarchy, and the Church as constraining the natural
progress of the nation. Inverting the notion of becoming in religion; The Russian Romantic; judgment Slavery/Violence/Disability/Body “Why the
devil couldn’t it have been blue?” I said to myself (83) Stature of the maker/creator “No, back to the first idea; I believe it would have been better for
it to have been born blue.” (84) memory of slavery; The Black Butterfly is a revolutionary text that insists Brazilian culture has always refused a clean
break between slavery and its aftermath. Brazilian slavery thus emerges as a living legacy subject to continual renegotiation and reinvention. “On the
outside, the Valongo incident was dreadful; but only on the outside. As soon as I slid the knife of reasoning farther in, I found a marrow that was
mischievous, refined, even profound. This was Prudencio’s way of freeing himself from the blows he had received- by passing them on to another. I,
as a child, had ridden on him, put a bit in his mouth, and thrashed him mercilessly as he groaned and suffered. Now that he was free, however, the
master of his own arms and legs, able to work, rest, and sleep, unshackled from his former condition, now he had surpassed himself: he had bought a
slave and was paying back, with steep interest, the sums he had received from me. See how clever the rascal was!” (149); Going to the house of the
new therapist “I am so sorry, so, so sorry.” (18) skin color becomes visible; “At the high school party the boy turned to the boys as boys do walking
into a fist punching through the blackness as glass shattered light knocked conscious blunt breathing bruising the refusing boy surrounded by blows
taking custody of his body bodying forth against a boyhood defining it by fighting through this body propelled forward and back bearing until the beer
bottle shattered hardness bruising the refusal leveled without give” (100) subject/object; helpless viewership. Vessel "words encoding the bodies they
cover. And despite everything the body remains./Occasionally it is interesting to think about the outburst if you would just cry out— (69) external; dot
adapted into the line. “As offensive as her outburst is, it is difficult not to applaud her for reacting immediately to being thrown against a sharp white
background. It is difficult not to applaud her for existing in the moment, for fighting crazily against the so-called wrongness of her body’s positioning
at the service line.” (29) “For Serena, the daily diminishment is a low flame, a constant drip. Every look, every comment, every bad call blossoms out
of history, through her, onto you.” “because words hang in the air like pollen, the throat closes. You hack away” (156) Justice/Morality/ Philosophical
Culture: "I had no remorse. Had I the proper instruments, I would include a page of chemistry in this book, wherein I would decompose remorse
down to its simplest elements with the aim of determining positively and conclusively why Achilles marches around Troy with his adversary's body
and why Lady Macbeth marches around the room with her spot of blood. But just as I have no chemist's instruments, I had no remorse; I had a mind
to be minister of state." (247) body of Nhã-loló; Decomposing is specifically used here as a form of empirical study into the human experience and our
feelings of remorse; apathy which permeates the ideologies of positivism. “hunger (at this he sucked philosophically on the chicken wing), hunger is
a test to which Humanitas sets its very entrails. But I need no more demonstration of this sublimity of my system than this very chicken. It fed on corn,
which was planted by an African- imported from Angola, let’s say. That African was born, grew up, and was sold; a ship brought him here, a ship built
form wood cut down in the forest by some ten or twelve men, borne on sails sewn by some eight or ten men, to say nothing of the rigging and other
elements of the nautical apparatus. Thus, this chicken, which I have just had for lunch, is the result of a multitude of efforts and struggles, executed
with the sole aim of checkmating my hunger.” totalizing theory, Society divorced from individual struggles are meaningless; Dogfight: ‘the beauty of
the spectacle, recalled the object of the struggle, and concluded that the dogs were hungry; but the privation of sustenance meant nothing in the grand
scope of philosophy.” (265) Notes: “Whereas I do not see any justice here, nor do I find any virtue in it, and consequently, if I set about taking revenge,
it will be solely out of wickedness… Before your eyes the object vanishes, the reasons evaporate, the culprit is not to be found, the offense becomes
not an offense but a fatum, something like a toothache (performative moaning), for which no one is to blame, and consequently, that remains is again
the same way out- that is, to give the wall a painful beating… deliberate pouring from empty into void.” (18) “Not just wicked, no, I never even
managed to become anything: neither wicked nor good, neither a scoundrel nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect… Yes, sir, an intelligent
man of the nineteenth century must be and is morally obliged to be primary a characterless being; and a man of character, an active figure- primarily a
limited being.” (5) “No sensitive soul, I am no cynic, I was a man; my brain was a theater in which plays of all genres were staged… Nor was it the
sole province of the eagle and the hummingbird; the slug’s and the toad’s habitats were represented there as well.” (Cubas 89) —>“I began little by
little, remotely, involuntarily, but irresistibly, to feel that it would be awkward now to raise my head and look straight into Liza’s eyes. What was I
ashamed of? I don’t know, but I was ashamed. It also came into my agitated head that the roles were now definitely reversed, that she was now the
heroine, and I was the same crushed and humiliated creature as she had been before me that night… For without power and tyranny over someone, I
really cannot live… But… but reasoning explains nothing, and consequently there’s no point in reasoning” (126) The word essence in this quote refers
to the Underground Man’s argument of “2+2=5”: some part of human nature cannot be accounted for in Enlightenment thought of reason.
The intellectualism of free will—Man's inherent capability to choose or to reject logic and illogic—is the cognitive ability that makes humanity human:
"I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but, if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming
thing, too. From “I am a wicked man” to “They won’t let me… I can’t be… good!” Ending: “As far as I myself am concerned, I have merely carried
to an extreme in my life what you have not dared to carry even halfway, and, what’s more, you’ve taken your cowardice for good sense, and found
comfort in thus deceiving yourselves. So that I, perhaps, come out even more “living” than you”… It’s a burden for us even to be men- men with real,
our own bodies and blood; we’re ashamed of it, we consider it a disgrace, and keep trying to be some unprecedented omni-men. We’re stillborn (an
infant born dead), and have long ceased to be born of living fathers, and we like this more and more… Soon we’ll contrive to be born somehow from
an idea.” (132) (from polemicist to defeated dreamer; hardly a “rational egoist” than a romantic. Paradoxically defiant doublemindedness of the
underground man and his intransitive dilemma- “heightened consciousness” of the rationalist, and the sentimental impulses of the romantic- comic
reversals. “one representative of a generation that is still living out its life” “why he appeared and had to appear among us” (1) Inferno: “Consider well
the seed that gave you birth: you were not made to live your lives as brutes, but to be followers of worth and knowledge" (XXVI, 90-120)
Social Organization: Russian society imported “development” and “enlightenment” from European lines. Social, human displacement, a spiritual void
filled with foreign content that drove him underground. Future organization of socialism – image of false unity; Humanitism- an egalitarian perspective
of the multitudes of labor; no one can claim ownership over that chicken because it came from a lot of people’s labor; social value belongs to society
because it was made by society; ‘This servant of yours has the Athenian’s mania: believes the ships are his, and that hour of illusion will give him the
greatest happiness on earth.” (284) Quincas Borba further concludes that this hostility depending on the social position of guests were all the expression
of that same delicate and noble sentiment- ample proof that man, even when blacking boots, can be sublime.” (286) in the chapter “The Pride of
Servility”; “unbutton ourselves, unpaint ourselves, unadorn ourselves… there is no audience. The gaze of opinion, that piercing judicial gaze, loses all
its power as soon as we set foot in the territory of death”