(10:56 AM) | Adam Kotsko:

Vacations Are For Failures: An Apologia

Earlier this week, as is now well known, I decided to take a break. My reasoning? I wanted to get some good reading done. I wanted to squeeze in Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida (my apologies to M. Gauche) as well as a substantial essay on "Force of Law" for the upcoming session of the university without condition. My break was to be accompanied by a break from any and all social engagements, except for an unavoidable birthday party tonight. Here's what happened instead:

1. On Tuesday night, when I had planned on reading Derrida's Aporias, I was so hungry after class that I couldn't concentrate enough to read in the library until the Chicago traffic calmed down, and when I got home, I utterly failed to read more than ten pages for some reason I can't remember -- probably so that I could go to bed stupidly early.
   
2. On Wednesday, I barely squeezed in Aporias before class, so I didn't get a chance to do much work on Prayers and Tears.
   
3. On Thursday, after squandering an entire day at work, I read approximately twenty pages of Hardt and Negri's Empire, along with my "terms" from the theological handbook for Systematic. The rest of the time was spent griping about how I didn't want to cook dinner, cooking dinner, drinking too much coffee, and watching episodes of Mr. Show from the DVD that Jesse had just purchased. I also spent substantial time at the computer talking to my mom on IM, because you can't just ignore your mom -- during that time, I could easily have posted without a net loss of "study time." Again, I fell asleep early despite having had several cups of coffee.
   
4. On Friday, right when I got home, my roommates invited me to go see Eternal Sunshine with them, so I did. It was a wonderful movie, but I get ever-greater motion sickness in movies each time I go, such that I had to leave near the end to throw up. I didn't feel well after that, and so once I got home, I again went to sleep early. I could easily have posted during lunch, upon discovering the flurry of comments generated by John Holbo's shout-out to my "There is nothing outside the blog" post, which remained at the top of the page of Crooked Timber for most of the day. (See the quick links for details.)
   
5. Today has actually been fairly productive.

In short, I have decided that blogging is not the central problem here. Please forgive me for my self-indulgent vacation. I promise it will never happen again -- ever -- until the day I die.

Now, on to Empire. I will cite only one footnote that I take to be representative of the work as a whole:

The notions of "totalitarianism" that were constructed during the period of the cold war proved to be useful instruments for propaganda but completely inadequate analytical tools, leading most often to pernicious inquisitional methods and damaging moral arguments. The numerous shelves of our libraries that are filled with analyses of totalitarianism should today be regarded only with shame and could be thrown away with no hesitation. For a brief sample of the literature on totalitarianism from the most coherent to the most absurd, see Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism ...; and Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Dictatorships and Double Standards....

Highly recommended.

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