Why Should The Lamp Or The House

[raymond Roussel] Said That After His First Book He Expected That The Next Morning There Would Be A Kind Of Aura Around His Person And That Everyone In The Street Would Be Able To See That He Had Written A Book. This Is The Obscure Desire Harboured By Everyone Who Writes. It Is True That The First Text One Writes Is Neither Written For Others, Nor Because One Is What One Is: One Writes To Become Other Than What One Is. One Tries To Modify One's Way Of Being Through The Act Of Writing.

The Political And Social Processes By Which The Western European Societies Were Put In Order Are Not Very Apparent, Have Been Forgotten, Or Have Become Habitual. They Are Part Of Our Most Familiar Landscape, And We Don't Perceive Them Anymore. But Most Of Them Once Scandalized People.

But Let There Be No Misunderstanding: It Is Not That A Real Man, The Object Of Knowledge, Philosophical Reflection Or Technological Intervention, Has Been Substituted For The Soul, The Illusion Of Theologians. The Man Described For Us, Whom We Are Invited To Free, Is Already In Himself The Effect Of A Subjection More Profound Than Himself. A 'soul' Inhabits Him And Brings Him To Existence, Which Is Itself A Factor In The Mastery That Power Exercises Over The Body. The Soul Is The Effect And Instrument Of A Political Anatomy; The Soul Is The Prison Of The Body.

To Work Is To Undertake To Think Something Other Than What One Has Thought Before

Why Shouldn't I Be Interested In Politics? That Is To Say, What Blindness, What Deafness, What Density Of Ideology Would Have To Weigh Me Down To Prevent Me From Being Interested In What Is Probably The Most Crucial Subject To Our Existence, That Is To Say The Society In Which We Live, The Economic Relations Within Which It Functions, And The System Of Power Which Defines The Regular Forms And The Regular Permissions And Prohibitions Of Our Conduct. The Essence Of Our Life Consists, After All, Of The Political Functioning Of The Society In Which We Find Ourselves.