Name: Fragility
ISBN: 9789493246102

Marlies De Munck

To Touch and Be Touched

Fragility

taylor miles hopkins

But if I live too long in a protective shelter, no-one will enter. The world cannot touch me, but neither can I touch the world.

As a consumer, I feel both powerful and powerless.

An algorithm refuses to read between the lines. It is unable to differentiate between nudity and pornography. So how could it understand a human being?

Franz Kafka warned way back: 'Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live'

What kind of idea will young people get if they are constantly asked to assess others?

Living language, conveying affection, enthusiasm and subjectivity such language is now known as methodological sacrilege. 

Perhaps that is why quite a few people in the humanities decide they see better opportunities in neurology, technology and digital humanities. Not ‘I think, therefore I am, but I count, because I am counted.’

The whole BARE chapter is very eloquently put.

the confrontation with what is disparate enables you to adjust and reinforce your own ideas. There is also healing in exposure.

Knowledge on its own does not constitute a voice of its own. Education that presents the canon as an absolute fact actually limits true creativity and so authenticity as well.

I must learn to appreciate what I have never before heard, seen or read. To understand why my taste differs from that of others. Why it differs from a collectively supported canon. It is just as important to keep a culture alive as to remain creative myself.

Umberto Eco asserted that a tear from the audience determines the difference between kitsch and art…But does Eco's comment not mask a rational taboo against sentiment?…does art not have to affect us in order to be termed Art? Is art that does not relate to life actually living art?

…but an aesthetic experience is, for me, all about comprehending fragility. Whether it relates to a human being or a society, you can comprehend them if you succeed in penetrating their fragility….aesthetic skill is the ability to experience a faltering and fragile reality as a cohesive whole.

But why can an art work affect me so much? Possibly because I recognize my own fragility in someone else's vulnerability…I only encounter myself when confronting someone else.

Art has been banished to the leisure industry. Culture has been rationalized out of education…Meaning becomes narrower.

very thought-provoking, easy to read essays...would love to have a conversation about the ideas with someone

I really enjoyed the little collection of fragile thoughts that slowly intertwine throughout the book. Understanding Vulnerability in connection to education, institution and human optimizing, I must say it gave nice impulses, yet I miss depth. 

antonia maria wagner she/they

A quick, worthwhile read. Helpful look at vulnerability and being open, particularly culturally and socially with the world. Gets into the over-rationalization of academia, need for understanding ideas in discordance to your own, uplifting art not just with a capital A, and a push for connection and grace through the walls we and others put up.

Fragility To Touch and Be Touched

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