
Part IV, Chapter VII
Les voix du silence [Voices of Silence] (1951)
The Precession of Simulcra, Ramses, or the Rosy-Colored Resurrection
1980s, Simulacra and Simulation (1981)
Part IV, Chapter VII
Les voix du silence [Voices of Silence] (1951)
Free Culture (2004)
Context: A free culture has been our past, but it will only be our future if we change the path we are on right now. Like Stallman's arguments for free software, an argument for free culture stumbles on a confusion that is hard to avoid, and even harder to understand. A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid. A culture without property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not freedom. Anarchy is not what I advance here. Instead, the free culture that I defend in this book is a balance between anarchy and control. A free culture, like a free market, is filled with property. It is filled with rules of property and contract that get enforced by the state. But just as a free market is perverted if its property becomes feudal, so too can a free culture be queered by extremism in the property rights that define it. That is what I fear about our culture today. It is against that extremism that this book is written.
Speech at Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (28 June 1964), as quoted in By Any Means Necessary (1970)
By Any Means Necessary (1970)
Wilderness and Plenty (1970); as quoted in Stephen R. L. Clark, The Moral Status of Animals (Clarendon Press, 1977), p. 32.
As quoted in Erdogan: "Democracy in the Middle East, PluralIism in Europe: Turkish View" http://www.turkishweekly.net/article/8/erdogan-democracy-in-the-middle-east-pluraliism-in-europe-turkish-view-.html, The Turkish Weekly (October 12, 2004)
The Guardian 'I don't hate Muslims. I hate Islam' http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/17/netherlands.islam (17 February 2008)
2000s
“We cannot overstate our debt to the Past, but the moment has the supreme claim.”
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Quotation and Originality
Context: We cannot overstate our debt to the Past, but the moment has the supreme claim. The Past is for us; but the sole terms on which it can become ours are its subordination to the Present. Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor. We must not tamper with the organic motion of the soul.
Commencement speech http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2007/june20/gradtrans-062007.html, Stanford University (2007-06-17)
Speeches and lectures