Isolatoes

"Most striking was what happened to Ishmael. Around the twenty-fifth chapter he fractures into multiple voices contending with one another as if taking turns in a stage play..." (Andrew Delbanco, Melville: His World and Work p.145)

"The general precariousness may be understood in connection with a culture in which there is no longer any master narrative - historical or mythical - around which forms can be organized, unless it be that of the archipélisation of iconographies, discourses, and narratives, isolated entities connected by filigree lines. We are confronted with a floating world..." (Nicolas Bourriaud, The Radicant p.104)

"...he confirmed that he was writing less about the world he imagined than about the self-revising process by which he continuously reimagined it." (Andrew Delbanco, Melville: His World and Work p.148)

"Inevitably, then, collective passions are being funnelled into a drive for war that uncannily resembles Captain Ahab in pursuit of Moby Dick..." (Edward Said, The Observer, after 9/11)

"In this sense, Moby-Dick was like an active archeological site in which the layers of its own history are left deliberately exposed." (Andrew Delbanco, Melville: His World and Work p.146)

"We have no choice but to move in cultures without identifying with them create singularity without immersing ourselves in it, and surf on forms without penetrating them. No doubt the destiny of man without an aura (thus without background, which here means without origin) is even more difficult to accept for Westerners, who are heirs to a culture in which values tend toward totality and the universal." (Nicolas Bourriaud, The Radicant p.42-43)

"Melville's creative process in Moby-Dick was the verbal equivalent of the 'tangible subjectivity' that he had seen in the canvases of Turner." (Andrew Delbanco, Melville: His World and Work p.146 footnote)

"...far as any geologist has yet gone down into the world, it is found to consist of nothing but surface stratified on surface." (Melville, Pierre p.294)

"...a zone formed completely of interstices, within which, far from the guardians of the Work, texts themselves will be put to work. They will embed themselves along various paths, will tattoo the body, will invest practices, and will bring together new communities." (François Cusset, French Theory p.338)

"But if whaling was a family affair, it was also the first international industry dominated by the United States" (Andrew Delbanco, Melville: His World and Work p.40)

"Misprision, misreading, and misuse are the three virtues of cultural exchange." (François Cusset, French Theory p.336)

Regardless, I am having a glass of wine on the balcony. The village is virtually empty. The wind is strong and gusty today. Sun is shining. (Marlene Angeja, Santo Amaro, Pico, Azores August 2008)

"Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other?" (Melville, Billy Budd 21)

"it is not a matter of reproducing or inventing forms, but of capturing forces" (Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation p.40)

"Art is a repetitive mechanism that functions through theft, forgery, copying and embedding." (I. N. S.: Tate Declaration of Inauthenticity #30)

"Aura had passed to the copy." (Martha Rosler, Video: Shedding the Utopian Moment. p.41)

"elated proud inspired thrilled relieved amazed euphoric hopeful happy optimistic cautious inspired thankful delighted exhausted joyful overjoyed scared ready..."-nytimes081105-One Word

"I would prefer not to." (Melville, Bartleby, The Scrivener p21)

"The idea that individual works would disappear into the homes of millionaires was anathema to him (Rothko)" (The Art Cheats Who Betrayed My Father, 14Sept2008, guardian.co.uk).

"I care not to perform this part of my task methodically; but shall be content to produce the desired impression by separate citations of items, practically or reliably known to me as a whaleman; ...and from these citations, I take it - the conclusion aimed at will naturally follow of itself." (Melville, Moby Dick p.221)

"It is not a matter of rejecting one's heritage but rather of learning to squander it, of plotting the line along which one will then carry this baggage in order to scatter and invest its contents." (Nicolas Bourriaud, The Radicant p.56)

"They were nearly all Islanders on the Pequod, Isolatoes too, I call such, not acknowledging the common continent of men, but each Isolato living on a separate continent of his own." (Melville, Moby Dick p.118)