२ एप्रिल, २०२२

"When Gramsci was four, a boil on his back began hemorrhaging, and he nearly bled to death. His mother bought a shroud and a small coffin.."

"... which stood in a corner of the house for the rest of his youth. As Gramsci’s latest biographer... reports...  Gramsci was buckled for hours each day into a leather harness contraption that hung from the rafters, intended to repair his spine. He hardened himself with tests of endurance, such as hammering his fingers with a stone until they bled. He kept a pet hawk, and idolized the Sardinian bandit Giovanni Tolu, who outfoxed the local Carabinieri. At school he was rebellious and insolent. Once, he had a dispute with a teacher who did not believe Gramsci had found a monstrous, snakelike lizard with feet. (He had: It was an ocellated skink.)"

From "The Unlikely Persistence of Antonio Gramsci/No one understood political battle lines better than a Communist politician from Sardinia" (TNR).

२२ टिप्पण्या:

mikee म्हणाले...

And Hitler was a vegetarian who loved dogs. Other than that, though, Hitler (and Gramsci) have lives that were problematic for others Of the human race. Which aspect of their lives has had more impact on the world - the personal bits, or the public behavior?

RideSpaceMountain म्हणाले...

"When Gramsci was four, a boil on his back began hemorrhaging, and he nearly bled to death."

That's really unfortunate. That he didn't die I mean. I'm not a fan of boils. I never thought I would ever be rooting for a boil, or be on "team boil", but here we are.

gilbar म्हणाले...

Gramsci? Who was The Founding Member of the Gramsci fan club?
Oh, that's right! Mayor Pete Buttifuc's dad!

David Begley म्हणाले...

This unfortunate and weird fucked up guy had fucked up ideas that we are dealing with today. The whole “march through the institutions” has worked. Look at public schools and The Disney Company.

Critter म्हणाले...

Why is it that Marxist thinkers are such a mess as a person? A case could be made that their political advocacy was motivated by a desire to strike back at normal people and society.

Temujin म्हणाले...

Would that he had bled to death as a child...

His thinking has worked like a cancer on Western Civilization. Maybe that's the fault of those buying into his words and not his words themselves.

One Eye म्हणाले...

Had boils as a kid, always on the knees.

Painful.

baghdadbob म्हणाले...

Pete Buttigieg's father, Joseph, was a noted Gramscian scholar.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves म्हणाले...

It's a happy coincidence that the corrupt left are grooming Buttigeig to be the insider *big money* leftist on tap for future power.

Bob Boyd म्हणाले...

Ironically, Gramsci went on to become a boil on the backside of all mankind.

hombre म्हणाले...

Fortunately for today's commies, like the author and the mediaswine at The New Republic, American indifference over the years has eliminated the need for them to suffer. All they needed was patience and The New Democrats have now eliminated the need for that.

We are there, Antonio.

BUMBLE BEE म्हणाले...

As Prager points out, the left has the time.

Michael K म्हणाले...

We are living in the post-Gramsci world. He predicted, or at least advocated, all the poison that flows today through the left.

Andrew म्हणाले...

I'm genuinely surprised to find that out about Buttigieg's father. What one learns from Althouse commenters...

Who could edit Gramsci's works with approval, and head up a society named after him? That's incomprehensible to me. One would have to be void of a conscience.

Has even one journalist asked Pete about this? Of course not. Instead he takes months off for paternity leave, during a transportation crisis, and no one bats an eye. But oh, how cute he and his husband look in the hospital!

Dave Begley म्हणाले...

I read a link that was provided by a commenter about Mayor Pete's dad. It was to a blog by "Robert Belvedere." The guy is very, very well read.

Pete's dad was a professor at Notre Dame and was the President of the Gramscian Society in America. He translated his books into English and Pete helped.

I'm convinced that Pete is a secret Commie and he was trained by his dad.

And, yes, Pete's communism is well-hidden. He is the Real Manchurian Candidate.

(Disclosure: I have a personal grudge against the glib and gay Pete. I hope he runs again so I can confront him on this issue.)

Wince म्हणाले...

“The bourgeoisie will remember my carbuncles until their dying day,” Marx told Friedrich Engels in a letter from 1867.

Marx's erupting skin may have influenced writings

LONDON (Reuters) - Karl Marx, who complained of excruciating boils, actually suffered from a chronic skin disease with known psychological effects that may well have influenced his writings, a British expert said on Tuesday.

Sam Shuster, professor of dermatology at the University of East Anglia, believes the revolutionary thinker had hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) in which the apocrine sweat glands -- found mainly in the armpits and groin -- become blocked and inflamed.

“In addition to reducing his ability to work, which contributed to his depressing poverty, hidradenitis greatly reduced his self-esteem,” said Shuster, who published his findings in the British Journal of Dermatology.

“This explains his self-loathing and alienation, a response reflected by the alienation Marx developed in his writing.”

While HS is linked to boil-like lumps, the painful condition also causes more widespread infection, swelling, skin thickening and scarring.

It could also explain a number of Marx’s other complaints, not previously linked, such as joint pain and a painful eye condition which often stopped him working.

Shuster based his diagnosis on an analysis of Marx’s extensive correspondence, in which he wrote to friends about his health and described his skin lesions as “curs” and “swine”.

1867: KARL MARX PLAGUED BY PAINFUL GENITAL BOILS

“I shan’t bore you by explaining [the] carbuncles on my posterior and near the penis, the final traces of which are now fading but which made it extremely painful for me to adopt a sitting and hence a writing posture. I am not taking arsenic because it dulls my mind too much and I need to keep my wits about me.”

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

And don't forget Marat:

"The radical French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat died, famously, in a bathtub. He was soaking in one when his assassin, Charlotte Corday, plunged a kitchen knife into his chest in 1793. And he was soaking in a bath because of a mysterious condition that left his skin intensely itchy and blistered. The bath was his only relief, and the bath was where he died. In the centuries since, people have speculated endlessly about the origins of his skin condition. Marat himself blamed the time he spent hiding from his political enemies, sleeping in cellars in damp, dirty clothes. Doctors have speculated about conditions with ever more complicated names: syphilis, scrofula, scabies, leprosy, diabetic candidiasis, atopic eczema, seborrheic dermatitis, dermatitis herpetiformis, bullous pemphigoid, and histiocytic proliferative disorder. Recently, geneticists decided to look at the only physical evidence that remains: the bloodstained newspapers he was annotating at the time he was killed...."

walter म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
Iman म्हणाले...

I see that name and my thoughts turn to the butterfly in Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder”…

Ampersand म्हणाले...

It feels as though Gramsci, post-mortem, has, along with Cloward-Piven, strategized the left's march for the past decades. He has provided the ideological and practical programs for the hegemony of the New Class. With only minor exceptions, our schools, professions, unions, religions, ethnic and sexual minorities, large businesses, media, the arts, foundations, nonprofits, and even the so-called capitalists of Wall Street, are now irrevocably captured by the Left. It remains only for the masks to drop and for new definitions of democracy and equality to be openly propounded and forced down our throats. These definitions will seem to perpetuate the new hegemony, until some trauma, perhaps foreign conquest, poverty, or disease, changes the rules.

Sorry to be so pessimistic, but there it is.

Josephbleau म्हणाले...

From what I read here. we are to be anti-boil with respect to policy. Many examples have been displayed showing that boilers demonstrate undesirable characteristics. This may indeed be so, but are there not many people of boils that are normal and upstanding individuals?

There may be an association between boil possessing and bad politics. But let us be aware that causality is a "two way street" where possessing boils may cause bad outcomes, or being bad of a nature can also cause boils. This leads to a conundrum, where causality is indeterminate.

Let us propose to experiment: Find subjects who have boils, and determine their politics, and also find subjects who are of politics, and determine their boils.

Issac Newton impells us from the grave, to be independent, honest, and observant.

gpm म्हणाले...

>>And don't forget Marat:

The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade,

--gpm