A friend has just sent me a quote from Nick Land and since this adds to
the post I wrote a short while back on the politics of formalism and
which made a quick departure from Maurice Blanchot and repeated the
notion of being honest I thought some others on the list would find this
interesting. In a way this may also be made to critically address the
way that _Quadrant_ magazine carries on about honesty too. So far as I
understand Nick is writing about a religious problem of honesty here.
The great educational value of the war against Christendom lies in the
/absolute/ truthlessness of the priest. Such purity is rare enough. The
'man of God' is entirely incapable of honesty, and only arises at the
point where truth is defaced beyond all legibility. Lies are his entire
metabolism, the air he breathes, his bread and his wine. He cannot
comment upon the weather without a secret agenda of deceit. No word,
gesture, or perception is slight enough to escape his extravagant reflex
of falsification, and of the lies in circulation he will instinctively
seize on the grossest, the most obscene and oppressive travesty. Any
proposition passing the lips of a priest is /necessarily/ totally false,
excepting only insidiouses whose message is momentarily misunderstood.
It is impossible to deny him without discovering some buried fragment or
reality.
[From Nick Land's paper on Pyrrho]
best wishes
Chris Jones.
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