Category Archives: Paradoxes of Identity

The Brothers Karamazov

The fol­low­ing are excerpts from The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov, Book 1, by Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky, the ver­sion trans­lated by Con­stance Garnett:

At the same time, he was all his life one of the most sense­less, fan­tas­ti­cal fel­lows in the whole dis­trict. I repeat, it was not stupiditiy—the major­ity of these fan­tas­ti­cal fel­lows are shrewd and intel­li­gent enough—but just …

September 13, 2009 – 7:57 pm | By Matthew Scheer | Posted in Dostoyevsky, Paradoxes of Identity, The Brothers Karamazov | Comments (0)

The Serial Killer as a Type of Person

The fol­low­ing excerpt is from the remark­able essay The Ser­ial Killer as a Type of Per­son by Mark Seltzer, a pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity. (The high­light­ing is my own.)
Obey your thirst!
There is an empty cir­cu­lar­ity in the notion of the kind of per­son called the ser­ial killer lift­ing itself by its own boot­straps: the …

August 13, 2009 – 10:08 pm | By Matthew Scheer | Posted in Mark Seltzer, Paradoxes of Identity, Tocqueville | Comments (0)