Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus page 180

In a work there is much seeming and sham, one could go further and say that as "a work" it is seeming in and for itself. Its ambition is to make one believe that it is not made, but born, like Pallas Athene in full fig and embossed armour from Jupiter's head. But that is a delusion. Never did a work come like that. It is work: art-work for appearance's sake--and now the question is whether at the present stage of our consciousness, our knowledge, our sense of truth, this little game is still permissible, still intellectually possible, still to be taken seriously; whether the work as such, the construction, self-sufficing, harmonically complete in itself, still stands in any legitimate relation to the complete insecurity, problematic conditions, and lack of harmony of our social situation; whether all seeming, even the most beautiful, even precisely the beautiful, has not become a lie.

Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour page 77

Methodologically, I shall try as far as possible to undo the division of those poles of the exploitative relations which are usually analysed as separate entities. Out understanding of scholarly work or research follows exactly the same logic as that of the colonizers and scientists: they cut apart and separate parts which constitute a whole, isolate these parts, analyse them under laboratory conditions and synthesize them again in a new, man-made, artificial model.

I shall not follow this logic. I shall rather try to trace the 'underground connections' that link the processes by which nature was exploited and put under man's domination to the processes by which women in Europe were subordinated, and examine the processes by which these two were linked to the conquest and colonization of other lands and people. Hence, the historical emergence of European science and technology, and its mastery over nature have to be linked to the persecution of the European witches. And both the persecution of the witches and the rise of modern science have to be linked to the slave trade and the destruction of subsistence economies in the colonies.

Gabriel Josipovici, What Ever Happened to Modernism? pages 145-146

...one of the key essays in Either/Or is the essay, in Part I, entitled 'The Ancient Tragical Motif as Reflected in the Modern', in which he seeks to bring out the essential difference between ancient and modern tragedy. Our age is more melancholy than that of the Greeks, and so more in despair, says Kierkegaard. The reason for this is that today each person is deemed to be entirely responsible for his actions while 'the peculiarity of ancient tragedy is that the action does not issue exclusively from character, that the action does not find its sufficient explanation in subjective reflection and decision'. We can see this in the very form of ancient and of modern tragedy. Modern tragedy, like all modern drama, proceeds by means of dialogue; in ancient Greek drama dialogue formed only one component of the play, alongside monlogue and, above all, the chorus. 'The chorus', says Kierkegaard, 'indicates...the more which will not be absorbed in individuality.' (And this, incidentally, explains why opera, as Kierkegaard demonstrates in the previous essay in the volume, on Mozart's Don Giovanni, can say so much more than drama--music, in opera, has taken over the role of the chorus in ancient Greek drama.)

What is this 'more'? Why does it define ancient tragedy? And why is it absent from its modern counterpart?

The reason for this naturally lies in the fact that the ancient world did not have subjectivity fully self-conscious and reflective. Even if the individual moved freely, he still rested in the substantial categories of state, family and destiny. This substantial category is exactly the fatalistic element in Greek tragedy, and its exact peculiarity. The hero's destruction is, therefore, not only the result of his own deeds, but it is also, suffering, whereas in modern tragedy, the hero's destruction is really not suffering, but is action.

The hero of Greek tragedy was not an autonomous individual. He was caught in and made by a whole web of different interpenetrating elements. These were what led to tragedy but also what absolved him from full responsibility. Terrible things might happen to him, but he could not blame himself, or, to put it in terms of Greek tragedy itself, he might be polluted but he was not guilty. In modern tragedy, on the other hand, 'the hero stands and falls entirely on his own acts'. 'Our age has lost all the substantial categories of family, state and race. It must leave the individual entirely to himself, so that in a stricter sense he becomes his own creator, his guilt is consequently sin, his pain remorse; but this nullifies the tragic.' For the Greeks, 'life relationships are once and for all assigned to them, like the heaven under which they live. If this is dark and cloudy, it is also unchangeable.' And, argues Kierkegaard, this is what gives Greek tragedy its soothing quality....Tragedy leads to sorrow, ethics to pain. 'Where the age loses the tragic', he concludes, 'it gains despair.'

William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch pages 186-187

You can write or yell or croon about it . . . paint about it . . . act about it . . . shit it out in mobiles . . . So long as you don't go and do it . . .

Senators leap up and bray for the Death Penalty with inflexible authority of virus yen . . . Death for dope fiends, death for sex queens (I mean fiends), death for the psychopath who offends the cowed and graceless flesh with broken animal innocence of lithe movement . . .

The black wind sock of death undulates over the land, feeling, smelling for the crime of separate life, movers of the fear-frozen flesh shivering under a vast probability curve . . .

Population blocks disappear in a checker game of genocide . . . Any number can play . . .

The Liberal Press and The Press Not So Liberal and The Press Reactionary scream approval: "Above all the myth of other-level experience must be eradicated . . ." And speak darkly of certain harsh realities . . . cows with the aftosa . . . prophylaxis . . .

Power groups of the world frantically cut lines of connection . . .

The Planet drifts to random insect doom . . .

Thermodynamics has won at a crawl . . . Orgone balked at the post . . . Christ bled . . . Time ran out . . .

Clifford D. Simak, A Choice of Gods page 138

And what had she done, she wondered. What had happened to her? Trying to recall it, she could discover only fragments of it and she was sure that when it had happened there had been no fragmentation and that the fragments she could recall were no more than broken pieces of the whole. The world had opened out and so had the universe, or what she since had thought must have been the universe, lying all spread out before her, with every nook revealed, with all the knowledge, all the reasons there--a universe in which time and space had been ruled out because time and space were only put there, in the first place, to make it impossible for anyone to grasp the universe.