XYZ Outlet #4: Yiorgos Veltsos - Talk | Tuesday February 1st 2011, from 20.00 to 21.00, strictly | Perdika 8 & Achileos, Metaxourgeio
For its fourth instalment XYZ Outlet is delighted to present a talk by Yiorgos Veltsos, on intellectuals, sexuality and a "gay becoming" in Greece.
"An intellectual is someone who thinks autobiographically." writes Yiorgos Veltsos. "Walter Benjamin, through his memories of Berlin, and “One Way Street”, showed us that he cannot separate theory from biography.
In Greece, the one who bares themselves - what Baudelaire called « mis à nu» (baring)- is being associated with Lakis Lazopoulos [comedian and TV personality]. The austerity, insulation of the intellectual caste, wills their presence to allude to purified water, without that pinch of salt, the lack of which makes it unsubstantial.
Foucault, in the book “To Mati tis Eksousias” [ed. A 2008 Greek collection of Foucault’s essays by Vanias Publishing], which Alexis Tsipras - president of the Greek left political party Synaspismos - gave to the President of the Hellenic Republic, Karolos Papoulias, two years ago in a symbolic manner, writes amongst other readings fit for a President, that “sexuality is part of the freedom we have in the world” because sex “is not a destiny but an opportunity for a creative life”. A gay ‘becoming’ - without it meaning gay necessarily - and its consequences, is what is missing from the intellectuals in Greece. So, yes, indeed “we must create a gay way of life.”
Yiorgos Veltsos is an academic and a poet.
XYZ Outlet #4: Yiorgos Veltsos - Talk
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