More Books Added

While in Ottawa recently, I stopped in at the Librairie du Soleil on Rue George - just to the east of Parliament Hill. My good fortune was to find that they had four Michel Serres titles in French that I didn't have. The new additions to my library are: Hominescence, Le Tiers-Instruit, Les Cinq Sens, Le Mal Propre. 

My desire to become better in speaking and reading French will be enhanced by these texts as I pursue what will, undoubtedly, be a life-long effort to understand more fully the nuance and style of Serres.

Angels and Beasts

In the section of Angels that deals with angels and beasts, Serres explores the dynamic of chaos and order through mythical creatures. The categories we use to demarcate each, assigning certain attributes to the angels and other, generally contrasting attributes to the beasts or monsters or demons. Our own world bears witness to the complexity of trying to neatly scribe such lines between things. When it is most confusing, I imagine some analytically fixated scholar trying to draw a line between hot and cold in a turbulent stream. There is hot and cold, as there are other polarities. The perplexity comes in learning their distinctions.