Human Flower Project
Miami, Florida USA
Denver, Colorado USA
Hollywood, California USA
Friday, July 09, 2010
Totality
Overcoming alienation: John Levett furthers the revolution thirty minutes a day.
Bobby James and Félicité Parmentier
Photo: John Levett
By John Levett
There’s an oft-quoted passage of Karl Marx that goes as follows: “as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming fisherman, herdsman or critic.”
It’s a passage about human creative potentialities where the human being “...does not reproduce himself in one specificity, but produces his totality…Strives not to remain something he has become, but is in the absolute movement of becoming.”
They’re fine passages omitting only the recognition that hunting, fishing, cattle rearing, criticizing and becoming are also available to women.