Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- 1 Peter Sloterdijk’s Spherological Acrobatics: An Exercise in Introduction
- 2 Foamy Business: On the Organizational Politics of Atmospheres
- 3 “Transgenous Philosophy”: Post-humanism, Anthropotechnics and the Poetics of Natal Difference
- 4 Disinhibition, Subjectivity and Pride. Or: Guess Who Is Looking?: Peter Sloterdijk’s reconstruction of ‘thymotic’ qualities, psychoanalysis and the question of spectatorship
- 5 Sloterdijk and the Question of an Aesthetic
- 6 Uneasy Places. Monotheism, Christianity, and the Dynamic of the Unlikely in Sloterdijk’s Work – Context and Debate
- 7 The Attention Regime: On Mass Media and the Information Society
- 8 In the Beginning was the Accident: The Crystal Palace as a Cultural Catastrophe and the Emergence of the Cosmic Misfit: A critical approach to Peter Sloterdijk’s Weltinnenraum des Kapitals vs. Fyodor M. Dostoevsky’s Notes from the underground
- 9 A Cautious Prometheus? A Few Steps Toward a Philosophy of Design with Special Attention to Peter Sloterdijk
- 10 Sloterdijk and the Question of Action
- 11 The Space of Global Capitalism and its Imaginary Imperialism: An Interview with Peter Sloterdijk
- Contributors
- Index
Bicycle Diaries: Racing in the Land of Giants
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- 1 Peter Sloterdijk’s Spherological Acrobatics: An Exercise in Introduction
- 2 Foamy Business: On the Organizational Politics of Atmospheres
- 3 “Transgenous Philosophy”: Post-humanism, Anthropotechnics and the Poetics of Natal Difference
- 4 Disinhibition, Subjectivity and Pride. Or: Guess Who Is Looking?: Peter Sloterdijk’s reconstruction of ‘thymotic’ qualities, psychoanalysis and the question of spectatorship
- 5 Sloterdijk and the Question of an Aesthetic
- 6 Uneasy Places. Monotheism, Christianity, and the Dynamic of the Unlikely in Sloterdijk’s Work – Context and Debate
- 7 The Attention Regime: On Mass Media and the Information Society
- 8 In the Beginning was the Accident: The Crystal Palace as a Cultural Catastrophe and the Emergence of the Cosmic Misfit: A critical approach to Peter Sloterdijk’s Weltinnenraum des Kapitals vs. Fyodor M. Dostoevsky’s Notes from the underground
- 9 A Cautious Prometheus? A Few Steps Toward a Philosophy of Design with Special Attention to Peter Sloterdijk
- 10 Sloterdijk and the Question of Action
- 11 The Space of Global Capitalism and its Imaginary Imperialism: An Interview with Peter Sloterdijk
- Contributors
- Index
Summary
Life is like riding a bicycle – in order to keep your balance, you must keep moving.
(Albert Einstein)Ten points! Twenty points! Thirty!
ZOOOOOM! Biking so fast that my feet can't keep up and almost get tangled in my reeling pedals, I fly past three bicyclists. Guess who's more Dutch than you? Hint: you’re eating her dust! My bright orange UNOX gloves from Sinterklaas soar in the air triumphantly.
Some people would say that racing through the streets of Utrecht for arbitrary and inconsequential points is ill advised, given that my competition are the Dutchies, and they have been biking since they were in the womb. Some even have the audacity to argue that racing a five-year-old on a tricycle doesn't count – especially if only one side is aware of the competition (meaning me). Something about an unfair advantage and picking on someone your own size. But frankly, as a short Asian girl, by this very logic, kids would be my competition. The people – adults and babies alike – in the Netherlands are the tallest in the world! It's statistically proven. Plus, c’mon, he was on a trike – that's an entire extra wheel on me! Somebody should mention that. Whatever. I choose not to listen to these hypocrites and their deficient analyses. I have better things to do. Like race giant toddlers and mothers with a bikeload of them.
The trailer is already playing in my head:
In a world…
Full of giants…
On bikes…
One woman.
One desire.
To race…
Fighting the urge to point and laugh at my competition – “In your face… five-year-old!” – I zip past stores lining the streets. House. Blokker. HEMA. Albert Heijn. (Mmm… lekker… good memories of splurging on 18 packages of stroopwafels… which may or may not have traumatized the cashier…) Sex shop. Coffeeshop. Church. I can't help but laugh. Only in the Netherlands can such contradictions coexist side by side without a lawsuit.
My eyes dart to my left, briefly eyeing the shadowy figure beside me: Tall Dutch Girl eating yoghurt with her left hand and holding a cigarette in her right. Impressive and… gross. My feet dance frantically.
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- Chapter
- Information
- In Medias ResPeter Sloterdijk's Spherological Poetics of Being, pp. 73 - 77Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2012