Welcome

Hello and welcome to the Centrifugue, a place where culture and theory is set in motion. This is my new blog. My name is Frederik Bové, and I'm a Dane, studying Modern Culture and occasionally blogging about it as well. I have been blogging in Danish, and now I thought it would be time to make the switch to English. The reasons are threefold: One is the old one, I consider my opinions meaningful and important, and I want to voice them in a language spoken by much more people than Danish. Yeah, I know, delusional, and who will read this blog anyway, but still... Small steps to begin with and so forth. Secondly I want to improve my English writing abilities. Hopefully the amount of spelling mistakes will decrease, and what I'm trying to say will become more and more clear. Thirdly, I'm currently an exchange student at University of California, San Diego, and I want to show the people I know from over here what I'm thinking and writing about. Yeah, the third reason is probably the most important one.

But why that weird name? Well, it is based on the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin, who distinguished between two kinds of language: Centripetal and Centrifugal. Centripetal language closes in on itself, creating less and less confusion, but also less posibilities for selfexpression. It is the language of ideology, the language of the communicative systems described by Niclas Luhmann, systems such as capitalism or religion, systems that sorts language based on binary oppositions such as profit/no-profit or sacred/profane. Centripetal language is a force of efficiency through (over)simplification, and ultimately of conservatism and narrowmindedness. Centrifugal language is the opposite, it centrifuges the language and whirls it out into the world. It is a force of liberty, of possibility, and perhaps in a minor way a force of anarchy.

Ok, but then... why Centrifugue instead of Centrifuge? The reasons are threefold:

1: Centrifugue means centrifuge in Spanish. In this way, the name indicates one of the main centrifugal forces: Translation. Constantly translating between languages keeps a culture openminded, and constantly translating between linguisticly based systems - be they societal systems ie contrasting monetal values with religious values, or more narrowly theoretical systems ie just trying to use the language of filmanalysis on music or vice versa – keeps the possibilities of different fields open.

2: Centrifugue contains the word 'fugue' in it, drawing attention to another Bakhtinian term: the 'polyphony' he located in the works of Dostoevsky. The different articles on this blog will hopefully in some way or other add up to a polyphonic fugue of theory and culture, loud enough to make the walls of Babylon come tumbling down. Hopefully.

3: The domain centrifuge.blogspot.com was already taken... Yeah, once again, the third reason is probably the most important one.

So then, this was a short explanation of thoughts and hopes for this blog. It will probably be a lot more clearer when I start to post some kind of content in here. Hopefully soon. I got a (small) cache of Danish posts I'm going to translate/rewrite and mix up with newly written content.

Hope you'll like it. Have a nice day.
Frederik