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Topic: Walter Benjamin, the Arcades Project, the Angel
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Trespasser
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1204
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posted 07 October 2002 11:52 PM
(Yes, Passagen-Werk = The Arcades Project)I have mixed feelings about Benjamin. The first Derrida article that I've ever read was the Force of Law: The "Mystical Foundation of Authority", in which he dismantles with much ingeniosity a very odd texte of Benjamin from the early 1920s titled Zur Kritik der Gewalt ('Critique of Violence'; 'critique' as 'evaluation, analysis' and not necessarily criticism, and 'violence' more like the force of law, foundational act of law). It is the (in)famous essay which earned Benjamin a congratulatory letter from Carl Schmitt himself, the essay in which he writes about the violence behind the establishment and maintainance of the law, about the alchemy through which force becomes legitimate, becomes a law; the essay in which Benjamin attacks pacifist and anti-death penalty arguments and meditates upon the coming of a possible new foundational violence (general strike and Sorel loom prominent). On the other hand, there's Benjamin of the postmodernists, of literary studies and art history, of sociologists of modernity and of the city, of analysts of fascist estheticization of politics. There's Benjamin who died at the border between two countries, as that was the only way to escape reterritorialization. And there's Benjamin the white crow of Frankfurt. Blake3:16 perfectly summed up in one sentence what was wrong with the Frankfurters: irredeemable gloom. Frankfurt was the hopelessness industry (apart from Marcuse, who was probably 'too involved in the world' for a decent Frankfurter). It was a monastery from which hermits looked down to the unruly Dasein-ness (  ) in trimphalist resignation. We told you so, things are only getting worse, succumb.... Adorno was a theologian to boot.
From: maritimes | Registered: Aug 2001
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BLAKE 3:16
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2978
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posted 08 October 2002 12:16 AM
One of the most amazing images in Benjamin's work is the smashed clock, the alarm clock that rings 60 seconds of every minute, the state of emergency. In certain senses I think Benjamin's power is his negativity, his nihilism. In Adorno, I think this is fetishized, but in Benjamin... Yes, it is the Passagenwerke -- not translated into English before except in bits and chunks. The anglo-American Benjamin is seriously distorted due to the easily available translations, and the contexts in to which they were put. What's its relationship to Andre Breton's Nadja? Or the work of Gail Scott? NB - edits were spelling and punctuation. [ October 09, 2002: Message edited by: BLAKE 3:16 ]
From: Babylon, Ontario | Registered: Aug 2002
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lagatta
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2534
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posted 08 October 2002 06:13 AM
I read stuff by Benjamin about Surrealist Paris, in French, probably excerpted from the Passagenwerk. And tried to read it in German, but my German is very poor. Blake, you know the great Viennese-Brazilian M. Löwy (shameless name-dropping) keeps sending me arcane stuff in German and Portugese, as well as languages I really do read ... I'll have to ask him for the babblers if "Walter Benjamin: Avertissement d'incendie. Une lecture des thèses "sur le concept d'histoire" has come out in English yet. I was mostly interested in material for art works. It is strange how one acquires a certain familiarity with philosophical and marxist German, but I couldn't read instructions on how to install a boiler... liked the thing about Frankfurters, know two (one is one of those unlikely postwar German Jews) - very "involved in the world"... Well, Nadja has the same type of wandering about the city, but in Breton's case, it was not a foreign city and there isn't the same degree of angst, but it would be very interesting to look at both works together. Although he is an intellectual, in some ways Benjamin seems more like Nadja herself than Breton, though I'd have to ponder this more. As for Gail Scott... brilliant writer but more than a bit snarky, anti-political. I think that is important for creators to find ways of remaining "involved in the world"...
From: Se non ora, quando? | Registered: Apr 2002
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Trespasser
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1204
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posted 08 October 2002 10:50 PM
Actually, there are two Adornos, not just one. The Prophet of Doomsday is the Adorno of the Dialektik der Aufklärung, political (in)activism, musical theory, Adorno the bitter old academic who hated the student who flashed her breasts in his direction during the 60s' riots at German universities. *Our* Man Adorno, OTOH, is (I hear, I still haven't read that book) the Adorno of Negative Dialectic, where he was among the first to envision a philosophy of non-identity. **** You have to be poor to be a good flâneuse, I realized that. And if not homeless, than sort of nationless, in order to be able to claim spaces of any city you find yourself in. A special joy of flaneurs/ses are global cities. But I should stop this flaneurie and go back to the centre of this city-thread, to Benjamin. I spend too much time hanging out in the passages anyway. [Pssst, Gatta: forgive me my outrageous ignorance, but who is M. Lowy?  Which (the word Gatta) reminded me of one thing that Eugène Ionesco said in a TV interview: there are cities made for cats and cities made for dogs. He didn't like NYC 'cause he felt it was a city which only the busiest of dogs would enjoy. OTOH he claimed Paris is still a place that a few cats can enjoy too... Just a little barb, I thought.]
From: maritimes | Registered: Aug 2001
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BLAKE 3:16
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2978
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posted 09 October 2002 08:52 PM
To pick up on Trepspasser's comments.. There's a brilliant book by Caroline Knowles called Bedlam On The Streets, published by Routledge. While it doesn't reference Benjamin, it talks about Montreal and its homeless mentally ill -- it talks about lives in flight -- which I identified with as a homecare worker on public transit. The flaneur/se... Again to the Arcades: "Against the armature of glass and iron, upholstery offers resistance with its textiles." [13,1] "Plush - the material in which traces are left especially easily." [I5,2] "If the crowd is a veil.... I lost the page when the phone rang.
From: Babylon, Ontario | Registered: Aug 2002
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Trespasser
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1204
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posted 15 October 2002 12:10 AM
I've been flipping through an old yellowish edition of Illuminations (the one with the boring-ish preface by Hannah Arendt) and you know what? The best essay in that collection is 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'. It's still very alive and of interest. "All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war. War and war only can set a goal for mass movements on the largest scale while respecting the traditional property system. *** Mankind, which in Homer's time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order."
From: maritimes | Registered: Aug 2001
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BLAKE 3:16
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2978
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posted 18 October 2002 09:37 PM
The Arcades Project is available in soft cover for about $35 - the design is quite nice and there's perhaps something nice about the soft cover vis a vis the loss of aura, a mass production of a very weird and eclectic book. But it makes sense! What I'm interested in regard to the loss of aura of the artwork is next question -- should be for is? Against this? Is a fait accomplis? I don't recall anything by Benjamin regarding Marel Duchamp and his readymades. I wonder how we can relate the two, and what it means ethically outside the sphere of 'art'. I do recommend the book -- it's trangressions and tangents are beautiful. It is full of all sorts of great illustrations, odd quotations, bits of hearsay, philosophy, revolutionary history. It's fun just to skip through. [ October 18, 2002: Message edited by: BLAKE 3:16 ]
From: Babylon, Ontario | Registered: Aug 2002
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