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Some Thoughts on the Politics of “Suburbs”

Tuesday, August 3, 2010 — danbarber

The place I grew up was not exactly the suburbs, more like some post-industrial small city out of a Springsteen song.  Nonetheless, there’s something about Arcade Fire’s new album that I find affectively striking.  This is because the titular “suburbs” are not an actual place—though, sadly, they are also that—but something like the condition of possibility for contemporary North American existence.   It is in this sense, I think, that we can speak of the political character of The Suburbs.  They have made an album that is not “realist” so much as an encounter with that which enables what we call reality—the feelings, the patterns of thought, the capacities of sense that one cannot avoid encountering.

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Posted in aesthetics, apocalyptic, Benjamin, ecology, Gnosticism, nihilism. 10 Comments »

New Benjamin Anthology

Wednesday, September 19, 2007 — Adam Kotsko

At the Seminary Co-op yesterday, I picked up a copy of a new anthology of Benjamin’s writings from Suhrkamp — Kairos: Schriften zur Philosophie. It contains a lot of the classic essays not found in Illuminationen, including sections from the Trauerspielbuch, as well as a selection of letters to and from Scholem, Adorno, and Horkheimer. The copyright date is 2007, meaning that all of you who do not live near the Co-op should continue to be murderously jealous of me.

I have a kind of compulsion to buy Benjamin’s writings in German whenever I find them, even though my German is still pretty bad. The fantasy, of course, is that I will discover some magic-bullet solution that will enable me to read German comfortably, but that does not appear to be forthcoming at this time.

Posted in Benjamin. 8 Comments »

Walter Benjamin and David Lynch: An Inquiry

Friday, August 3, 2007 — Adam Kotsko

In the course of recent conversations about the distinctiveness of David Lynch’s films, I found myself drawn to the vocabulary of Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art &c.” Once made, the connection between Lynch’s techniques and Benjamin’s theory of film seemed to be overwhelmingly obvious, so I assumed that there must have been many articles written on the subject. My initial search, however, has turned up nothing. If anyone with superior research skills or with preexisting knowledge of an article along these lines could help me, that would be great.

Posted in Benjamin, David Lynch. 11 Comments »

On the Concept of History

Tuesday, April 24, 2007 — Adam Kotsko

Is it possible that Benjamin’s concept of the “Jetztzeit” (lit. “now-time”) in the Theses is meant to evoke a contrast with “Neuzeit” (modernity, lit. “new-time”)? That would seem to fit well with the distinction between the liberal-progressive concept of time and messianic time.

The German text does not appear to include the word “Neuzeit,” but of course “Jetztzeit” appears in several places.

Posted in Benjamin, translation. 1 Comment »

Benjamin: Latin American Liberation Theologian

Thursday, April 12, 2007 — Adam Kotsko

In Fire Alarm, Michael Löwy brings Benjamin’s “Theses” into dialogue with Latin American liberation theology. One gets the impression that this connection is somehow surprising, but in fact the genealogical connection is obvious: JB Metz.

I defy any of my readers to find a major text of liberation theology (at least in the initial, “heroic” stage) that doesn’t cite Metz! I defy you!

Someone should write an essay about this, probably.

Posted in Benjamin, dogmatics, eschatology, Marxism, politics, religion. 9 Comments »