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“We presuppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.”

Marx, Karl, Capital (Kindle Locations 2918-2920).

I am typing in the living room of my chilly, dimly lit apartment. This Chicago morning is blandly gray—nothing new under the wan wintry sun. But it’s December 31^st, the one day of the year that harbors the promise of beautiful novelty. We will soon flee from ourselves and become completed humans. We will vow to make a minor adjustment, which also stands in for every adjustment we possibly could make in order to perfect ourselves. We will start again. We will make New Years resolutions.

“[…W]hat Proust experienced in the phenomenon of remembrance as an individual, we have to experience in regard to fashion.”                    

–Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project, p. 39

By the end of Walter Benjamin’s life, the concept of ‘the dialectical-image’ became the focal point for his unfinished Arcades Project. The development of this concept began early in his life when he resurrected the value of allegory, distinguishing it from the symbol. Studying baroque theater in The Origin of German Tragic Drama Benjamin writes, “Allegorical personification has always concealed the fact that its function is not the personification of things, but rather to give the concrete a more imposing form by getting it up as a person”

My Hegel Problem:

Here’s the thing with Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: the dialectic works in both ways, al(l)ways; it always-already covers all the “angles”. In a way, I would risk saying it is an operation of reflection directed against the operation of writing, or of the philosopher against the writer. Whatever it is you lay claim to, or write, Hegel will look at what’s behind it and say that it was a direct result of the latter. A direct result.

As a prelude to a discussion about “the ordinary” in its various guises i.e. (1) its illusory manifestation as a privileged space impermeable to the threatening uncanny of “real world” politics; (2) as the radical ordinary reclaimed from the seeming greyscale of the neoliberal West and its culture industry:

“Themes of “wonder” and the “marvel of Being” are suspect if they refer to an ecstatic mysticism that pretends to escape the world. The theme of scientific curiosity is no less suspect if it boils down to a collector’s preoccupation with rarities. In both cases, desire for the exception presupposes disdain for the ordinary.

In the contest to mystify what is at least for this worker bee the self-evident object-cause of mass killing—namely, the happiness of a warm gun—Professor Wampole’s latest foray into social criticism at The Stone really takes the cupcake.

As the descriptions of the events at Sandy Hook become more and more detailed in the media, I find myself — like probably much of America — imagining this horrific scene. J.R. mentioned in the comments to metaphysicalvillain’s post that these scenes are “infused with the fantasy of some absolute, cinematic gesture.” This seems quite true, but I’m not sure how we should understand this association. What makes a scene or an act cinematic?

Why does this exist? Really haunting: I saw some kids playing with this today, showing off for their parents.

Read all about it!